going nuts, cracked, broken

cronies, hucksters, conmen, cheats

In yesterday’s Substack, Robert Hubbel describes the shockingly unqualified, dangerous, odious nominations Trump has made to his team, his assignment of key architects of Project 2025 to critical government positions, and his wild tech-bro relationship to Elon Musk as surprising and disappointing.

Surprise and disappointment? That’s what he’s feeling! I feel those things when the cookbook I ordered doesn’t show up in the mail on time, or when an old friend doesn’t call to wish me happy birthday, not now when our country is on the edge of the Great Shattering as I have come to call it.

What does it matter that Hubbel doesn’t dare use words like frightened, alarmed or even terrified? It matters because surprise and disappointment aren’t emotions that are going to have enough energy and bite and staying power to motivate us to pay attention over time and, to use Hubbel’s words, raise our voices in resistance, opposition, and truth. It matters because by not using those words, Hubbel’s readers are almost invited to feel less, tone down, hush up, buck up.

In Timothy Snyder’s compact little handbook, On Tyranny, all twenty lessons on how we can respond to attempts to overthrow our government call for a state of vigilance and high alert. Do not obey in advance, defend institutions, stand out, investigate, be courageous. These actions don’t arise out of surprise and disappointment. They arise out of the capacity to clearly assess the trouble we are in; out of the courage to stay alert, wary, and to name the fact that we as a country are facing an existential threat like we have never faced before.

I am a few months shy of 80 and never in my life have I awakened to the kind of fear and sadness I wake to every morning now. I too want to look away, to minimize the problem and normalize it and say maybe it really won’t be so bad, but I realize that looking away and minimizing and normalizing are exactly what Hannah Arendt described in her book about Hitler and the German people, Eichman in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil.

Most of us in the USA, I believe, don’t have good fear-lifting muscles. We think fear is a sign of cowardice or mental illness or poor character. We don’t see fear as a sign that something is very wrong which must be addressed.

Recently, I took a workshop on creative forms of essay writing. The instructor gave us an assignment to write a piece using the alphabet and food as a frame. To my surprise (and not my disappointment) this form allowed me the freedom to wander around in my sub-conscious and make associations that gave heft and form to my deep fears, my anger, and to my surprise, it even helped me find one path forward.

I offer you this essay below as a way for me to feel accompanied as I walk the dark tunnels of fear, howling. I offer it to you also as accompaniment to you in that same scary place. The essay is titled ABCDEFG.

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ABCDEFG

Apple. Malum malum. Eve bit into the red fruit fallen from the tree of knowledge. Malum Malum. Women. Malum malum. Now white men, Christian men, chosen men will have revenge, confiscate the wombs of women, malum malum, bewitch their minds, cast them out of the Garden and into the wilderness.

Butternut squash soup, yellow orange like the dawn sky over the ocean half a mile from this place I call home, my last meal before the vote is tallied and I wake to the Great Shattering. At the old oak table, three friends, my husband: chatter and laughter masking fear. Outside the big windows, the quiet forest, blanketed in darkness, breathes slowly. The moon, the only light visible in this haven at the end of the long dirt road, is just rising.

Cake. Pat a cake, pat a cake baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Roll it and slice it and mark it with a B and put It in the oven for baby and me. Oh, the bright, clapping children. Drill baby drill, pump it out of the ground, as fast as you can. The window for a livable planet will close. The floods will come, the forests will burn, the birds will die. I cry for the children.

Duck. Duck. Duck. The ocean is warming, the Arctic is melting, the butterflies are dying. AI is coming for your job. Crypto currency is coming for your money. They/them live next door. Your son wants to be called your daughter. The Indians aren’t all dead. Another pandemic lurks in the market. A black woman ran for President of the US of A. Duck and cover, the world is all fucked up.

apple, butternut squash, pat a cake, pat a cake
duck duck duck
(the world is all fucked up)

Elderberry, Elder berry. Revered in some cultures, unknown in others. Dangerous when taken raw but when properly prepared offers rich nutrients good for the spirit. I am an elder. I have ripened. Deep purple, round and glistening, still on the vine. When properly prepared I can be good for the spirit. Beware I can be dangerous.

