Bathsheba Monk's Blog, page 2

Mary Griswold Carter, Happy Woman's History Month

God, I can’t believe it’s early March and flowers are popping up all over the place.  Someone who lives a couple of blocks from me posted a picture of a daffodil coming up in his yard.

Daffodils are nice, snowdrops too, but the flower that always gets me is the violet. I never see it coming, then boom, suddenly a purple carpet covers the woods and changes the lens. Did you ever notice that the flowers that are natural and bountiful in nature never make good cut flowers? Like cornflowers or thistles.  I cut bunches of violets and prop them up in a little vase, but they never make it. I put sugar and Miracle-Gro in the water, but it doesn’t help.

Little weaklings. Fish out of water, I guess. I want to tell them to buck up.

I always get a laugh when I tell someone to buck up.  Especially after someone tells me their tale of woe, after they tell me they stepped out of their ordinary and fell down. I tell them to “buck up.” 

It IS funny.  Because no one is that demanding anymore. My intention must be irony because otherwise I would be cancelled and socially shunned, if not arrested, for telling someone who just fell to step up instead of giving them a hug.

My ex-long-departed-mother-in-law used to say it to me when I was whining.  I remember lying in front of the fire one snowed-in day at their country house and I was doing my Russian homework, complaining that it was too hard, and I thought I would quit the course.  I was taking it at the Harvard Extension School and it was one of the hardest courses I ever took—and I was resentful when I found out the students who were passing had already taken the course twice. I think that was the first time she told me to buck up.  “A hundred million Russians speak Russian. Buck up.”

Excuse me?

It wasn’t the last time.

She was a WASP of the sort my sort of Pollack didn’t run into often in those days. A rock-ribbed realist, she called herself.  Her official stance, "Wipe that gauzy Vaseline off your glasses and have a look at the world."

Her husband was an artist and in their early years, she modeled nude for him. When I came across the drawings and asked if they were indeed her, she shrugged off my pronouncement of them being sexy as hell. “I’m just a Yankee,” she said, as if that precluded also being sexy as hell. It certainly had nothing to do with the business at hand in her opinion. “He needed a model.”

She was a schoolteacher.  She had completed her master’s degree in English from Cornell University about the time most people are just starting college and at a time when women weren’t going to college, much less graduating master’s programs. 

When she and her husband moved to the country and she had nothing to read—this was before the miracle of Amazon Kindle—she started a public library in her little town in New Jersey. 

And when she found out that girls in this same town were having trouble getting gyno healthcare, she became a tireless worker for Planned Parenthood.   

You just buck up and get it done.

She listened, uncomprehending, when I whined about having to have a regular job and not being able to be the full-time artist I thought I was destined to be.  If you want it, she said, you’ll make it happen.

She knew all about art and literature and I asked her once—after we were admiring a local farmer’s irises and comparing them to Van Gogh’s paintings—if she didn’t think it was a waste that she was just an artist’s wife and wasn’t able to create art herself. She told me one of the biggest pleasures of her life was to be able to experience life through the sensibilities of great artists. That she couldn’t imagine having a richer life.

 A funny thing, I said, for a rock-ribbed realist to think. 

No, an artist makes things clearer, she said.  If they enchant reality, maybe it’s that reality IS enchanted, and artists help us see that.

I never got mother-in-law jokes.  Yes, she let me know how she would do things, or rather, how things were done—the usual complaint against mother-in-laws—but luckily I have a thick hide and had only a vague idea of how things should be done anyway.  

When she was sick, I picked some violets and put them in a tiny green vase by her bed. 

At that time, she was the only person who understood the part of me that wanted to make things happen. And she was one of the few people who could tell me how to get done the things that I had no business even trying.

And, she was the first person I was close to who died.  I found out what people meant when they said the hardest part of someone you love dying is when something great happens and you want to call them up and tell them. And lots of good things have happened that I never got to tell her about. 

Some bad things too. But I know what she would tell me.    

