Stories

I knew nothing about Dune and so didn’t have any expectations upon seeing Part 1 of the film several weeks back. While I dislike much about pandemic life, certain things are absolutely better now: curbside pickup, and the ability to stream movies as soon as they’re released, for example.

Anyway, Ol was with friends for the weekend, and Jack stayed here to attend some school events, so Tom and I found ourselves alone in WV and tired after a day of work. I’d had some wine and couldn’t have cared less what we watched —if I’m by myself, I never turn on the TV so am both behind and infinitely flexible— and Tom suggested Dune. Sure. We set a fire in the cast iron stove and settled in.

I love Star Wars and Harry Potter but dislike Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Where would Dune fall on the sci fi/fantasy spectrum? Squarely on the dystopian, polyglot, strong women, naive-handsome hero side of things as it turns out so, I was hooked.

I’ve since seen it 2.5 more times, including, today, on the big screen.

Is it an epic work for the ages? Jesus, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care. But did it speak to me? 100%. I loved the crafty, powerful shadow-walker women of the Bene Gesserit who look like pissed-off Italian widows (ps: Charlotte Rampling could pretend to be a daft penguin and I’d love her); Rebecca Ferguson’s quite fierceness and her stiff-jointed sign language; every bit of Timothée Chalamet and his interrupted adolescence (and marvelous head of hair); the endless dunes; the integrity and courage of some; and, as in Star Wars, the variety of language and the fact that most seem able to understand all.

I don’t know about y’all, but in my opinion, shit is bad in the world. Like, really bad. If you made me tell my honest opinion on staying at or below a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius and American democracy, I’d answer that at this point, both are pipe dream relics of a bygone era. No one in power is taking climate change as seriously as Greta, Bill McKibben, Paul Nicklen, and Cristina Mittermeier are (or Al Gore and Rachel Carson were generations ago) which means all their big talk is, as Greta says, “blah, blah, blah",” and if you can’t even enforce Congressional subpoenas, keep judges from overtly preferencing murderers, convince elected politicians to protect voting rights, or keep science and fact from being optional, well, you’re in bad shape.

At this point, we don’t deserve to have much. We are an arrogant, ignorant country, and it is heartbreaking, scary, and ugly. I say that as someone has fought constantly since early 2016 but with increasingly fading hope. The fire that propelled me for so long still burns, but it is a tired flicker now, worn by injustice, Covid, and the fact that trump will probably run again in ‘24.

So, post-apocalyptic sand worlds and worms and no water in 10191? Give it to me. Lest you think this is my only escapist activity, I am also reading Endurance, the incredible yet horrifying recounting of Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition that commenced in 1914. Hoo boy, I doubt I’d be any sort of hero in either tale, but I can definitely appreciate the stronger among us. And meanwhile, I continue to delight in the possibility of two of our goats being pregnant and in helping idealistic young people go to college. I tell you, it’s all a bit of kosher LSD.

But really, is that so wrong? Why not indulge ourselves for a few hours each day around the times we try so hard to hold everything else together? We are long into a pandemic that isn’t ending, the world is burning, white Republican lawbreakers seem impervious to consequences, there is a national mental health crisis in our young people, Facebook is Meta (eye roll that strains), and winter is coming.

Stories help us understand, process, navigate, and leave behind even momentarily the tough parts of life; the losses, disappointments, worries, unknowns, horror. Stories can help us feel less alone, give us hope, enliven our imaginations and dreams, inspire us. And so for now, I’ll take Shackleton and Paul Atreides and my goats and all who keep fighting with courage and faith. I’ll take and relish the moments of pure distraction and otherwise keeping donating and parenting and doing what I can, and I’ll start reading Dune to tide myself over to the 2023 release of Part 2.

Covid #InAmerica + goats + nature

We are so many months into this pandemic, and the relentless pressure and loss of it all weigh. On me, on many. On most? I suppose it depends on where you live, what you choose to believe, who you have lost, and what meaning you put into life, community, “freedom,” and duty.

I suspect you all know where I come down on this, but in the meantime, I spent a meaningful few hours on the Mall last Friday with my friend M in service of a local artist’s installation regarding Covid in America and the scale of what we’ve surrendered.

Some of you definitely saw this exhibit; others read about it. I couldn’t fathom its impact until I was there. I had volunteered to transcribe online submissions from people who wished to honor their loved ones. M and I sat at a Cosco table, armed with fresh Sharpies, white flags on metal stems, and printed cards to copy onto them. The volunteer to my left lost her brother to Covid last year; other volunteers didn’t share, at least to me, but some had helped for many days, and if I’ve learned anything at 45, it’s to never assume you know what someone is struggling with, processing, or feeling.

After more than an hour of transcription, M and I offered to tend plots of already-planted flags. Part of me hated to leave the writing tent: there was something so powerful and important about bearing witness to grieving people’s testimonies. By writing their final tribute, we, too, honored the dead they mourned.

But carefully, tenderly straightening flags felt almost like tidying a graveyard. Watch your step, provide honor where honor is due, memorialize.

While we were there, the artist, Suzanne Firstenberg, changed the number board to reflect the updated official death toll: 700,327. I mean, the sadness-rage cocktail became a frothy, shaken mess laced with ice chips. New Zealand’s count was like 14 (see tiny patch in above photo). This could have been different, the numbers could have been infinitely lower, perhaps we’d be done with this masking, distancing shit by now.

But no! ‘Murica. SMDH.

I am so glad M and I volunteered, but at the same time, it was a sad cap to a shitty week. A poo bonus, if you will.

