Does This Make Me Look

Ever since I was pushed into the world as a girl, I’ve been taught to push down anger (“it’s unattractive.” “It’s unseemly.” “It’ll drive people away.”). I fell for that because of course I did. Most of the women I know were fed the same bitter spoonful over and over and we’ve lived in a constant state of swallowing just so we wouldn’t make people uncomfortable. I was tempted to say “make men uncomfortable” but that’s not true or fair. This anger-suppression tonic for women was indeed concocted by men back in day, but now I know that the emotion of anger makes many women uncomfortable too. I’ve been that discomforted person for sure. I’ve also felt how titillating it is to see a woman expressing anger and owning it right out there in public. A lot of times I’ve scooted right up close to her just to feel the power. Then, little by little, I learned the difference between aligning with someone whose anger is misdirected and dangerous like a dirty bomb and someone whose anger is delivered as a clear concise gift that can be held and is warm to the touch but doesn’t explode in my face. Yet I’ve always been adjacent to anger, not actually uncovering my own feelings or actions around it.

Currently I’m soaking in it. It’s all my own. I know there are multitude ways to express it outside of myself, but I’m also feeling like maybe I just want to sit with it, let it swirl around me, actually feel it for a minute. I’m not yet in the mood to put it to any sort of practical use. I’m appreciating all the messages and writings being posted about love and movement and forward motion and keep fighting and check on your people and positivity in the face of fear and adversity. I don’t disagree and I’m free to cherry-pick the actions that make sense in the moment. Yet I’m also appreciating the energy of how my real true pissed-offed-ness is bubbling up from a well of grief and disbelief without me needing to point a firehose of the stuff in any particular direction.

Disbelief: I now know that more than half of the people who make up the America I live in hold ideas that are 100% opposed to my own on almost every level. It’s good to know, actually. It’s a kind of preparation. In my younger days, I was almost comically proud to be different in the place where I grew up (Irvine, Cali) and so set off to find my people, which I did: Hello, New York City. Now as an oldster, I feel a different kind of recognition around not thinking like the majority. I’m hella proud of my opinions and ideologies around social justice, bodily autonomy, and kindness and I’m beyond happy with the people in my life who both align with those values and who express them, whether vividly and forcefully, or quietly and privately.

I used to be patient and rather kumbaya around listening and trying to understand the other political side of the spectrum, and then 2020, etc. happened (the pandemic, the election, the 6th of the first month of 2021). Before that, I thought listening and explaining my stance was the enlightened way to go. I thought the person on the other side was listening. I thought those things until the two-by-four of NOPE hit me upside the head. Metaphorically, yes, but the sense of slamming the door on my beliefs was visceral.

So the white-hot energy of anger. I know I can do a lot with it that won’t intrinsically hurt or destroy me or anyone I love. I know that’s the important part. And I also know not to put the force-field of that anger away where it will pop out in truly unhelpful (read: passive-aggressive, grudge-holding) ways. I’m also really very tired. So it’s gonna be a minute before I think anything productive may flower from that rich complicated soil. Who knows, maybe nothing immediately productive will appear and that’s OK. Takes time for things to root and grow. Maybe a controlled burn where I can keep track and let the newly exposed take over.

In this moment, the art of Yoshitomo Nara is working for me sooo hard (selections above and below)! I first saw an exhibition of his in L.A. a few years ago and just climbed right into his world of expression. Passion, anger, action, movement. I feel my heart beat when I look at his work. Banging the drum, my drum, not caring what that looks like because really, who gives a F&k? Needs must.

Here’s the part where I tell you that if you’re not in the mood to be specifically reminded of the upcoming administration, then read no more and please enjoy Yoshitomo Nara’s art as a finishing flourish! Otherwise, scroll on below the art!

I appreciate you all being here in all the ways you are!!!

My friend W, whose commitment around action I admire beyond words, posted a couple of things for those who will be most immediately affected by the coming loss of freedoms we know will end in January 2025 (& let’s be honest, the folx who will be most immediately affected have never really been completely comfortable or taken care of, no matter the administration, so … ) in her words: “given the fact that mass deportation and limiting LGBTQ rights are very much on the table, … if you are even a slightly darker skin color than [pale] and/or are even arguably an immigrant or child of an immigrant, you need to get an original/certified copy of your birth certificate (which you can order from the state you were born). You should also make sure that you renew your passport in the next few months (i.e., before January) if it is going to expire in the next 4-8 years. This is not to flee the country, but to have proof of citizenship. You should have this for your kids too—even if you don’t plan to travel internationally. If you are in a non-heterosexual marriage, you should make sure that (a) your name is on your kid’s birth certificate and/or make sure you have your parenthood established legally and (b) consult a lawyer to set up paperwork (powers of attorney, wills, etc) to make sure you and your spouse are protected together. Make sure you are up-to-date on your vaccines ASAP. Several of them (like TDAP) need to be renewed every so often.”

And I’ll add: HeyJane to the mix for reproductive rights in this moment. They’re an amazing resource. Also, I found this piece really helpful on Ambiguous Loss (yes, it touches on the election itself but I think in a really helpful way).

Hello, excellent people! Now that I’m back in the land of seasons, I’m amazed at how fast things in nature change. One day I’m staring at eye-popping yellow and red leaves blazing off trees and bushes and then the next moment those fragile little hangers-on have been blown clean off their branches and are crunching underfoot. I love seasons, especially the ones with the most colors, although I also have a fondness for snowstorms because they feel like an excuse to stay inside and read. Why I need to have Mother Nature deliver an event in order to spend a day reading? Excellent question.

