I don’t have a country place to go to. I’m in the same place every day watching the headlines get more and more terrifying. What a way to spend my last years. How dare I feel sorry for myself in the face of the abandonment of the people of Cuba and Iran and Gaza, all by one madman and his accomplices. how can we not rend our clothes? And howl in shame.
The country helps a bit, barely. Mostly, like you, like millions of others, I read the headlines and I feel this extraordinary sense of outrage and shame (the people who should feel most ashamed, don't), and like you I can't help thinking that this might hit me slightly differently if I were thirty years younger. But I am what I am and it is what it is and - again, like you - all my thoughts go to the people, from Ukraine to Gaza to Cuba to Iran. It's a brutal time, and yet evil does fall - or it has, historically - and we may yet live to see a Nuremburg 2.0. I cling to that hope.
I cherish my “bubble” moments when my heart is lifted and the gut pain dulled. As a dog walker randomly meeting strangers outdoors the like-minded are drawn to each other sharing our thoughts and hopes of an end to this madness. Twenty minute walks turn into hour long conversations of who some of us really are and the human connection that bonds us.
Thanks, Lynn. These links and conversations between like-minded people suggest that something good may yet come of this insanity. I'd like to think so. After all, there are still more of us (a lot more) than there are of them.
I, too, have felt this sense of rupture: "I’ve been feeling the tug of nostalgia – not for some Golden Age that never existed, or existed only for those lucky enough to have been born in the right time and place, in the right hue and gender – but for a world that felt recognizable. Intelligible. Perhaps even fixable. I miss that pre-lapsarian age, before our Fall into whatever it is we’ve fallen into."
Willa Cather claimed that the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts. It's happening again, not just with injustice, war, and inequities. But with the underlying systems that once made sense of these things. I keep reading The Chronicle of Higher Education with a kind of morbid curiosity, and the latest is that David Brooks going to go teach humanities at Yale (with no PhD). The attention economy is not "truth," but at least for now it's influencers all the way down.
The best we can do is to protect the small beautiful things close at hand. And bear witness as we're able. And give to those in need as we can. If/when there is a larger purpose to serve, it will present itself.
I agree with every word. As for David Brooks, that paragon of journalism, well, you know how I feel about him. Not sure who the appointment reflects most badly on - him, or Yale. Yale, I'm thinking.
I'm actually going to write down your last paragraph. Beautifully put, admirably succinct, something to live by.
Disdain, cruelty, arrogance, on and on . . . and what can we counter with, other than continuing to say, "This is not okay." Only trouble is I'm saying it to my representatives, who are among the GOP arrogant and cruel. It's like shouting into a vacuum. But as with you, Mark, physical work, preferably outside, helps - not so much as a refuge (although at times it can be that) but always as a form of solace.
Evening here in Moravia and completely knackered. What is it about hard, physical work that slowly but surely purges your soul of accumulated shit? Maybe it's the fact that wood or stone don't lie, a saw is just a saw. It's a temporary refuge at best (and definitely not an answer), but for a time, I agree, it can bring some solace. For a few hours at least we're unable to think about half-naked Trump with those heartbreakingly little kids, or the the pain being visited on ordinary people by criminals.
I can never ignore your posts because they are always so well done, always serve well to articulate the rage horror and despair in a way that hurts but helps.
I need a Mrs K in my life though I know at heart I have all I need.
North Woods is an absolute favorite. Did not know about the other which is now on my list.
I don’t have a country place to go to. I’m in the same place every day watching the headlines get more and more terrifying. What a way to spend my last years. How dare I feel sorry for myself in the face of the abandonment of the people of Cuba and Iran and Gaza, all by one madman and his accomplices. how can we not rend our clothes? And howl in shame.
The country helps a bit, barely. Mostly, like you, like millions of others, I read the headlines and I feel this extraordinary sense of outrage and shame (the people who should feel most ashamed, don't), and like you I can't help thinking that this might hit me slightly differently if I were thirty years younger. But I am what I am and it is what it is and - again, like you - all my thoughts go to the people, from Ukraine to Gaza to Cuba to Iran. It's a brutal time, and yet evil does fall - or it has, historically - and we may yet live to see a Nuremburg 2.0. I cling to that hope.
I cherish my “bubble” moments when my heart is lifted and the gut pain dulled. As a dog walker randomly meeting strangers outdoors the like-minded are drawn to each other sharing our thoughts and hopes of an end to this madness. Twenty minute walks turn into hour long conversations of who some of us really are and the human connection that bonds us.
Thank you 🙏♥️
Thanks, Lynn. These links and conversations between like-minded people suggest that something good may yet come of this insanity. I'd like to think so. After all, there are still more of us (a lot more) than there are of them.
🔥🔥🔥
I, too, have felt this sense of rupture: "I’ve been feeling the tug of nostalgia – not for some Golden Age that never existed, or existed only for those lucky enough to have been born in the right time and place, in the right hue and gender – but for a world that felt recognizable. Intelligible. Perhaps even fixable. I miss that pre-lapsarian age, before our Fall into whatever it is we’ve fallen into."
Willa Cather claimed that the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts. It's happening again, not just with injustice, war, and inequities. But with the underlying systems that once made sense of these things. I keep reading The Chronicle of Higher Education with a kind of morbid curiosity, and the latest is that David Brooks going to go teach humanities at Yale (with no PhD). The attention economy is not "truth," but at least for now it's influencers all the way down.
The best we can do is to protect the small beautiful things close at hand. And bear witness as we're able. And give to those in need as we can. If/when there is a larger purpose to serve, it will present itself.
I agree with every word. As for David Brooks, that paragon of journalism, well, you know how I feel about him. Not sure who the appointment reflects most badly on - him, or Yale. Yale, I'm thinking.
I'm actually going to write down your last paragraph. Beautifully put, admirably succinct, something to live by.
Disdain, cruelty, arrogance, on and on . . . and what can we counter with, other than continuing to say, "This is not okay." Only trouble is I'm saying it to my representatives, who are among the GOP arrogant and cruel. It's like shouting into a vacuum. But as with you, Mark, physical work, preferably outside, helps - not so much as a refuge (although at times it can be that) but always as a form of solace.
Evening here in Moravia and completely knackered. What is it about hard, physical work that slowly but surely purges your soul of accumulated shit? Maybe it's the fact that wood or stone don't lie, a saw is just a saw. It's a temporary refuge at best (and definitely not an answer), but for a time, I agree, it can bring some solace. For a few hours at least we're unable to think about half-naked Trump with those heartbreakingly little kids, or the the pain being visited on ordinary people by criminals.
Amen on everything, Mark, and how right you are to recall Tony E's quiet but brilliant novel!
Disdain, smirks, shrugs sure covers it.
I can never ignore your posts because they are always so well done, always serve well to articulate the rage horror and despair in a way that hurts but helps.
I need a Mrs K in my life though I know at heart I have all I need.
North Woods is an absolute favorite. Did not know about the other which is now on my list.
May the cutting, piling, fixing work it’s magic.