Does This Make Me Look

I hope:

Uunprecedented gets shaken out of the lexicon between now and January 20, 2021, when we are, in fact, unpresidented. Can we maybe not use that word for a bit? Just give it a rest and possibly switch to unparalleled, extraordinary, groundbreaking.

And speaking of that last one: Kamala Harris. I’m adding thrilled, elated, and proud to that list. Her election to VP makes me so happy while Joe’s makes me relieved. So there’s that.

Polls Until people can figure out how to fix the political ones, I’m choosing to only use poles (the kind I’ve danced with and swung around, the type firemen come down, the North and South ones).

Limbo (the state of mind): All of 2020, so far and with the exception of two months at the beginning, have seen time become weird. Mondays are Thursdays and Tuesday afternoons rolled into one. Saturday is maybe Wednesday or possibly already Sunday. Friday’s just gone. Everything feels suspended. Like we’re hanging out. Doing the best we can. So with these last three+ days where we waited to understand for real that President-elect Biden and Vice President–elect Harris would in fact become that, limbo was a state we’d all had some practice with. But personally, that didn’t make it any less excruciating. I was marking little milestones, like the absence of full-scale incursions at voting locations, a seeming lack of foreign interference, little violence at vote-counting facilities. These things helped, but still, the MW definition: d: a state of uncertainty was unnerving.

Limbo (the dance) over the last four years the US and global people (those who’ve understood that his ideology was made of destructive, bully-boy narcissism and fear mongering) have been increasingly required to go lower and lower to clear the bar of daily life. Every day, week, month, year a humanitarian gnashing watching children in cages, the pulling out of climate talks, lifting up oligarchs and authoritarian regimes and leaders while belittling democratic allies. Some of us fell on our back trying to clear the space, but still we got up and carried on as well as we could. Now, we have a helluva lot of work to do. (So. Much.) But we can start, go forward. Watch the bar become lifted again and step toward a kinder more inclusive and accomplished way to move (please click on way to move for a Soul Train clip if only to climb on the “Love Train” for some fierce moves and some awesome pairs of bellbottoms).

Acknowledgment. To know that tens of millions did vote for the man to whom we’re showing the door and who did so much damage is a truth to be acknowledged. Of course four years ago we realized this country’s divide and although it was actually more shocking to me this time around that he retained his base so fiercely despite having killed people with Covid (and I mean that literally: there have been at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of 18 campaign rallies he held from June to September as documented in a peer-reviewed Stanford study) and lied and lied and lied and lied (again, literal: As of Aug. 27, the tally in The Washington Post database that tracks every errant claim by the president stood at 22,247 claims in 1,316 days). So, yes, there are some folks out there who are sad, upset, disbelieving. (There are some who will say those links about the Covid deaths and lies are untrue and media-manipulated. And that is scary unto itself because it means he’s done his job to toy with their ability to seek out their own proof rather than rely on one mouthpiece or channel.) What I hope is that there can be those same five stages of grief that are generally used to move through to a better place. (I employed them four years ago and truth be, got pretty stuck in the bargaining phase, which just spun me round like a stuck LP.) There are also seven stages for those who want to take a little more time with the whole thing. But better this than three steps toward riotous rebellion. Any of you working through the stages, let’s not do that last one please.

This NYTimes piece: I Am Shattered but Ready to Fight “The support for President Trump is a disgrace, but the future is not hopeless” by Roxanne Gay is spot on as a clear-eyed vision of how skewed we are as a country. I was tempted to include some numbers about how Black women in particular were the driving force in electing our new President and VP, and I do know that to be true from things I’ve read, yet any link I would have included come from polls (see above re: nope, not using those right now). So factual/anecdotal evidence is what I honor them with.

All-in-all, here we are: FINALLY. I’m taking the day to breathe and take it in. Feel my shoulders relax. Try and figure out what day it is. Eat a cookie. You know, living stuff. I hope you all do the same and thanks for being here!

