i didn’t pick up the feather. i have many feathers, so this is rather unusual, but i left it there. i wanted others to see it as well. one lone crow feather, standing in the grass.
and when all evidence is but one feather, what does it say about this crow?
what evidence are we leaving as we fly through this world?
are we complacent, inattentive, unmoved by all the chaos of the current climate in these un-united united states? are we merely living superficially, going about our days normally, with nary a nod to the cruelty and vileness of what this administration is wreaking, what this administration is intending? are we ignoring the descent of this country from the cherished democracy it had been? are we shushing each other, refusing to partake in conversation, stating that we “just don’t talk about it”?
or do we care about the fast and vast changes that are taking place? do we feel the pain of others, do we try to put ourselves in their shoes? do we try to ease the burden of people who are affected by the policies based in homophobia, xenophobia, racism, extreme nationalistic, misogynistic, patriarchal, antiquated horror? do we speak up, is there an inflection point when we are no longer silent?
I didn’t pick up the feather. i left it there because i felt like it was evidence that we all leave evidence for others to witness.
no matter how many fresnels, how many gels, how many follow spots, how many tracks, how much confetti, how many bubbles, how many furries – it does not match the energy in the giant pavilion as it built through their performance.
our son and his musical EDM duo partner aced their set – their music setting the heartbeat – and, from a new vantage point in the middle of the crowd, it was sheer joy to watch.
PRIDE milwaukee was a celebration of freedom – freedom to respectfully love whomever you choose to love. there is nothing like being embraced and encouraged by a festival-sized crowd to be whoever you are. it’s like there was a mash-up of the words of cher’s “believe” and marlo thomas’ “free to be” ringing in my ears. empowering. tolerance.
and i stood in the middle of all of these thousands of people – all just being who they are, all dancing and laughing and hugging and feeling in their skin – wondering how anyone can reject acceptance, how anyone can squelch love and draw parameters, how anyone can vote against LGBTQ rights and freedoms, how anyone can wish to instill fear in a community, how anyone can righteously think they are above others.
i was proud to be at PRIDE.
one of our son’s friends said, “you are such supportive parents.”. i thought to myself – wow – that’s redundancy at its best – “supportive” and “parents”. aren’t they one and the same?
yes, i was proud to be at PRIDE.
on saturday night, surrounded by thousands of others, i danced with my hands to the sky, grateful to be here in this community of people loving people, granting each other the freedom to be, grateful to choose to be a mom who was there.
and then, the reality of right-now crept in.
and i thought about the peril part. the danger of this precipice between democratic freedom and autocratic elimination of rights, of silencing LGBTQ, of the denial of acceptance and empowerment and support.
and i thought of the deplorable act of voting for this abhorrent administration – against family members or friends or people in one’s own community.
i thought about ALL the cruel policies, sweeping up and discarding in the name of xenophobia and racism, banning rights, freedoms, hotlines to help, books, HIV/AIDS resources in the name of homophobia, gleefully destroying healthcare, food security, assistance in the name of oligarch wealth. it’s sickening.
“there’s a land that i see/where the children are free/and i say it ain’t far to this land from where we are/take my hand, come with me/where the children are free/come with me, take my hand, and we’ll live
in a land where the river runs free/in a land through the green country/in a land to a shining see/and you and me are free to be/you and me
every boy in this land grows to be his own man/in this land, every girl grows to be her own woman/take my hand, come with me/where the children are free/come with me, take my hand, and we’ll run
to a land where the river runs free/to a land through the green country/to a land to a shining sea/to a land where the horses run free/to a land where the children are free
and you and me are free to be/and you and me are free to be/and you are me are free to be you and me” (1972…free to be…you and me – stephen lawrence/bruce hart)
and, astonished at the speed at which evil takes over, i wondered: where did this land go?
