Self-lies

 Self-lies are hard to break through when we believe them.  Believing a self-lie renders it invisible.  I can't iradicate what I cannot identify as a lie.  I am certain that there is a big lie, resting on my brow, and that identifying it would be like the bursting of a festering boil.  So, I drink my tea, light my candle, draw my tarot card and set my goals each day with faith that, through daily efforts to move forward, the screw will eventually turn.

Inside or Out

 I've heard of people talking of being on the outside, looking in.  I know what they mean, that intense longing to be a part of something, to be in, to be included, not alone with something.  I, on the other hand, have often felt that I am on the inside looking out.  I'm locked in place, rooted to a spot, unable to break free, while the whole world goes by without me.  What did Mrs. Dalloway say about the most incomprehensible feeling on earth?  As she walks out her door onto the bustling London street, she thinks:  Some day all of this will go on without me.  Then, she plunges herself into it.  She pinpoints the very thing that is so impossible to grasp about death...that the life will continue after ours is gone.

 But here I sit, while the world goes by without me.  I see it, though, going about its business.  the dog walkers, the ball throwers, the comings and goings of neighbors.  And here I am on the inside, looking out, wanting but unable to take that plunge.  

Another trope is the question:  Is the glass half full or half empty?  The answer is supposed to reveal the subject's world view.  Is it positive or negative?  Is the subject an optimist or a pessimist?  Well, I'm here to tell you that there are times when you want that glass to be half empty.  That's considered to be a wrong and very revealing answer, but, in this instance, context is mandatory. 

Booger Red

  

His name was Bill Hunnicutt, but he used to be called Booger Red.  That was back in the days when he was a carny barker.  But I met him when I joined Alcoholics Anonymous to quit drinking back in the 1980s.  A lot of people helped me over the years, but it is Bill Hunnicutt’s voice I most often hear when things are dark.

 

I was 22 and spent, he was in his late 70s.  Short, round, with huge ears like Yoda’s on either side of his bald head, suspenders holding up pants on a waistless body, long-sleeved white shirt with sleeves rolled up, horn-rimmed glasses, strong body odor, and a voice like gravel. 

 

He seemed to be at every meeting I attended.  I’d walk into the meeting hall, and he’d growl, “Nancy, what time did you get up this morning?”

“Um, I don’t know.  7:30.”

“Ha! I been sober longer’n’you!  I got up at 6:30.”

 

AA abounds with clichés and everybody wanted to have his own personal quip, but Bill Hunnicutt was the only person who didn’t make it seem like he was trying to pull something off.  He didn’t seem like he was angling for center stage.  He was simply reminding me that I only have this day. 

 

“This is the only day I have to live right now,” he would say.  “None of the past ones, none of the future ones.  Just this day.”

 

Okay, Bill.  I wish you’d been with me yesterday to remind me that, in living that day, it would eventually end and I wouldn’t have to live it anymore.  But you weren’t with me, so, after a sleepless night, I started this day without any demarcation. 

 

On the previous day, on our way to get coffee, we were assaulted by a parade of cars, uniformly blasting a Trump rap song, American flags, Trump flags, gathering the clouds.  The parade wrapped around the block, as far as I could see and just kept coming.  My stomach lurched.  The rap song, pounded alpha male like an assault rifle, revering their war lord.  People walked out onto their porches, shouting, some cheering, some shouting rage.

 

“Four more years!”

 

 A woman with a Black Lives Matter sign on her front lawn and purple hair, spat into the wind, “Over 220,000 dead!”

 

In 2016 when he was elected, I thought, he’s going to get us all killed.  Surprisingly, Bill Hunnicutt showed up just then, just when the darkness plunged.  “If this is the end,” he whispered, “Live it!  Live each day.”

 

It’s been a long time since I’ve attended AA, and even longer since Bill died in a meeting at the age of 87.  But there are still times when I see Booger Red.   Bill’s round, bald head appears when I least expect it and shakes in front of me, his neck wagging. 

When a friend had been brutally raped and stuffed into the trunk of her own car, I remember her mother sobbing and asking, “What kind of a God would allow this to happen?”

 

Bill softened the gravel in his voice and explained, “This isn’t God’s world.  What you’re seeing there is man’s world.  God don’t have nothin’ to do with that.  God give man free will, and this is what man’s done with it.”

 

When I was a student in Italy in the late 1980s, I was sober the whole time.  No vino for me.  Instead, I went to AA meetings in Florence.  I attended an English speaking group there that met 3 times a week.  But, as my language skills improved, I ventured into the ones where Italian was the spoken language.  I lived in terror that they would ask me to share.  My skills were getting better, but I had no confidence at the idea of speaking in a meeting in front of 30 people. 