Under a mile away, there is a house where a confederate flag hangs at the door of the garage. I know grown-ass adults live there, so this isn’t a matter of a misguided youth trying to be rebellious. And while I don’t know said grown-ass adults personally, their choice to hang that flag right here/right now is a message that can’t be ignored. Where I go with it: Hello, please know that the people who live in this house do not respect all human life and in fact feel fairly hateful toward a major portion of those who live in this country. (In actuality, the discovery in 2020 that a great majority—let’s just call it in the upper 80 percentile, and I’m probably under-calculating—of white Americans who never really went deep into their own racist tendencies were faced with them this year because, as Ibram X. Kendi puts it so well in this Atlantic article, “Donald Trump has revealed the depths of the country’s prejudice—and has inadvertently forced a reckoning.” I am of course one of those people who has had to call out and name my own prejudices and recognize that the work is an ongoing life process. For anyone who hasn’t started that work, I don’t know what you’re waiting for because as any good therapist or wise person worth their salt will tell you, there’s no chance of being your full self until you face what’s deep inside and take responsibility for your actions, no matter how entrenched. If the reaction is “oooh, it’s so hard. I’m so tired. I don’t want to” well, join the club and be proud of yourself for doing what you need to do to make yourself a better citizen of the world.) Okay, so I digress.

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This next week is going to be a doozy. In some moments (the naive ones?), I think, Hey, maybe this will be like Y2K: lots of buildup, which as many of us remember was a boatload of anticipated bang and very little boom in the end. In my most lucid look-around-me moments—like when the cartoonishly high-off-the-ground-need-a-stepladder-to-get-in pickup truck with the multiple Trump flags mounted in the back drives by—I think, Whichever way the election goes, it’s going to be really really bad. A voting block that refuses to accept the outcome. People taking to the streets. Violence. I made the mistake of reading this before I got out of bed this morning because, you know, yes I did wonder what Ron Suskind had to say about the day after November 3. Then I sat down to meditate. Wow, that quiet hour did not go well for me. We drive into my dad’s community and past a flagpole with about a trillion pro-Trump flags flapping. One of which is Women for Trump and my stomach turns that my fellow sisters actually want a self-proclaimed “Grab ’em by the pussy” sexual assaulter in office. (That is an actual quote in case someone needs reminding. Here’s the man himself saying it.) I know firsthand that women can and are as sexist toward other females as men, so that’s not the actual surprise, but can you imagine if any other person running for office said out loud what he did? Why/how in the world did people vote for this lecherous creature? And no, I have no interest in re-litigating the Hillary Clinton moments since apparently a socio-psychopath—yes, he’s been diagnosed as such (here, a peer-reviewed piece to that end)—was preferable to some over a Clinton who was distrusted because of an email server debacle (and again, I know the anti-Clinton folkx out there have a whole list of things to go with this as to why she was going to take this country down. jeezuz.). But anyway, for the three people who may be out there and call themselves undecided, or the seven-and-a-half who haven’t already voted and are planning on throwing down for the psychopath but may be open to swaying, I appeal to your humanity.

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Yesterday, I took a multi-hour walk around the neighborhood and up into Prospect Park to clear my head. A couple of things: the sky is still blue. So so blue. Flowers were really blooming, because nature, although directly under attack in this ass-quackery of an administration that has turned back climate-change regulations, is blithely continuing to dazzle as it does. Yes, this was a good reminder to keep my eyes open and notice all the things. I listened to some of my favorite podcasts (This Jungian Life and Louder Than a Riot are both working for me right now). I came home, looked at my calendar, and stepped into my National Voter Assistance and Showing Up for Racial Justice moments (there are still many things to do to help, just click on the links). I tried another round of meditation with a little more success.

I’m sending each and every one of my American readers strength for this week ahead. For those of you who are not in the US, please send us your good thoughts and support. I hope those of you still needing to vote choose to listen to your heart and vote for the man and woman who will work toward policies that skew toward humanity. Nothing’s perfect and they (and we) will have a looong way to go toward helping this country into a more stable place, but this disruptive madness needs to end, don’t you think?

Hello, all! Yep, we’re heading for the day when voting will cease for this 2020 election (9 days, 12 hours, 18 minutes, 20 seconds as of this writing to be exact). Sooo, I’m posting this today for a few reasons: 1) I’m including a few links that are time sensitive, 2) ideas for this are at my fingertips, so why not? 3) Dennis is making breakfast, so I’ve got an excellent time deadline to let the thoughts roll.

