Tag Archives: future

In Your Presence

17 Thursday Dec 2020

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When my son was young and we wished we could still confine him to a stroller but yeah good luck with that, we brought him to the Space Farms Zoo in Sussex New Jersey.  I’d been alive awhile and never heard of it, but hey!  A learning experience, let’s go!  We parked in vibrant emerald cornfields before harvest, and before we left the lot I was stricken, no exaggeration, absolutely stricken by the sound of a lion who was half a mile away.  I stopped walking and just couldn’t stop listening to his voice. He was speaking, announcing, conquering.  He had a truth he wanted to say and I don’t know how anyone could not hear him. Breathtaking.

Years later I came across YouTube videos of a man in South Africa who took lions into his care and works so very hard at trying to help people and lions live together on the same land.  His name is Kevin Richardson and you can look up his work at your will.  I learned so much about lions and hyena, their relationships, behaviors, and why we need to preserve them in our world.

Recently my friend Elisa and I visited the Norfolk Zoo and at one point during our walk a male lion spoke. He made us aware of his intentions. He became the center of the Universe. I’m not convinced the people at the zoo understood lions the same way Kevin Richardson does, but I do not doubt their dedication to the creatures in their care.  So he roared the way you don’t hear him in the movies, Roooarhhhh ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh…. His call to assert his hierarchy and his bond with the ladies.  And I could not move.  I just had to stop.  Breathtaking. Lion. Captive yet regal, visceral, owning us all, all the way down into my bones. I was not expecting to hear this. Hear him. And I wept. And she saw me. And I could not avoid the question, “Are you okay?” Of course I’m not okay.  How can any of us be okay in the presence of him, while we condone canned hunting and can’t figure out how to live with him in his land? So I lied and said, “I’m fine.”  But she knew I was not.  Elisa wrote about her very own capture as she walked in peaceful astonishment with the Orangutans.

Today I’m thinking about the lies we tell ourselves.  The lion’s roar in lands we can’t quite commit to living with. Humans we won’t commit to protecting.  Elon Musk’s rockets are dreams of the future, ones we should pursue, but where is that future for 20,000 lions left on the continent of Africa?

Pacifice et nimis incommode morior

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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Another day of life, another day I get to choose. Hold on, let me light some sage and pace the floor and forsake the waiting page because I’m not ready yet. Willing, able, but not ready to commit words to page, creating something from nothing.

Another day of life, another day I get to choose not to hate, to clench my jaw, to think and feel and say terrible things though you surely earned it.

Another day I get to give up. To throw in the towel. To say fuck it, nothing matters. (Insert leaping rainbow dolphin meme here.)  Another day to despair and ask, “Why do I give a shit? What’s the point? I’m wasting my time and energy. A woman’s voice does not matter and will never be heard.” Another day to wallow, to feel helpless, to watch things not go my way, to watch sufferings and wrongs that cannot be curtailed by the wave of my wand that means well, but has the exact power of a mythical unicorn. Another day to spend in tears because the child hurts, the women hurt, the world hurts, and can I point to anything at all I have done or have yet to do that will make real, lasting change?

Another day to to choose hedonism in favor of being in this world because wouldn’t I rather just live on Vanuatu and never give another flying fuck about this world ever again? My tick tock clock is countdown calling, and wouldn’t it just be better to surrender to the good life, a life of living moment to moment without sadness for the past or fear of the future, just hand to mouth and embrace that dirt nap when it comes in volcanic soil, without caring that I never had a soul to begin with? It’s just easier believing we are a parasite on a rock, hakuna matata, the end.

Another day to acknowledge the pain in my bones and my skin when I hear that no one believes the women, another day to acknowledge the betrayal of all I hold sacred if I turn my back on us. Another day of life to not give up on doing what’s right. To choose action, to speak out, to make a stand, to do what’s right, parasite or no.

Men and women are different. The guys have the upper body strength, but women have the gift of stamina. We keep going. You and I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t keep up with you all those colicky nights. No matter the shit or the threats, the bruises or the cum on our dresses, our fear to speak honestly because “No,” or “I will have,” “I deserve,” “I need” equals “No one will believe you,” women find ways to keep going.  And if I curl up and say fuck it and stay in my bed and wallow and wait for the soil then how could I ever deserve to requiescat in pace? I know that right now the few are running the world for the rest of us. Lying down and letting them steamroll us hurts our daughters and sons in ways that’s hard to see when we don’t know where dinner is coming from, but we must never give up. It’s hard to see a better future when we’re unbelieved today, but we just  have to keep going.

Another day of life to choose to keep going.

