Hope is not a luxury

And it requires that we fight for it until our fingers bleed

A timely exhibit in Arles

It’s impossible to start today’s post without mentioning my bottomless grief and rage over the self-destruction of the United States of America. I got out of bed without looking at my phone this morning and came to my desk to write unpolluted from the news. But Tim has just come downstairs to tell me. And now I hardly know where to start. My own issues suddenly feel greatly irrelevant.

This is not normally an overtly political newsletter, but my personal politics have always been passionate and clear. I haven’t posted much about US politics because 1) many others have been doing a more thorough job, and because 20 most of the people who follow this, I am guessing, treasure many of the things I do: freedom of speech, bodily autonomy for women, a diverse population, arts, literature, civil rights, nonviolence, freedom to love, fighting racism, homophobia, and discrimination in all of its forms. I don’t feel a need to convince you, my readers, of the value of these things.

Yet our country has just elected at man who has admitted to sexual assault, who has been convicted of a multitude of serious crimes, who has tried to overturn democracy, led insurrection, who abhors women and nonwhites, and continually displays signs of madness and mental deterioration. Just for starters. It’s a big win for misogyny and racism and white patriarchs.

I look at that short list and cannot fathom how even one person with a shred of humanity could vote for him, let alone how many people did. Especially the women. I am shocked that a single woman could be so deeply self-loathing, so ignorant, so trapped under the confines of patriarchy she cannot understand the dire future Trump plans for her. I am appalled at Trump voters’ lack of interest in protecting their daughters, sisters, wives, and friends. In voting for Trump they have failed to protect the environment from which we all draw sustenance. They have failed to protect democracy itself. And why would anyone want to feed the narcissism of the most toxic and dangerous man ever to run for president? The 2006 election proved the deep misogyny of our country, and today tells us that things have only gotten worse.

So many of my friends from around the world wrote to me yesterday, hoping with me that Americans would vote with their brains and their hearts, would recognize that this election doesn’t just matter to Americans, it matters to the entire world. They had hope for us as a country. And now they do not. Once again, we have shamed ourselves on the international stage, revealing the ugliest, basest part of our people.

For so many years we have talked ourselves hoarse about this, have written and reported. None of it mattered. Maybe it’s that we have forgotten how to listen, how to read, how to assess facts. We have definitely lost the ability to think critically, to understand how to determine truth from fiction.

I voted, but it didn’t matter. I am a minority in a country that has lost its collective mind, has sold it to the highest bidder.

Under Trump, we will see the end of government efforts to fight climate change, which frankly is my primary issue. Not one other issue matters without a habitable planet. The few wild places we have left will not be protected. Women will continue to lose rights to their own bodies. We will be at greater risk of nuclear war. You all know the list. I don’t need to repeat what we already know.

This is no excuse for us to lie down and allow ourselves to be ground into the earth. To allow our earth to be ground into toxins. This is an excuse for us to fight with all of the (nonviolent) weapons we have. Our pens, our wills, our brushes, our chisels, our imaginations, our creativity, our diligence.

I don’t want to write about any of this. I don’t want to feel my struggling body consumed with rage again, not when it already has so much on its to-do list. So I will resolve not to feel this, not to dissolve into a dew. I cannot afford to feel my emotions; I need to stay upright and resolved in order to act.

I’m so tired of hearing, “oh, Trump voters are just misunderstood. We write about them incorrectly, we don’t pander to them enough, we just don’t get their issues.” Anyone who thinks Trump cares about anyone’s issues other than his own is willfully blind and deaf. I cannot excuse voters who chose to vote against our environment, women, arts, peace, law, democracy, and sane discourse. There are more malevolent, racist, misogynist, and criminal people in the country than I ever dreamed. Those who would say, oh, I voted for Trump because of his economic policies or lower gas prices, that is no excuse to willingly overlook his views on the planet and more than half the human race. (Besides, I think gas prices ought to soar so high no one can afford to continue to use petrol and is forced to invest in non-polluting technology. Destroying our own habitat ought to be prohibitively expensive. How else will anything change?).

I guess this is when I find out which subscribers voted differently. I will be sorry to lose subscribers (if by any chance there are any Trump supporters among you), but I cannot pretend that this election does not eviscerate me, that this election is something I can forget while sitting at my computer.

So what do we do now? How to move forward?

“Storm the capitol?” suggested a person close to me (WHO WAS JOKING). “Clearly, Trump voters think insurrection an okay thing to do.”

But that’s not the kind of thing our side does. Because we still have/had hope for democracy, for the law. Because by and large, those who voted with me do not believe in violence as an appropriate agent of change. Nor do they believe in overthrowing democracy. We believe in using our minds and speech and creativity rather than guns.

I can’t end on a pessimistic note, just as I cannot get through the day if I lose hope that this chemo will work. Hope is as essential as breath.

Thus. What I hope for in this moment is that we will haul our exhausted, enraged, grief-stricken bodies from the floor, and re-engage in our efforts to educate our children, to create art that provokes thought, and to protect our world. Our natural spaces need us to fight for them, hard. I hope we will rise up to stand in front of all threats to the environment, that we will throw our energies into blocking drilling, fracking, coal mining. That we will continue to invent green technologies. To fight to promote these green technologies and outlaw oil. That we will fight harder than ever for human rights, civil rights, abortion rights, and the arts, everything we believe to be important and life-giving. That we will redouble our efforts to raise boys to be good men, to raise girls to power.

The only alternative is despair, and this is what we really cannot afford, women least of all. Some of my friends say their children have already given up hope of a future for themselves, they say all we can do is to love each other as we watch our species die.

I cannot accept this, for myself or for my daughter (who was the first person to ring me with condolences this morning, as she had been following election results since 6 am).

My dear friend Annette wrote this to me the day before the election: “There is reason to hope.” She wrote this when I had more hope. But I think what she continued to say is all the more vital now: 

“And there is.  We are all so connected, human beings that love and hope.  If one of us loses hope, others can carry us until it returns.  The heart is made to hope.  Our hearts are made to hope together.”

Hope requires more strength and work than ever before, but never has it been so critical.

A few immortal words from two of my favorite authors, Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston:

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilisations heal... I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art..." - 

Toni Morrison, from her 2015 essay entitled *No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear*

“No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

Zora Neale Hurston in her essay “How it Feels to be Colored Me.”

And because as we go one, we will need to look after ourselves in small ways, I ended my phone call with Theo by saying I was going to take a New York Times quiz on which vegetables are better for you cooked and which are more nutritious raw. “That,” said Theo, “Is the most you thing I ever heard.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/10/well/eat/vegetable-healthy-raw-cooked.html

One last, unrelated note:

No eulogies, please

I want to clarify the invitation in my last post. I am not looking for eulogies, nor necessarily stories that reflect well on me. I am simply seeking concrete, specific stories and anecdotes of all kinds that you remember from our common past. Uncensored. Maybe even something that will embarrass me. I have made no shortage of questionable decisions in my life. I want memories for my daughter that show me as I actually am and was.

Thank you to those who have written me already, with stories I may have forgotten! And of course you are free to write other memories as they bubble up, if they do.

PS: I still owe you flamingo stories

PPS: I’m also working on a sonnet in praise of bowels, so you have that to look forward to (Thanks, Michelle Jana Chan, for the challenge!)

French flamingos: Sometimes we all need to curl into a ball for awhile.