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Back in June of 1992 when I worked at SPIN, I traveled with Pearl Jam to London and Groningen (Netherlands) for a feature. I took Polaroids (remember them?) to accompany the story. Their first release Ten had come out in August the previous year and the album had raged into the charts and fans multiplied like … a lot, and showed their love in myriad ways (see above in pic where Eddie was slightly concerned when a young woman showed him the PJ stickman symbol she’d had tattooed on her shoulder). This particular tour had been booked into smallish clubs before the label realized how fierce the fandom was becoming, which led to moments like Eddie wandering into a park after a London show and holding forth on life with an ever-increasing circle of people until their road manager, Eric, had to wade in, take him by the arm, and lead him back to the bus for the overnight ferry ride to the mainland. On that ride, there was much talk among Eddie, Stone, Jeff, Mike, and then-drummer, Dave about the state of the country and the world. Clinton was about to defeat one-termer papa Bush that coming November. Conservative John Major was Prime Minister in the UK and, as I remember, our conversations revolved around a woman’s right to choose and politics. (In fact, Eddie would go on to Sharpie-marker pro-choice on his arm for their 1992 MTV Unplugged show, which happily caused not a ripple of dissension—as far as I heard anyway—from the corporate execs in charge of the show).

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And here we are, almost 30 years later and Pearl Jam are still voicing their views and putting their money where their morals are. Until tomorrow (Sunday, October 25th) night, you can access the band’s April 29, 2016, Philadelphia show on Nugs.tv. The $14.99 buy-in will be donated to national and local Pennsylvania nonprofit organizations like Make the Road Pennsylvania, Penn Future, and national organizations like League of Conservation Voters and People for the American Way.

And obviously it isn’t just big-time Charlies and Charlenes who make differences in this election for President and Congress (and local matters as well). It’s every single one of us. My friend Windy had posted a way to become trained for a National Voter Assistance Hotline to answer voters’ questions, help them make a plan to vote early, and help ensure that every eligible voter is able to exercise their right to vote. I’ve signed up here because during this year of Covid, doing any sort of door to door is not a thing. I Will Vote is also a rad site filled with one-stop answers to voting qs.

So that’s about all I’ve got for this weekend. Please enjoy as much involvement as your heart desires!

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I’m a girl who buys in multiples. As I’m writing this, I’m wearing a pair of Muji woven slip ons. I have three pairs of them: two in light blue and one beige. And I’m not gonna lie to you, going online to link the item for this blog entry I saw that they’re sold out and my heart beat a little faster with Oh No, These are my favorite around-the-house wearables. What will I do? People, I have THREE pairs of these already. They last more than a year (based on that fourth pair I bought June 2019 and just threw out). Why am I already thinking about my feet three years in the future? This brings me to a kind of strange mindset. A hoarding mentality, if you will. For me, this is not a COVID-19 development—and I wasn’t one of the infamous March 2020 mass, multiple toilet paper grabbers. Rather, I’ve always been someone who if I see a style of shirt, trousers, etc. (maybe everything except sneakers–not sure why I leave those out) that I love, I’ll often end up with one of every color. This trait has become more developed in the last decade, maybe a product of me knowing as I get older what I like and what looks good on me. I’m certainly prone to strange buys at the thrift store that are often aspirational. Apparently I’ve never met a faux-fur, fuzzy pullover or hoodie (sometimes jumper or skirt) that I didn’t think I could make my own. In our NYC apartment this was a problem given shelf space (one furry item takes up the equivalent of two to three cotton items). In Cali, the problem is the weather. There are probably three-and-a-half days out of the year when a full-on fake-fur coat is ever appropriate. Clearly this is all about inanimate objects given in no universe do I desire multiples of Dennis. He’s that one-of-a-kind for whom duplicates would do me no good.

So, back to that multiple-buying situation. Is it because I’ve found something that works and I don’t think I’ll ever change? Is it security in knowing I’ll have a collection of the things I like around me? If I dive a little deeper, I find that the need for control pops up. The sense that if I know I’ve got some things I like, and if I have a gazillion of them, then I’ll never run out, which means I might feel more solid in my place on earth. This is all clearly bullshit, by the way, since there’s really no way of avoiding change and life-thrown curveballs both the good, the bad, and the in-between. But searching for a foothold that leads me to the sensation that I’ve Got This is ongoing. Especially during this time when nothing, nothing, and more nothing feels controllable. I get the toilet paper shelf raids. I understand why the UK put a moratorium on how many bottles of beer its citizens could buy at the beginning of their lockdown (altho now looking for a link to that, I find none, so maybe that was a bit of panic journalism). Anyhoo, to have control over something, anything is an ongoing goal and one that is futile. When it comes to say COVID health, politics, racial and social justice, the environment there are most definitely things to do. The fact that those things sometimes feel like baby steps is where the reckoning comes in.