My Remains Ask You To Examine What Matters

28 Thursday Sep 2017

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morning crickets, disorganized, a messy symphony, out of time and tune like a first grade choir. they are young and vigorous, excited, eeping out of time like i’ve never heard before and we love them, dearly love them, dabbing our eyes with pride and ready for more.

green water with long whitecaps in the bay, ambassadors to the hurricane’s arrival. white sky turned gray for days, cloud processionals form impressive figures like gray knitted blankets, then icebergs moving fast in a distilled sunset sky that dispenses piss water instead of whisky.

i hear you. i hear you all. i allowed you to take over me like some drunk uncle at the barbecue who knows better. our burgers were adequate, filled our stomachs but we really didn’t want cheese on ours and not exactly burnt on one side.  it all works out in the end because we’re family and we take what we get, even after I told you all to fuck off because i can’t take your flag-waving bullshit anymore. We’re a family. I can do better, and so can we.

my anger is constant. it simmers long and sometimes a bubble pops and you get hit with the spray of “fuck off,” a little stain on your favorite faded t-shirt or that gauzy thing you wore for the first time today.  i try to keep her in check, in the cauldron, but after 16 days, sometimes it goes critical and that nicey girl, the one you thought was so well spoken and decent and measured bursts and she… she will not forget it.  she’s been wrestling your vipers and her vipers. my unwieldy elbows knocks the cauldron over and now another job:  own the disaster. the strife. the discord, the worry, the ransom, the fear, the woman, the apple, the evil, the world. I mop up the bloody mess and wring the rags out into the cauldron to begin again. again.

then i seek to breathe. to hold. to measure. to examine and find a way to spread the peace. the love. the wonder. the beauty. the magic. the grace. the harmony. the creation.  to own and love and share that thing i cannot see that made me and made you and reach for your fingertips in our birth and in our death, the turning wheel that pricked my finger and gave me a sword to fight my own dragons.

Momma said if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.  I believe she was so right, so very right. But when you believe, you need to stand for it, all the way, not stare at your toes and be a neutral pussy.  Take a stand, make a change, have courage in your convictions, and fuck what your father thinks.  Our future isn’t about measuring mother wounds, and it isn’t about lobby money and power. It’s about people rising up and telling the world the world matters, YOU matter, everything on it matters, we can do better, and I will walk with you peacefully, barefoot, and speak for you loudly, peacefully, forcefully. Otherwise, my silence means I accept the wrongs, the ill-doings, the damage, the hurt, the shoulder-shrugging extinctions.

Be brave, my fellow humans. Be brave and be kind and be giving. Be tolerant. Be listening. Be strong. Be happy. Be comforted. Be loving, and be one. Be ready to speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. Stand your ground not for us but our earth and life that we cannot yet imagine will come because our time here is already done.  The future is fragile and we can sow the seeds to make it beautiful-strong.  Put love on your tongue. It’s not impossible. We are right and good and brave as we walk barefoot through all of our dust.  Bless you for taking a knee and asking for the wisdom to discern what matters.

Help Us Move On

26 Monday Jun 2017

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Long solo drives require that I have good music, and when I’m tired of that I have a good story to listen to on CD.  I never had a reason to get into books on tape when they first came out, but I have come to value them now.  After listening to four music CDs, I was ready to hear an audio book. The story asked me to suspend reality, to believe that a cyclops, the last of his kind, wandered an island and all that that entails.  The authors wrote a story that makes me believe. Yes. Why not?

I drove to New York to attend my son’s graduation from high school, and it was a wonderful day.  He is a beautiful thing in this world, not the standard teenage sheep, but a wild spirit full of deep thought, creativity, and the rebelliousness that comes along with not playing inside the lines or staying inside the box.  He’s cultivated some true friends along his journey, friends that certain parts of society might label sinners and sodomites.  He spent graduation night with his “fruit” friends, a name he lovingly calls them, and I am glad he was with them.

The next day I took a long walk with my dear friend in a local park and then we sat at one of the benches under the pavilion to continue our conversation in some shade.  We noticed a long-haired person lying on one of the bench seats, but he was keeping to himself so we kept on chatting.  He got up from his bench and asked if he could bet us that he could change our view of everything in one minute.  He was about 20 with lots of full, brown hair, board shorts, a tank top, and he wore a long pendant that had what looked like a dragon with wings outspread, but there was a symbol underneath my old eyes couldn’t make out and I didn’t want to get closer to discern.  I said, “I won’t bet you, but what’s on your mind?”  And he sprang into preaching the view of flat earthers.  Oh gawd… really?  Sigh.  My friend sunk into her cell phone while I engaged the young man in his beliefs, not trying to debunk him because you can’t tell an alcoholic to stop drinking just as you can’t tell a flat-earther not to believe.  I understood his reluctance to believe in what science espouses because it’s all just a conspiracy to get us to be afraid and conform and turn away from God, but once he said, “Just like they pound it into our heads that we have to accept trans people as normal….” all my light-hearted goodwill shut down.  I no longer wanted to let him take up any more of my time. I stopped engaging him with questions, I think he got the idea that I was done, so he got in his car and drove away.  All I could think was that if my son had been sitting there, he would have been up in that guys face, and it would not have gone well.

