the land of our enemies

There’s not much I have to say that probably isn’t being said elsewhere more eloquently. I don’t have much either to say about my own feelings or knowledge or hunches or experience. It’s been grim in the land of my day job, so perhaps some part of me was battening a hatch somewhere. It’s still grim. On Tuesday I became a member of public television so I could take my anti-anxiety medication and pound a CBD soda while watching Masterpiece theater and eventually go to bed as messages started appearing on my cell phone from my people. My heart raced, I took the emergency pill, I slept dreamlessly and soundly (which, for another time, was notable.) And then I woke up.

Every morning since I have woken up and it’s now light out again. I look out into the split between the wall of the friary next door and the telephone line and then I remember, and I wonder when that feeling will shift, and what it will shift into.

So on Wednesday I listened and read this poem over and over again. A friend shared it a few years ago, and last November it really hit me. Perhaps it will forever, in the core of my donkey soul.

I have my own thoughts about what happens next, none of them good. I don’t feel surprised, and I don’t feel broken hearted, and I don’t feel deeply disappointed. I don’t feel hopeful. I feel very afraid. I also have taken my pills every morning dutifully and been drinking tea and finally doing the things I needed to do when I moved back here. There are things to be done. As Luke O’Neil quoting MJ Lenderman says, It falls apart, we all got work to do. 

I have spent my entire life watching my father see Venezuela crumble, and what that looks like. Of course it can happen here. But there are things to learn from. There is grim resolve. Generally I am trying to reserve any ability to pull on cheer for him when I need to.

But I am very afraid and there’s no need to put my brain’s machinations here, only to say: take care of each other. And think about what you would do to stop another from being thrown into cruelty. And how we can ameliorate the slow drip of it as it appears.

There certainly was the moment of how stupid it is to write, but the more I think about it, the more I realize if ever there were a time to leave it out on the field, throw it to the wind, save nothing for the way back, it’s now. That you make things to make things, and be out in the world, and if anything has ever seemed dumber, it is institutional acclaim. I am making small strides. I will keep writing this newsletter, and if it’s not too obnoxious, I like the idea of writing about art and creativity for a little while, and let’s see how that goes.

On that note, here’s the poem. I think listening to it is wonderful. Joy will look and feel like many things, I think, even if the naive notion of it will be far away for some time. But I think it will be found in the doing of things, however you may do them.

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Listen here:

Reasons to Survive November
Tony Hoagland
November like a train wreck—
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze—
but there's a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

—Or maybe I'll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
                in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
          like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

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Ceasefire now, always, keep trying.