This is my first post on Medium and was written 11/12/16 as an email to two of my girlfriends. It’s also in re: the question marks and wtf’s I’ve been seeing behind my eyelids for many nights now.
K & L,
I love you two so much I’m going to allow myself to“ramble on.” This thing that happened is like illness, death. It truly is — at this moment. But — and forgive me for saying so because you already know this — those are also opportunities for the reset. I need one, any reset, which is why I keep putting that stupid button from LOST up on my Facebook page.
I’m not as smart or as young as you guys. I might have been more prepared than most for the outcome of the election, though. I took his — small aitch for “hands” — prez-play very seriously and was annoyed when anyone treated it/him like a joke that would fall back and dwindle away. The three of us have experience with this kind of man — they don’t fade except for those few seconds after their orgasm.
We know that but none of us know what will happen next. We’re not going to be able to predict it going forward, either. That’s troubling. It’s also troubling that talking heads have to be talking all the time. I think we need to be quiet for a while and ingest, take stock, be accountable because we’re all responsible for this in some way. Shhhhh, I’m ingesting.
Please now indulge me while I do some more too-much-talking:
So…much of this was predictable. We’ve been a 50–50 country with a few sad 3rd party people for at least 16 years. Everyone’s mind was made up about who they would vote for long ago. If they said they weren’t sure, it was because they had shame or self-consciousness about it. We’ve been snarky, smug and self-righteous toward and turned our backs on one another for all these years and it caught up to us and bit us on the ass. At least 50% of us got what we deserve.
No one will get what they wanted.
If you’re like me and the book you’re writing takes place during an era in which we expected radical progress — in our lifetime — in spite of the horrible things that took place during same — you might not have been thinking a lot about the possible alterna-world that just happened. You were probably still thinking that humanity would be sensible and become more humane or at least course-correct. I’m so guilty of that — in spite of my cynicism — but look how long it took to stand erect, to cover long distances, to colonize the world. Evolution is slow and opportunistic. Like everyone before us, we’re not going to see the world be the place we want it to be and that is a bitter pill, the bitter pill. Aaaand we were never going to. Not with or without Hillary. It’s not like we weren’t aware. It was either forgetting every time or willfully not wanting to remember.
I can’t seem to forgive myself. But I also don’t know what to do differently. If I can’t fix myself, how can I fix that guy? Forgiveness or “letting go” is so much trickier when you’ve been abused, gone through terrible times, been sick as most of us have. We have that in common. Even the orange man has suffered. Forgive yourself. Forgive me. Forgive everyone but don’t forget. Never forget that some people are actually dangerous. Maybe even you or me. Maybe not even on purpose.
Once when shopping in Best Buy, an employee came up to me and asked “Do you have any questions?” and I said, “Is the universe impartial?” And he took not even a moment and answered, “I don’t work in that department.”
The philosopher and teacher, Gurdjieff (who could be funny) said that if we were all conscious, there would be no humor. I’m beginning to understand what he meant but I’m glad to have lived in the Irony Age.
I’m telling myself to keep cultivating compassion, to watch for and take any opportunity to do good at least commensurate with and/or weighed against the amount I’m aware of the potential for danger. Worrying about danger is a thing for me. It’s a primitive resource. I always tell people to follow their instinct so I have to tell myself to do that, too. Sometimes I don’t know the difference between an impulse and my instinct until too late. The scary shit, the bad shit? That can at least be clarifying. Sometimes there’s even a touch of lightness that comes with it; clear choices such as stand firm or cut and run or take the Slauson cut-off. I’ve never been ambivalent in an emergency.
But that doesn’t mean I made the right choice either.
Sometimes there is really nothing we can do. (i.e.):
I was hit in the head from behind and knocked unconscious.
I died.
Speaking of death, remember that saying: “Life’s a bitch and then you die”? That old thing had been going around for years and one day on the set of “Peggy Sue Got Married” standing a couple of feet behind Francis Ford C. and Dean Tavoularis during a lighting change, I saw Gary Fettis, the assistant property master rush up to FFC and say, without any context other than the context at large, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” FFC lost it. It was the hardest I ever heard him laugh. And then Dean said “What?” and Francis repeated the line. He could barely get it out, he was laughing so hard. And Dean nearly fell off his chair and these two giants were shaking with sick whooping coughs of laughter for about a full minute. And I was still standing behind them shaking my head like, dudes, what?! You’re just now hearing this? And it’s not that funny — is it?” I was young. This comes to mind now. It’s real.
Every good thing and every great person in my life, i.e. you, mean more to me than ever. I’m trying to be grateful for the stuff/people/manifestations I don’t like, too. This doesn’t mean I have to engage with it/them/myself overly much does it? For instance, I haven’t had time for the nonsense of meanies since about 2008 and I only half-regret it.
I try to do better each day, to remind myself that everyone fails — but not every time.
One day we win. Some days it’s the day before someone else wins. That one day of winning we had way back when will have to be enough. That doesn’t mean we have to be satisfied with it. I recommend not being satisfied. Sometimes winning is admitting we all casually do things that hurt other people. A real win would be to stop that.
Instinct, though…
This is more or less what we’ve been given, what humans have always had. Reminded of that, we can see that nothing has really changed all that much, that small things are usually the biggest we can accomplish while hoping/planning for grand ones. And maybe that’s a lot considering the obstacles inherent in our biological, anthropological, largely impersonal situation. The social experiment we’ve deployed out of it is whack. I’m not saying we’re helpless. There are opportunities for us to affect an outcome. We’re still capable of changing our attitude.
I hope this is a nuanced enough letter to convey that I’m not talking about acceptance or being passive. We can still choose our preferred activism. I’m mostly thinking about how each of us trying to stay good and feel good in the face of what’s happening and any nastiness we encounter would be a delightful outcome, a small act of resistance. And we do know what good is. That means don’t be bad to one another. Just don’t. That’s what I want to be able to do; be good, do good, feel good, remember that we are one, celebrate our similarities and our differences. That makes me feel like I have some control and it also makes the other guy feel safer. So we’re there. It’s not going to be easy. We’re people and we’re hurt and mad — still hurt and mad and hurt and mad again and again.
If the book of face is any indication, most people scared the living shit out of the kids. We have to stop scaring one another, let alone the poor kids. Let’s be brave together for us. Be brave and be kind and the kids will be fine. It might all just be okay. We really don’t know. Love is a sustainable resource and most people never run out of it. We’ll go forward and be practical and do this life one minute at a time if we have to and we’ll do it with as much integrity, empathy and joy as is possible, plausible, useful.
And we’ll keep making things for one another with words and pictures. And we’ll play our favorite music if only in our heads.
Do something nice for yourself that a kind Aunt in a children’s book would insist upon. Think of me when you do it. xoox
LJP