“you have the right to be yourself.” (aclu wisconsin)
there are few places with more evidence of this than PRIDE festivals. the wholehearted acceptance of one person to another is a theme on loop. it is a gift to attend such a celebration of people loving people.
and isn’t that the way it should be?
and yet, persons in this country, in some warped and perverted place in their brains and hearts – have decided that erasing the right to be oneself is their calling – leading with hate, placing the LGBTQ community under siege – people all complicit in the marginalization, disenfranchisement and endangering of this community with their hurrahing of rolling back protections of freedoms, mandating discrimination, and weaponizing federal law against transgender people.
when there is precious little time to start with in our mortal existence, how is it that so many people have so much time to spend on reviling of and cruelty to other people?
the american civil liberties union fights to protect, defend and expand civil rights and liberties.
because everyone has a right to be themselves.
the aclu of wisconsin “envisions a just society in which the dignity of every person is respected and our collective liberation is realized.”
imagine. a place where we simply love one another, support one another – as best we can.
to take every moment and maximize your time in it. to have compassion. to exercise kindness. to extend goodness. to embrace each other. to push back against oppression.
to generously allow each and every person to be true, to be authentic, to be themselves in every respectful and loving way.
“be yourself. everyone else is already taken.” (oscar wilde)
every single bit of the dandelion that is you is unprepared for the flight of the fluffy feathery pappus of the puffball off and beyond.
though the flight of these filaments is your ultimate goal – to give lift to these children who have merely been loaned to you for a time – their jet-stream-like flight takes you by surprise, leaves you a little breathless and a little astounded as you watch them fly, dispersed by the wind. your hearts – the extra ones that were birthed in you at the time of their arrival – clench a little in the moment of their departure, wonder at the very, very big change in how you are then defined in the world.
and you realize, perhaps, that you suddenly understand how your own sweet momma (and dad) felt. the moment they retired and moved. the moment you moved away, likely to not return to live in their locale again. the moment you no longer stop by at any old time. the moment it required more planning, more travel, more arrangements to see each other.
and you try to adjust – your little dandelion heart works hard to put it all into perspective, to recognize the natural order of things, to grok that this is the way of the universe – birth, growth, independence. it is the way of the dandelion. as beautiful as it was, the yellow flower was not the pinnacle; the puffball is essential for these amazing children to go, to become, to make their mark on the world, to change things for all time.
but that same little dandelion heart sometimes just aches a little – for the days they were satisfied with lap-sitting and book-reading together, or the days you endlessly shopped together, or the days you sat on the sidelines of their game or their match or their race or their concert or their recital, or the days you simply were together – sharing space and time – sharing time in the same space.
i knew my own momma was my biggest fan – despite any disagreement we might have had along the way. she was the cheerleader of my life in the same way that i carry pompoms for my own children, in all their sharing of steep summits and challenges and bliss and angst. they will always be the first thing i think of in the morning and the last thing at night as i tuck them in with whispered prayers i poof to them like blown kisses or – maybe – like dandelion pappus in the breeze.
time will keep moving and i can feel it now.
“it’s friday again,” i look at d.
“and it’s june,” he replies.
wow.
and my grown children keep growing – in their own physical, concentric worlds. and i keep going – in mine. and when those two worlds meet – when they bump up against each other and sit still for a spell – my dandelion heart is ecstatic.
when you hike a trail a lot, it becomes a member of the family. like when you recognize something has changed – someone had a haircut, someone has new glasses, someone has lost weight, someone looks tired – it is no different. the trees have leafed, the underbrush has been knocked over, the game trail is tamped down, the may apple has flowered, the wild geranium is prolific, the river is high, the river is low, the turtles have come out, the beaver dam is bigger.
we talk about our river trail a lot because we hike it a lot. though we’d prefer it to be different, we see it more than we see any member of our family.
this particular day – when the sky was a perfect sky-blue, when the river was high enough to cover the logs where the turtles sun, when purple fleabane budded next to its white-daisy-bloom predecessor, when the great blue heron joined the cranes flying the river, when the color green had more hues than any person might imagine – this day was a reminder of how well we knew this trail, its turns, the gifts of the familiar and the magic of the unexpected.
and there is this high spot on the trail where we stand and look out over the meadow, over the marsh, over the river. and i stood – still – looking at where the trees met the sky, all glorious, listening to the sounds on the breeze, feeling the sun on my face and my feet on the ground – standing still – and felt the insanity of being alive.
there is a spot in our backyard – a pretty specific spot – where we can sit and watch the sun as it gets lower and lower in the sky. it filters through clouds or the trees to our west. it lingers over the familiar rooflines of houses nearby. it is a spot on the patio that is ridiculously reassuring as we adirondack-chair sit, sunglasses on, witnessing the beginnings of the end of the day.