 

 

   

Through a Glass Darkly

Paul and I had a great brunch at a river inn yesterday with one of my oldest friends and his wife.  When I say great, I mean that it's a relief to communicate with shorthand with people who have been through the same wars.  Roll up your sleeves, compare scars.  No need for chit chat or ID. 
Waiter, another bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Let's let THAT do the talking. 
We used to talk about that when I was stationed in the military overseas, that you recognized soldiers out of uniform by odd specific things: shined shoes, creased jeans. Weirdo hair parts.  Especially that, lol. 
Once you realized what was giving you away, you shed. And you stop talking about it. 
You feel naked for a while, but your nakedness is a shiny object, distracting observers from the real show.
It's the same, I'm finding, with getting older.    It's an unnaturally warm winter.  People seem disappointed, like we haven't suffered enough to have daffodils.  But I don't remember extreme cold winters.  I've always been disappointed that the winters weren't harsh enough to enjoy a fireplace, to enjoy the daffodils already pushing up.
I took a trip across country 25 years ago. Starting in January and driving west and south, daffodils were always coming up. Completely screwed up my sense of time. A shaman told me I had to do a soul retrieval to reset my circadian rhythms.  
I did, but my rhythms are off again.  Time seems to be bending in on itself as it could be any old time at all.  Any old season. I don't seem to be living in a time zone anymore. 
At brunch, the wife of my friend tells us that her sister just died. Suddenly.  Like 2 weeks ago.  I remind her that, even though I think of her mainly as my friend's wife, I've actually known her for 25 years and that I met her sister when I visited her and my friend that many years ago.  
On that cross country trip looking at daffodils with my first husband. 
All four of us are veterans of that war.
I remember her sister--a lovely blonde--dancing to the music on the radio in the kitchen as dinner was being made, pulling me into their circle. The sisters were Texans and I loved their raucous laughter, their noisy fun.  Loosened up my tight east coast ass, I'll tell you, and I learned to laugh loudly too. 
These friends have children who've abandoned them. We talk about them in the present tense, doing stupid silly things when they were twelve.  Or five. We laugh loudly at their antics. Scold them as if they could still be rehabilitated.  
We wear those combat medals too.  Sewed on our sleeves with invisible thread. 
We laugh through several more bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.  And all at once the sun is setting on our brunch. We have things to do in several time zones. We head for our cars, not making plans to see each other again--we never do--and yet we always do.
If not now, some other time.  With the same people. 







   








 

Guinevere had green eyes, like you, lady, like you...

 

I didn’t know I even missed David Crosby till he died. And then, his death unleashed ghosts of mine that have been scared into the closet by blue light and a service economy.

Not that I missed David Crosby, precisely, but some men I knew in that era.  The ones who romanticized women.  Not that I was looking to be romanticized then….I knew what I was made of, so that was like the LAST thing I expected from a man.  Or from anyone.

They romanticized themselves too.  And life.  Part of me thought they were fools.  Part of me was jealous that they knew what they wanted life to look like.

Remember those flowy blouses we made—we all made our own clothes—with sleeves gathered at the wrist with elastic and tied with a ribbon on the collar and hair that was allowed to curl or be straight or be whatever the hell it wanted to be, all it wanted was for some wildflowers to be stuck in between its tiny braids? By some man who thought our hair was spun silk.

Yeah.

Jeez, remember carrot cake?

Being an earth mother was the epitome of femininity. Earth mothers all made carrot cake.  

There was a farm in Coopersburg owned by some guys who knew my boyfriend, John. They wore Revolutionary War type military coats with brass buttons and their own long hair was in ponytails. A big fire was always in the fireplace. No electricity.  I think I was supposed to cook something as part of the tableau, but I don’t remember doing that. Because I didn’t know how to cook then. I do remember the guys making beer.  “Meade.”  Lol.  They were all writing novels.  One guy, Jim, his novel was so long the paper was stacked as high as my knee. 

Because he wrote on a typewriter.

Jim was thunderstruck by me, for reasons I never did understand, for reasons that didn’t ring true.  He was the first person to romanticize me. It was like one of those medieval chivalrous relationships. He would recite poetry to me. Sing David Crosby songs to me. I never knew how to act around him because I was trying to fit his romance.  I am probably in that novel. I probably wouldn’t recognize myself. 

John, my real-life boyfriend, and I went to the farm to fight. That farm always brought out the worst in us.  We fought outside in the full moon in the plowed field. I can picture it right now, tonight. The white Snow Moon illuminated the plowed rows and my boyfriend’s handsome earnest face, implored me to want what he wanted.  I didn’t know what he wanted.  A simpler life? This romantic life on the farm? I was too young. It was inconceivable to me. I wanted a complicated life. I wanted to see what the hell was out there.  What was going on. I didn’t want my youth and beauty to be buried in some farm making porridge and babies.

Now, of course, I know what’s out there.

