Going forward from today

We take care of each other

I’m writing this, you’re reading it; so that means that both of us are carrying the energy of resilience, determination, strength, perseverance, hope, and an abiding inner joy that guides and lights our way. This is the spirit of our Ancestors—allll the way back to before we became human. We’ll get through this, and a lot more besides. We’ll have to fight, obviously, but we can do that. Take very good care of yourself so we’re ready. BLACK LIVES MATTER.

—My dear wise friend Lauren Bock, on Facebook, November 6, 2024

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November 6, 2024

I am in shock.

I imagine many of you are too.

I know that beneath my shock are anger, grief, and fear.

I love my country, for all its flaws. I believe in the idea of America. I believe(d) that we can heal the wounds of our nation and bend the arc of our moral universe toward justice.

The enormous energy, intelligence, and joy of Kamala Harris and the Democrats’ campaigns helped me believe that my dream of a land where, after everything, justice, equality, compassion, and the common good hold sway as values among the majority of the humans living here. Where we could heal from the legacies of colonialism, genocide, and slavery.

Today, that belief is sorely tested. Maybe gone.

Several weeks ago, David, my husband, confessed that he didn’t think the U.S. would elect a Black, south Asian woman to the presidency. (We both supported Harris and voted straight blue tickets.) Unfortunately for us all, he was right. Misogyny and patriarchy, including racism and a hatred of weakness represented by children, the elderly, poor and working-class folks, and people with disabilities, ruled the day.

It’s hard to feel good about humans today.

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I generate hope and inspiration as fuel to move me through the world. I need them. I am by nature, and a Jupiter-ruled sun and moon, an optimist. But not today. Today I am a gutted, underslept, under-hydrated, over-caffeinated, unbathed, weirdly-fed (cereal for lunch, and I don’t even eat cereal) human. Vulnerable, disappointed, angry, and sad.

Okay, I’m drinking a glass of water right now.

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In September I had the enormous good fortune to gather with women I love and admire, in a beautiful place in the Pacific Northwest, for the last retreat of those we’ve been attending together once or twice a year, absent quarantine years, since 2013. Several people there told me how they enjoy this newsletter. I vowed then to dust off “The Enthusiast” and start sending it out again. But first, I devoted myself to volunteering for the Harris campaign, as well as doing some personal writing.

And now?

Lidia Yuknavich says that writers must “write in the face of fuck.” And this morning, sitting in my garden in front of my little Mary statue (it is ominously warm in central New York), beads in hand, I knew, in that way that crisis can strip away bullshit and create clarity, what I want and need to do. I need to gather with my people. I need to keep making music. And I need to write. To you.

I need to write, period. And I need to reach out to you with my words.

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What do you do in the face of tremendous uncertainty and fear for the future? What are you doing today?

I don’t have any appointments today, and I gave myself permission to do anything. I stayed home. David is working from home today, so he has been spending time in Zoom meetings and then sitting with me in between. Just talking, hanging out.

This morning I sat on the couch with my dog and read Murder before Evensong, by the Reverend Richard Coles, a cozy and delightful (and well-written) mystery starring a rector in the Church of England and the very English eccentrics on the estate where he serves. I checked it out from the New York Public Library on the Libby app for my Kindle. It’s delightful.

This idea of the “cozy” book, whether mystery or romance or fantasy, is new to me. I’m here for it. I read a lot of literary fiction, a lot of serious shit. I could use some coziness. A few weeks ago I checked out—also from the NYPL, also for my Kindle—The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna. Also English. The hero is an English witch who was born in India and adopted into England. She’s a woman in her 20s, and the book has wonderful portrayals of characters of color, queer people, a funky old house, a little bit of spiciness with a white Irish librarian (I mean, come on), a social conscience with a happy ending where good triumphs.

This morning I also sat at my piano and played “La Valse d’Amélie,” from the movie. I played it over and over. I worked the left hand—lots of arpeggios—and the right hand—with its melody carried by the pinkie and the “alto” voice working the thumb and index finger especially—together, and then separately. I slowed my playing way down and sped it up. It is such a fun song to play; it feels almost mechanical in its different smoothly moving parts. It makes me think of typewriters and clock gears and bicycles.

After cereal lunch and more coffee, I decided that the spider plants that live on a shelf high on the wall above the dining table are looking awful and neglected. I started pulling off dead leaves, and I snipped off the largest babies, putting them in clean jam jars filled with water (and promising not to let them rot there but actually to plant them in a few weeks when they have more roots). I took a root-bound plant outside and made a mess repotting it. (Did I mention that it’s warm today? I’m sitting here in shorts and a tee shirt with the window next to me wide open.)

Now I’m writing. Later I will cook dinner. Concrete things. Grounded in this moment things. Taking tight hold of what I love.

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November 7, 2024

Yesterday we canceled our subscription to the New York Times. This morning I canceled my subscription to the Atlantic. The Washington Post went out a while ago; I wish I could have canceled it a second time after Jeff Bezos refused to publish their endorsement of Kamala Harris. David is weighing canceling his subscription to his beloved New Yorker. The fourth estate—US legacy media—has failed us, utterly. I believe they share a huge part of the blame for this election outcome.

Yesterday I laid really low. Quiet. Midday a text arrived in my group chat of far-flung women, from a dear Latine friend who lives in Miami: “It's a day like today that the BIPOC community should be checked on/in by our white sisters.” Whew! Truth. I am so grateful for friends like her, who trust me enough to hold me accountable. Shit. I forget, all the time, how my silence can cause harm. Also, I know that one of the legacies of whiteness (and of my family of origin) is this quiet, this reserve, this holding things in, this not reaching out. One of my best friends where I live, who grew up in a South American country and culture, and who has lived many years here as a (highly skilled, privileged) immigrant of color, expresses her surprise and dismay that her American friends don’t check in on one another in small ways, on the regular. “Is this just how it is in America?” This is how it is in white America, to be sure. And even though she has told me this several times, I still forget all. the. time. Dammit.

It may be different for some white subgroups—perhaps in Appalachia?—but for most white folks in the US, especially those of us with social and economic privilege, we don’t know how to do mutual aid. We don’t have good instincts for when to speak out, when to call in, when to use our privilege for good, when to protect ourselves, what to do to keep ourselves and others safe through hard times. Mostly, I don’t know how to do these things. We’re going to need to learn. Right now. Yesterday. I can tell you that building a bunker—literal or metaphorical—is not going to get us through.

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I intend to write here more regularly. The focus—which we need now more than ever—will be, as always, on what I love. That includes frivolous pleasures, and it includes dead-serious needs. It will include resources for getting us through. There are hard times ahead. As my friend Perdita says, I will gather my kin close: “my blood kin, my soul kin, my fur kin, my odd kin.”

Thank you so much for reading.