High Drama

Such a moment we are in, historically. Good that we have our Shakespeares: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, the writers of Saturday Night Live, the bloggers, the columnists. Writers I have not read, can barely follow, writers and speakers I so want to hear and put my faith in: they're loud, and they're easy to find, no books required. I watched PBS tonight, the War of the Roses, and I fear we have not evolved one whit. What entertains me tonight is the intensity of the irony of where we stand today, where we will be tomorrow, all of us together. It's not a pleasant folly, not a delight I take in this weighted time.

My community, my beloved alternative thinkers, thought we had evolved. We were sure the signs were clear, that our champion Obama had followed us to bring our government along. I stuffed my unease with his strength and clarity as his Hope and Change won so many of us over, and indeed he was benevolent and we nearly trusted him, many of us. Michelle was our regal and honored matriarch. It seemed too easy for him to rise, for us to cheer, for us to believe, but the lull in our personal wars was so welcomed, that we rested. We were happy and innocent. Still, he didn't free Leonard Peltier, or stop a pipeline when the moral ground was so evident and waiting for him to stand upon it. The G-8 and the G-20 continued to meet and the climate didn't fix itself, and the bombs fell harder and millions of people suffered. He couldn't do so many things, was so thwarted, and now, our hope tonight is still with us, but it's so very dramatic and so thinly spread. He's only one guy, only one part of it, and the cast of characters is vast and we can't follow the script.

Have the electors read their plays? Do they understand the hero's quest, the long roads of ambition and defeat, the psychology of abuse and domination, and why we fight for the innocent? In the show with its elevated prose, so well spoken, the battles were bloody and all the good men died. All the children had their throats cut. Everyone's sword was sharp and they thrust with great passion and conviction. And through it all strode Margaret, in her armor, so vicious and so fearless, yet at the end she was in chains, watching her son die. A good story, with the foreshadowed King Richard speaking right to us in the Cumberbatch mask, the actor of the moment, so endearing in his struggles in his other roles (some on other channels at the very same time), so convincing to us as someone we believe. Television brings us our dessert and takes us from our news to our fantasies and puts cartoon faces on it so we can trust only the Simpsons, only the actors, only what makes us laugh with recognition. We are not really amused. We are desperately wanting a laugh that rings sweetly, without a self-protecting twist of our mouths.

Now, in our modern world, still we battle, with weapons not hand-forged, but mass-manufactured. Our propaganda machines, our gun distribution networks, our fast food purveyors, rain violence upon us and we watch ourselves writhe in our horror, then snack again, to stop our disheartened bodies as soon as possible. For sweet relief we grow our buds and tend our roses, to wake and spend a week encased in ice, helpless, with no comforts save those our neighbors will share, and gladly, with us.The last roses were encased in thick ice, and will indeed rot soon, sink into mud, like the emblems worn by the actors in their chain maille.

If it hadn't been nature, the cruel irony would have been too rich. At the Fairgrounds, I and my fellows spread our baubles out, lined up the products of our tireless labor, and hoped that this would please our neighbors as it had before. It seemed a distraction, a pleasant diversion from the tragedies. We would have our Christmas. We did need our community gathering, warm and shiny, where we could lose our fears and put aside our terror, while we waited for tomorrow. The cheesecake case was almost empty for once, the tables full, the dancers wild and happy. We hugged and cried. We crammed our empathy and our impatience right next to each other and came home confused and unhappy, with one more week to manage. Frog had his best day ever, I heard. I haven't sold a single "fear less" hat, but the "I make stuff up" are flying out the door, showing our agreement with the fun side of post-truth.

It's only politics, American politics, not the world itself. The world itself was teaching our valley about ice, more things that it could do: exploding trees, iced branches piercing our roofs, thin soles of our fashionable shoes not enough to keep us from falling and breaking like the brittle bushes. My friend did that, broke her right hand, the one she needs, and at the other end of her family life her father's house burned up with everything saved from her whole life. Far more cruel fate than what was deserved in any way, seemingly random, but so lasting in its pain. Another told me of his aortic aneurysm, for which he will hie himself to the surgeon forthwith tomorrow morning. He was walking the Holiday Market knowing he could simply explode within and die at any moment. As could we all.

It's too damn much! We are prey. We have been eaten and tomorrow will likely be spit out, we hope with gentle rains to melt the ice, and with courageous men and women to thwart the bully with a further layer of chaos. And I sit and wonder if everything on the television was meant tonight to keep me from rage, to keep us all at home, enraptured with the play as we are unable to stomach the reality. Is it even real, any of it? The young people say not. They say it's all relative, it's like the matrix, it's like that movie, that story, and there is no reality, so it doesn't matter. So tempting. Then is this the quiet apocalypse, that already happened? This makes it easy not to care, and not caring would indeed be so much easier.

Traumatized people don't recognize further trauma...it feels normal. We know the abuse so well we can't call it out and make it stop. All of the articles I read in the paper today were subtly written to normalize the politics (I can't write his name either, the name of our tormentor/figurehead.) He will do this thing that is milder, he will renounce this thing that we couldn't stand for, he won't succeed, because good men and women will stop him. There are more good men and women than bad, as we could see when all of the chainsaws came out to free neighbors and streets from nature this week. We know that this is true. We all know so many good people, so many people willing to treasure our baubles, to give us the means to make art, to write, to be together here in our good town, where we are safe. That has to be the truth we seek.

