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transcend the sickness. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

we pass a certain house on our way to a favorite hiking trail. it is clearly a hoarding house. there is stuff everywhere and if the garage door is open – even just a bit – you can see that the hoarding continues in the garage – piles and piles of things and things and things. it’s creepy. and you can feel it as you pass by. you feel the suffocating feeling of too-much-stuff.

i once knew someone who was a hoarder. he was unable to transcend it and so his house had tiny pathways to move from one room to another. all the rest of the space was filled with books and magazines and newspapers. there were piles on every step leading to the second floor – so much so that there was no way – anymore – to get there. the second floor was essentially blocked off forever – or, at least, until someone might clean it all out. i found it disturbing to be at his house, smothered by high piles on every side of me and no place that was even near empty or calm or welcoming a sit-down. it only took one visit to convince me that i would never return. i could not breathe. there was no space.

in both of these cases – and in a farm out in the county that we’ve visited with a variation on the same theme – we were privy to – inside – a sickness of the person whose home was emitting hoarding frequencies.

THIS is how i feel about this country now. we are walking – all of us – inside the administration’s sickness. there are few places to breathe, few ways to sit down outside of the enveloping dismal cloud of narcissism and revenge and selfish cruelty. there is little calm; instead, chaos reigns.

is this what authoritarianism feels like? is this what an autocracy feels like? is this what fascism feels like?

they are hoarding away our country, with little access to its democracy, its freedoms, its decency, its humanity.

we need the junkman to come and clean it all out – toting enough dumpsters for all their project agenda – a nation-sized mr.clean to wipe it all down, trash the filthy intentions, clear a path with space and air and possibility.

we need recognize this for what it is – truly – and we need to transcend the sickness. or breathing will become impossible.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

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something else out there. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

tens of thousands of people are attending their rallies. for good reason. bernie and aoc are speaking to the heart of america. they are the shining light – that glimmer you can see through the gap in the inosculated trees. their message to hard-working middle class america is balm for people exhausted-by-the-twisted-depraved-bullshit-warp-of-oligarchy, people like us.

we sat in the adirondack chairs in waning sun and listened to bernie sanders as he spoke. his words were – to me – like the sound of birds early in the sunrise or the wind chimes out back in a gentle breeze. direct to our hearts, we found ourselves hopeful, perhaps for no other reason than they “got it”. there is another way; there is sense instead of chaos.

it was like stepping outside the sickness foisted upon this country.

we are merely two days away from the possibility of an intensely corrupt chess move from the current just-itching-to-be-dictator administration – deliberately planned, contrived and soon-to-be-executed. the number of people involved in or supporting this evil is overwhelming. up close now, it makes me simultaneously nauseous and breathless.

i stood on the trail, gazing through the space in the trees – trying to see clearly. i attempted to get my camera to focus on what was beyond instead of rough tree bark, a different depth of field. it couldn’t. i could see light and color in the slit, but it was blurry, overtaken by the trees in the forefront.

but there’s something else out there, something better, something beyond what’s on deck now.

we need to focus on that, and diligently seek out that hope, that color, that light.

*****

HOPE © 2005 kerri sherwood

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read DAVID’s thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY

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the american dream. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

we spoke quietly to them as we hiked. they seemed to be everywhere that day…on the trail, in the brush, by the river. they watched us; we watched them. we told them they could trust us, that we would not hurt them in any way. they didn’t flee, instead, aware of us, grazing a bit, snuffling in the snow. it is my hope that they felt no danger from us. when we hiked on, they moseyed, unhurried, beautiful innocence graceful through the snowy woods.

no danger. it was not that long ago when we did not feel impending danger.

all that has changed. rapidly.

and suddenly, we are thrust into a country where all is at peril. we are standing and staring at the unchecked mob taking over our democracy, at the purely evil intention permeating the administration that is destroying every vestige of the american constitution.

we watched hgtv the other night. there was a couple looking for a house in north carolina, specifically in rocky mount – where martin luther king, jr first spoke his “i have a dream” speech. as they visited houses, they remarked excitedly about one, “this is the american dream!!”

i grimaced. for what – exactly – is now the american dream?