because we are not given to dinners out – and they aren’t really in our budget anyway – we tend to spend the waning hours of daylight on our deck or on this patio. maybe with a little happy hour, maybe just quietly – either way, it is a magical way to be a part of sundown, to begin evening, particularly when the ‘hood around us is silent but for the sparrows, chickadees, cardinals getting in last licks at the birdfeeder, dustbathing in the dirtspots dogga has generously dug, sipping water from the birdbath or the pond. it can be so quiet as to hear the hummingbird’s tiny chirps as it buzzes over our heads after devouring at its feeder. these are good days, the days that decrescendo like this.
and so, i try and capture these ends-of-day – for other days when the time comes for sunset and the horizon is full of clouds or rain, for other days when our hearts need the reminder, the universe hug that there is a night of rest coming and a new day to follow.
i glance over at d – whose hand is holding mine – and watch dogga run his backyard circle of joy.
for this moment, i feel a sense of peace. I breathe it all in – soaking in the energy that we need to be in these moments of history. i lean back against the throw pillow and exhale.
the sun, the contrail – elements of an exclamation mark in the sky.
i imagine it is an exclamation-mark for the beginning of PRIDE month – events with themes like “united in pride!” (chicago) and “remember, resist, rejoice!” (milwaukee) and “rise up: pride in protest! (nyc). i imagine it is lifting up the indisputable importance of acceptance of others and pushing back against discrimination and the violence that accompanies it.
we are proudly attending PRIDE – both in milwaukee and chicago. our edm artist son is performing at both festivals. for the last years we have attended both PRIDE events in these cities and i have come away with the big-sky-like feeling of people loving one another. it is a freeing reminder for anyone who has forgotten what it’s like to just care about each other, despite any of the differences that have been politicized into marginalizing people.
i – we – will always be staunch supporters of our son. we will always be staunch supporters of his friends, his extended family. we will always be staunch supporters of the LGBTQ community. we will always question the ugly – people who wish to eliminate LGBTQ freedoms and safety. we will always question those people – who tout their “christian” beliefs, their “jesus-saids” – while their gross bigotry shamefully reveals their empty words. no, jesus did not say anything that would buoy your cruelty. we will always question those people who have voted against the rights and privileges of the LGBTQ community, who have gleefully cheered on the homophobic, patriarchal march into autocracy, who have betrayed their own families.
the exclamation mark in the sky marks the beginning of a month in which we have the opportunity to promote unity, in which we have the chance to truly love one another, in which we might set down the vileness of homophobia and pick up kindness and the embrace of what diversity is.
“you are a child of the universe. no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.” (desiderata)
i don’t suppose i ever really fit in. i was the youngest in my family – separated by a decade – while most of my friends had siblings their own age. i grew up in a neighborhood where the kids were somehow athletically gifted, while i took organ and piano lessons and sat in my tree writing poetry. an early entrepreneur, i pulled a wagon around our neighborhood selling baby cactus cuttings and candles i had made. i didn’t go to – or get invited to – wild parties or cut class or skip my homework. i took bike-hikes and walked on the beach in the winter while everyone was at the mall or the bowling alley or the movies. i didn’t listen to the stones or grateful dead or led zeppelin (with the exception, of course, of stairway to heaven – everyone’s prom theme). i listened to john denver and gordon lightfoot and the carpenters. i wore off-brand clothing and didn’t keep up with fashion trends. my momma bought me less expensive boy-pants and found the offbeat stores for shoes-that-look-like-trendy-shoes-but-are-not, like my cherished construction boots. my first car was my dad’s vw beetle, nothing fancy but beloved. i had numerous part-time jobs through high school and then in college and knew the joy of serving corn flakes to both me and my dog missi for dinner. i never thought of myself as weird. but i suppose – if one considers the definition “may have unusual habits, interests or ways of thinking that set them apart” it could be true. i don’t see that as negative, though i also suppose that – depending on the way you see yourself fitting into the world – one might consider it such.