We all make tradeoffs, I guess. I became a writer because I didn’t want to be forced into one box.  I wanted to create my own worlds and live a million lives.  If I could enter other people’s worlds, I could even make porridge and babies if I wanted to.

Jim, the novelist, came to visit me years later when I was stationed in the Army in Germany.  He was on his way back to the states from Greece where he fell in love with a man on a beach.  A paraplegic. Rhapsodies for the man on the beach.

I don’t know if he ever finished the novel, it’s probably as tall as I am if he didn’t. I heard recently that he’s teaching poetry in upstate New York. 

Sometimes, I think that the farm was the right place but the wrong time.  Wouldn’t it be lovely, at this stage of my life, to be cooking for a houseful of people by firelight. With my husband crooning, “Guinevere  had green eyes,”  putting wildflowers in my hair.  Pretending it was a time before we all counted our daily steps on fitbits, and before we were in despair because we know way too much about the world and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.

But it’s a Snow Moon and maybe I’m a romantic. Like you, lady. Like you. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Beat the Doldums

I had an opportunity to work briefly with a sailor this year.  More of an adventurer, I’d say, than a sailor per se. Whatever he called himself, he liked to put his little craft into big water and see where it took him.

And boy, did he go places.  I hope I get a chance to tell you about it.

His story resonates with me because when I’m in balance, I picture going through life as being on a river, never knowing what’s around the bend.  

I didn’t know where my craft was headed when I put Blue Heron Book Works in the water in 2015.  I literally had no idea.

Sometimes when you’re rounding the bend, Shangri-La is waiting. 

My first Shangri-La was Larry James Neff who wrote BHBW’s first book, Rigger, about his time in the Bethlehem Steel Company. I was apprehensive when he handed me the manuscript, pretty sure I was going to hate it and then have to tell him that I hated it.

That’s the thing people don’t understand about editors and publishers.  No one wants to reject you, babe.  Bad writing puts us in a foul mood because we think you’re being sloppy and lazy because you never reread your first draft thinking the first thing out of your head was delivered to you on the mountaintop, dictated by God himself Almighty, and THEN we have to feel bad about ourselves because we’re making YOU feel bad by telling you this.

Sorry.

So, yeah, it’s about us, not you.

Isn’t everything?

But Larry’s book was aces. Encouraged, I was back on the river, looking for Rheingold.

Turns out, there’s lots of gold in the river. Lots of surprising stories. Makes me love my fellow man more than I am inclined to.  

The best part of this ride is meeting people I would never have met otherwise.

Here’s a secret: once you become a literary author, your circle becomes a little rarified consisting mostly of artists who are doing the same thing you’re doing—looking for the real to re-purpose—and academics who are running from the real.

Have you ever noticed that most first novels are fabulous and real, the second is about being a novelist?

The stories are on the river, waiting round the bend. Not at cocktail parties.

The best is when—and it’s not too often, but sometimes—there’s a crowd of cheering people who have been waiting for what you bring to them.

If I have a purpose in life, besides enjoying the hell out of it, it’s bringing those folks on board and traveling together.

Until they eventually disembark. 

I always wondered, if you love someone and they leave, does it leave a hole in your heart or does your heart just get bigger? 

We made lots of stops this year, picking up passengers who make us wonder how we would have survived if given the challenges they had.

We just launched Emily K. Whiting’s book, She is Charlotte.  If you know someone with a bigger heart and a clearer sense of self, I’d like to meet them.

Keenan Hudson, The Unspeakable Truth and Life Story  is a straightforward look at digging yourself out of an impossibly deep pit and thriving.

Coming up:  G. Bruce Boyer (the G stands for God) takes us on a lived history tour through American music in Riffs.

Coming up: an alphabet book by our favorite mime, Nate.

Coming up: Before You Go, by Linda Mancinelli, who shares her 30 years’ experience as a hospice nurse. Yes, it's joyful.

Coming up: Itch, The Art of Possibility by Harper St. Clair, a novel of art and love and what’s the difference?

Coming up: Eco-woman, by Fanny Barry who writes about Eco-Woman’s transformation into a superhero—our last chance to save the planet.

Coming up:  Warped World by Billy Ehrlacher. a hilarious novel about a young man who is on a mission to keep his favorite soap opera on the air.

Coming up: Memories of the Year 2000, by moi!  A graphic novel.  Didn’t know that about me, did you?

Coming up:  Cryptopia Vol. 1, part one of a five part series of novels by our genius editor-in-chief, Paul Heller.

