2020 is turning out to be just a hell of a year. I guess, for me, that actually things started to go awry last year, which I thought was ALSO a hell of a year. Or a year of hell. Whichever. Or possibly the last 4 years. The Trump years. Years of hell.
I won't apologize for feeling that he has done irreparable damage to America. But in doing so, he has held up the dark mirror for us to see -- in full color, vivid sound, 3D, and all -- what the tangled threads of racism, unfettered crony capitalism, rampant cultish religiosity divorced from any morals, authoritarianism, sexism, outrageous egotism, american "exceptionalism", hollowed out educations, greed, willful ignorance, and zero commitment to universal good -- where it has all gotten us as a nation.
Perhaps we needed this full reckoning because we (and I'm speaking mainly about straight white cis folk) have been so sound asleep, so complacently NOT LISTENING. People all over the world have persistently ignored, denied, negated, and crushed people of color - people of difference - people perceived as Other. The nations are finally waking up. I only hope that we do not have to go through a complete societal collapse to get through to the other side of this. But I suspect we will.
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I was going to go further off along this side-track, but I remembered that I can't speak for anyone except myself. And I am so tired. I feel overwhelmed by what is going on all over the world -- the pandemics of not only disease but of authoritarianism, of war, of environmental collapse, of extinctions, of pointless technologies. I am worried for my children and grandchildren. What kind of world did we give them? Was I selfish to even bring them into the world?
And on top of that, the work that I love, the craniosacral therapy that I have been studying and practicing for the last ten years, caused me harm about a year ago. Or it released something harmful in my brain that still has me fatigued, clumsy, stuttering, and unbalanced. I compare what happened to having every head injury I ever had all coming back to haunt me at once. Like I needed that as some kind of healing crisis.
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I'm not even sure where I was going with all of this. Maybe it's just that I wanted to point out that I am getting a very hard dope-slap on the fact that I have no ability to be in control of anything anymore. I can't even have the illusion of having any control. Everything is being stripped out. Out of habit and attitude, I am fighting this loss. But I know it is winning when I understand that I can barely make a plan for dinner let alone plan a week.
So I try to take some small joy in every day, whether it is a flower or a lizard or a bird that stops by the feeder. It really is the little things.
this little face in the rearview
this ratatouille my daughter made for me
these tiny lizards
this rainbow
peace
