Watching the Fire

About twenty years ago our good friends, the Blakemores, moved to Australia, where they settled in a little beach town.

One year, there was a fire in the forest uphill from their neighborhood. Naturally they were worried. They and their neighbors brought their yard chairs out into the street and sat there watching the progress of the fire.

I imagined them sitting in the street, watching the fire as if it was a soccer match, wondering if they were going to lose everything.

They were fortunate. Their homes were not burned.

I’ve been thinking lately about the surreal notion of watching a fire as if you were watching a sporting event, because I have had a surreal feeling watching the news.

It has been obvious right from the get-go that 45 would most likely shoot himself in the foot (I mean that metaphorically, but with this guy you never know). Recently it has been one damn thing after another. A little obstruction of justice here, the firing of three people who were pursuing the Russian involvement there, a first call for impeachment on the floor of the House of Representatives, the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Oh, I know there are people out there who think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and will be remembered as the greatest president we’ve ever had. I heard a man say that on the radio. I have been assured that there are millions of people who believe that. Pssst: you are all wrong.

His antics are keeping us distracted from all the mischief being done in Congress. I think of all the people who gave so much, including their lives, for the freedom, fairness, safety, and equality we have in this country. We were not finished assuring liberty and justice (not to mention health care) for all, not by a long shot, but we were working on it. Now our children and our grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren, are going to have to fight to regain lost liberties, lost justice, lost healthcare. That thought grinds my gears.

Now, mind you, I was raised by Republicans. I put my hand over my heart when I said the pledge of allegiance, still do. I get choked up when I sing the Star-Spangled Banner, and I stand up and put my hand over my heart when the guys in the color guard go by in the Festival Parade and I choke up then, too. I was taught that the Commies were trying to bury us, and that America was the last best hope for the oppressed people of the world. That there was nowhere else to run.

That is how I was raised, folks, and I believed all of it.

The Civil Rights movement changed my views. The Vietnam war changed my views. The way vets are treated changed my views.

Watergate and its aftermath and Ford’s pardon of Nixon changed my views. Carter was a decent guy, a genuine Christian, so we had to get rid of him. The election of Reagan was frightening and turned out to be worse than I could imagine, even though I had watched what had happened to California under the tender mercies of his governorship. Reagan’s election was when I knew we had become an oligarchy, although I didn’t know the word for it at the time.

Bush Sr., was an epilogue to Reagan. I had hope for Clinton, but it turned out his pejorative nickname, “Slick Willy,” had more meanings than one. George W. Bush – wow. He was surrounded by guys who wanted revenge for what happened to Nixon. People are still coming home maimed and in boxes thanks to him. And there was that little economic collapse.

Obama – now we’re talking: health care, and a few other advances in spite of the incredible obstruction and racism he faced. He didn’t get everything right. The drone attacks on civilians. The way the bankers did not go to prison. I do not remember a president in my lifetime who was not vilified for his actions and policies, e.g., Nixon, LBJ. Obama was the only one demonized for his skin color before he ever took an action or made a policy.

And now, ladies and gentlemen and others, we give you the fabulous imploding presidency of 45.

It isn’t only him. It’s the guys at the top who sailed into office with him, and the guys they answer to, and those millions who voted for him and them. This fire has been building and burning for years. I blame myself now for a lack of imagination. I did not believe it could get this bad in America.

Pssst: I was wrong.

There’s a Dance or Two in the Dinosaurs Yet

Consider our indigenous people.

We believe that they came across a land bridge from Siberia and from there spread south through the Americas. There is some evidence that aboriginal people from Australia sailed in and settled in South America and Baja California, as well.

Tools and arrowheads found near Clovis, New Mexico, are thought to be 12,500 years old, and were considered the oldest evidence of native people here until more tools, scrapers, and points were found near Austin, Texas, that date to 15,500 years ago.

So. Fifteen thousand five hundred years ago, about 13,500 B.C.E. by our reckoning, native people had been here long enough to populate the American continents.

I went to my Grun’s “The Timetables of History (The New Third Revised Edition)” to see what was going on in the world at that time.

Well, guess what. It only goes back to 5,000 B.C.E. It notes that there was an Egyptian calendar of 360 days, 12 months of 30 days each, and that the earliest cities were founded in Mesopotamia.

So guess further what. The American continents do not enter in to this comprehensive “timetable of history” that far back because it was compiled by Europeans for whom the American continents did not exist until a little over five hundred years ago.

You’d think someone would have the bright idea of updating a “comprehensive history” to include the history of all the world, but no. Egypt is covered extensively, but the rest of Africa? Hah. The Roman Empire gets a lot of play. There are odd mentions of China and Japan. It’s the history I was taught in the 1950s and 1960s. The history of America does not begin until the white Europeans arrive.