Any-who, circling around to the topic of being blown clean off a (metaphorical) branch: This last month there has been a lot of destabilizing going on in my life. Things that felt solid weren’t. Steps that seemed forward-moving proved to be no steps at all. Basic assumptions went sideways. All very eye-opening in a way I don’t particularly love, mostly because who does? “I want to be as confused, uncomfortable, and uncertain as is humanly possible” has said no one ever. I mean, maybe I see a hand waving way at the back telling me they’re into that vibe, but I’m quite sure I don’t know you. So stuff kept happening, and I kept thinking Cut it out. Stop blowing the leaves from my tree. It’s cold and uncomfortable. Here’s one thing about that, though. When everything’s fallen away, there you are—or rather there I am. Exposed in a moment that forces me to assess.

I was perfectly happy rolling along with all my blazing colors but yet (shakes fist at sky) apparently that wasn’t the plan in this moment. So just like during the wanders I take up and down these roads, now I can see clear into some places I hadn’t noticed before. Like there’s that shiny silver airstream parked deep into some woods where before about a half-dozen trees hid it. Then my mind churns: Has that always been there? Is someone living there? and, depending on my state of mind (creepy vs. pragmatic, which really has to do with cloudy vs. blue skies), what goes on in there?

Well, the same thing is happening in the crevices of my mind/soul now that all kinds of things have been blown away: Has that (thought, desire) always been there? Is someone (me) living there (or rather living all the possibilities there)? What goes on in there (this deep crevice I’ve tried not to deal with)?

I’m here to say I one-hundred-percent have zero answers to these questions, but I am thinking about them. When I’m perfectly still, I actually know some things have been wanting to answer back for a bit and I’ve kept them shut down. One of those changes (criminy that word is unsettling to me) is something that will affect you, my excellent reading people. In a few weeks, I’m going to migrate this weekly writing over to a new platform where there will be more goodies, specifically a project with Dennis will be attached to where you’ll get to see clips (little videos. in-motion moments) of him working the new land. Maybe sometimes I’ll be in the shots too. Who knows. I will tease the first one, though: Our new mail-person makes an appearance.

So stay tuned for all the info on that. And in the meantime, two things for these unsettled times: For the U.S. folx among us, I’m sending you as much peace as can be expected as we ride into this wild next week. The feeling of weariness and anticipation around Election Day finally happening combined with the sense that the national upheaval around that day will not be over for quite a while (I hope I’m wrong about this, but all signs point to no, not wrong) is excruciating so again, wherever you can find the solace, distraction, headspace you need (after you vote, naturally), I’m rooting for you. And if that means I don’t hear from some of you for a while, I TOTALLY understand that. Be good to yourself. I’m planning on doing the same. Also, remember U.S. people to turn your clocks back tomorrow. I’m going to use that extra hour to sit on the couch with as many of the cats who will have me (there are only two, so I’ve got a 50-50 chance) under a fuzzy blanket with a book and an occasional visit from D. (His happy place will probably be outside hooking up a thing or fixing a doo-dad or wandering around with some mysterious piece of equipment.)

I’m sending all good vibes out to each and every one of you, my friends, while keeping a heaping basket of the same in my heart as well.

I have come to understand that Desi and Lucille are currently living their best life. Not only are there creatures big and small (deer, turkeys, chipmunks) roaming right outside the window for them to stare at, but they’re indulging in all manner of instinctual, I might say show-offy, hunting activities of their very own.

At last count D&I have set free five mice that have run out from under the sink, apparently the last entry point from the outside that hasn’t been filled in with foam. We’ve found two dead meeces that we weren’t home to catch&release before the felines finished them off, and last night (more like early this morning), we helped one escape D&L’s tag-team clutches as Dennis ran around the place with a pot while I served as emotional backup. Once the cats understood we weren’t all on the same side, they attempted their own corral team yet the critter disappeared into … I don’t honestly know … perhaps the bathroom closet where it’s currently still living? Perhaps down into the heating vent? Hopefully it made its way outside to communicate to its brethren to avoid this house on Merwin street. Maybe it’s in witness protection in a pile of leaves in Vermont.

Then there was the bird. I was on the phone attempting to set up my new health insurance last week (oh, marketplace, I both love and hate you in almost equal measure) and as the woman was attempting to sort through some of my information, the sound of relentless chasing was happening in the other room. When I stepped out, there was a dead bird in the middle of the dining room floor. Dennis found that the bulk of the crime had happened on our bed. Because of course it had. Boy cat had proudly brought in the bird through the cat doors from the catio and was attempting to teach us stupid humans what to do with winged things. As no one was paying attention, he did the job himself. Sister, unhappy at being left out of this monumental brother’s-first-bird moment dragged in some kind of low-level green bug (winged, small-ish) later that was still alive and which we grabbed and let go. I think she’s still mad at us.

So, yes, they’re living their natural lives, following instincts: chasing when it’s called for, napping when they feel like it, demanding all the things they want (food, human-operated playthings, under-chin and belly scritches). I’m studying this behavior for the human equivalent. I’m pretty sure there’s a parallel to not overthinking it and just infusing my life with a little cat energy. Taking a nap when I feel like it without any guilt. Eating a cookie when it cries out to me (so much easier to just open a package rather than having to chase it down, although packaging these days … am I right?), stepping up to Dennis for a hug and reaching out to all my pals for the verbal equivalent (or the real thing if I’m close enough).

