And But One Day Later

 Since your hearts are already broken, let me make you weep. I think this is all about the death of our planet, or rather, burying the fear of it. They want to loot and pillage, as that is all they know, the only way to balance their grief, which they will never admit or recognize. We feel it though.

My reactions last night while I watched PBS and all of us bargain with our deaths, were to think about misogyny and racism, and why we were willing to believe they would not operate. We wanted to be done with those, and we believed it was possible. I burst out in tears when I saw Kamala on SNL. I knew. She was going to be our savior...and we all know all we need to know about that myth, that the black woman will save us.

Those voting for him do not recognize that they were voting to hurry it up...to hasten and get it over with, the pillaging and death of our planet. They know the storms and floods and loss of their homes and shores and ways of life are beyond control. They know we have ruined it, not me, not you, not any one of us, but all of us acting together in self-destruction. They voted to get it over with, as quickly as possible. To hand it over and dream of going off to Mars.

Otherwise why would you believe in the con, the Musk, the known quantity that is him and his acolyte, the young liar hillbilly. It was easy to see through it. You just had to shelve your memory of what happened not very long ago, how hundreds of thousands of your relatives died while he pretended to look at the eclipse. He always tells exactly what he is going to do. He is going to sell us out, has been selling us out, will never not sell us out. He makes the deal. I suppose you could have pretended not to hear it, to just stay on the surface of your fears, of "others," of high prices, of reading and changing your attitudes to match the times. Why bother to go deeper? Nothing matters. The planet is going to die and no one can do a thing about it.

Not you, my six and now four loyal readers. You have been listening. I know my son did not join the young men gamers who think it's funny that everything is about beating that next boss and the more violent, the better. Did you know that two thirds of Americans are gamers? Do you think they are based in this reality, on this planet? 

We've successfully been put in these silos. When Frog died, my whole entire Fb feed was Frog posts. Mostly people wanted to say how special their relationship with him was because he told them his off-color and sometimes offensive jokes on the regular. Who among them felt his congestion, his weak heart, his despair when he tested postive for Covid and figured it was all going to end for him. It was all about them. I reflected on my own death, which will no doubt be one of those which identifies the person with their persona, their products, their shtick. Not real. I'm happy for him that he did not have to watch the election returns this time and wonder how he would survive. I hope he wasn't afraid as he struggled to breathe, alone at his end. I'm pretty sure he didn't think he'd be finding himself in heaven.

We're not going to heaven. They are going to strip out all that we have been using to prop ourselves up. We will live in an authoritarian country for the rest of our short lives, we will suffer. Our community is valuable, but it won't be enough when the next mismanaged crisis arrives, when our safety net is handed over to crazy people to be looted. We will hang on, but we will lose our people as we have lost our structures that we built.  

In OCF, in Market, everywhere I can see, the authoritarians have risen up saying only I can fix it. Sure there are still a few good people among us, but we're beaten down. We've tried to say something, we've tried to help, but mostly we have, at this point, withdrawn our support and turned to survival. We have meaningless smiling conversations as they rob us of what we have put in place. I went into the office and my box where I collect items for the archives was already redecorated with someone else's name, in ignorance of what I am still doing. Another conversation was had about how I should just bring in my carload of materials and work on them in a windowless room an hour or two at a time. Another dismissal of what I have been doing, of the scope and meaning of my project, of the hundreds of hours it represents. Of the nature of a volunteer task. Dismissal.

Yes I am full of rage. I am a woman, I've been raging all my life. I ride my bike to the market and have for more than fifteen years...a little bit of fossil fuels going unused every week. It has added up. I'm even more angry that I broke my wrist, sidelined myself, can't work and can't be independent, can't maintain my homestead and my meaningful work and life. I cut myself off from my community, to some degree on purpose, for my own emotional survival. It's not about whether or not I like the people...sure I like them. But where is their rage? Why are they not living their values and trying harder? The planet is fucking dying! Do we think it will not affect us?

I almost can't bear it. This woman who put herself out there for sacrifice had it all. She worked so hard for it. She told the truth every day for 107 days and had faith in us that we were listening. We had faith in each other. But we were in a tight little silo and we had no idea. 

My mother once told me she was sad that I was so cynical. She had no idea how cynical I was, fifty years ago in my twenties. She let it go, I stopped telling he about my rage, and I just kept trying to live my values, desperately then and still desperately now. Isn't it worth it, this planet, this community, these people? This beating heart, Frog's weakly beating heart? Doesn't it mean anything?

Well, you and I know it does, we just don't know how to magnify our rage into something that makes a real difference. We can't control it. Our attempts to control each other won't help. We forgot how to work together, to collaborate, to lift each other up and support each other. We just want to smooth things over and pretend it isn't about death and profound beauty and moving forward to something more real and less fake. It's about death and beauty and something real. It's not a recycled joke on a piece of copy paper you can collect for $2. It's not a fucking tote bag.

Americans have now taken their self-hatred and fear and thoroughly fucked the world. It's not forgivable and we won't be able to fix it. If I even manage to survive for four years of this, my fight and rage won't even make a dent. Many of us won't survive it. We're not meant to. We're expendable, and in the way. We won't be the first to go, of course, because America is determined to be the final boss. But we're all going to lose, we've already lost.

Ride your damn bike. Refuse the damn plastic and the domestic poisons and their cancers. Quit buying the comforting lies. This is the fucking end. It's fine to cry. I hope you still can. I myself, find it impossible. 

My rage is quiet. It looks like nothing. It's stoic. It looks out the window when the sun is golden this time of day and it doesn't dissolve in tears. It's not likely to explode. It's also not going to explain itself to you. It's not even about you. It's not even about me. Maybe it's about a bird, a leaf letting go of its branch. Maybe the absence of fear, a finding of joy. A life. A death. A god damn gorgeous, living planet. Saying good bye to that, slowly but forever.