Franks, yellow mustard, soft rolls, the boardwalk, the sea, and me with my first job at the concession sitting on the high stool before the cash register, making change, listening to the sea roll, the children shriek, the coins clink, the gulls call. Jones Beach, 1960. Before. Before the JFK assassination. Before the Vietnam War, before Watergate, before the planet warmed. 1960. The world waved its open arms at me & I threw myself into her embrace.

Ground fish too. Me and Pop-pop fishing for flounder in the Great South Bay, the brown swamp swallows perched on the tips of sea grasses; the kelp swaying under the little wooden boat with its tiny motor; the marshes still healthy, not yet dredged, submerged, wracked with plastics; the chorus of marsh birds loud in our ears; a dead flounder reeled in with glee glistening like glass on the gray floorboards.

Hamburgers. Bloody, salted, shredded red meat, mounded into patties, the food of the victors. My father the war hero in the back yard, a grill, glowing coals, a metal tool in his hand, flipping burgers. WW2 just a shadow now. The pictures he took stamped Classified Nagasaki, hidden behind the boiler in the basement. Picnics, barbecues, baseball games. Cows in the field, sweet, innocent, mewing. The word slaughter forbidden.

elderberry, franks, ground fish too
bloody red hamburgers, sweet mewing cows 
(the word slaughter forbidden)

Indian pudding. Cornmeal, sweet molasses. The Native peoples grew corn here, planted it with beans and squash, a nutritious entwinement called the three sisters. But we had to wait for our New England made ships to sail to Africa, capture black men, women and children, enslave them on islands in the Caribbean, force them to grow sugar until we finally fulfilled our sweet tooth’s desire. Molasses molasses we all fall down. How long before this history is banned?

Jello. The election results come in and as I watch the map turn red, blood red, my knees turn to Jello. Jello, pink Jello, yellow Jello. Slippery, cold, sweet. Surrender.

Kale, once a humble, leafy personality scorned in green salads recently discovered by the culinary elite and featured on the menus of the fanciest eateries. There’s a trick to upscale kale: it needs to soften, to relax its tense demeanor, its armor against harm. To soften: rub oil over its leaves and let it stand. Soften. Soften. Do we dare? Do I?

Indian pudding made 
from slave trade molasses
Jello, slippery sweet surrender
kale, softened with oil 
(soften, soften do we dare?)

Lettuce, lima beans, lentils, lamb. Some people can’t afford to buy food for their children. Some can’t afford a gallon of gas. The jobs in the oil fields, the coal mines are gone. AI is building cars. Health care is hard to find but opium is everywhere. The rich are getting richer. Lettuce, lima beans, lentils, lamb, who will feed the poor? Rage rage against the dying of the light.

Mussels, purple crustaceans clinging to rocks. At low tide my 7-year-old grandson and I harvest a pail full, walk home, slice onions, chop tomatoes, add a little wine, sauté the mussels, set the table. Giggling we devour the soft bellied creatures as generations in this crumbling fishing town have before us. 5 years ago, we sold that house. Old climate activists don’t have time for second homes. Since then, invasive green crabs decimated the mussels, lobsters migrated north, 90% of eel grass is lost. Our grandson is taller than me.

lettuce, lima beans, lentils, lamb
the poor are scared and hungry
the mussels are lost to green crabs

our grandson is taller than me
beware I can be dangerous

Nuts. Nutty. Nut cake. Going nuts. Gone nuts. Cracked. Cracked open. Broken. Scattered. America. Me.

The onion, interlocking circles of life, layers of time and memory, cloaked in a thin papery coat. Sweet, savory. Peel, slice, weep. America. Me.

Potato, one potato, two potato three potato four; five potato, six potato seven potato more. Trump chooses the heads of government: Education, Interior, HHS, Labor; EPA, DOE, Homeland Security, More. Count them: cronies, hucksters, conmen, cheats; tricksters, liars, autocrats, creeps. Is this how democracy dies?

going nuts, cracked, broken
cronies, hucksters, conmen, cheats
is this how democracy dies?

QRSTUVWXYZ. I don’t know what comes next. It’s not yet written. I read somewhere that in the battle between totalitarianism and freedom, the most dangerous acts of resistance are acts of spontaneous, radical kindness and compassion.

interlocking circles of life
peel, slice, weep
America, me
kindness and compassion are
dangerous acts of resistance
soften, soften do I dare?

beware I can be dangerous