Coming up:  Indestructibleby Luis Moreno, a novel about a man who is fighting for custody of his kids.

I think I’m forgetting something.

Oh look, another bend in the river!

 

I'll Be Home for Christmas

Nothing like winter darkness to bring out religion in me.

ME: Hey, is that the abyss I’m looking into?

O.S.: Why, yes, it is. 

ME: Wait, is God down there somewhere?  In the abyss?

O.S.: (chortling) Do you want to find out?

Years ago, I went out in a friend’s tiny boat, out of the Boston Harbor into the ocean. A storm was coming, we were pitching and rocking, water coming into the boat, and I remember looking at my friend and thinking, “How well do we REALLY know anyone?”  Natalie Wood was on my mind….was she pushed? Was it an accident? What did it matter. At that point, if I landed in the water,  I was chum. Bye bye mortal remains.

Did I mention that I found it thrilling?

That being alone in the cold universe made me feel more alive than singing carols around a LED lit Christmas tree drinking eggnog?

I have recently found peace with the idea of god. It’s my own idea, I made it up. Isn’t that what everyone does? 

Just yesterday I was walking down an alley on my walk, when a fox darted in front of me, looking over his shoulder as he ran down the alley.  I stopped to give him space, when another fox darted out, following him. They ran a half a block, stopped and turned to see what I was going to do. One of them I had seen before. I recognized his tail, long, bent, and kind of beat up.  I think he slept on our porch this summer. We regarded each other for a long moment before I turned, and they trotted into the woods.

My idea of god, and it’s not for everyone, not by a long shot, isn’t totally original. I think Kahil Gibran came up with it. At least he said it on a meme, which is where I get my philosophy these days.  Who has time to read?

At the end of my walk is a stone amphitheater, built by the WPA.  A crisp morning. Everything nice and crunchy, but I take care not to step on the fern like thingeys that are covered in frost.  The Jordan Creek runs through and all kinds of waterfowl hang around till I get there and scare them away. They never stay. They have bird things to do. I wish I knew what they were. Anyway, I have people things to do. 

When I get to the creek, I open my arms and ask for help. My friend, Fanny, who is a yoga guru, taught me to do this.  I scoop up the energy and bring it to me. I need all the help I can get.

People get sniffy when I tell them I only ask for help. “Don’t you thank God or the universe?”

What kind of an ungrateful b*h am I?

This is the darkest time of the year. Everyone cheers the seconds of light we gain each day. I savor the darkness, where magic happens. Where creativity gestates and blooms. I can polish it later, in the light. I can share it later, in the light, and get official pronouncements.

But now, in the darkness, the pleasure is all mine.

In the dark, too, I think about losses, second-hand and direct hits. Deaths of two dear ones. A divorce in the family. A beloved nephew who turned his back on his family. Lost friends. I’ve had some sorrows.

Who hasn’t?

I have recently learned something about quantum physics which is this:  when an object is observed, it changes.  But there’s more: the observer changes too.

What fabulous golden thread binds us? Even the losses are woven into the fabric. 

I think of that when I look up through the 200-year-old oak tree in our backyard into the cold Christmas night sky. I don't feel alone. I think, hey, I got a pretty big house. 

And everyone’s invited.    

On the way back from my walk, a murder of crows, which has tripled since last year, buzzes me. The sentinel crow lands on a tree near me and says something in crow language.  I answer in kind. He adds to his riff, and I repeat it. He does it twice more until I can’t remember the long sequence and just laugh, and he joins the others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a Wrap

 Things I've learned the hard way in 2022, on earth: 

1. There is no nice way to tell someone they are not what you're looking for

2. Living under a predatory capitalistic system is exhausting 

3. And dehumanizing

4. When I don't feel like taking a walk in the woods is when I should definitely take one. 

5. In fact, I should camp out then.

6. Especially if I'm expected elsewhere. hahahaha.  And don't call. 

7. I am immediately suspicious of someone trying to sell me something

8. Which is ridiculous when you remember that we live under a predatory capitalistic system

9. Like, how else can you survive? Duh. Only losers AREN'T trying to sell you something.

10. The elephant in the room is that there are too many of us by half

11. That's why all the fossil fuel demonizing is...well, okay, it might work if we all did our part

12. And I mean, ALL of us, not just us with green recycle bins and electric cars, but the BIG guys too

13. But there is still all this heat and demand being generated, so I don't know. Doesn't look good. For us. The planet will probably be fine.