We are counting on this. As I sat in so many City Council meetings and got to know a little the public personas of the county commissioners and the mayors and other officials, and the staff people, I watched them spin the drama of where to put the buildings they will build with our taxes, and I could believe in them. They all wanted what is best for our town, but you and I both know that what is said at the meetings and reported in the news articles is only a small part of the full story. There were meetings that were not public, plans that were not revealed, deals that will be made that will not benefit the public, but will line the pockets of those who are already rich. This can't be not true, even though in our small world we might know the family that owns the timberlands that are simply resources, the gravel extractors, the people who own the fine restaurants that serve the foods we want to taste, to stimulate our bored and needy palates. Mr. King Estates will also take down an entire hill in Oakridge, for money, despite the fact that he can't put it back, can't restore the native graves and history that will be lost, and the aesthetics of the lives of all who live around it. The commissioners set them aside, and used a thin legal precedent to stand behind, angrily sliding blame aside when faced with many who did care, very much, about preserving that land. It was an ugly scene on my laptop as I watched. It was a classic drama.

And the City Council, with the end run of the supporters of EWEB, who fully believed in their better plan, I am sure, but when in ten years or so when it all sorts out and all the buildings are built and the pockets lined, what surprises did they hide in those decisions for us to lament? These things are often in plain sight. Now the City will negotiate for half the Butterfly...so who will buy the other half? Will some investors swoop in to build the Pike Place of some peoples dreams where we want our simple farmers' market? Will that happen somewhere else entirely? I don't really believe that it simply disappeared, that comprehensive feasiblity study that looked so attractive. It's not what they say they are doing, but the cynicism I have finely honed since my political awakening in 1969 has not dissipated. I watched closely, and I saw the little evasions and things they wouldn't say. I didn't get a lot of eye contact at those meetings. Is it that I am shy and come off a little eccentric, and it was me, or was there something hidden in those official proceedings? Will I know, and will I be able to help? Will it eat me? What parts are poison and which are sweet? Easier to not care.

Of course my fallback is that it was me...isn't that our fallback now, with the national situation? We were naive, too trusting, too relaxed in our Obama haze, having too much fun with all our new strains and edibles, not vigilant and not willing to believe in the power of our abuser-elect. He didn't have to lie about most of it, but remember this...in no way was it our fault. He is the rapist. He is the Bankrupter-Elect. I can see the whole cynical plan, thanks to our Shakespeares and our lie-detectors and our courageous and vigilant writers ( I do wish my key that is between the h and k would work so I could give the press their credit...)

I can see it, but I can't do anything about it as it plays out, and I can't bear to watch, or look away. It's exactly like those gritty battles tonight, with the thrusting swords and the intimate daggers of power-over. Damn, it is painful. The frozen town and domination of nature was a relief. I can say this because I had electricity and I made money with my baubles, but I will be sad to see the pause end and the real weather return, as I loved the suspended feeling that nothing would move, nothing could move, until the sun said it could. It was a fantasy of brilliant light, a treasure to see, free for all to love, hiding destruction and suffering and loss, but so achingly beautiful.

Oh, I wish for simple, for that gift. I wish so hard that in tomorrow night's news the Hamilton electors would have risen up, and our new heroes would be our ordinary ones, the ones that could see the right thing to do and did it. I fear that my idealism will crack and break again, or sadly melt as the ice does, and I'll re-immerse in the cycles of grief, and the next week will be too hard again, something Christmas won't be able to cure. But tonight I can still cling to hope as the ice clings to our trees.

We lost some very precious ones, the Zumwalt oak, the willow at the Historical Museum that was all woven together by that long-gone Fairgrounds gardener who also loved fuchsias, whose name I don't remember. We don't know all that we have lost and will lose, but we do know that we have loss in our lives. This is the same as it ever was. Grievous, crippling loss will come to us, and that is why we work so hard to create. We have to work so hard, we are bound to it, and we will all keep doing this because of the deep love that we share for what makes beauty, what makes light. The music, the tiny paintings, the flashing crystals, the tie-dyed underwear, the soft unstructured hats, the wooden spoons, we need these things. We need the books from the guy with the personality. We need the fashion days. We need each other. That's what we have that we can depend on, that we can trust and love and feel safe around.

I'm going to relish my isolation next week, after it is all done, but I am not going to be complicit in silence with those who would abuse me. None of us should let ourselves get quiet and hide when it gets meaner and tougher and more demoralizing that we ever imagined our elder years would be. We're going to make it better, make something beautiful out of it, like we have taught ourselves to do. We're going to keep spreading our peace and love. We're going to have our Christmas, and our happy holidays of whatever kind we have, and our New Year. If it comes with a big helping of chaos, so be it. We can endure the darkness, and burn our candles through it, and see those of each other. Same as it ever was. We have our hearts, ever exploding.