AT 3AM I woke up feeling as though darning needles were being thrust into my chest. Little lightning strikes to neurons. I couldn’t understand or remember anything like it. Maybe cat claws but there were no cats on my chest. The vision of being in a cave with my recent posts attached to the walls clung to me even after I knew I was awake. Had I psyched myself into Covid-19?
I hadn’t had much supper so I was hollow as that cave. When I had run the invader black cat out this second time, I actually had my hands on him and he bit my thumb hard — that was throbbing, so I’d taken a dose of acetaminophin. I’m not used to that. In the evening I had watched a bit of “Stargate”, a sci-fi movie, before I realized it was the same old anthro story of meeting strange people, but some of the images stuck in my head — like the cave.
My heart was fluttering like a frog. I thought, “Well, this is it and I don’t care!” There were much more fireworks last night, bigger, closer and sometimes sounding as though crackers had been thrown against the house. I thought of burning up and was happy that my siding is asbestos. Etc. But I didn’t die. I just went back to sleep. Today I feel as though I’ve shaken something off — maybe depression. Maybe it was a turning point, a crisis.
Long ago — as early as childhood — I made a vow that I would never turn away from life, that no matter how grim the situation was, I would stick it out because nothing lasts forever and a lot could be learned. (This deal did not involve pain.) But a corollary has been to never turn away from people who disappoint me, who hurt me, or who desert me — maybe by dying. I would continue to gaze without judgement — just looking at facts. That’s over.
It is this last piece that has died. Now I dump people who are a drag on my system. Whether or not I could learn from them, time is short and I have things to do that are more important to me than figuring out people I don’t much like anyway. Often I’m finding they don’t really know me either — they just thought I might have something they would want.
Some of the people I cherish the most are already dead anyway. Death doesn’t mean erasure. But my death would mean my memory of them is lost along with me — I’m not one of those who pretends that there is a happy place where all loved ones will be together. But there IS writing. A counselor I once had said that in some idea from her own therapy, she threw a party and invited all her best friends. Alas, they hated each other. No doubt there are people out there who are carrying little bits of me around in their memories, bits that are completely irreconcilable.
But if you look at it a different way, one reason for preserving me is that I am carrying the memories of valuable people. Inconveniently, some want to be secret.
Covid-19 has brought death sharply home to those of us who are sentient, though a big share of Americans are headed right back into the death trap, denying it all the way. The failure of education and families to form ties has meant a failure to remember many of the things that were crucial to maintaining a decent life, much less a functioning democracy. I remember them, I took them seriously and believed in them — still believe in them though they are often dead in others. They should have remembered plague, esp the slow contagion of time.
In my particularity, it is the threat rather than the actual death that is deadly, because it paralyzes and blinds. I’ve lived in potential, which was crucial for dealing with students, and helpful as a survival factor in my goofy below-standard houses. I still believe in the potential of the planet, including its own death, including its transformation, including the unknown and unexpected.
In his bassackwards way, Trump has succeeded in some of the things he promised though he didn’t know what they were because he wasn’t listening: the exposure of a faction of the Republican party that was monsterous, the exposure of the rest of the party that was stupid and frozen, and the exposure of himself as an illusion based on American phony standards. Our hypnotism by money, a fantasy construct of sex, and what poor people think rich people are like, our fantasy of them peeing in golden toilets.
Though I haven’t been that interested in previous “tell-all” books, I’ve ordered a copy of “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics” by Steve Benen. I didn’t want the audible version because I need the margins of a paper copy and ability to apply stickies and high-lighting. Because I don’t think this is just about the federal government. I see it everywhere there are institutions/organizations of every size. It was there in public schools, congregations, denominations, counties, the rez, and even small towns like this one. Yet in the midst of all the vote-rigging, purse-raiding, and outright lies about what a person is doing, there are always a few people who could stand against the tsunami and come out alive. What made the difference? I’m hoping Benen’s book will give clues.
In the meantime, there is science fiction. I would love a world like Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea, and I recognize as she did that ecosystems have something to do with it. Harsh lands can mean harsh people; generous lands can mean people softened and lulled by luxury. She urges being able to go back and forth between the two extremes.
Some people will tell you that I have no “standing,” that I’m not qualified to have an opinion. They don’t know what an education in ethics would mean, or how it guides one’s life to remember what the old maid teachers at Jefferson High School taught us about democracy in a time when the USSR was first showing fracture and doom. I can dream on.
No comments:
Post a Comment