14. But hey, I'm not Neil DeGrasse Tyson, what do I know.

15. I was in Verizon the other day talking to a young woman service rep with 8 visible tattoos, next to a young man service rep with both arms covered in an anime inked wonderland, to my right a much older male customer telling the young man, "nice tats" and then the young woman telling a young man customer to my left, "wow I love spidey" talking about the spider tattoo on his thumb/index finger web, then spidey's MOTHER, a Walmart Wonder TAKING OFF HER SWEATSHIRT exposing tats on her unashamedly flabby arms saying, "I got 10 more across my legs and up my butt" and now that image is burned in mind's eye and the young woman service rep almost crying saying, "I love it when we show each other our tattoos" 

16. It just occurred to me: I may be only person on earth without a tattoo.

17. I want to go back to my home planet.

18. I started getting what I needed when I stopped asking for what I wanted.

19. I don't need much

20.  If you don't have a tattoo, either, maybe we can grab a drink and talk about our home planet. 

Cold Moon

This past year I've been celebrating full moons with yoga in our garden under a 200-year-old oak tree, bare feet crunching acorn caps--very satisfying--scattered on the moss, blankets under mats to soften the above-ground roots, essential oils and incense burning to keep mosquitoes away. None of which work by the way.  I offer yoga under the full moon to people I don't feel like cooking dinner for anymore, but I still like to see. Covid has changed how I think about people and how much I want them in my life.  I'm sure they feel the same. My phone isn't ringing off the hook, just for the record. 

All full moons ask that you look over the past month and see what's working out and what you should discard.  The Cold Moon, the December moon, asks that you look over the past year and do the same.  The Cold Moon isn't fooling around, either. There's no place to warm your illusions. 

I’m working with a writer now who is writing about her experiences as a hospice nurse, and so death is on the table. Under discussion. Paul told me about his mother who, in later years, had a list of her friends on post-it notes on the nightstand. Towards the end, most were crossed out, with “gone” written next to their names. When the last one was crossed out, she died too. It was as if she stopped existing. 

I think of the first night I was on shift as a nurse’s aid. At 3 o’clock in the morning, the RN sent me to take the vitals of an old Greek man in 23A. There were only nightlights on, so I never saw his face. He was naked under a light blanket. I picked up his wrist to count his pulse, strong at first then elusive. I dug deeper chasing his pulse until it vanished. I didn’t feel sad until his family came in, crying loudly. Then I started bawling. 

I knew my ex-in-laws for years, had enough breakfasts and dinners with them to know the rhythm of their conversation; so when my mother-in-law died and my father-in-law was being tended by nurses who thought that he was demented talking to himself, I knew he was talking to her. I always wanted to write a play about that. 

I used to think that we are defined by material things: our surroundings, our clothing, our belongings, our music, our taste. When I asked a freshman comp class to write essays about what they would feel like wearing their parent's clothing, the revulsion was real. So, I think material things partially define you.  But I think now that the people you surround yourself with define you even more. At Blue Heron Book Works we say, “You are the story you tell about yourself,” and I am expanding that to “You are the story others tell about you, too.” It’s a Cold Moon out there. Time to take a look around.

Year End Comeuppance

 

Yesterday, the news was that Pakistan is releasing Omar Saeed Sheikh, accused killer of WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl, after 18 years in jail. He was acquitted of that murder this summer, but because of appeals is still being held in jail.

That news would ordinarily not pierce my protective white coating, but for a few variables.

It was on my radar because the person who edited and published my first two novels, Sarah Crichton, edited and published a book written by Pearl’s wife, Marianne, about the Pearls’ relationship and the search for him after he was kidnapped. So, I was interested in Omar Saeed Sheikh because of that association.

Maybe not interested in the way you’d think.

No, it was because the death of one white journalist from the whitest newspaper in the US was elevated to a place in my psyche when, for fuck’s sake, he was in a war zone. Lots of folks get kidnapped, tortured and killed, if they find themselves on the wrong side of an idea in a war zone.

Not to minimize HIS death, but not to minimize the others’ either.

He was in the elite that rules the world. And good for him, really. But his story is only interesting, to me anyway, in that you can be part of that elite ruling class and still get killed doing your job.

But I’d be more interested in knowing Omar Saeed Sheikh’s story. He risked everything too. What was he thinking, beheading a journalist for the WSJ, powerful mouthpiece of the most powerful nation in the world. Is he crazy?