 

The day came, and they called on me.  I could say that I don’t know where it came from, but now I do know.  In Italian, I told them where I was from and that I knew a man named Bill Hunnicut who had been sober for 38 years.  This was wild to them because AA had only been in Italy for about a decade.  I apologized for my poor language skills but told them that I believed they would understand me.  You see, I went on, Bill always said that Alcoholics Anonymous is a place where we come to speak the language of the heart.  It’s where the heart speaks and where the heart listens.  I was so amazed by my own speech that I got kind of high off of it.  I couldn’t believe I’d said all of that.  I still remember the faces of the people in that room, smiling and nodding.

 

Three weeks later (mail in Italy is much, much, much slower than a snail), I got a letter from my friend, Gloria, who told me that Bill Hunnicut had died in a meeting.  He died the day before I was called on to speak.  I know that Bill didn’t speak Italian, but whatever powers he had tapped into on the other side extended me the words.  I still think of him often with love and gratitude.

Get Into Position, Please!

 

I think he’s sicker than they’re letting on.  I think he has an expiration date, known only by a few insiders.  People are jockeying for position, working to envision themselves in a post-trump world.  Mike Johnson is trying to slither his way into the Presidency.  Bible in his pocket, right hand ready to spring into oath-taking position, he seems to be an appealing alternative to JDVance.  That is, if you haven’t been paying very close attention to what a nazi he is.  The entire nation will collectively barf at the idea of JDVance being President of the United States.  He’s already such a laughing stock…not someone who can take on the role of manly leader.  

 

Mike Johnson will be a new face to the masses of people who don’t pay attention to politics, beyond knowing who is President and whether or not to hate him.  The only thing most Republicans know about Speaker of the House is that it is no longer Nancy Pelosi.  

 

Johnson has made sure to be right in step with Donald Trump at every hair-pin turn.  Now, suddenly, he’s diverging, ever-so-slightly, so very gently with regard to the Epstein Client List.  Johnson would likely be among those in the inner circle to know the extent of Trump’s illness.  He’s on the slide.  And he won’t stop sliding until he lands at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…or so he thinks.

 

Upon closer inspection, Mike Johnson isn’t much more appealing than JD.  Not really.  Sure, he doesn’t look like a goon.  But he doesn’t look or sound like a manly leader.  There’s no bombast.  Where Trump had a bullhorn Johnson will force people to turn up the volume.  My guess is that they won’t bother.  

 

So, who?  Who will be this manly leader to spring from among the Republicans?  This isn’t a rhetorical question.  I really want to know who the heck could keep the Republicans engaged the way Trump did.  He entertained everyone.  I mean everyone…love him or hate him, he’s the center of every news story.  The volume around Donald Trump is loud no matter where you stand.  He convinced half the nation that he was the superhero they have all been waiting for, leaving the other half of us wondering how anyone could believe his crap.  Think tanks will conduct studies for decades to try and parse the abyss between Who Donald Was and Who Donald Projected Himself to Be.  Maybe just as interesting is Who Saw Donald As He Was vs. Who Drank the KoolAid?  Why did so many drink the KoolAid?

 

Anyway, the spell is somewhat breaking, and it’s kind of fun to watch…or it would be if the Media hadn’t turned it into such a feeding frenzy.  Trump has finally thrown a tantrum to the very category of people you can’t aim a tantrum at…other great big babies.  When a baby screams at another baby, the other one screams back.  Yeah.  They’re pissed.  Damage is done.  Bell rung.  I can see Trump in my mind in that last scene of Ghost, where the bad guy is dragged, screaming, into hell by dark demons.  I see Trump’s face, mouth stretched into a yawning scream, as he is dragged by demons to a prison unlike any prison anyone has ever seen. 

Trump on Maxwell

Trump's reaction when asked about Maxwell was surprising.  "I wish her well," he said.  "I just wish her well." 

 

He seems to be afraid of her.  I mean, really. When has he ever NOT thrown someone under a bus, whether they represented any visible threat or not.  I think he tires of people, and they suddenly turn evil before his eyes.  But not with Maxwell.  He wishes her well.  

 

This whole business has awakened a rough beast.  He spoke of her as someone he slightly knew, much the way we might speak of some of our neighbors…”Oh, yes. I knew her.  She lived two doors down.  I think she came to a couple of our barbeque parties….”  Yes, he knew her, slightly.  

 

There’s talk that Maxwell recruited young girls from Mar a Lago.  There’s talk that, since Trump has declared the entire thing a hoax, Maxwell will demand to be released and cleared of all charges.  There’s talk that Maxwell has petitioned to speak before The House, ready to answer all questions.  

 

If the Executive Branch’s goal was to turn American Politics into a reality show, it has arrived.  What a pickle, Mr. President!  He can’t kill her.  That would be too obvious, since that’s what he likely did with her partner.  He can’t stop her, no matter which way he goes.  Threaten, cajole, intimidate, sic the MAGA hounds on her, declare her a radical lunatic.  Yet, he has done none of his usual thugwork.  Why?

You Just Can't Argue with Crazy

 

It’s the ones who buy into the Qanonie conspiracy theories I don’t even try to engage in discussion.   

 

A while back, I went to a local tavern for dinner and sat at the bar.  When my beer arrived, the guy next to me lifted his glass and said, “Cheers!”   

 

I cheered back.   

 

Then, he lifted his glass again and said, “To better days!”  Now, I’m thinking that this isn’t his first pint.  “To better days,” I chime back.   

 

That’s all he needed to launch into this bizarre story about how the Bidens, Pelosis, Harris’s, and Bushes were all holed up in bunkers with a cabal of international bankers, and a top secret law enforcement agency is closing in on them…

 

Oh, criminy!   

 

“Everybody knows about this.” he declared.  

 

 I asked for my bill and made my order to go.  Aimee, the bartender, was laughing as she rang me out. 

 

Reproductive Health Issues Have Nothing to Do with Children

 

Ever listen to pundits yammer on about a topic and totally miss the significance?  I feel that way about the melding of the topics of reproductive medical care with children who live or die through school shootings.

 

The stance of Vance and every head-bobbing MAGA rally attendee has nothing whatsoever to do with children.  I mean, the media steps right up to it but doesn’t seem to understand the significance.

 

They say that the MAGA stance toward women and their reproductive lives is not in alignment with their response to school shootings.  MAGA says that any fertilized egg should be treated as a person.  But when kids are killed by shooters at a school, their response is, “eh, shit happens.”  It doesn’t make sense, they say.  How can they be so hard-assed about women and pregnancy but so callus about children dying in school shootings?

 

Absolutely.  When looking at these two things, it doesn’t make any sense.  These two things do not make sense because the fight to remove women’s reproductive rights has nothing to do with children. 

 

I want to say this again, because it’s’ killing me that everyone’s missing this.  The rules around reproductive freedom have nothing to do with children.  Nada.  Not one thing.  This whole mess, all of it, is revenge for all the years that Roe v. Wade gave women 100% control over their bodies.  Men couldn’t decide if a woman was going to keep or abort a fetus.  If she decided to run a pregnancy to term and become a single mother, the guy couldn’t force her to abort.  He could even be nailed for child support, and there was nothing he could do about it.  But say he wanted a baby, and she decides to abort.  It simply wasn’t his decision to make. 

 

This is the only situation that has ever existed giving women 100% say over something, men be damned.  I believe that all of the effort of this largely white-male movement to regain control of women’s reproductive decisions is a temper tantrum.  We must be put in our place, and that place is where white men are in control.   It has nothing to do with children.

 

Of course, lots of unwanted babies will be born.  Men have never been very good at taking responsibility for unwanted children.  Why would that change?  It’s no skin off their noses. 

 

What about women who spew support for losing their bodily autonomy?  I’m talking about women who stand with these white men.  Women who are complicit are almost worse.  I know these women.  I grew up in a family of rednecks, where the only good woman was one who followed her husband’s lead.  These women are utterly convinced that they need a man by their side in order to be safe in the world.  If they have any thoughts of their own, they keep them deeply buried. 

 

Has anyone ever wondered how big this group of women is?  I’m talking about women who are enslaved in their belief that they can’t survive without their white male counterparts, who understand that, by opposing these white men, they could be thrown out onto the streets to be consumed by the countless dangers awaiting them.   “Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.  Hard to get by just upon a smile.” 

 

I belong to a Facebook group of women over 50 who love to travel solo.  It’s a great group, with women sharing their plans, adventures and sometimes mishaps.  But I see posts, daily, from women who are intrigued but terrified at the prospect of doing anything alone.  They think that going to a restaurant and asking for a table for one will bring down all kinds of judgement.  Everyone will stare.  The serving staff will resent having to serve a table of one.  So many women firmly believe that going to a public place without a man by their side will make them the subject of ridicule and scorn.  I find this to be profoundly sad. 

 

Is everyone assuming that these women, who have been misinformed their entire lives can’t be reached?  Or is it that no one is thinking of these women at all?  What if someone told them that they are, indeed, allowed to think for themselves.  Cast their own votes, not just what their husbands would do.  In my travel group, we sort of do that…we coax women into facing their fears and going out into the world.  Most of these women are the ones left behind.  Either their husbands of 30 years have died or left them for a younger model.  They’re left spinning inside their own heads, wondering whether they can figure it all out or if it’s just time to die.