Now, I am in WV. I drove out Monday morning after getting the boys off to school and finagling a childcare logistics schedule that any mother could do while sleeping but which would likely boggle the mind of most men. Because there are no longer llamas here, our pastures are overgrown and in need of serious mowing. I have spent many hours trimming, but this is beyond the scope of one woman and her motorized weed whacker. I priced brush-hogging it before asking about renting a herd of goats. Goats are half the cost.

And, goats are the answer. They are darling, friendly, make amusing sounds, require no gas, need to eat, love to eat, and poop liberally which amends our rocky “soil” in fabulously beneficial ways. Sixteen arrived Monday around noon, and I have loved every minute since. Well, I have loved everything except smelling the billy who is the sweetest animal but who smells so foul that it cannot be articulated. He is as if an ancient fraternity-house carpet, sodden with years of spilled beers, decided to start asking others to pee on it with abandon. And never washed. Holy shit.

Anyway, I love them, and it is so healing to be here by myself, including without Nutmeg and Ruthie, and to have no schedule and no one to feed or talk to other than the animals. To garden until I can hardly move another muscle. To order mulch and sifted soil. To eat a donut. To indulge the barn cats. To think and simply be. To acquire a Neighbor Account at Tractor Supply Co.

This is Romeo. He is my boyfriend.

Romeo from the back, omg. ;)

Losses

A teenager at one of my sons’ schools died yesterday. He had been at school the day before. I did not know him. I cannot stop thinking about him or his family. That after all these months into the pandemic, they are suffering a loss greater than anyone should ever bear, in the “best” of times. I look at my own teenager, who is finding his place in the world. It is hard for him sometimes. I remember how profoundly uncomfortable I felt in high school; it was hard. On the surface, both my son and I have/had everything. But the surface is not where real life stews or is experienced; well, not for most of us, I dare say.

I have no idea what happened to this boy, but I know that he was loved by family and friends, that he was valued, that his loss will quake daily in the lives of those who remain.

I have what seems to me, a large number of friends who have lost children. This is a terrible, wrecking awareness. I don’t know what it means. One was killed in a terrorist attack, one seized in utero until she died and had to be delivered, two died suddenly as toddlers from what seemed like the flu, another of a cellular disorder with which she was born. None were older than twelve. All were loved, wholly and forever.

I do not know what to make of these tragic horrors. I have tried to just listen and feed and record and sit. It is a bare minimum, but I haven’t known what else to do. I mean, is there anything? I know that it is something, means something, to show up, to bear witness. I am repeatedly appalled by all who run away instead of toward. But perhaps that is more an indictment of how we allow grief to be expressed in this country, what is appropriate, what is not. We smile and curate and please and make comfortable, and that is a shame, an affront, and a disservice in all too many circumstances.

Many times, often, life is ugly. It is cancer and blood and death and loss. It is divorce and infidelity and poverty and want. It is hunger, violence, desperation, and drought. It is loneliness, fear, and simply wanting someone to ask and then really listen, without interruption, without judgement, without deflection. It is young women performing superhuman athletic feats being abused by their sport’s “best team doctor,” winning gold medal after gold medal, but suffering in the dark quiet of silence and secret until they learn that the FBI has betrayed them and so their only recourse for justice is to sit, more publicly than should be humanly expected, in front of Congress to relay horrific stories of non-consensual vaginal penetration and molestation so that maybe someone will finally mete out some goddamn justice.

Today, a friend had an MRI to see if any of her sixteen brain tumors have shrunk in the face of a daily pill that costs nearly $600. She’s well into her second month of this, she is on Medicaid, and she must take these pills because cancer wrecked her spine, requiring a vertebral replacement and subsequent fusion, rendering her ineligible for chemo until her back has healed. I have not heard from her since just before the MRI. She was terrified; I pushed her to do the scan because information is power, or something like that. We must know if these pills are helping.

My dad is still recovering from his recent surgery, my teenager is navigating a huge high school that he interacted with last year from our basement, and I feel unmoored. Each morning, I help both boys with their hair. This, I can do. I love that they ask, and I feel tethered (though rushed) in those moments when I hoist myself up onto my bathroom counter so that I can have enough height on them to see their heads and help with parts, hair drying, man buns, and product application.

It feels heavy, and hard, this experience of living on a pendulum between youth trauma and older-folks trauma, of trying to be present in each day while realizing all the bad shit that lurks around the corner. That darkness isn’t myth or nightmare; it’s real and experienced, and to not honor that reality seems like the most hideous of invalidations. If you are lucky to have not experienced such things, either be gracious or be quiet.

I drove to WV this morning after dropping Jack off and packing Ol’s sleepover bag for a night at my parents’, a bar mitzvah, and a sleepover with friends. The entire drive was a cacophonous musical of wailing cats and clanging trampoline parts. When I arrived safely, I swallowed gratefully and thought about my freshman roommate, Rosemary, and her advice: “ Sometimes, Emmy, you just have to put on your face and get out there.” That advice has proven so wise and beneficial so many times over the past 25 years. Thank you, Rose.

So, I put on my face and met with an amazing Jack of all trades who is going to fell dead trees for us and also rent us goats to mow the pastures. He wasn’t feeling well so suggested we wear masks, and I was so thankful because that is not the norm here, and then we enjoyed time just roaming the land and talking about fences and baby goats and fainting goats and nasty billy goats, and a castrated man goat named Rambo.

And then I hoed and weeded and planted and mulched and cooked and petted and painted, and then my big boy arrived, with his best friend and darling Tom. And we are here for the weekend, and everyone is laughing and full, and, for a moment, the awfulness recedes.