Demolition men

Temperature: just two weeks ago it was warm enough to work out outdoors in a tank top. A strappy one. Practically naked then. In October. Sweet baby Jesus, you’d think how wonderful, but I’m not okay with this.

Eating: chili sin carne

Drinking: kefir

Watching: Belgravia

Listening: to the grating sounds of construction coming from a few blocks away. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Reading: The Irish Princess by Elizabeth Chadwick and Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen. The latter is a coolheaded autopsy of the Trump presidency; a fast read because if you’ve been paying even summary attention you already know these things; and yet it's a striking read, events and effects so clinically laid out and linked, and all the while you’re thinking: how is this man still president? And then this came out. Autocratization surges, yes, but resistance grows. If history were a seesaw, you could argue we’re pivoting. But a question to the autocrats, who are not very good at playing the long game: how do you think this will end, because you can’t win no matter what you do? For a moment you may feel you’re on top; you go about suppressing and oppressing, intimidating and silencing, stripping rights and taking lives. But that only breeds more anger and bitterness, leading to your tighter squeeze and then more resistance, a cycle whose logical end is something like North Korea where everything and everyone exists to serve the leader who is in fact the most vulnerable citizen of all. Your total power is a sad illusion because you have neither earned it nor won it, you have taken it. And it can in turn be taken away because you neither deserve it nor honor it. The whole country and its resources are your hostage, but you are no criminal mastermind or genius of any sort, you are an opportunist, just someone who got lucky as the seesaw moved.

Writing: “Dearest America, the president you elect you deserve.”

Thinking: We can’t drink oil, we can’t eat coal, we can’t shelter in the heat or rising tides. Please stop voting for men trying to convince you that of course you can.

You're the voice

Win some, lose some

What’s going on? I never blog Monday to Friday! That’s right, I don’t. So I thought I’d give it a try. A more social September.

It’s taken a lot of music, movies and series, hours of exercise and gardening, and tons of family time to get through this year, and it’s going to take plenty more before the year is done. But you got to keep going. Keep on moving, keep on dreaming, keep on working on whatever your life is made of, or on changing that, and your future, and ours. You won’t lose, you can’t lose, unless you give up. You can experience defeat, single events in a long line of experiences that are the story of you, but you will never be a loser until you decide to give up on yourself or the world we live in.

Remember that, dearest denizens. Being defeated does not make you and mark you as a loser. It just means you went for it, you were active, you tried, but did not succeed in that endeavor in that moment in time. That’s all it means. That’s all it is. Don’t make it to be something it’s not; that only leads to pointless feelings of guilt, suffering and self-recrimination. Ain’t nobody got time for that, agreed? Don’t waste precious time and energy. Live and learn and move on.

I often write about hope because I view it as both a tonic and an antidote. Hope is not passive, wishful thinking, a Hail Mary pass. Hope is not a noun but a verb, a doing word. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look up Professor C. R. Snyder this coming October. He has a theory and a toolkit that might boost and soothe you, as contradictory as that sounds, on this roller-coaster ride we’re taking.

This decade got off to a pretty shitty start. You know what that means? The only way is up.

North Brooklin, Maine

30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,
E. B. White

Ikigai