 

So, I see in the news that there are efforts to bring in Black voters, especially black women, latino voters, LGBTQ+ voters, young voters.  I want to see some new targets.  Women who are married to MAGA white men.  Women who are learning to use their voices for the first time, mostly older women who find themselves alone at a later stage of life.

 

I tried joining a group called Red Wine and Blue.  It’s a group of suburban women who are claiming their voices in the political landscape.  They are a vibrant, strong group.  But they are not my tribe.  When I offered comments regarding older women, they were not only not interested.  They refused to include me in their discussions.  I know I am very opinionated, and it has to be difficult to moderate a group with tens of thousands of members, but it was clear that their mission statement differed from my own.  And I am certain that these women are not the ones I speak of who are married to MAGA white men. 

 

This demographic of white women, married to and enslaved by MAGA white men, and those who formerly were, is all but invisible.  But they’re ripe.  Waiting to be plucked from the tree and saved from themselves. 

 

Dreamcatchers and Black Jobs

 In The Dreamcatcher by Stephen King, there is a scene where aliens, disguised as humans, go into a convenience store to get something to eat. They’re trying really hard to fool the real humans, so they ponder what humans like to eat.

 

Bacon! They think…humans love bacon. So, they find the bacon in the store, rip open the packages and chow down on the raw bacon. “Mmmm, this is good,” they mutter, greasy blobs dripping from the corners of their full mouths.

 

Pretty disgusting, huh? Of all the things written by Stephen King, it’s snippets like this that really gross me out.

 

This is what I imagine Trump and his crew will look like as they attempt to stop looking so weird and try to seem like…whatever they think the majority of us look like. I can’t wait to see it. Or maybe they’ve already started trying to look less weird. 

 

Here I am, just grateful that I retired from my black job before some immigrant came along and took it.

Another Trump Rant

 

This quote came up on my Facebook feed today and set me on a rant:

 

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. ~Noam Chomsky

 

So, I thought, what would I see if I step away from the minutiae? By minutiae I’m referring to some friggin big things, like women’s healthcare, LGBTQ+ issues, Jan6, the upcoming election, all of it, all of the things being pointed and counterpointed in the news every day.  Referencing the above quote, are all of these things examples of ways the spectrum of acceptable opinion has been strictly limited?

 

I’ve been embroiled in my nation’s politics since the 2020 election.  So much is at stake.  So many moving parts.  But are there?  What would I see if I could beam myself up to a satellite station and look down on all of this from a distance?  Is there a pattern to this chaos? 

 

I see that we have a mission to save democracy in the United States of America.  It hit me that democracy will not be saved by a super hero in tights and a cape.  Democracy will be saved by we the people working together to bring light and shine it all of those dark corners.  Our theme song should be This Little Light of Mine. 

 

I get the sense that all of these weighty, important issues at hand are distracting us from the real issue.  All of these matters, every single one, stems from Donald Trump.  Throw in his puppetry over the Republican Party in Congress, and it is evident that he has taken over control of us all.  He’s stirred so many pots, and we’re all in those pots, spinning.

 

If we’re, all of us, the collective hero, we’re really only up against one man.  All of those angry voices out there, they’re all really him shouting, disrespecting, demeaning.  Trump made that normal.  He made it acceptable.  He made millions of Americans extensions of his bullhorn.  So, what needs to happen is for that bullhorn to be taken away.  If he were to be silenced, lots of people would snap out of it, until only a few diehard fanatics would be occasionally seen. 

 

The only way to silence him is to treat him like any other criminal.  Could you imagine being arrested for armed robbery, but being released by the court because you don’t have time to go to jail.  You’re up for a promotion.  Treat him like the criminal that he is, and throw him in the pokey…without bail.  That’s what he deserves, and that’s what we deserve.  Treat him like any other prisoner.  Fuck his secret service detail.  He lost his status as a free American when he was charged.

 

Putting him in prison would castrate their strategy of delay.  How fast would they go from tortoise to hare if he couldn’t campaign from prison?  Then we’d have a trial.  And he will be found guilty.  And he will go to prison for the rest of his whiney little life. 

 

And his goon squad…all of those who’ve been manipulated and hypnotized by his seething hate…we will see, won’t we, what they’re made of.  I think that Jan6 was a wake up call for his base.  Until that day, they never dreamed that there could be consequences for anything that they did in Trump’s name.  Somewhere in their deluded minds, they know that Trump calling the convicted insurrectionists hostages changes nothing.  The institution of our court system looms over them.  Trump can say anything he wants, and they can cheer for it all, but now they will hit a wall if summoned to go to battle for him ever again. 