is it destroying the foundation upon which this country was built? is it the annihilation of civil rights, of freedoms, of the helping programs in this country? is it stripping opportunity-for-all in favor of opportunity-for-only-a-very-few? is it adding to the income of a few billionaires, while decimating the lives of billions of ordinary folks, undermining any stability they might have had? is it aligning with authoritarians around the world, ignoring long-time allies and neighbors? is it gleefully watching people die in wars, in famine, in disease while shaving aid so that the wealthiest among us might not participate in paying taxes? is it deporting millions of innocent people who have been seeking a better life, contributing to our communities? is it living inside – and capitulating to – the maniacal sickness in the soul-less minds of the new administration? is it standing by, silently applauding your own bigotry? what exactly is the american dream?

if you are not deeply embarrassed by what is happening in these un-united states, i have no idea what is in your heart.

we are all at risk. there is impending danger.

“every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.” (lyman abbott)

we are watching you – those of you who voted for this desecration of our country, for the scourge running the show.

so, which is it?

is your american dream virtue or vice?

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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galloping gishers. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

it was only later that i could put a name on it. after the onslaught, post-avalanche, suffering from shock (though no awe), swirling from being bombarded with zero chance for retaliation. and it all came from what-would-seem the unlikeliest of places – a person in esteemed position, regarded as powerful and wise – a person who turned out to be the wizard behind the curtain. it actively devastated all chance of truth and the cadre of co-conspirators rode the horses in this brigade of destruction. in the end, it was sad. in every way.

later on, i learned it was called the “gish gallop”…a strategy employed to distract, to overwhelm, to usurp any ability to correct the ship – there are simply too many false things, spurious statements at once – all being stated in rapidfire. it’s nicknamed “shotgun argumentation”.

in my experience, it was smack in the middle of the gish-galloping when i realized i had no way to counter all the untruths that were being said. it was too-much on purpose. if someone is going to resort to this sort of gallop – and there are no parameters or guardrails placed upon that person – the race is over before it has started. stating half-truths, misrepresentations, outright lies, it is a painfully sad strategy by wizards who lack decency and integrity, who need to hide behind the oz-curtain and blitz-word-attack. it’s ugly nonsense. and – unfortunately – it often works.

so…as we sit in the stands of this new horse race toward the attempt of demolition of our democracy, we have decided that we absolutely cannot listen or watch or cue in on every single gishy thing going on. it is not healthy. it is not truth. it is devised to make us all walk around in – live inside – the middle of the sickness that permeates this new administration. though – in reality – cantering completely the other way isn’t pragmatic – staying out of the horse race is.

winning is not about pushing all kinds of negative, hateful ish down others’ throats and convincing them that the sky is falling every second of every day.

winning is remembering to live best we can, to be the best we can, to live with compassion and solidarity and generosity and to call out the gishers galloping by.

i’d love to canter the other way – into the sunset. but i don’t have a horse.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

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normal. in waiting. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

when we went to hippy tom’s farm and wandered around, browsing, i was overwhelmed by feeling like we were inside a sickness – a hoarding personality – and i felt trapped and breathless. it was too much for me. we drew in deep lungs full of air when we left, shedding the layers of dusty disorder. we were fortunate; we never had to return there. we wished him, the sale of his inordinately massive barns-full and sheds-full and yards-full of stuff well, and left, returning to some degree of normalcy, some degree of air on the county highway back home.

these past four years have felt that way. we have been trapped inside the narcissistic and delusional sickness of the president of the united states. we have hovered in the dark recesses of his self-indulgence and in the rhetoric of his hate-speech, his divisiveness, his zeal to promote violence. we have lingered in his vitriol.

we are a nation, in its spacious skies, its amber waves, its purple mountain majesty, that needs air.

the words of joe and jill biden on thanksgiving made me weep. words of unity, words of solidarity, words of hope, words of recognition of the need to heal. these words, spoken by people who feel like real people rather than physical manifestations of psychological sickness, are words that inspire. the president-elect and the first-lady, in waiting.

we look to this light. new times. new leadership. new air.

and we are grateful. for normal. simply that. normal.

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY