The Phoenix Bird statue, carved out of the remains of a burned out tree and living now
on the patio of Nepenthe, my favorite restaurant in the world in Big Sur.
Have you been thinking a lot about the meaning of the recent election of No. 47? And considering not only meaning, but how to survive a tsunami of feelings?
I had not one clue that I was not alone in losing hope - until about six months ago when my gut snarled up like those ropes often do, the ones anchoring ginormous crab pots that crabbers toss out into roiling Alaskan seas. I knew something was definitely wrong. In search of a cause I turned not only to the medical establishment, but also to my therapist. One day she asked, "Could this have anything to do with the political situation?"
I started to cry rather profusely until some minutes later I recovered my composure. Then I learned that as the political world turned, I was most assuredly not alone.
My solace and my solution came by way of many paths, not the least of which was, and is, poetry and music. The Duchess is my constant companion and we often sing together these dismal days of agonized wonder about how it came to be that in my country I feel like an alien in an alien land? I feel unmoored, ripped out of some la-la land I must have been imagining, and flung uncermoniously down a horrific rabbit hole the likes of which Alice never imagined. (Working now on this sweet Faure piece with some rhythm challenges to smooth out in the first few bars; always something for the amateur pianist to solve -- but getting there!).
Of course, depending on your style, good-hearted humor or jagged-edged humor may be a help, if we can find it so.
A week after the election I happened upon a video of three psychologists discussing my apparently rather common feelings of living in an alien country, something that they call "dissociation" and "derealization" (at 12.39 in the video). WebMD says that dissociation is "a break in how your mind handles information. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings. It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time."
What WebMD said.
Listening to the two psychologists' guest, Dr. John Skrovan, brought me a modicum of solace. Perhaps it is only that "misery loves company", including the company I feel with the two humanist psychologist podcasters discombulated by the MAGA win.
At least I find some relief to know that a week later I am still in the process of feeling that the world has gone mad, and while half the country celebrates, there is the other half or almost 49% of the voters (by count on 11.24.24), a half of the voters that I inhabit, who are also searching for meaning in a new, unexpected environment.
Although a lot people on both sides of the aisle believe that the voting majority was feeling "dehumanized", "patronized", or "not taken seriously" by the so-called elites represented in the universities and by professionals, government officials, and the Democrats, those feelings seem to rise from our opposition to the dehumanizing policies and beliefs that they espouse --and not to their personhoods.
I do my imperfect best not to participate in overbroad, non-factual conclusions of "insanity" or "stupidity" of those who voted for No. 47, just like I resist engaging in dissing physical appearances or unavoidable behavioral tiks. I just don't want to live in a world, associate with, or spend money with people or businesses, for example, who think all immigrants are criminals or eat dogs, that women's bodies belong to men to control or "protect" and there is no such thing as "the autonomous women", that the first transwoman Congressperson has to use the men's bathroom, that a vaccine-denier or TV star should run any health agency, or that veterans are "losers."
Thus, I do not join Dr. Skrovan who thinks many who voted for No 47 were "just not compelled by" the messaging of candidate Kamala Harris.
Her message was just fine: clear, concise, and specific. Although at my age I may wish that she had focused more on protecting social security, she was oriented to helping those who voted no matter their political preference, namely the middle class, young families, and budding small businesspeople. Her message was focused on the economics of lowering household goods prices for everyone, and her messaging was calmly, powerfully, and joyfully spoken.
Yet in this undeniably paternalist, anti-humanist society and country, those who were "just not compelled" by Harris' messages and policies, refused to hear or believe what was said.
They were "just not compelled" to visualize or accept how a Black-South Asian woman could actually be a powerful, effective, and trustworthy leader. Electing just such a President may never be possible in the United States.
Another source of solace I found on this page about Dr. Oliver Sacks. He received a cancer diagnoses in his early 80s not long before 2015 when he passed. I feel like I just received a cancer diagnoses, too.
Dr. Sacks achieved equanimity with his impending death in a number of ways, and I wondered if he had something to say to me?
His crucial message was "detachment." He decided that among other things, that "growing inequality ... was no longer my business; (it) belongs to the future." He cared and was not indifferent he said, but was detached. Being his age, I wonder if that is my solution, too?
But to what was he attached as he attempted to find peace in his decline? We have to be attached to something or we will float right on out of the world as a lost soul without a purpose!
Perhaps he found awe and solace because he noted "the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.” He sought to live "in the richest, deepest, most productive way" he could.
It's amazing how death can focus the mind. So can shockingly unexpected political elections such as the one just past in this country.
But the mind reacts to such things and focuses to the extent of one's health, age, awareness, and values, does it not? At 80 Dr. Sacks wrote:
"I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together."
So he already knew what was what before he got his death diagnoses.
Maybe if we think like Dr. Sacks we can find solace and productivity in these roiling political times? Maybe a perceived political tragedy can somehow liberate our minds and unhinge the grip of time from urgencies of lesser import. Maybe it presents a huge push to bind us like-minded spirits more tightly together in gratitude and even more resolute in finding ways to turn our country around in the future.
Maybe we will waste less time and devote more time to use our voices and call upon our certain muses to even more forcefully than in the past, say to ourselves, to our friends, and to the world just who we are and what we still value. Then hopefully we will act accordingly.
If you would like to be an escort into the clinic for women seeking reproductive (including abortion) care at Planned Parenthood at the Bush St. location in San Francisco, please apply here, as I have done, or contact PP in your city. If you wish to shop with businesses that value and invest in what you hold dear, check out Goods Unite Us and INDEXALIGN.
Whether fewer folks agree and a heckofa lot more folks today disagree with me, or whether anyone chooses to act or vote as I do, is of no real matter.
I did not change when No. 47 was elected. I'm still here.
STILL HERE
When ash remains, ash is One Thing.
Even a zombie’s hunger lives.
On rags of skin the gods of old
can write a score.
One shard of crystal can pierce a heart
and broken glass, placed just so,
can catch a beam and flame.
An ancient dam may fail
from lack of wit or care,
then inadvertent walls may form
from concrete stacks left there.
A chef dissolves her sugar
as life dissolves resolve
in oceans of despair.
Still here.
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