 

So, instead, his cultists shrink into their lairs and seek out Trump’s targets to threaten, demean, terrorize on his behalf.  And as they sneer with pride when they send this hatefulness to another human being, they must certainly know on some level that they’ve descended into complete cowardice. 

 

Take away his bullhorn.  Throw him in the clink.  Put him in a cell by himself so that he can’t hurt anyone.  We’re wasting time.  The courts need to stop coddling this grifting, self-aggrandizing, hateful, manipulative man.  Every day he stays out of jail, he’s winning.  They say that there is no such thing as bad publicity.  All of the news is about him.  There isn’t a shred of anything going on where we don’t have his stupid input.  Whether part of his base or not, left, right, any label you want, the news is about him.  He’s in control, and it needs to stop.

 

 

The Saboteur

 

In computer parlance, it’s called an infinite loop.  An infinite loop goes like this:

 

If blah is true

Do blabbity blah

Sleep 20

Done  

 

As long as the blah remains true, the program will repeat the blabbity blah command every 20 seconds…forever, until you hit CTRL+C to manually exit. 

 

I have an infinite loop in my head, and it holds me in a paralytic twilight as it plays and plays and plays.  My biggest challenge is to find a way to hit CTRL+C.  The loop resides in a deep groove inside my head, so finding the exit keys is difficult. 

 

I retired this year, so the loop presents an array of conditions related to that adjustment:

 

• Will I be able to live on so little money?
• Will I be able to keep my home?
• Will I have to avoid all social activity to save money?
• Will anyone want to buy my jewelry?
• Will my jewelry business ever supplement my income?
• Will my 401k run out?
• Will I become too isolated?
• Will I become sick?
• Will I die soon?
• Blabbity blah blah blah…

 

Retirement is a challenge in all kinds of ways I never anticipated.  Fear of the future has encased my life in a putrid fog of self-doubt.  Sometimes, the fog lifts, and a radiant blue sky buoys  me up just enough to see outside of the groove. 

 

Extra light draws me and I am able to step out, or as John Muir would say, step in.  Only outside of the loop can I access my creative self.  I jump on it.  I write.  I design and execute many pieces of jewelry.  I read a ton of books.  I attend to life’s business, clear away wreckage.  Eventually, I’ll get too close to the edge and fall back into the groove, where the loop waits.

 

The loop is a trickster, not intending good or bad, simply performing it’s imperative.  It never stops, even when I am outside of the groove.  I’ve never been able to find the CTRL+C.  So, until I do, my job is to get out of earshot.  Slip out the back, Jack.  Make a new plan, Stan…

 

Such is the rhythm of my life.  The rhythm holds a stark reality.  I cannot immerse myself in any creative endeavor if any part of me is thinking about how I will make money from it.  Thinking along those lines is the surest way to make the creativity fairy bid me a fond fuck you.  What I want her to do, wish I could train her to do, is scream, “Stay away from that groove, you fool!”  And call me back into her bosom.

Arthurian Legends - My Readings and Meanderings

 

Today I finished reading Steven King’s Finder’s Keepers.  One of the things I underlined in my Kindle was when Pete says that Rothstein’s work changed his heart.  I immediately thought of the book that had the biggest impact on me when I was a young reader, The Once and Future King, by T H White.  The book didn’t change my heart, rather, it articulated truths about my core being that opened my heart and showed it to me.

 

The book made me laugh until I was in pain.  And it made me cry for days.  I could say so many things. 

 

The Once and Future King, a World War II anti-war novel, is a compilation of five books.

 

The Sword and the Stone

The Ill Made Knight

The Queen of Air and Darkness

Candle in the Wind

The Book of Merlyn

 

The books were originally published in the late 1940s.  The Book of Merlyn wasn’t published until the late 1970s.  When The Book of Merlyn came out, I couldn’t believe it!  There was MORE! 

 

I’ve always thought that, if I were to be given one wish, I would wish that I could flip a switch that would allow me to read a book, see a movie, hear a piece of music for the first time again.  I’ve read many books more than once, but I can never read them again for the first time.  That’s what I want.  I want to read a book for the first time the second time I read it…and the third.  Maybe that’s not such a good thing.  If I could do that, I might only read one book, thus denying myself the pleasure of so many wonderful storytellers. 