Patience sometimes feels like an excruciating ask. The long game can feel like a fool’s journey. Incremental change doesn’t look or feel dramatic enough. But in the end, unless you’re Lebron James, Greta, or Beyoncé—or someone else with a long reach into the social media and public sphere—this is what we have to work with. Everyone pulling it together and going forward. Seeing the places where things can move one or two steps forward, even as they might slip one back again. Not quite Sisyphus but maybe a little more electric slide. Moving forward, sideways, in a group, individually. Doing what can be done to keep an eye on the prize. No head in sand. No pretending it’s not a thing what’s going on around us in the world. Sure, you’re tired, I’m tired, let’s just pretend it’s [fill in blank of your favorite year here, being honest to recognize that that year had issues too, because of course it did]. But, no, if you draw breath and consider yourself alive, then you’re in it. It’s 2020. And if you look around and feel your heart beating at injustice, any injustice, even if it’s a damn kitten in a tree crying for help, then boom, you’ve got the makings of empathy. And why not apply that in even a small way. Again, not gonna lie, there are moments of overwhelm where I’m like What’s the point? I don’t have kids. The future’s just gonna be crazy for them. What good can I be? That lasts for a minute until I sort out its origin. I’m just bloody not sure sometimes what to do and how to do it and when to do it and on and on.

David Attenborough has a new documentary, A Life on Our Planet  on Netflix. I’ve yet to dial it up, but know I need to. I wonder what I’m waiting for. I realize it’s the voice inside me asking if I’m in the mood to face my own responsibilities regarding what I can do (what we all can do) in the face of what the planet needs. Sir Attenborough is 94 years on this planet. He’s seen a few things. He’s telling us what he knows and doing so in a beautiful way, from what I hear. So, really, it’s not about me being in the damn mood. It’s about stepping up and being open to receiving more information about what is needed, no matter if it’s big or small. A friend wrote me last week saying she’s making sure that she’s engaged every day, not just busy, but engaged. And I see her Insta feed and smile at her bike riding all over the NYC, slipping safely into galleries and really living inside her curiosity and commitment to being present and engaged. I also know she is not perpetually happy or satisfied because who the hell is, and really, who wants that? There has to be gravity, sadness even, in order to have joy. And it needs expressing and looking after. I’m inspired by her. And I know it’s imperative to keep taking the steps. Here in the US, just a guess, but the next few months are going to be even more gnarly than they’ve been.

So given the fact that I can’t order the earth up in multiples, that there’s really just one chance in November to vote (flip the effin’ senate and bring in a President who can exhibit leadership), and that being kind to my fellow citizens requires masks (oh, I do have multiples of those by-the-by), then I’m committing to taking steps deliberately and understanding that each moment stands alone. I may do it in a t-shirt of which I have one in every color and those damn house slippers I love, but I can at least aim whatever modicum of control I have in a direction where I feel I’m a part of something larger. Please join me. Thank you.

Hello, my friends. What a time, eh? While I’d been (and am still to some degree) planning a real cleansing rager in this here space, I’ve also come into a little bit of a soft place as well. Not quite as cuddly as kittens and puppies, but with a level of appreciation for something a bit more heart-felt than the hot fire I’d been planning to focus on only. Initially I was set to climb atop my (imaginary) dragon and set off east toward the pale house on the hill (of lies) to lay waste Daenerys-style to the whole damn pile, but then I paused to realize that if my dragon merely sneezes over this tinder of California that we’ll all go up in flames, soooo I’m living in the real world and trotting out the words instead.

From a pull-back-the-lens perspective, I’ve been heartened (a bit, because you really never ever do know) by hearing that the ladies who bent toward Trump in 2016 are reassessing their stance for 2020. I’m not going to totally chalk this up to a gender intuitive situation, but I do think that women, and especially moms, must see that a bully, sexual assaulter, and liar (the links I’ve included are his actual voice doing and saying those things) are the type of human they would not, I assume, want to raise. I think most women look to bringing strong and kind and wise men into this world, responsible and respectful types of people. Just teaching basic lessons up to and including if you’re ill, stay in your damn room so you don’t spread it around to others. (But apparently there is no one with enough courage to ground the man-child in DC, so off he goes free-range spreading at will.) I’m thinking that the ladies who are now uncomfortable with the kind of meanness he (I could use a derogatory nickname here as he would, but my mom taught me better) exhibits have made plans to go a different and kinder way. And to those women, I say thank you. The one true statement he said yesterday from his Evita-balcony scene at the White House was that this is the most important election of our lifetime. Yes. It is. And clearly when we go to vote, it’s looking at the whole shabang-a-lang of choices from understanding the strength around the VP candidate given the age of both men (which according to a University of Illinois study tells us that Trump being classified as overweight and an infrequent exerciser puts him at a lesser level of health than Biden), along with education around Congressional/Senate candidates. But, really, I’m back to saluting the ladies who are brave enough to to look into their hearts and understand that there is no good in having such a bad moral example at the helm of this country.

