One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

We all choose the terms of the desperate bargains we make with the powers that may be, which baseless beliefs and decaying wisdoms we cling to, and which we discard as superstition or sorcery or the ravings of misguided zealots.

The list of irritatingly misapplied clichés people utter would take me more hours to type out than I have left to live, but near the top is the conversational gambit “There are two kinds of people in this world…” There are two kinds of people in this world: the ones who split the world into two kinds of people, and the ones who know that’s reductive and conversationally lazy.

armed with a brand-new college degree and the unearned optimism of quarter-centenarians.

“It’s the only thing that works. Legislation doesn’t. Corporations like Belsum just ignore it, knowing enforcement is years away, if ever, or they buy politicians and, with them, favorable policy. Citizen pressure doesn’t work. These issues are impossibly complicated, way too complex for the public to understand, and besides, Belsum can spin it and sound bite it into anything they like. Public shaming doesn’t even do it. People’s memories are too short. Corporations just wait for everyone to get over it, and we do, quickly. What works, the only thing that works, is simple math. It has to cost them more to ruin your life than it costs them not to. That is what we have to do.”

It’s another cruelty you never think of, almost incidental it’s so far down the list, but the bad memories paper over the good until the good ones are gone or so buried they’re forgotten.

the revolution in “industrial revolution” is like the revolution in “American Revolution,” revolution like war. It remapped small towns and big cities and nations, destroyed communities, willfully refused to consider the long term in favor of immediate blood and power, and demanded the sacrifice of scores upon scores of soldiers for the glory of the men getting rich. It was the industrial revolution that conscripted towns like mine and consigned their citizens—us—to the bottom of every pile yet to come.

And that might be the best feeling of all—trusting, having faith—better than the kissing, better than the sex, better than the magic. Briefly.

There are so many people who have sinned a little and a lot. There are so many people who deserve some of the blame. But that means there is never anyone whose responsibility it is to take responsibility. There is no one who must make it right, no one who must make amends. There is so much, therefore, that stays wrong and unmended.

It is not enough to be loved by your mother. It is a good start, and you wouldn’t want to do without, and it helps, but it is not enough. You need also the love of your community, the love of friends and admirers, the love of strangers who don’t know you but still wish you well, the love that comes from passion and from commitment and from someone who will never, never betray you and not just because they’re related to you. You need more love. We all need more love.

For I can write as well as anyone, writing requiring but one well-honed brain, a ranging imagination, a determined mind, and a resilient and wide-open heart.

Our road trip makes me see that needing help doesn’t mean there aren’t other places to get it besides home, other people who can provide it besides family, that having limits doesn’t mean I cannot—must not, maybe—bewitch and bewilder, range far and wander wide and wild. For home is like black holes—no matter how small, no matter how humble, they capture everything in range and trap it inside. The only way to escape their draw is to be far enough away. Nora