Member-only story
POLITICS
I Felt The Earth Move
On a quiet Sunday afternoon, the earth shook, and everything changed in an instant
“I feel the earth move, under my feet. I feel the sky tumbling down.” — Carole King
I was sitting on the beach yesterday, my mind blissfully empty and uncharacteristically untroubled. There is something magical about the beach in summer that allows you to be wholly engrossed while doing absolutely nothing. Even my wife, who has trouble sitting still, can sit on the beach for hours at a time, days on end, accomplishing nothing other than browning her skin and feeling satisfied and fulfilled while doing it. It’s some sort of dark sorcery, I guess. Hypnotic mindfulness that smells of coconut and salt air. The white noise of the ocean, occasionally broken up by the sound of a gull’s cry and the patter of the ice cream man. You can forget that the world is on fire.
I had been lost in thought, contemplating our current political circus and wondering how I might be more effective with the other clowns in the car. It has occurred to me how unlikely it is that I’ll ever change anyone’s mind with a direct plea for logic and reason. We all know what we think, or at least think we know what we know. But writing is how I process the world and my feelings toward it, so I needed to find a new approach for my own mental health, if not for the well-being of the nation.
I thought I might try changing gears and make my writing even more personal than it already is, inserting myself more deeply into current events, rather than simply trying to make sense of it. A bit of new journalism, allowing my experiences with the news to tell a larger truth, only without all the hallucinogens. Rather than trying to convince anyone of anything, I would just explain what I was seeing, reading, and hearing and how all that made me feel.
I think it’s possible that this is more likely to invite empathy and defuse the need for an ideological argument to the death. Maybe there would be no change whatsoever — it’s hard to say. But I began thinking it might be worth a shot. It was something to do, and something is usually better than nothing. Usually.