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And now to the more intimate moments of my ladies! The ones whose moral strength and friendship I bow down to. This morning I received a couple of texts that reminded me how important the women in my life are to me. They run through my system in ways I don’t often acknowledge or even have the words for. Honestly, there may not be words. That whole wind-beneath-my-wings kind of thing. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. This is what I am so grateful for. Strong, fierce women who I’m lucky to know and call friends. (And, okay, I just finished this book, so am riding that as well.) But regardless, even six months into a pandemic and only seeing or talking to my ladies occasionally on various devices, while also sometimes calculating time differences, I still feel their force. And goddammit, if a revolution needs to be acted upon, I know we are strong like that (& I also know there are some damn fine fellas who will join us). I’ve already got my outfit (see post “More Than a Feeling” end of August). So in celebration of the women in my life:

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Fer the love of, could 2020 get any more bananas? Really, my instinct was to just post this week’s column filled with videos of kittens in a basket and puppies in a field. But on further reflection, I began to think on the topic of comfort—not to mention that writing this is keeping me from refreshing my news sites over and over and over. And over. So, yes, distraction, comfort and their usefulness.

When my local nightly news source, PBS Newshour, pulled all their people indoors for segments, suddenly the awfulness that they were talking about, otherwise known as the news, became a study in diversions that had nothing to do with the words coming out of their mouths. Would you look at Judy Woodruff’s bookcase? That woman must be really into Civil War history. Jeez, Amna Nawaz has some excellent modern art on that wall. And so on. These observations would run along side what events were being talked about, so it wasn’t a total loss of information. But even a million months into at-home news segments, their are two journalists who could be telling me I’ve won a million dollars and long-lasting world peace had been achieved and all I’d hear for the first forty seconds of their mouth moving would be that Charlie Brown teacher blah-blah-blah sound. That is because I’m looking, actively nose-close-up-to-the-TV-screen attentive, to see if their cats are around. Lisa Desjardins and William Brangham each have a couple of felines that are incredibly entertaining. Dennis is really very patient with me during these moments since I might be blocking the screen. If they’re there, I get inordinately happy. If they’re not, I get over it fairly quickly, but still…I do enjoy seeing them and might feel a little gloomy if I don’t.

So comfort. Diversions. We find them where we can. If you’re lucky enough to have one installed in your house, I’m thinking pets or maybe a jester of some sort or you live with Sarah Cooper, then yay. Otherwise, it can take some amount of focus to bring the joy. For me, stepping away from the reality outside the door at least one-half-hour before sleeping is crucial. I use books for that. One that has nothing to do with world affairs and is often a novel. Sometimes the story involves superheroes like The City We Became. Although there are times I am saddened that we don’t have our own superpeople to call on so I’ll turn to other options. Right now I’m reading Caitlin Moran’s new nonfiction More Than a Woman and because it’s both hilarious and true in so many ways, I get an endorphin rush while learning stuff.

I’ve always been a creature of some habit (see post on) and have developed a bit of a rhythm for my week-to-week: three parts activism from home with WP4BL on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for anywhere from one-half to an hour. Mixed in with a bit of virtual Women’s March Action for this election season. Then I pull it inside and get on with the bits of the day not connected to crazyTown: tutoring, writing, communicating with my writing workshop. This last is interesting because most of the 15 students are in the UK, with one in Europe and three counting myself in the US. Last week, when I expressed dread on one of the forums about the debate, a little floodgate of sympathy opened up. The general sense was “We’re so sorry that you all are going through that” and “We have Boris, and while his hair wins the crazy contest by only a little, your guy takes the overall prize.” Happily we then return to each others writing, but in that short span I’m fascinated by perception/reality. As my good friend, Ruth, pointed out this last week, her friends from the UK send her news articles they think she might not be seeing regarding America and its perception outside of our shores. Eye-opening. Not necessarily comforting. When I asked my workshop pals what they turn to for self comfort, there was a lot of tea, a good portion of beer, and long walks (Berlin weighed in with coffee and pastry). I enjoy all those things. And also a good dose of (furry) creature comfort.

