Retrospective
“It’s a day of retrospectives, including a backwards visit to a tiny memo pad I kept in my teen years. Amidst notes like: “Buy tickets to Tom Rush”, “Pony Club, 23rd, 11-1” and more mysterious ones like “marble to carpentry class”, I found this very poignant confession, taking up a small amount of real estate on an otherwise blank page: “16 and already at odds with the world”. Who couldn’t relate to that today? Well, maybe folks who feel unified behind a position, a candidate or certain virtuous actions they’ve been ritualistically engaging in, but I’d venture there are many others who feel lost. As if unmoored from anything remotely familiar that we used to call the US of A, our value systems have been dashed, our belief systems mangled, our grasp of history sorely challenged, and all of it slipping off kilter to the dulcet tones of imbecilic, robotic talking heads who want to tell us what reality is. For some, this is a recent thing, built upon a vague, growing, uneasy feeling, what some might call “cognitive dissonance”, since the start of the year. For others, it dates further back: perhaps to 9/11 and the consequent invasion of Iraq, when trusted media outlets seemed to go along blithely with a bunch of war mongering psychopaths. Pick your poison. I can’t think of one person who hasn’t either been completely radicalized to an extreme position relying on that pesky human trait called: trust, or who has alternately decided to swear off caring. I admit, I’m some where in the middle. I love my people, and the ones who stay in sheltered camps are still acceptable to me. I don’t talk politics with them, and even when they do spout off, I take it all with a grain of salt. God bless ‘em, I think. I will never stop loving. It’s been a long, hard seven years for me. My husband left and got remarried almost immediately, which gave me pause. I lost my voice, a phenomenon that with baffling efficiency, translated from the emotional, to the physical. Now, if I talk at all, or with any fluency, it’s with people who will listen. They are curious about the disability I have, & compassion, evidently, is their strong suit. Dear reader, these are the ones among us to adhere to. To form community with. To strengthen relationships with, even when it’s hard. The ones who stay silent, when in front of them a wife or mother is being gas-lit & thrown to the curb, these are unfortunately normal citizens who’ve learned to disengage, fall in line and protect what they have. It goes both ways, gender-wise, just to be clear. These same good citizens will report you to the authorities, should you go against the newest rule. Okay, off my soap box. Six inches of snow up here, at 1800 feet. I’ll soon be living alone again, tending broken equipment and harsh nordic conditions. But regardless of who “wins” this election, the more sensible way forward is to identify your team. Who will back you up in a pinch, who will tolerate your ill-formed political opinions, looking beyond the flawed narratives we’ve been programmed to believe. Going forward, we’ll need growers, and builders, and lovers and geniuses. All within a few miles of home.”