 

I digressed.  I squealed in the bookstore the day The Book of Merlyn came out.  But, after reading it, I had a sense that something was wrong.  The Book of Merlyn tells the story of Merlyn changing Arthur into animals so that he can learn the different ways creatures of the earth govern their societies.  But some of the stories in the Book of Merlyn had already been told at the beginning, in The Sword and the Stone. 

 

I discovered that parts of the work had been edited out because they were considered too controversial.  So, when the greater work, The Once and Future King, was published in a single volume, The Book of Merlyn was removed.  Some of the endearing animal stories from The Book of Merlyn were placed in The Sword and The Stone.  And parts of the Sword and the Stone were removed, altogether. 

 

I pieced this together in a T H White meandering.  In the 1980s, when I was a poor college student, I walked past a collector’s bookstore on my way to the bus.  Of course, I went in.  Often.  One day, I found a first edition of The Sword and the Stone.  It still had the flawless original jacket.  I think I got tears in my eyes and paid something like $12.00 for it.  I know we’re supposed to put such treasures in glass-encased bookshelves, to be admired but not touched beyond a mild dusting.  But the book vibrated in my hands, begging to be read.  The book is dogeared now, but it’s still my treasure.  Cringe if you must.

 

That’s where I discovered Madame Mimm!  And the snake story appears in the original version, that same snake who has such an important role in the final chapters.  So, once again, I had discovered MORE! 

 

Since then, I have found separate publications of each of the collected works, mostly in libraries.  Each one is worth a separate read.  Each was edited for compilation in The Once and Future King.

 

White creates characters who spin their own stories, some so comical that I smile just thinking of them, some hapless but never passive, and some profoundly dark.  He throws in little delightful bits, like Arthur speaking with a boy named Tom of Warwick.  I didn’t pick up on it when I read The Once and Future King the first time.  But I caught it in the musical version of Camelot, at the end, Richard Harris as Arthur, speaking to Tom of Warwick, sending him home to tell the tale of Camelot.  Where once it never rained ‘til after sundown…sorry.  Sir Thomas Malory was from Warwickshire. 

 

The stories of Arthur came from all over, but the first writer that I know of to compile the stories of Arthur was Sir Thomas Malory in the 1200s.  Malory wrote parts of Le Morte d’Arthur from prison.  It was while I was reading Malory that a friend said to me, “If you like that, you have to read The Once and Future King.”  I thoroughly enjoyed Malory.  But I read a prose version of it by Keith Baines.  Very readable.  I love the battle scenes.  They’re hysterically funny.  A knight can be gashed from groin to sternum, steaming guts spilling to the ground, and he’ll pick them up, stuff them back into his belly, wrap himself up and return to battle. 

 

Malory also included Tristram stories, which are a hoot.  That guy was a total man-whore, who used the excuse, sorry, honey, I thought she was you.  My favorite Tristram story is the one when he rescues one of the Elaines, I can’t remember which one, and Tristram wouldn’t know either.  Elaine is being publicly boiled in a cauldron of oil for some transgression.  Tristram pulls her naked, pink body from the boiling cauldron, saving her life and causing her to fall madly in love with him.  When I say madly, I mean it.  The lady turns out to be quite coocoo in later stories.  But, after the oil incident, she was reportedly pink for days. 

 

Most college students have been assigned the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  I’ve found so many stories like that in second hand bookstores, and they’re like little pieces of candy. 

 

Next that I know of is Tennison’s epic poem, Mort d’Arthur.  Tennison’s work best told the story of The Lady of Shalot, which has been rendered beautifully in music and painting.  I have a poster of the Waterhouse painting in my dining area. 

 

White came along in the 1940s.  Steinbeck wrote a compilation of some of the Arthurian stories.  Mark Twain wrote humorous story of a time traveler, who goes back to Arthur’s time, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

 

Mary Stewart wrote a popular trilogy, centering around Merlyn.

 

The Mists of Avalon is a title that comes up when discussing books about Arthur. 

 

I can’t think of any other prominent works about Arthur.  These are just the things I’ve read.  I suppose I could go back to before Malory.  The further back I go, the closer I will get to writings made when the nitty gritty of the stories can be laid bare.   

 

The stories depict a time in England when Roman Christians were in the process of stamping out paganism and replacing it with Christianity.  The world is populated by witches, who are evil, whose ways must be vilified and annihilated.  The greatest quest of the round table is to find the holy grail.  Knights gain strength from their purity, each sin diminishes them.  Only Galahad, who is without sin, is able to see the grail.  If I go back to before Malory, will I find writings made when people believed these things?  When pagan England was under siege of Roman ideology? When rituals focusing on the lyrical processes of Nature were going underground, to be replaced by a system whose god had martyred his own son.  In place of herbal remedies and midwives, stone edifices were erected to house stories with a focus on white men, their deeds, their battles, their destruction. To find stories written during those times would be a prize. 