I also had the pleasure of spending time with a very delightful young fella this week (hello, Pikachu) and feel the residual joy of what it means to play. To again not overthink the storyline. To bring things to life because you can see the possibilities in the blue car flying through the air and then winning the race over all the other red, yellow, and green cars because that’s what you feel needs to happen. And also, the simplicity of watching and listening to people around you. Maybe they seem strange or fascinating but ultimately it can be pretty wonderful to just be able to feel safe to stare and wonder and come to your own decisions about what’s happening around you, then only share those thoughts if you want to. I vaguely remember that sense of watching and wondering and learning, while feeling like I had time to do just that. It wasn’t a conscious I-have-time thought but more a sense of not knowing I needed to know or that there was a time constraint built in. I was just taking what I needed and waiting to see what happened next.

I still often don’t know and my goal is to not think that I need to. Just wait and listen and see what happens. Drive that blue car right into my imagination.

Or: Which way is up? down? sideways? And does it really matter?

My last 15 months have been filled with change. For sure the four years before that, moving to Cali and being with my dad, held a massive amount as well, but this last year’s change has been a more varied type of moving (literally) and shaking (figuratively). Whittling it down even more, this last week’s rocky road has been a jalopy of strangeness. One that’s been filled with the kind of surreal situations that in future may be looked back on as Wow, what a weird confluence of events, yet right now strike me as too soon.

Two weeks ago, out of the blue, this happened (the headline regarding AARP is all that matters in that link): While doing a job I’d come to love since July, copy editing for AARP as part of a great team of other copy editing humans, in a position that recognized my skills with great pay, benefits, hours, and interesting stories, there was a mandatory Zoom meeting with the staffing agency where we were all (our department, along with researchers, video producers, editors, and more, equaling over 70 people) laid off with one week of pay as severance. Turns out, AARP, the nonprofit organization whose mission statement is “to enhance the quality of life for all as we age. … [for] people [to] live with dignity and purpose and fulfill their goals and dreams.” had decided that monetary issues were more a driving force than the services/jobs/futures of their contractors, a majority of whom (including myself) are their target audience of oldsters.

Layoffs don’t surprise me having been in the working world for four decades, which has made me well-acquainted with how they operate across all working universes. So it’s not that it happened but rather how it did, being shrouded in all the mystery and silence that lawsuits bring. The confusion of being completely shut out from communicating or getting references from the managers with whom we worked well and closely. The radio silence regarding our circumstances and the fact that those self-same managers are not allowed to speak to or hire us for the next 12 months. The icy silence. I’m not a lawyer, although I do have a dear friend who is and who has been so amazing at parsing out the bits of this particular funhouse mirror. I have had an opportunity on the excellent group text that has started up amongst all of us displaced folx, to speculate, vent, and generally gnash teeth and shake fists at AARP, which has now put those of us who are over 50 (65% at last count) in a very challenging job market where our demographic is not exactly sought after. (But, hey, this market is extra tough for all ages and beings. We are not alone.) This is of course made richer by the specific stories about ageism in the AARP that I would regularly copy edit. This one, which was published on our last full workday, is particularly ironic.

Anywho, my point isn’t specifically the layoff, but rather how this thing began a series of events that are wild and make me wonder/understand how my little psyche percolates both taking in and reacting to things. Makes me question: Is there such a thing as a streak of luck? Is it more getting stuck in some weird forcefield of crazy? My mom, back in the day … maybe still? … is a fierce proponent of the power in positive thinking. I don’t have that same think-it-make-it-so belief system, I circle more around there’s a lot of random chaos while also knowing I have freedom of action in making choices. I don’t think there’s a born-under-a-bad-cloud kind of legacy. I think more I’m a teeny-tiny part of a very large universe and perhaps I’m just a player on this stage where sh*t (all kinds of it: good, bad, otherwise) happens.

That said, I’m currently marveling at the wack-ness this last week has brought in a kind of upside-down world way. Last weekend, D&I spent some time with a small group of excellent people, all of us looking to go a bit deeper in our ways of thinking and seeing the world. I, naturally, thought I’d be traversing the light fantastic, appreciating the power of nature, the magic of my mind. Instead I spent the bulk of my time in the bathroom throwing up (or purging, in the parlance of the group), then zonked out asleep on an air mattress. Weirdly, I did not feel upset about this. In fact, I didn’t actually feel any which way about it at all. D was by my side, making sure I was as good as could be, and he apparently had his own fine time. But wowza did it ever remind me that (wo)man plans and the gods laugh. Ya know, so I’ve been processing. My therapist reminds me these events have flattened me. Removed the must-do part of me that would be trying to solve the problem or figure out the why and how of the thing, when in reality, the job loss was me as collateral damage and the weekend events were a forced slowdown. Yes, I agree. As the part of me felled, lying on the proverbial ground where stillness actually feels good, I can see the shadow me trying to get up and tidy the joint. Do stuff. Looking for something to fix, to move. To stop thinking about where I’m at and distract myself with taking care of, er, stuff? This is why all the rest of the week’s malarky is hitting so hard.

To begin: D has been suffering a gum infection all week, which stops him from being able to eat solid foods and takes his energy way way down. There’s nothing for me to do there but give him hugs and work the blender overtime. The woman who I was forced to call to sort out my NYState unemployment insurance filed my claim wrong so I needed to spend another 4-ish hours on the phone with a new person redoing the caboodle for me to receive my weekly payout. (We’ll see.) After my annual physical in service of using up the good insurance before it runs out at month’s end, my GP found some abnormality that’s sending me to a specialist. It’s likely nothing (says, she), yet need to make sure. Girl cat seemed to have developed an eye infection, yet then managed to clear it up by herself (thank you, Lucille). I sliced the top of my finger with the sharp knife last night so that my left index finger looks like a bandage balloon—also, typing. That’s fun. A fork got stuck in the dishwasher’s utensil holder and it literally took a hammer for me to disengage it. Miracle I did not then smash myself into a concussion or put my eye out.