Here’s to hoping you all are finding your distractive comfort place wherever and whenever you can!

We took a roadtrip to the beach and even in that daylong getaway, I remembered what it means to travel. I also put my body in the Pacific Ocean for the first time since we’ve moved here and remembered why I love the ocean. The salt water buoyancy and the unknown. I mean, I’m not a fan of sharks. Jaws seriously messed up many many otherwise blissful summer swims (damn you, Peter Benchley, Steven Spielberg), but overall the sense of floating and looking out and out and out and there’s no end. Like you’re just alone in it all.

We drove to Seal Beach and Long Beach (hi, Mary! We didn’t ring you. Waiting til Covid moves on for a proper visit). I used to live in Long Beach when I want to the Cal State Uni there. I had an apartment on the beach and damn if you wouldn’t think that I’d have spent more time actually going into the ocean given I lived steps away. But I didn’t. Not even once that I can remember. First off, the kind of beach girl I fancied myself back then was a peasant bloused, gauze skirted, bells around my ankle kind of hippie chick who went to bonfires at night where boys played guitars (I don’t know why girls didn’t play guitars. Maybe they did. Maybe even my memories are gender stilted. ANyhoo.). The boys played guitar, they wore puka shells and hooded woven ponchos. They knew “Stairway to Heaven.” That was my beach. But no night swimming (damn you again, Peter Benchley/Steven Spielberg), altho besides the sharks it was probably for the best since I might have been stoned. But here’s the other thing. That whole scenario described above? I maybe did that once. By the time I lived in Long Beach, I was into a different scene. One that included imported UK bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, clubs in LA, and the like. So there you have it. Memories are tricksters.

As Dennis and I walked down Ocean Blvd, where my apartment had been, I looked mightily to find it. Figured I might have a pang of “here, this was it.” But nothing. In fact my friend Mary and I had been on a similar search for the apartment this last February, and again, nothing. As I remember the place, there was a large expanse of green lawn in front of the building. The windows faced the ocean. The apartment was on the second floor. I also have a very vivid memory of when, during the signing of the lease, a jogger was running by and collapsed. The landlord ran down to help him, but when the ambulance arrived, they discovered he’d died from a clot passing through his lungs. Yes, I remember that vividly (also that my boyfriend at the time’s car was stolen while we lived there). But walking up (& down) Ocean Blvd, there was no sign of a front lawn, just apartment houses pushed right up onto the sidewalk. Maybe they tore the place down. Maybe there was no lawn. Perhaps it was those memory jokers again. The ones that apparently embellish and move the furniture around in my life story. Thank gawd I write fiction.

After completing that search, we went down to the ocean and I walked in. Damn it felt good. No waves. No bonfire. No “Stairway to Heaven.” Fine. It’s a new day. We moved on to Seal Beach where there are waves. Big ones with surfers climbing on, riding in, jumping off, falling off. I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf. Okay, that’s a lie. The surfing thing didn’t happen until I was in New York because, again, there’s that moment where what’s furthest away is the thing I want. So funny. I’d see people on the A train going out to the Rockaways to surf and think, me too. There’s no denying that water (ocean, pond, river, kiddie pool on the back patio) is my happy place. Standing at the edge of the big waves I watched how people approached them. There were the ones who ran straight in. The ones who walked in, saw a big wave coming, turned around and ran out. The ones who stood their ground and got knocked down. The ones who executed the dive through. I recognize all these moves. I do them daily (you are not wrong if you think I’m going to use this scene as a metaphor for life). As a baby person, I have a memory (?!right?) of having my mom on one side and my dad on the other and being walked into the ocean. It’s not where I learned to swim, but where I learned to stand in the face of resistance and pull. Something might knock me down, something might suck my feet deep into the sand. Could go either way and often went both. I’ve obviously done all the run in, run away, fall over, gasp for air, learn the dive through, get hit by another immediately upon surfacing. Tumble, think I might die, come to the surface. Get out.

I’m not going to lie to you. Right now, living in this time, in this country, with this much going on, the ocean as metaphor is strong in my mind. The dive through has become my go-to, although I also need to pick some waves to commit to and ride in on, even if I crash on the sand. Surfing would be handy too, but I haven’t got that skill presently. The point: I cannot in good conscience merely dive through the problems if I can be active and ride them out for awhile. Currently, ActBlue: Flip the Senate is a wave I’m riding. As well as my weekly WP4BL moments. I also know that everything changes and this is a time to be aware of the waves. To stand in the face of them and not turn away. Know that messages in the sand will get washed away and new ones will be etched in. Do what I can to read them while they’re there.