I am driving a car that no one could ever believe existed.  We are defeating diseases that no one could ever believe we could.  We build towers and bridges, planes, vessels, and armament that no one would ever believe could be true all those years ago, but here we are. I am typing my thoughts on a keyboard and screen knowing that there are people who will refute the science of vaccination.  I can’t disprove it, so proving it is impossible, like proving the moon does not have a light of her own, which she does not.  Right now I can’t prove that Newton and his society wanted to control the world with fear, nor can I disprove it. Only you can, and I ask that you spread the word of reasonableness. I want to ask that everyone set aside their emotion and look beyond yourself, your children, your grandchildren, and their children.  We are alone in the universe at the moment, not because the earth is flat but because we haven’t found anyone else yet, and even if we did, we need to take care of each other as we would brother and sister.   I would like to stress that the future is not white and god-fearing hetero, but it’s a future that understands we are tender, fragile humans that would like to go on, but you must use science to do so.  Science is not the enemy, no matter what anyone says.   Your beliefs are relevant and no one should ever shut you down, but at a certain point you need to believe that one plus one equals two. And those two need to embrace and keep the whole thing going.

Meet Me at Ozymandias

16 Monday Jan 2017

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Nothing can stand still. The universe will not allow it.
I’m not sure when creatures began chafing at the idea of change, developed that sinking feeling of concern and fear of the “other” trying to change things up. I can’t say if the creatures at the end of the Mesozoic lived harmoniously with their mammalian neighbors or if they feared and tried to crush them (eat them) sunup to sundown. I doubt the mammals celebrated when their reptilian neighbors faced their final sunset. They just went about their business of being mammals, no protest signs for miles.
I often (so very often) think about our earliest kin. What did it look like when an established status quo is challenged? How long did the shift take? “No no no, we’re not going to change things. We’ve always done it this way, always will. Seen what happens when we do not do things as we’ve always done: calamity! I am in charge of this tribe, this society, and I will not let my tribe fear, or suffer, or perish. Fall in line, get out…or die!” I can only imagine what would create such a situation, oh great fodder for novel and cinema.
Collisions, retractions. The universe. Dark matter. Stars. Solid matter, planets, atmospheres, life. Quartz. A meteor. Sand. Slavery. A White House made of sandstone. World War II. A man on the moon. Born in ’68. Reagan shot, the Wall came down, I kissed some boys. The internet showed me a world where tyrants and freedoms both come and go, in real time, not just words on the sour-smelling pages of my textbooks filled with black and white photos of things I never saw firsthand. Yawn. It was the simple, narrow view of a young person living from September to September.
Change means we either adapt or fight it because we are afraid to let go of what we’ve known for generations. I feel like we are at the end of a status quo, when those in power are afraid to lose their hold on the world. Slowly, slowly things have begun to change, and the pushback is growing loud and louder, shaping our fears–and our laws, all laws, across the world. Terrible things have been done in the name of holding on to the way it’s always been, protected by proverbs, maxims, idioms, laws scrawled on a page, well-meaning words at the time, trying to protect all souls from the scourge of the hell they all feared.
This morning I contemplate remarks made by a president-elect, suggesting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is obsolete. I contemplate his vision for this country, and I’m not sure he understands that what he says reverberates, makes ripples, causes heads to rise and words to swell like tsunami. I see a childlike person who believes the world should operate on simple terms, fair vs. unfair, prepared to negotiate a better deal or else. I contemplate the domino effect his words and views will have, and I wonder could it lead to something worse, or something better? The world has been operating under a very specific status quo, and I can tell you for sure it’s not been written by the people who are fleeing their borders because their children were murdered in their beds. Everything changes, and perhaps status quo is tipping now, changes will be made, and who can say if the world will get better or worse because of it? Perhaps things have to get worse before they can get better? Is it fair for us to make America a “no change” zone, where everything stays the same, hiding behind a well-meaning Constitution? That the White House is eternal and will never be replaced by a better terrain? That only white, Christian males get to hone our country based on their views, because if we let an unsmiling black woman on the ten dollar bill it’s the end of the world?
Change is painful. It is bloody ugly. But the salt I sprinkle on my meat for health and delight wasn’t just born on a shelf. We create, and our fruits come from reflection and pain. Perhaps it’s not my right to hold back change if it will lead to destruction–and rebirth. A better world awaits, after the hurts we will live through, question mark… or fullstop
We don’t find change hiding in the grass like sneaky little easter eggs on some sweet April morning. It’s not dropped into our arms like a babe from the stork. Change is viper strike on a hot summer day.  It means hurting first. We have to be brave enough to peel our fingers from the pillars of what our ancestors have always known, strong enough to live evolve and work together as we change.   I only hope enough people are willing to meet me at Ozymandias and know better things will come. But it will only come if we recognize that tyrants will never last, not even the sand will last. We will not last. But we must make a better future for the grains of sand that haven’t yet come.