Surprise: this post is not a poem.

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Every single person who said we were being hysterical about Trump being an existential threat should be forced to explain how the President seizing control of the capital’s police force and deploying military units to forcibly relocate citizens represents normal democratic governance.

~Mike Brock, Notes from the Circus

I have always mistrusted people in suits.

I was dismayed when I read that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy complied when asked to wear one, rather than his usual military-style clothing, to the August 18^th White House meeting with Trump and a few European leaders. Pick your battles, I guess, and he looked pretty sharp. But Elon Musk wore tee shirts in Cabinet meetings and as far as I know, no one tossed him out or scolded him for not being sufficiently deferential to his betters hosts.

I dunno. Maybe it’s one of those “binds but does not protect/protects but does not bind” things. In group/out group. Which side are you on?

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“We need a ‘leave us alone’ law.”

~Vine Deloria

Also dismayed that the VP came here to Indiana to encourage more gerrymandering. As if I could be any less represented than I already am. This was after he had the water level of the Ohio River raised so he could have a proper kayak experience on his recent family vacation.

They’re not even trying to relate to us anymore.

I’ve taken to compartmentalizing. I know: it’s not a great look. But I’m in the midst of what you might call a life transition. A state of flux, when the old way is passing and the new way has not yet taken form. Shapes are shifting. In this I feel pretty much in synch with our culture, which is a strange thing to write, and a stranger thing to feel.

My work with our local public radio station has become, shall we say, indeterminate. If you live in the States or pay attention to such things you may know that our congressmen in suits (mostly men, anyway) eliminated funds for public media in July. Clawed back already-allocated monies, in fact, after contracts were entered into, commitments made. About the rescission of funds and other broken promises made to the arts and humanities, Metis poet Chris LaTray commented, “Sounds like a treaty!”

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Don’t know a soul who’s not been battered, don’t have a friend who feels at ease.”

~Paul Simon, American Tune

My friend Claire started a new job this past month as an art teacher at a middle school in a small city across the river in Kentucky. Go, Claire! She has a big room and a few supplies, a salary and a regular schedule, after a few years of not having any of those. She also has ambitions for her students. She is happy and she is nervous; classrooms are hard on artful people, and middle school is hard on everyone. You remember. You were there.

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At the end of July we held our second spoken-word event in the gallery space of our local arts council. People showed up – different people than the first time, also some repeat attendees. They read their poems, they told their stories. Everyone seemed happy to be there, most were slow to leave, hanging around afterward to drink the wine and eat the cheese.

It really doesn’t take much, does it. A space, an invitation. Someone to bring the wine and cheese, someone to print and fold all the zines to give away (that would be me).

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“Jettison your inessential desires. Dispose of outmoded goals”

Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology

This summer I found a ten-year-old list in an old notebook. House renovations to undertake, places to visit, projects to pursue, things to accomplish. I’d done some of them, not done others. How many were inessential now? How many outmoded?

Time for a new list, I thought.

Or maybe no list at all?

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“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

~Kurt Vonnegut

What I’m listening to.

Also this.

Helps me to forget about (compartmentalize) gerrymandering (et al) and remember where I am: on an island in an ocean, the third from the sun, a bit of stardust and billion-year-old carbon, just here to fart around.

~ps