Retirement

 

 

Retirement.  How old was I when I started to think about it?  How many years into my career?  Early on, I had great imaginings about what it would be like.  “I’ll travel the world!” I thought, unraveling a mental montage. Standing in front of St. Mark’s in Venice.  Strolling a dusty open market in India.  Playing on the beaches of Cambodia.  Revisiting The Tate, MOMA, Palazzo Borgese.  Walking the Camino de Santiago…at least part of it. 

 

I’d get in shape, take myself out into the woods for local hikes at least once a week.  I’d walk.  Join a gym with a pool.  Oh, I’d be so busy taking care of myself.  Each day a new adventure. 

 

But the moon has two sides.  The dark side of the moon returned echoes from an endless cavern.  Will I have enough?  Will I be able to keep my house?  Will I be healthy?  Will I be alone?  Will I die within a year or so like my dad?  I’ve always thought that the health problem that took him was a symptom of a man who was just so tired of it all.  Would I be like that when I retire?  Tired of it all?   

 

Those were good questions.  But there are others I’ve identified now that I’m about 9 months into retirement.  For example, I had not anticipated what an emotional roller coaster it would be. 

 

• The corner turned away from having a generous paycheck and benefit package to relying on Social Security and Medicare.
• About a year before I retired, I started learning to make jewelry.  Beaded.  Silver.  Copper.  I began taking classes in silver smithing and transformed my carriage house into an art studio. 
• I opened an official business for my jewelry.
• Worried about what to do with my 401k. 

 

With the 401k, I went from:

Never touch it unless it’s an emergency.  New water heater.  New car.  A medical expense.  Emergency dental treatment.  Leave it for that purpose alone.  Don’t touch it unless you have to. 

 

To:

If I pay myself X a month, the 401k funds will last for X years.  That will give me just enough breathing room to cover my expenses, if I’m careful.  And, surely, my business will begin to kick in a little.

 

It’s taken nine months, but I’m finally quasi-comfortable with the financial side of things.  I’m going to be okay.  I have adequately provided for myself.  I just can’t live like I was when I was bringing in a couple of paychecks every month, each having been more than my one monthly Social Security allotment. 

 

Dealing with Social Security and Medicare intimidates me.  They are both, at once, extremely efficient and inefficient at the same time.  When they do something wrong, it takes hours of maneuvering around the  bureaucracy to speak to someone who can address the problem.  Their rules seem random and incomprehensible. 

 

The details are boring and typical big bureaucracy balderdash.  But I realize now that I haven’t dealt with this kind of bureaucracy since I was in college.  Maybe that’s another thing college taught me.  How to go with the flow of a nasty, rule-ridden, system.   

 

My memories of the University bureaucracy are of a place where each person behind a desk only holds his one piece of the puzzle.  No one within the bureaucracy can see the whole machine.  So, rather than turning its gears, the student is the one spinning, spinning, gone.  It takes fortitude, courage and a little bit of being the one who goes where angels fear to tread.

 

Thank god that isn’t the whole of it.  Making jewelry has become a passion.  I do bead work inside the house and silver and copper work out in the shop… or the Nan Cave, as I like to think of it. 

 

Yes.  I am alone.  But I’ve settled into my aloneness to a place where I am never lonely.  I enjoy my solitude.  I frequently go into a creative zone, where I have so many things to turn to.  Writing.  Just sitting and reading a book.  Working on a challenging bead project.  Going out to the shop and losing myself in the tools and materials I’ve put together.  Sometimes I come out of the zone to realize that it’s after 9PM, darkness dropped on top of me, and I’m famished.  I enjoy long, hot bubble baths and time with my kitties.  I love cooking myself interesting meals.  I’m never bored and am surprised to find that I am usually quite happy. 

 

A few months ago, I started selling stuff on eBay.  I buy stuff from garage sales and thrift stores.  Then resell it.  I’m still getting the hang of it.  I buy figurines, vases, trinket dishes.  I look for things that make me wonder why someone left this object behind.  I’ve found some wonderful stuff.  I haven’t made much money yet.  I’ve sold a few items, and it always surprises me to see what sells.  But I have a lot to learn about how the world of online retail can serve me.  In the meantime, it’s great fun.  I’ve become a prowler of thrift stores.  I have a pile of stuff acquired but not yet sold, and I refuse to believe that I may be becoming a hoarder.  I will NOT become a hoarder.  NOT.  So, I enjoy some of these things for a while.  Then I let them go. 