So, for 15,000 years and more(rumors of many thousands of years more, I hear), indigenous people lived here, from Alaska to the tip of Chile, from the Pacific to the Atlantic. They traded with one another, they warred with one another, they made agreements, they fell out, they banded together. They were nomadic, and they built cities. They had arts, music, and dance, they had languages and spiritual and commercial practices. They built civilizations which flourished for hundreds or even thousands of years. They had codes, and laws.

They managed fine, with only brief visits from Vikings on the Atlantic coast, and Asians and Russians on the Pacific coast (there is that Chinese ship stranded inland down in Oregon).

Fifteen thousand years of tribes, cultures, and civilizations.

And then the white Europeans arrived. Thousands of years of indigenous peoples’ tribes, cultures, civilizations, and communities were almost destroyed in fewer than five hundred years. Just. Like. That.

The United States of America has officially existed for 241 years. A spit in the wind of time. Now our little experiment of a republic seems to be getting flushed down the hole by the greed of a few guys of mainly European extraction who already have more money than they could ever spend, a profound hatred of women and the poor and the old and the non-white, and an amoral code of behavior which is impervious to reason. These are people who find our Constitution and the system of checks and balances in our government impediments to their goals.

I said to a friend the other day, “Sometimes I think we are the dinosaurs, and Trump is the asteroid.”

Pause. Deep breath. Let it out slowly. Keep breathing.

I believe we must take care of one another and of ourselves. Get your sleep, laugh often, love your friends and family. Sing. Write a poem. Encourage one another. Be kind. Be angry. Resist.

Some of us will die before this unfolding apocalypse is over, but we must keep working in the sure and certain knowledge that our children and grandchildren do not deserve this.

Human beings excel at committing atrocities, we know that, but there’s a dance or two in the old dinosaurs yet. If there is anyone left to record history, let them record that there were people who resisted the forces of evil.

Consider, once more, our indigenous people. They were proud and independent and free for much longer than we whiteys have strutted around here. They fought to preserve their way of life. They lost. They are fighting now, to be recognized and respected as human beings even though they are so few, and even though the forces against them are so great.

Way to go, First Nations. I hope we pantywaist, bleeding heart, pot smoking, infighting progressives can follow your example.

Peace.

Thoughts After the Purge

Nothing like a couple of days of food poisoning to purge your body and clear your mind. Not that I recommend or condone it.

The first and worst day I went through wondering if I was going to die, old and weak as I am, with so many regrets, so many things undone. After a while I wasn’t sure if dying wouldn’t be so bad. Hey, you’ve been there.

Time was meaningless. Saturday was a series of delirium dreams in between trips down the hall. I slept off and on all day Sunday and most of Monday. Okay, some things cannot be denied: I got up long enough on Sunday night to watch the Masterpiece Theater programs. Watching Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell makes me forget everything else.

By Tuesday morning I had regained the will to live. When I woke up I did an inventory of my body and realized that nothing hurt. This is so rare and wonderful that I lay there for a while savoring the sensation. Perhaps you’ve been there, too.

As I got up and walked around in my empty condition I realized I felt ready to purge the house, too. My sons would like it very much if I shoveled everything in my house into garbage bags and sent them to the dump. As I stood there feeling wan, I looked at the piles and I felt a strong urge to do that very thing.

It is unfortunate that I have a hard time letting go of things.

The pictures are my biggest obstacle. And slides. We must not forget the slides. I inherited them all, from both sides of my family and from both sides of Rick’s family, him being an only child. They add up. The pictures are in boxes, and the boxes are in stacks, and the stacks lean against each other in piles.

I wrote to my friends John and Julie Blakemore about my house situation and my desire to clean it out, and they replied that their kids have “firmly requested bordering on demand that we strip the place down to a level of physical simplicity that a senior Zen monk would find comfortable to live with.”

Yeah. Our children see it coming. When we, as John euphemistically puts it, “fall off the perch,” they will have the monumental task of cleaning out our houses. Poor babies.

Beloved, cherished children: I sincerely hope and pray there comes a time and is a world where cleaning out our houses is your biggest and worst problem.

So. I’m still a little green around the gills, as my mother would say. Looking at the piles and promising myself to continue sorting and tossing. It is slow and tender work. Who are these people my aunt took a picture of in the 1930s?

While I was ill I had a little time apart from this crazy world. Every time I turn on the radio and listen to the news, what I hear hurts my feelings, breaks my heart, upsets my stomach, and pisses me off. Maybe it wasn’t food poisoning that made me throw up, but an overload of cognitive dissonance and a steady diet of deadly nonsense.

My friend Julie reminds me that every time I feel like I’m going to blow a gasket, to remember that there are millions of people around the world also trying not to blow a gasket. Is that comforting? It was, a little, to me.

I make some tea and toast, and continue to recover. The hyacinths and forget-me-nots are blooming, as are the dandelions, which I don’t bother because I hear they are good for the bees. The sun is out today, and the leaves have popped on the trees that looked barren last week. Life goes on, ignoring human folly.

There is so much human folly.

Okay, that’s it for me this time. Please close the door on your way out, so the dog doesn’t get loose. Thanks.