Look, I mean, I read over this stuff and it seems just absurd, yet also like a series of emotional paper cuts. Am I listening? Which way to letting it all go? Being quiet and paying attention. Stop doing. Cry some. Laugh some. Do nothing. or very little. A nauseous unemployed person wearing a bandage trying to work a hammer and the blender alternately while on hold with NYState unemployment as my beloved naps on the couch and the cats stare at us confused. And that’s just my house. That’s just right now.

Those two words: Put. Out. So many ways they can be heard. As a girl in high school, those words formed a phrase that was used exclusively to demean, marginalize, and signal something very specific. Needless to say, words can be weapons. Now, as an older lady, I look at that combo plate of letters and think, screw that, no. Taking back the phrase in a couple of ways. I’m going with verb usages like putting myself out there, for instance. Or being put out in a way that suggests out of sorts.

This past week I’ve lived in both of those definitions. Last Sunday I challenged myself to get out of my comfort zone and canvas for the Dems in upstate NY (Kingston: Go Pat Ryan, Sarahana Shrestha, Michelle Hinchey). Two things made this the best of all possible ways to put myself out there: 1) I have to keep doing things for this election 2024 and this action, a thing I’ve in the past felt too socially uncomfortable to attempt, was the next step after postcards. 2) I did this with the very best people, my amazing friend, W, along with her sister and niece, who are seasoned election-year canvassers (yes, even the youngest among us). The thought of knocking on people’s doors and both asking questions and making a point is a stress/stomach-churning thing. I didn’t even sell Girl Scout cookies back in the brief period of my badge-earning days because I couldn’t fathom having to convince anyone that they needed to buy four boxes of Thin Mints along with a couple of Peanut Butter Sandwich cartons, even though it was clear that no one said “I hate Girl Scout Cookies” ever. People love ’em, yet still the thought of trying to sell them made my skin actually sweat. So imagine talking to people about something that chances are they’re not enthusiastic about (or at least not as excited about as cookies)? And on a Sunday at that?

But yet, I did show up. Mind you, I now understand that this activity is a challenge for most/many people, which is why I have always been extra-adoring of W and her commitment to speaking and doing things that matter because I know it’s not her regular go-point to be meeting strangers. Instead, it’s the importance of doing what has to be done and not being silent. So that’s why I was there. Putting out: myself, the message, forming words in ways that hold some meaning. And the activity went a little like this: Apartment complex. List of 50 doors to knock on. Very strong start with the first two doors opened and one woman very explicitly and enthusiastically declaring herself a voting Democrat. This was good. The next 48 doors were a mixed bag. Mostly non-answered, giving the youngest (&perhaps most adorable) among us a chance to perfect her roll-the-handouts-slip-into-door-handle technique. The other doors that were cracked open brought some not-altogether surprising messages along the lines of “I don’t vote.” A woman who shook her head at the thought of voting as if we’d asked if she performed a daily colonoscopy ritual: “Oh, no, I don’t do that. Not interested.” When asked (gently by W or her sister) why? “It doesn’t make any difference.” Then the door closed. There was the man holding his very curious&beautiful son who said, “Nah, I don’t vote but I’ll give the information to my old lady.” It was hard for me not to yell “Do it for HIM!” while pointing at the boy. And also maybe to let him know that the term old lady probably went out with the Nixon administration for good&obvious reasons. But there was no yelling. Of course not. I don’t even yell when I actually have every right to (more about that in a minute).

We finished the day at a Mexican restaurant with the acknowledgment that we’d done a good thing, that maybe a handout would be read, a tip toward voting may happen, a Sunday well-spent, and yes, the guacamole was really good too. None of this was small and the level of putting out was large on all our parts.

The other put-out this week had to do with this job I’ve had and loved since July. It ended. Not just for me but for a whole load of folx who were unceremoniously turned out of AARP at the last minute because of a contract mess (or at least that’s what we were told). It’s all very confusing and currently, I have no idea the hows or whys of it. And maybe that doesn’t even matter, although I do recognize that the first reaction at least for me—and who can’t relate?—is to try and get to some logical reasoning around an event that so definitely changes the course of my current day-to-day. Yet when I move off to the left a bit and realize that there are a load of things people—people who I adore—are going through and have gone through where there is no connection to an explanation, I realize that it’s important to acknowledge the frustration and helplessness. That’s not, to my mind, willful inaction but rather things happen. If it does good to raise a ruckus (see above. Election 2024), then hell yeah. If it’s just howling into the wind, then for sure that feels good even if it yields only the result of it feeling good.

This is where the yelling might fit in: and that might feel good because it will let off the steam but because I don’t live in Network and therefore won’t find an audience or window to shout out of where people will cheer for me, I understand that this is just something I would do to satisfy my need. That’s not nothing and I am allowing for the seven stages of grief around letting go of a situation where I enjoyed the work, the people, the hours, the money, the health insurance, and the benefits. A sort of unicorn. An acknowledgment that I like steadiness in my day-to-day life even as I’ve chosen a not-steady career in the publishing industry. I haven’t lost those people I beyond-appreciate who I know in this topsy-turvy industry. The ones I’ll always know who pre-date this job, and even a couple from this gig who I hope to still know into the future.