 

So, I have a couple of activities that fulfill two purposes.  These activities are designed to be fun and to bring in a little bit of money.  And, between these two activities, jewelry making and eBay haunting, I am quite busy.

 

My social life has gotten a little busier, too.  I’m such a recluse.  I resist anything that gets me around people.  But I recognize that I must get out of here a few times a week to be around other people.  I go to one of my two favorite restaurants, places where everyone knows me, where I don’t need to see the menu.  Even when there is little conversation, I feel comforted being in these familiar public places. 

 

I’ve also done a couple of craft fairs.  Those have been really fun and get me out and around lots of people.  Craft fairs are so good for me. 

 

Immediately after I retired, I went to that familiar panicky survival mode.  How does one not work?  In the past, I’ve had a lot of lean times when I was between jobs.  Finding a new job was a horror show of putting myself out there, investigating what came back.  Singing back to middle-managers my enthusiasm for being part of a team, solving problems, elevating the structure, when inside feeling like garbage, feeling hopeless, being so full of fear that nothing would come along until it was too late.  When I retired, that’s where I went and stayed for about 2 months.

 

Then it slowly dawned on me that this was not the same situation I’d been in many times before.  No. Retirement was something entirely different, and the plunge into survival mode fear and despair was not warranted here.  If I wasn’t careful, I might start having thoughts about being tired of it all.  I backed myself out of that groove and started off in a new direction.  And I’m so glad I did, because this road is beautiful and full of surprises. 

 

This Party is for You

 

I attended a seminar last weekend in my small town of Monroe, Washington, which had the purpose of finding ways to make our community more inclusive.  It’s mighty white here in Monroe…but not really.  We have a large Hispanic population and a small black population, a smattering of Muslims, a growing group from India and an occasional Asian.  But our community events do not include people who aren’t white.  It’s not intentional.  But all of the events are planned by white people.  So, music in the park centers around bands that appeal to old white men.  No one’s going to suggest that we have a dance in the park that plays nothing but songs from James Baldwin’s Spotify list. 

 

Now, I know that there is racism in this town.  Politically, we’re divided, like everywhere else.  Like everywhere else, the hate faction that has sprung from right-wing politics goes about carrying a bullhorn.  I know that racism exists, that my brothers and sisters who are not white face dangers and challenges that I can only try to imagine.  I know that I go about my life from a place of privilege, without even seeing how privilege manifests itself in my life.  I am not blissful in my ignorance, though.  I want to know, to understand what’s actually happening.

 

So, this seminar focused on how to build a more inclusive community.  Then, one of the facilitators said something that hit me between the eyes.  She said that the two black women in our community who normally would have co-facilitated this event were not there because they are too afraid to come to the YMCA building.  This seminar, by definition, should have been safe.  The YMCA should be a safe place.  Yet they were too afraid to come and be with us.

 

I commented on this.  I said that I wanted a better understanding of what these women were dealing with.  Why would they feel unsafe in a room full of women (and one man) who had gathered with the express purpose of fostering inclusion.  The white facilitator told me that she would be happy to take me aside, maybe for coffee, and explain it to me.  But, she said that by even talking with them, I would further victimize them.  By talking to them, I would become a perpetrator of their oppression. 

 

I don’t know what to do with that.  If my community is that toxic, and I’m not saying it isn’t, what the hell good would it do to have an Hispanic band at a community gathering?  If attending a meeting with the purpose of discussing inclusion is not safe, if entering the YMCA, which publishes its core values as caring, respect, honesty, responsibility, and inclusiveness, is not safe, then why would anyone think that encouraging more ethnic vendors to set up in our farmer’s market is a solution?

 

I’ve heard many time that it is not any black person’s job to explain it to me.  Indeed, the facilitator pointed out to me my ignorance in this regard, that by even speaking to these women who felt too traumatized to attend this meeting, I would further their battering. 

 

I don’t know…maybe I am incredibly ignorant, but I think that, before throwing a party for people who don’t trust me, it might be a good idea for us to sit together and get to know one another better.  It might be a good idea to ask our non-white neighbors what they would like.  It’s like we’re changing the menu to appeal to people who would never come to our restaurant, for people whose refined palates we haven’t bothered to become familiar.  It’s all well intentioned.  But, as white people, is it our place to decide what would make them feel more included?  If getting to know them better is considered abuse, then I’m at a loss.  That’s where I get stuck.

 

So, I turn to the teachers who have spoken out.  Again, I turn to books, movies and art.  But I don’t understand how I can help effect change if I have to cross the street to avoid sharing the sidewalk with someone who finds me a threat because of my color.  I came across this clip of James Baldwin this morning.

https://fb.watch/n9Aa1KhlZK/