Broken brain

Midweek Mélange

Photo by Naman Rastogi on Unsplash

To all those who had to be somewhere today on a day that should be a National Day of Mourning, I give you great respect. If I had not already been off today, I would have taken a sick day, because not in the sickest I have ever been in my life have I felt this particular combination of physical, emotional and deep soul malaise.

My brain feels broken, exploded by the inability to comprehend the ignorance and betrayal of what has happened to our country in the past twenty four hours, as a supposed majority of voters (I am not convinced there was not massive interference and loss of democratic votes) became a conduit for the destruction of our democracy. I sit with you in a state of shock, disbelief, grief, and an utter inability to fathom what possessed people to walk blindly into a dangerous and unknown future.

I wondered if this is what it must have felt like on September 3^rd, 1939 when the UK and France both declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland two days earlier. The gut-wrenching realization that there was The Time Before—and there is The Time Now. Except that we cannot join as a nation to fight the external enemy, because he and his minions are the enemies within.

On a personal level, in my small family, I am the singular blue dot. They live four hours away in a snug den of whatever the fuck kind of FoxNews cult religion they practice, and I have never felt so isolated.

Last Christmas I had a chat with my ex who seemed to be coming around when he said he wasn’t sure about voting for [he whose name shall not be mentioned]; I said “He is a fascist. The 2016 inauguration speech was absolutely redolent of Hitler’s, and I said so at the time.” He nodded, then said he wouldn’t vote for Biden. I said fine, just please don’t vote for the other. He agreed he just wouldn’t vote. Maybe he didn’t, but it seems a lot of people did. What the hell happened?

I thought my only child, my adult daughter, my intelligent, educated, ER nurse daughter, was at least considering Harris as we texted during the debate and she said “Hm, she’s kicking butt—I’ll have to look into her more.” But last night at about midnight, she texted to ask how I was doing and to say “I’m sorry” in a way that made it clear she had not voted for Harris.

I imagined this morning texting her to say, “ I am sorry for failing you as a parent,” but immediately thought better of it, of course, for all kinds of reasons.

I never really thought I’d have to seriously consider moving to Canada or Scandinavia, but there it is. Then again, I feel it would be wrong to abandon the fight at home; if we flee, we leave it to the now-official enemies within, the billionaires, the corrupt Supreme Court. The people targeted by this disgusting cabal will need our support and protection, and the deluded, malinformed masses will eventually need our help to detox from the Kool-Aid they’ve become addicted do.

To paraphrase Monty Python: We’re not dead yet!

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Hope is the Thing With Feathers

By Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That cold abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

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Thank you for enduring at the Verbihund Café.

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