What I’m reckoning with is the sense of disappointment. Of having a choice made for me that I didn’t choose or want. The realization that to put out in the way I want is a decision I make while being put out is uncomfortable. Maddening even. And so goes the merry-go-round, which I will ride, fastening the safety bar while yelling, screaming, thinking, perhaps laughing, appreciating, and going forward in the best way I know how.

There are two very specific vast empty spaces currently in my life, both of which will be ever-so-slowly filled. They’re both incredibly exciting yet one I understand better and lives in my imagination, while the other is in my line of sight yet I can’t quite visualze it yet.

A week-ish ago, D & I found out for real/for sure that a piece of land we’d made an offer on in upstate New York (Schoharie county, Stamford is the nearest village with all mod cons: grocery, cute diner, coffee place, used bookstore) is ours. It’s 25 amazing acres and D has plans mapped out for the house and all attendant things that will be built on top of it. He’s been sketching and planning for over a year now as we’ve been looking for just the right place. Having found it, while also enduring as one does the slow-mollasses drip of NY real estate, once the deed was done (&signed), the excitement was both real and slightly blurry to me. For D, he can look at this land—one vast space, half-mowed, half with big gorgeous trees—and see things: What needs to be done, what will stand where and in what order. He also has some solid ideas about when those things will happen.

I stand on the land and see the half-mowed-ness, the amazing trees, vast expanse of the view and am slightly stunned. By the beauty, yes, but also by the fact that he has the vision to bring it all to life and I have a vague sense around, Wow, look at all this land; check out this view. That’s about where my imagination stops. Last weekend, we went out and measured where some wee-trees will be planted along the property line that separates us (by a couple of miles) from the neighbors. Yet still, because there aren’t a lot of houses in the area, and there are a lot of sloping mowed hills, the view into other houses would be real. Hence the trees. They arrived last week. Little saplings of Maples that were shipped in boxes and tied to sticks. And while it will be years before they grow into actual block-the-view trees, for the first time I could understand how this land would (slowly) populate with us (and our trees). How D will build and fashion and make this rolling space ours. This impresses the hell out of me and I still stand and look out over the landscape with my vision a little blurred while he trails his hand around saying things like “and over there…” and “right here…” and “that’ll be….” and I nod because I believe him, it’s just that it’s more amorphous to me. We do have an apple tree from which I grabbed a few ripe ones and made an apple concoction (basically flour, sugar, and all sorts of baking stuff with the apples on top. Very yummy.)

Where I’m more able to see things that aren’t there yet are in stories. In my head I have a whole bunch of characters who are up to no good and definitely in dire straits. Some of them mean well, some definitely don’t. They (mostly) all have names and some traits, all of which could change as the writing gets going. The thing that will hold them is this large book: 230 lined pages inside a hard cover, 220 of those pages are currently empty. I’m actually trying something new in writing the story out longhand. My longhand is really horrible, mind you, so it’s hit or miss that when I get to the end of a draft, I’ll be able to go back and be able to read and then transfer the story into my computer. But, I’m trying it. The idea of just writing without erasing or going back and changing things or moving things around. I mean, already there are for sure lines and words crossed out but somehow the pen on the paper is keeping me moving and I’m not freaked out that I’ll lose the file or that one of the cats will step on the keyboard and disappear the whole thing.

This empty space does not freak me out. Where D can see what’ll be on the land, I can see what’ll be on the page. Of course, we both get to do the thing to bring it all to life. And that will take time (years). So now comes the patience. I’ve never been altogether good at that but in this case, there’s no real choice.

Away we go.

On Tuesday night three things—a supermoon, a harvest moon, and a partial eclipse—all took place in one celestial body. I’m not a selenologist. Yes, it’s a thing! The name is based on an Ancient Greek myth that the Moon goddess, Selene, drove a chariot pulling the moon across the sky every night. Awesome job for a night owl, which I am not and so I didn’t see the eclipse because it happened at 10:44 Eastern and that’s a good bit after I’m asleep driving my own little dream chariot through slumberland. Yet, while I was awake, every time I passed the northern windows in our house, that moon was winking fat, sassy, and majestic.

Being someone who’s mostly (OK, always) lived in populated areas, I’ve never had a clear sky to see the full picture of stars and what-have-you. Now, with no ambient light except the one on our porch, I can see things. I may start getting curious about constellations. I do have more of a sense of both being little under a big sky and also aware that this moon is the same one stared at the world over. It’s a good reminder for me since lately, during this silly season of politics, I’ve noticed how I can become easily overwhelmed, frustrated, sad, and just generally agitated at a swathe of people existing under that big moon.

Now that I work at AARP, copy editing all the things that go online and in the magazine, along with the videos, bulletins, etc., I get a fair amount of insight into what’s important and top-of-mind for the over-50 among us. It’s also wild that that includes me: over-50 for real, even though as most anyone of any age will say, they don’t even know what it means to feel like you’re a certain amount of numbers on this earth. Back in my music days, I was almost always the oldest in the room given I came late to figuring out the what&where of my life. I was older usually by a year or five but as far as I knew, it didn’t make a difference in what I said, did, or wrote. It wasn’t as if I was trying to fit in somewhere I shouldn’t have been (see Amy Sedaris in Strangers With Candy) or had an aim to corrupt the youth.