I just read that John Mulaney has entered rehab. Another advantaged white dude taking up real estate in my brain, and I’m to waste my few remaining strands of 2020 sympathy on his cocaine and alcohol addiction?

And what about all the space devoted to Lori Laughlin not being able to sleep in prison, serving a  sentence that was just a slap on the hand, then even that was commuted to basically an overnight.

The point, and I do have one, is this: Right now, at the end of 2020, I’m sure you noticed, we’re in big trouble. We got to fix the world.

And I don’t think that stories about advantaged white dudes and dudettes in trouble is going to help us figure things out. Those are fairy tales, bro.

Big lesson of 2020 is that we got to take care of our neighbors, our physical neighbors, and hope that the energy from that effort ripples out to the larger world.

We got to listen to each other.

We got to tell each others' stories, so we know we’re not freaks, we’re not “the only ones who think that way!” or the only ones who committed a particular atrocity.

We all have atrocities in our suitcase.

I can’t tell you how many people write to me (as publisher and editor) saying, “I don’t know if I can say this, it’s so awful.” You know what? I haven’t heard an original story of horror, abuse—self or other—since I started this racket.  If we were less ashamed of things that we have no control over—“My mother is really my aunt!” (oldest one in the book)—spent more time forgiving ourselves for not being heroes, and more time congratulating ourselves for just getting a grip, we might advance as a species.

Mostly, we have to tell each others’ stories. Get the horror out and the joy out and let’s acknowledge that yes, maybe Daniel Pearl is some kind of hero, but so is my friend and BHBW author who is hobbling together a zillion sales in freezing temperatures so her small business can come through the other side of this pandemic. So is my friend and BHBW author who, right before Christmas and right when his dance career was taking off, had his Uber license suspended because they were updating his background check and found his background wanting. Extraordinary people at the mercy of systems and forces they probably don’t even understand because they don’t have the price of admission to those parties to figure out what is the what.

Or what about the woman who discovered that the medical industrial complex had nothing to cure her auto-immune disease, so figured out how to cure herself. Or the young man who spent everything he had in a court system that doesn’t think fathers are good parents, but nevertheless prevailed and got his kids. Those are the stories I want to hear. Blue Heron Book Works is interested in the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. People who can’t pick up the phone to fix their fuck-ups.  People who don’t have a pile of cash to land on if they’re pushed out of the plane.  And people who, nonetheless, prevail. These are the people who have our ear and our megaphone, whose stories will help us figure things out.

We have a great line-up for our readers in 2021. Stay with us to find out more about the world’s most interesting people.  Because here is where you’ll meet them.  Happy New Year, everyone.

 

 

 

L' shana Tova

I don’t think this election is going to answer questions, like whether we’re going to live in a fascist state and if 45 is an historic inevitability, because, unless we get our house in order right quick…yes and yes. 

People, lots of people who vote, say, “We’re doing poorly, because God isn’t smiling on us anymore, because we took him out of the public square.”

I can’t wrap my logical brain around a Santa Claus-like god in the sky, keeping lists, withholding toys, pressing his nose against the fence in the public square. I sense something bigger. 

A  phrase keeps going through my head, “God made us in his own image.” I think the opposite is true: We make God in our image.  A spiritual woman I am working with says that spirit (capital S) is like the feeling you get at a football game. Team spirit. School spirit. The collective we. That makes both intuitive and logical sense to me. Can’t you feel the pull of the angry vortex creating our American god? And it’s gaining in velocity because we keep feeding it. It’s like we’re swimming against an angry current.  You can try to put on the brakes by posting pictures of your pet or your garden or naïve pleas to “let’s all just get along”—I do that too, no judgment—but we have to dig deeper than sentimentality and a jingoistic appeal to the totems of our culture. It’s time for us to lay our culture on the table and do an honest assessment of who we are—not me or you personally, we’ve used our personal innocence to excuse genocide, thievery, cruelty, and slavery for too long. It’s our culture that’s on the examination table.  Our God. And if our God, our Spirit, is to be the just, benevolent God we want them to be, that we believe them to be, we have to create that God. But quick.

Some cultural appropriation: It’s the beginning of the Jewish holidays. A time to beg forgiveness for any trespassing we have done in the past year, gratitude for what we have attained, and hope for a sweet new year. A perfect time to reimagine and create the world we want. Let’s get busy.

 

 

 

 

The Art of the Story