All the junk that goes with being human — the sweaty parts, the sour refusals, jealousies ocean-sized and petty, the worm of veins as aging wears out the body. We try, though, don’t we? We try to manage expectations, to overcome the vast array of annoyances, to face our fears as we watch the burning hellscape that is America.
To get up and fight.
It might be our turn to fall. If so, it won’t be from from hubris, but from a toxic blend of corrupt greed and epic stupidity. Plus Facebook. While Oleg Deripaska funds aluminum plants in Kentucky, a passel of white people in Pennsylvania storms Target yelling about their freedom not to wear masks.
Huh?
Outside, a pounding — perhaps a new deck for a neighbor? Maple leaves ruffle in the wind. They will crisp and yellow and before long, fall and litter the fence line. How do your hold your suffering? With what secret thoughts or unsustainable compromises? Winter, as has been said, is coming.
By the time the neighbor’s new deck is nailed together and stained and holding chairs and company, the election will be upon us. The massive efforts to steal it, already in motion. If only this… if only that… How to do enough?
How many things have you lost of late? What of them matter? Where does Hope dwell in your body?
I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg would want us to hold fast to Hope with a ferocity past all reason. Don’t you?
Prompt: write for five minutes about all the junk that goes with being human.
Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord sent a card a few years back with this quote from Susan Cooper written in her beautiful calligraphic hand,
“The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.”
The idea of hope being a constant is something new to me and a thought I’m going to carry into tomorrow.
I am a child of Autumn, born in mid September, I just celebrated my 73rd birthday. Autumn has always been my New Year, my fresh start and this Autumn, we so need a fresh start.
I thought about what I have lost during this time and it’s very little; probably the most loss is not being able to see our daughters and grandchildren in the ,but we keep in touch in may ways.
Hope dwells in my “huesos”- my bones. It has moved from my heart to my bones because they frame my body, they are the structure that keeps me upright…today is the day I clean my house, used to do it on Sat., now I do it on Monday. As I dusted, I looked up at one of my cloth collages above the sofa; the cloth includes Liz A’s imagine Peace pin and an embroidered green cloth that she made for me because she knows that green is my hope filled and favorite color. She so kindly embroidered words I wrote a long time ago on her blog re Hope.
“Hope is standing up not standing aside to connect in a way that helps to make us all one”…And I think of how so long ago I wrote of Hope as standing up and now how I feel it in my bones…and it continues to flow outward.
This morning, as I shook bathroom rugs outside in my back yard, my Trump supporting neighbor called to me over the fence. Asked if I was voting early and I said yes…he said, he was not going to vote this time, could no longer support the man in the White House but was not ready to come to my side…I smiled at him and said, “Maybe, one day, I hope you will…” I hold fast to Hope and this morning’s exchange with my neighbor was simply, a gift and if I really want to put it all out there, I truly believe it also was a sign from RBG.
Meant to say, not being able to see our daughters and our grandchildren in the flesh…
I love the idea of hope moving from heart to bones. And the quote of yours that Liz embroidered is amazing and seems to echo some of RBG’s famous words.
Happy belated birthday!
this … the story of your neighbor … may he be one of millions …
Yes and yes. I don’t think is gaining any new followers, is he?
i love the Collage Image and i closed my eyes and there sprang a huge image of millions of Women assuming the position their skirts pulled up, their slits in Full View with Wild Abandon, the place
where their best effort slid forth from, but only after those long long contractions of
Transition
It’s me. Grace. Anon again.
Just days ago, a friend sent this
http://catherineblackledge.com/raise-the-skirt-reclaim-your-power/
Here here!
oh man. I thought tomorrow was the equinox. To the point where I just made a post about the last day of summer. Sure hope the larger cosmos accepts my end of term project that I didn’t turn in until today.
Was completely riveted by this post. Couldn’t possibly have made a collage while I was in labor. I sang my way through it. Only time in my life I’ve had perfect pitch and a belt range. Thanks for the memories. I’m smiling now.
It might be tomorrow. Is it tomorrow?
maybe here in the great commonwealth we call home everybody gets to decide which day for themselves???? laughing. I felt like an idiot until you expressed uncertainty too …
It wasn’t marked on either of my calendars this year.
The vultures are always circling the corpses-but, we are not dead yet. Turn away from the chaos and cruelty. Shelter deep within your truth. “Gandhi called his overall method of non-violent action Satyagraha. … Nowadays, it’s usually called non-violence. But for Gandhi, non-violence was the word for a different, broader concept-namely, “a way of life based on love and compassion.” In Gandhi’s terminology, Satyagraha-Truth-force-was an outgrowth of nonviolence.”
Oh Michelle. I hope you’re right.
I baked scones during labour
Why doesn’t this surprise me?!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the list of loss lately, rocking back & forth from not caring or feeling as if I’m cracking. Hope has been fading, but you’re right- will work on summoning ferocious hope.
Collaging- impressive! Worked on a quilt during Blue’s labor, never finished it, Moon came too fast, barely made it home in time.
I talk a good game about hope. A friend said in a zoom call this morning that she woke feeling we need new words for despair and anxiety because they just don’t capture how so many of us feel in this moment.
I kept thinking it would be worse so when I actually showed up at the hospital- I was 2 hours away from delivery. First baby. The same doctor induced baby two- he said I wouldn’t even know and the kid would hit his head on the floor falling out of me. Hardly true. Exaggeration.
But still makes me laugh out loud.
Wow. Two hours? C came 16 hours later. D, being second, in only four. That doctor’s comment IS funny.
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