In the last decade though, I’ve absolutely noticed basic differences around how my age situates me in the world. The first stop being my closet. Understanding that some of the looks I’d completely loved and made my own were just not workable anymore—I’m looking at you short skirts with knee-socks and motorcycle boots; oh, and hey tank-tops, maybe you’re not my favorite clothing choice anymore either. Beyond my closet, I’ve also been reminded of ideological positions that have not aligned altogether with my peers. Working where I do, one of the most jarring moments, besides seeing people who I double-take for having aged (Jon Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Brat Pack-ers), is understanding how folx across the country think about the world we live in. And wowza, I’m always muttering, Hey fellow oldsters, what is up? Every time we publish a poll about how Trump is ahead among 50-plus voters nationally, I have to get up and pace around while saying (maybe yelling) “Polls are unreliable,” attempting to understand how there are people out there falling for this shuckster-shyster-felon with no plan beyond chaos, domination, authoritarian shenanigans (don’t even start on tariffs. Either a) he doesn’t understand how they work and/or b) he’s counting on his followers to not understand how they work. A great and clear clip here about how they’ll very much hurt the income of Americans).

Ultimately, though, I don’t need to understand how the minds of people who have been standing under this same moon for the same amount of time as I have view the world. When faced with a picture of our current America, they see something completely different than I do. I see the great possibility of a chariot pulled by a fierce woman doing a lot of work to keep the moon (metaphor for all sorts of stability or at least not self-induced chaos) coming and going steadily. They see … who the hell knows? But regardless, the sense of how goddamned important and consequential the decision on November 5 is for all of us connected in these 50 states, not only for how long we can exist into the future to see the moon and the sun rise and fall, but also how every person of all backgrounds, races, proclivities, and beyond stand underneath and look up at that sky, well … it’s consequential. It did make me happy that my fellow oldster lady people voiced this (based on a poll that went up at work Friday): “Women voters 50-plus support Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris over Republican former President Donald Trump by a 12-percentage-point margin, largely because of how these voters rate the candidates on pocketbook and retirement issues, an exclusive AARP poll released Friday found.” Yes, it’s a poll. But still. Now let’s get in our chariots and bring the woman qualified for the job across the November threshold for a win. That’s an eclipse I’d stay up for!

I have no tales of wildlife this week. No mice in the house, bears at the trashcans, roaming dogs around the shed. Except for a family of wild turkeys stepping out of our driveway and a beautiful buck bowing his majestic antlers while nibbling near our apple tree in the front yard, no creatures great or small really interacted with me this past week. Instead, a more human type of creature was on my mind. For work, I’d been tasked to run fact-checking backup during the Presidential debate this past week. The assignment was that when (if?) the candidates touched on the topics meaningful to the AARP audience—Medicare, health care, Social Security, caregiving—then I would quick-like-bunny make sure what they said carried some truth so that the writer could include that information in the piece. We all knew that Trump would be in negative-truth, 88.9% lies territory (I mean, during Harris’ baller-shake-hands-pre-debate move, he said his name was Trump, which we have been able to prove as true), yet still … just in case he and she had a meaningful back&forth on one of the AARP-style topics, there I was to check it. While Harris did in fact tuck in some facts on her policy ideas (read details in depth here and here), and true to form, he spewed angry spittle and said “I have concepts of a plan” around health care (even though, no, I’m sure he doesn’t except tear the current down), in the end, the decision was that AARP would not run a story about the debate. There was a tiny moment as we all tried to figure out how Taylor Swift’s endorsement might fit into the demographic (grandkids love her? I added that I would bet plenty of 50 and older peeps do as well, yet maybe not enough to do a story on the endorsement). Then everyone signed off our group chat and went to bed.

The elation I felt around Harris’ delivery, not to mention facial expressions (the sense that the split-screen delivered delight as compared to the tragedy of June’s Biden/Trump debate was visceral), sent me to bed hopeful. That word hope in all its permutations has been put through the spin cycle and tumbled around in the lexicon overmuch in the last many political cycles perhaps leaving it threadbare, but I still pull it tight as a comfort item, and I’ve clutched it Linus-style ever since Tuesday night’s debate.

As much as hope has been washed through the language, sanity is also coming up for a spin. A term that’s been bubbling over the last little while: sanewashing, wherein the press normalizes Trump’s words by not calling out the lunacy and disjointed nature of them, thereby exposing his complete lack of fitness for holding any office and his actual danger to our world. This isn’t even about fact checking, because there are no facts to check, but rather constructing meaning where there is none. This quote, “Watching a full presidential Trump press conference while visiting the US this week,” the Australian journalist Lenore Taylor observed in 2019, “I realised how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect.” Please note that this was observed in 2019 so it’s not a new phenomenon. These two pieces, one by Stephen Robinson about the absolute embarrassment mainstream media outlets like the NYTimes, Washington Post and other front&center at the newsstand papers of record have made while pretzeling to make T sound coherent, thereby making him all the more dangerous, are instructive and clarion-call clear. (Thank you, W, for introducing me to these columns.) This recent one by Brian Beutler strikes the most hopeful, yet absolutely cautious note, that perhaps there are other outlets (read: independent essays on places like Substack) where calling out this sanewashing insanity is causing a ripple of a difference in the so-called mainstream press. The sense that perhaps people are actually starting to be sick of having journalists, writers, media sorts create out of whole cloth some sort of coherent narrative out of Trump’s unhinged comments may be surfacing. One example: The factual corrections the moderators made around the most absurd of Trump’s claims during Tuesday’s debate (Linsey Davis, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” And David Muir pointing out that ABC had called the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, and found that, no, pets were not being eaten by Haitian immigrants and there were no credible reports of pets being harmed whatsoever. The. End.). Look, they were small moments and by no means held him accountable for the totality of his ranting lies, which would have meant the debate would have for sure gone on until well past midnight, although it would have been helpful if the moderators had stopped him from hogging the talk-space and truly cut his mic as he verbally bullied himself into overtime.