so the sticker “stay weird” hung upside down and backwards made me laugh aloud. somehow my laughter summoned mary oliver and she and i enjoyed a good chuckle about the infinite extraordinary of the insignificant and the everyday, the value of seeing the usual through a filter of unusual.
weird took a very long hiatus – it was safer, less vulnerable, and kept me out of trauma i had shelved. i pursued the inevitability of having to make money, to help support a household in a more meaningful way than the way of an artist. for this society – though its love for the arts is profound, its support of the arts is less so.
it was after my children were born, after the imperative was too loud to ignore, after the perils shushed a bit – when it was time to start releasing music. writing, practicing, recording, performing, marketing, booking, hawking – none of this is necessarily standard-work fare – it is unusual, it is tenuous, it requires a bit of courage. it doesn’t have the same parameters as a workday in corporate or structured america. it has no guarantees of reward, no regular paycheck. it is steeped in personal challenges, the need to be scrappy and the sisu to put it out there.
in the time that was the heyday of my recording career i would call absolutely anyone, regardless of their position. as the owner/artist of my label i have talked directly to vice presidents of sales of barnes and noble and borders books and music, owners of publishing houses, the personal managers of ridiculously successful recording/performing artists. i’ve sat in j. peterman’s messy office chatting (of the j.peterman catalog and seinfeld fame) and in the spare chair of radio program directors. i’ve danced across the stage at qvc-tv under a disco ball and played songs live over phone conferences with oncological pharma higher-ups. i’ve stood in the rain on flatbeds playing, embraced boom mics over my piano on theatre stages of all sizes, sang in front of 35000 people in support of cancer survivorship in central park. pushing the boundaries, carrying a little chutzpah along with belief in my own artistry was everyday life – and necessary. and i’d remind myself each time i picked up the phone or stepped into the unknown the very fact that we all breathe in and out the same way. this thing we have in common, i would tell myself – breathing. surely i could connect on that most basic of levels.
as outside the conventional box as it all seems, i didn’t feel weird. i felt in my skin.
and so, apparently, the weird continues. we know we are different than others. we have a certain run-and-jump into vulnerability that others do not. we have a certain pull towards creating, experimenting, learning – all in the public eye. we share because we have to, not because anyone has to receive it.
so, yes, the “stay weird” sticker really spoke to me.
though my life – and our life – is quite a bit different than the traditional lives or retirements of lovely people we know and care about, it is somehow just right for us. i never forget the corn flakes and he never forgets the sleeping bag in his studio space. every everything counts and we are reflexively careful about not being frivolous. for us, weird has granted us a certain appreciation of the littlest things, honoring simplicity and leftover pasta, redundant black thermal shirts and a shared bin of socks, used notebooks and repurposing taken to a new level.
what one does with one’s “wild and precious life”*…
i suppose it’s human nature. we tend to take it all for granted – our health, the place we call our home, our freedom. we are relatively complacent about it – maybe not necessarily actively grateful – more passively matter-of-fact.
until we are without it – our health, the place we call our home, our freedom.
and we want it back.
and then we wonder why we didn’t appreciate it when we had it.
each and every time i have had any kind of physical challenge, any ailment, i linger on what it was like before it began. before i broke both my wrists, before frozen shoulder, before i had covid, before…
it’s – of course – a fool’s errand and does absolutely no good save for being somewhat masochistic – which doesn’t fall under the category of good.
and – of course – the lesson i find is to intend gratitude for all in each moment we experience.
but we humans – particularly in this society – are slightly more hindsight types. and we tend to sort to the “in retrospect” view of things instead of being anticipatory or present.
so i do a heads, shoulders, knees and toes check-in and thank my lucky stars. i look around at our old house and thank this place we call home. i move about daily without restraint, making decisions about what to do, where to go – for which i am thankful.
and yet, right here and right now, we stand at a crossroads – an absolutely critical moment – when we must decide what all it is we are grateful for, what all we wish for, what all we believe in – before we don’t have it anymore.
those of us who are not in allegiance with the takeover of our democracy into autocracy, those of us who have not normalized an administration which is morally bereft, those of us who pledge our pledge to a republic and not a man – we all must decide to stand up for the freedom of this country. before it becomes one of those things we wish we had appreciated – when we had it – before it was gone.
reverse threading 