Cowabunga.

Back in 2018 (feels like a few lifetimes ago), at our Hearst magazine Christmas party (yep, those happened once upon a time), there was a white elephant–themed gift-giving shang-a-lang. The particular twist on this one was to put a gift on the table that in some way spoke to a thing you couldn’t live without in your day to day. I got esoteric and bought a copy of a book called In the Company of Women that a friend had gotten me for my birthday. There was a suction-cup wine holder for the shower/bath that for a minute was the most coveted gift, spending some go-rounds being taken and untaken and taken again. But then someone picked up the package our creative director, Peter, had laid on the table. A Ruth Bader Ginsburg tree ornament. The crackle in the room was loud. Everyone. Wanted. That. Gift. And once it was claimed for the final time, I’ve no doubt those of us who hadn’t ended up with it, were all just a little less happy with what we walked out with. Me, I left the room with a Starbucks gift card and a bag of coffee, because of course I did. The next week, before we broke for the holiday, I found a little bundle on my desk. Peter, so kind, had gifted me with my own RBG. It felt like there really was a Santa Claus. I took her home and hung her near some Christmas lights, then I brought her back in the new year and placed her on a pushpin next to a photo of Winnie Swingle, a pen-pal I had from Lula, Georgia (more about her in a future post).

What was it about Ruth Bader Ginsburg that resonated with me? Many things, but the one I’m landing on here is her thoughtfulness. Not in the definition of “showing consideration for the needs of other people” but rather “showing careful consideration or attention.” Someone who was full of thought, and took her time to share it. Nina Totenberg, NPR’s correspondent for legal affairs, was interviewed over the weekend on PBS about her friendship with RBG and said, “She never said ‘um’ ever. Ever. It was not a comma for her, it was not a word. She was not about to utter it. She thought and then she spoke.” These pauses of hers always struck me as remarkable because to hear Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak, it was abundantly clear that in this time of fast patter and the filling up of conversational spaces, to be dedicated enough in words and thoughts to take time is almost like finding a unicorn under a double rainbow. As I recognize in myself the discomfort of unoccupied space in a conversation, I was always reminded and inspired by her commitment to pause. To think. Not react because you want to have the first word or prove that you know something, but to listen truly, formulate your thoughts—no one else’s—then respond.

Dennis had the pleasure of working at an event at Amherst College in 2019 where she spoke. And besides the fact that there was extra pressure to make sure NOTHING happened to her (no spare cords laying around to be tripped over), the magic of RBG was palpable from the live feed I watched. Of course her thoughts were concise and clear, and you could practically hear her mind working over the considered answers to the questions the women in the audience were asking. It felt both a necessity and a privilege to listen. And again I was struck by the authenticity of her. And because of the absence of that quality in so many humans we put front and center today, the wonder of her felt even sharper. If there’s any bonus about our pandemic times, it was that you could listen to the Supreme Court in action given they were phoning it in during the last months of the 2020 session. In May, a case about companies limiting contraceptive coverage came up before the court and I listened. Again, RBG’s questioning, not a lot of it, but precise, was amazing to hear. I feel lucky that she lived in my time and continues to resonate beyond whatever political insanity will now come on the heels of her death.

As a guiding star, I have my RBG talisman to remind me about bravery in self, how to be silent and trust in the ability to arrive at one’s own thought or conclusion, and if there needs to be more information, to ask.

Thank you for that, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I’ll say it again: My good gawd, people, I had this whole idea of what I wanted to write about this week and then, rawr, a brush fire breaks out just up the mountain from my dad’s. Combined with inferno, dry, triple-dig temps, and, lots of mental hoo-haw (does he need to evacuate? What does one put in a go-bag? I’m told clean underwear, toothbrush, important papers and insurance cards. How is it I don’t know this and don’t have one already prepared for us all? stuff like that). So it’s been a day. It actually still is a day, but I”m feeling like a writing distraction may be good.

There are just some things you can’t control. Weather is clearly one of those things. I’m a girl who has always enjoyed a nice big snowstorm that shuts things down and makes people stay inside. Great excuse to do daytime novel reading and drink hot beverages with marshmallows. But a fire event feels different. More angry. I know snowstorms can be quite gnarly and very damaging, yet there seems a muffled softness to them. Or maybe that’s just because when I’ve fallen on my butt in a snowstorm, it’s been a fairly pillowed landing unless it’s black ice, and then broken stuff happens. But fires are altogether different. They feel angry. Who’m I kidding, they are angry. So I look up into the hills above my dad’s house and all I can think of is crackling, burning madness, then I cross my fingers while also considering that go-bag situation and checking the fire-info website like a day trader (currently 5% contained, called the El Dorado fire, if anyone’s curious about its progress).