Being a journalist myself and someone who has been reading and watching mainstream media (specifically The New York Times) for four-plus decades, I realize the habit of it. I recognize my intellectual laziness when I open the app or the newsprint, read the words written there, and go on my way thinking, Yep, now I get it. It’s an alarm bell rung for me to investigate my own tendency to want to believe in the simplest way possible just because I always have. Just because in J school, they told me these news sources were of the highest standard. That Woodward and Bernstein had risked their careers to break a story that would bring down a president, and they did it in a national newspaper. This is the school of thought that weaned me, and it felt important, unimpeachable, noble, even. And all those things were true. They did do a thing that exposed a president. It was important work and important work does still happen in some areas of mainstream media. But, simply said, it’s not the only word or the last word. It’s just one word in a whole sea of others.

I had my polarities. As I marched with my boyfriend back in the eighties for America to get out of El Salvador, I wasn’t all that surprised that my NYT paper of record didn’t cover my view on the subject at all. My thinking: Those journalists were doing good mainstream work while I was heading a bit underground. I was climbing toward music journalism, which truth be, I wasn’t even sure was traditional J street material. I mean, sure, Lester Bangs was a muckraker in the truest sense, yet he did often create his own reality where no fact-checker dared to tread. Julie Burchill was fierce over at the NME, but also someone who pushed on the politically correct, emotional bruised bits to get a rise although I never doubted her belief in what she wrote. Perhaps, I thought, truth is fungible in the land of music, and while that isn’t altogether wrong, it’s also not altogether right. Living in the gray zone, I ducked the hard stuff because world events weren’t really being shaped by the bands I wrote about until of course, the world began to be shaped by the bands I wrote about. Yet still I observed, standing just off stage and not really taking a stand. Just watching. I continued to read the Times on the subway every day, creasing it in quarters in order that it wouldn’t open up into the person standing next to me’s face. That paper remained the place where I got my national and world information. For the city view, I had my pals at the Village Voice where their insight was more radical. Those friends never disabused me of my big-time-charlie newspaper habit although one did say she couldn’t really trust my opinions if I believed what I read in there. I just thought she was being spiky.

I certainly had experience with stopping up my ears and swallowing my ideology around people who believed in things that were destructive and abhorrent mainly because I wanted to be in their orbit. A certain pop star who said he admired Margaret Thatcher. He had dreamy eyes and had just bought me a drink. When he said it with his Brit accent I thought, he’s being cheeky, he can’t mean it, even though I’m sure he 100% did. I said nothing to push back. Drank the drink. Listened to him ramble on. The rock guy who felt Reagan had done wonders for the economy, because apparently being in a mid-successful band meant he understood and missed what Ronnie had wrought? I probably just smiled at him because he seemed like a good listener. Then there was the music man who laughed about Clinton and the cigar, how he’d do the same thing given the chance, then said he was really a feminist at heart and looked at me like he expected a cookie. At the time I thought journalism is hearing viewpoints without inserting opinions. Subjective. And yet, these moments were not me getting a story, this was me sitting in a bar or restaurant or club shooting the shit. This silence was about not rocking the boat. Wanting badly for them to like/love/stay with me and if I’d dug in and brought out my opinion as a woman, as a citizen, they would most certainly leave. It’s taken a long time for me to understand that not only is there space but there is necessity in saying what needs saying out loud. And holding it. And if the person is still there as those moments happen, then huzzah! Rinse and repeat.

I mentioned last week we are watching Babylon Berlin, and it’s set during the Weimar Republic period in Germany. In the show, the Nazi party is on the ascent. Naturally, a historical lens colors things but what the show does well is to agitate around how things like the crushing economic crisis post WWI and Germany’s national identity were shifting the molecules in a way that, like in The Handmaid’s Tale, things are akin to a frog in a pot beginning to boil. It feels hot, but it’s steady and the noticing is not acute. While I’m not making a direct comparison here with T, understanding how new normals were accepted as Hitler, who many saw as a lonely, weird, inconsequential character who could really rouse a crowd, stepped up his horrors, finding the flex boiling point, then unleashed the hell we know as history is chilling especially given the knowledge that it’s the people surrounding said person who enable it to happen. MiPeople, we’ve seen how this cult of personality mindset works; been to this reichstag before!!!

I’m lucky to have a community of people and a love in my life who inspire me to listen better and fight harder for the basics of our country, our world, the whole damn planet. To shake myself out of the place where I’ve been comfortable receiving/taking in news. It’s a phoenix rising every few years where I realize I’ve become complacent or haven’t questioned the where and why of what’s going on around me. Sure, I’ve been busy living a few lives, but haven’t we all? The importance in making sure our country does not get handed back to a man who is clearly slipping ever further into raging unhinged authoritarianism is no joke and despite the powerful media outlets who are practicing the disservice of pretending what comes out of his mouth is sane as they word-scramble around to construct his derangement, I know I need pay attention to where I get my information. And stay inspired by the community of each of you who will get this election over the line into a Harris/Walz win. Even after November 5, I know we’ll still have to fight to stop his takeover since he will not give up. Yet maybe if the outlets who’ve been complicit by MadLibbing his absurdities into stories would stop doing that, then maybe his flatulent balloon would lose air and deflate on itself. Or at least sputter out somewhere over a desert island.

Next week: puppies?

A couple of weeks ago, having popped a melatonin, book in hand, and about to drift off, there was a noise—a squeak, rather—from the general direction of the living room. D and I looked at each other. “A mouse,” I said. He was doubtful and waved toward the outside world where all sorts of things make all sorts of noises. But then, the unmistakable sound of little cat feet in chase mode. Up and out, into the next room where, yes indeedy, a tiny mouse (is that an oxymoron?) was surrounded by Desi and Lucille who, while not baring their teeth, were playfully(?) batting at it as if lobbing a shuttlecock back and forth on a well-groomed lawn wearing Polo shirts, chinos, and loafers. While there was no net and the mouse was only airborne because it was attempting to avoid their paws, D took the opportunity to grab a pan and plop it over the wee creature, then slide a magazine underneath for transport out of doors. If you’d seen a half-dressed man out on a dark porch at 10 p.m. telling a small rodent to “RUN. And go tell your friends this place is not friendly,” then you’d have been a part of our world. The cats were not exactly indignant, but they did appear disappointed that we couldn’t appreciate what they were trying to accomplish for us. Or rather, were disappointed we didn’t let them carry on with their mission of hunting, then presenting us with the prize. But we did appreciate what they had done: Flushing the little fella out so we could set it free. They were following their vocation.

Last Sunday, we came home to find a couple of their favorite playthings lined up on the floor. A larger-than-life-fish (thank you, my friend J, who sent it to them years ago and it remains a favorite) and a mouse, which I thought was one of the stuffed ones they like to maul. But as I bent over to pick it up, I realized that au contraire, while it was lifeless, it had in fact been (recently?) very much alive. Apparently, the OG set-free mouse hadn’t done a very good job of spreading the word that our house not only had zero blocks of cheese left out in the open but also housed two cats who loved nothing better than to chase and kill them. Perhaps that OG mouse had run all the way to New Hampshire, unable to speak. Or maybe it was the same mouse that had boundary issues, adrenaline problems, and perhaps a death wish. Whatever the case, whoever the mouse, it hadn’t gone well for that fella.

Again, we were fine that the cats were doing their job but decidedly unnerved while also completely aware that as the weather gets colder, the mice issues are becoming manifest. Wednesday morning, the furballs were very interested in our clothes closet, rooting around D’s shoes. A mouse shot out and ran into the bedroom. I, standing near the bed, jumped on it. I might have screamed similar to how they do in cartoons. The cats, ignoring me, expertly corralled while D covered the little thing with the pan and I, having gotten off the bed, handed him a magazine to slide under for transport back into the wilds of our yard. We would obviously need to pay some attention to blocking up the porous points in the house. Noted. Wednesday night, as we were watching Babylon Berlin (very good), the actions of D&L once again suggested it was mouse time. We pressed pause, turned on a light, and sure enough there was a scurrying little creature ricocheting around the room. D took chase with the pan, I stood at the ready with the magazine (I did not leap or scream this time). Backed into a corner, the little one jumped into the pan but then, having not been told that D had good intentions, jumped out and ran under a door and into a giant hole in the pantry, which presumably goes outside. The cats were indignant. They stared at the pantry door. They kept up vigil until after we’d gone to bed. At 2:30 in the morning, the by-now unmistakable sounds of a mouse being chased by two cats woke us up. The pan, the magazine, the chase. This time, the little meese-ness was wedged into a crevice in the kitchen and I, by now long over my initial leap-away instinct, was at the ready with something to cover the pan once the mouse was inside. D managed to coax it out and into its golden (Teflon) chariot and out into the world.

The next day I noticed both cats wandering from place to place where they’d last encountered their prizes. Desi stood in the kitchen staring at the area where the night-before’s mouse had been rescued. Lucille had taken up watch at the clothes closet door. They barely glanced up at me as I went from room to room doing whatever it was I was doing. I recognized the instinct. Return to the place where you know a thing has happened and maybe it will happen again. And, depending on whether that was a golden, wonderful moment or one that wants a re-do, the thought process goes (at least in my head), if I stand here long enough staring and waiting, I’ll have another chance.

The thinking part of me knows that it never turns out like that. I’ve waited at plenty of emotional portals for a person or situation to appear just like before and dazzle me. Or materialize for me to remake/remodel the whole sha-bang-a-lang into a better situation. Needless to say, it’s emotion over intellect so on I stare, ruminating and cogitating until the anvil drops on my head (like in a cartoon) and the little stars blink on and off with It’s. Not. Happening. Here. The thing I’m looking for, the satisfaction, turns out to either be situated somewhere else or not situated at all. Perhaps it’s in my periphery vision so that if I just altered my gaze slightly, I’d see what I was looking for. Or maybe I don’t need to revisit that space again and just need to move on. Yet the stubborn me thinks that if I take my eyes off that one spot, I’ll miss my opportunity. Fool’s errand, that stuck-in-place moment. When D&I go round and round on an issue that’s age-old in our relationship, my stuckness keeps me grooving around the same old track, which does not produce any movement forward, and I’m assuming the same for him. What if I shifted to the left (or right, or hovered up) and found a different view? What would be the outcome then? Not discarding the issue. It’s still a real one, just like the mice, but perhaps it’s easier to be open to another perspective from a different vantage point. When I approach a new piece of writing, I walk down the same proverbial hallway looking in familiar rooms. It’s dawned on me that there are different hallways and new doors to try that will have ideas too. I don’t need to stare into the same space waiting.

I tried to explain this to the cats. No surprise they barely even looked at me. Then D took a foam gun and some steel wool and stuffed up as many open holes in as many places as we could find so that the meeces might gain no entry (next come the traps). The cats will have to settle on being proud of hunting inanimate objects. (Girl cat is currently engaged in taking down a twisty-tie inside an empty box. It’s going well.) While I am cracking open an empty notebook and wandering through the hallways of my imagination opening new doors.