It’s not a stretch to say that as a college student, one of my reasons for relocating to the east coast from Southern California had a smidge to do with how much I love coats, hats, scarves, and boots. Things that scream seasons. Mostly fall. As discussed last week, the September issue of Vogue was my aspirational catalogue. I also got excited about what the fall season promised in the way of classes (new notebooks!!!!), then once school wasn’t a thing, new museum/theater/movie openings. I love myself a nice datebook where I could write down first, as a student, my whole schedule and what books I’d need and all that. Then, as a young-and-beyond adult, what shows to go see. (Obviously 2020 has blown that last bit out of the water no matter where one lives.) But looking back on the shift in wardrobe before I moved to the east coast for my closet, I can see that I was a stubborn puppy. I wanted to wear what I wanted to wear, so even though going to Cal State Long Beach where the temperature would probably be in the mid-eighties in September, I was still determined to slip on that plaid, mid-length jumper I’d gotten from who knows where. This was not an altogether comfortable sartorial choice, but as you can see from the college-pal photo below, I was determined. And I think also a little heated in that tartan skirt although I did seem to pair it with a white t-shirt, so there was some style/comfort sanity going on.

I think ultimately the season of fall still triggers my new-beginnings sensation. Everything is starting new, and when I was younger that posed questions about how my life would move one step closer to the person I dreamed of becoming. This is not altogether far off from the thoughts I still have. As I start my writing workshop this week, I can feel the possibilities tickling at my brain. At some point (maybe?) the heat will drop below three digits, although fire season is now a year-round reality. I’m never not aware these days of the actual boots-on-ground events happening that demand attention: Yes, we’re having more explosive weather events because of climate change. We know this because science says so — for those who have doubt,s here is a peer-reviewed article to bring it home. Yes, there is an actual real problem with racism in this country and Black people are being shot by law enforcement with no end in site. Again, we know this because actual statistics show us so, and, no, there is not a media conspiracy unless you’re so stubborn you just can’t face the facts. Here, a non-partisan study bringing home some truths. And, of course, there is an election on the near horizon that in all likelihood will not go smoothly. And fer-chrissakes, the COVID is still with us along with the mask wars (but I’m lucky to have gotten two beautiful new ones made by an indigenous company in Canada for this fall season from my lovely friend Judy. I have agreed to share with Dennis. As my basket grows, photos may follow).

So there’s all that happening, but yet still, I feel the flutter of newness as the month of September marches on. It feels pretty primal no matter how many years I’ve been on the planet. And funny thing about that: Speaking of no control, as per the title of this blog, while I’m giving it up to mother nature, I also have been realizing I need to give it up on caring about looks and aging as well. Yes, I’m aware of what my body and face are doing within this 59th year. Somewhere in the last few a corner was turned a bit more sharply when it came to my age and I matching up closer to reality. Back in 2017, when I worked at Hearst and mentioned my age to the woman who sat next to me, she did a spit-take and said, “What? but … look at how you dress?” Okay, so really, I’m not sure of what to make of that. But since I normally fall on the side of bright rather than dark, I went with her giving me a compliment (altho now reading it back, maybe not. Anyhoo). Last Friday, when Dennis and I could finally get our hairs cut again, the fantastically cool stylist who I secretly thought might consider me also cool, said, “You guys are two of my favorite new customers. I was telling my partner how I wished you were my parents. You’d be the coolest.” People, this is another good use for masks: She could not see my jaw drop, not hear the muffled cry of whaaaaa? It wasn’t that she was dissing us at all. It was a compliment that slid in sideways. I think. In that moment, I was reminded that, no, I’m not a punk-rock-thirtysomething anymore, like she is, but an elder states-chick (like Patti?). It only took a couple of hours for me to move on, but then it was kind of freeing. Yes, I am a fine version of 59 who still has fun with style. And it’s fall. And I am now mature enough to understand why wearing a tartan wool jumper is not a thing right now. See? That’s progress!

(To help me really get it, one of my top-five fave writers, Caitlin Moran–funny, smart, age-appropriate) has a new book out on just this subject: More Than a Woman. YES, just YES.)