Gratitude List: 1. The shiny children 2. I finally saw a tiny Priestess gathering pollen for her Lady. And now the crocus and windflowers and daffodils are opening. The tiny narcissus on the neighbors’ bank are open. Lots of pollen for the Little Sisters. 3. A restful weekend 4. Henry and his grandfather flying a kite. It went SO high! 5. The constant murmuring of the bluebirds in the little woods at my parents’ house. I have no doubt that they were telling each other stories about my dad.
May we walk in Beauty!
“Awake my dear, be kind to your sleeping heart; take it out into the vast fields of light and let it breathe.” —Háfiz
“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.” —Thích Nhất Hạnh
“Only until all human beings begin to recognize themselves as human beings will prejudice be gone forever.” —Amelia Boynton, Civil Rights leader
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.” ―Rabindranath Tagore
“It is time for women to stop being politely angry.” ―Leymah Gbowee
“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” ―Franz Kafka
“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” ―Rachel Carson
“Don’t die ’til you’re dead.” —Mississippi John Hurt
Someone got to the Heron in the night before I could check it out yesterday—one of the People Who Deal with Death. I wasn’t quite able to bring myself to go get a close look. Perhaps after a while, I’ll go check if there are feathers left which I can photograph. Meanwhile, I will imagine the rich milk of a fox mother nourishing a nestle of kits, who dream at night that they are gliding on great blue wings above the fields and streams of the hollow.
Everything returns. Everything feeds the next thing. Everything is nourished by that which came before. May we be food for the next cycle. May our words, our actions, our fierce determination, our resilience, our abiding joy, our activism and our contemplation be nourishment for those who come after us.
It is International Women’s Day. Let’s remember, as we celebrate the women whose lives and stories have fed us, that we must feed the coming generations of women their rights.
Gratitude List: 1. The courageous activist women who have struggled with their whole beings for equal rights. May we continue their struggle. 2. The quiet women who continued to work and nurture and do what needed to be done behind the scenes. May we be steady and reliable, too. 3. The contemplatives and poets, women who inspired us to be better, more evolved humans. May our words sing, and our meditations deepen. 4. The resilient women, who took their own stories of struggle and pain, and turned them into fierce walking boots, firm ground for striding, protective clothing for the long journey. May we, too, be resilient. 5. The women who are coming behind us. May they reach with hope and determination and calm and fierce resilience toward their own empowered futures, their own empowered nows. May we be a strong foundation upon which they may stand and reach upward.
No rants today. I think that from here on out, today will be rantless for me (I can’t call the whole day rantless because I accidentally ranted a bit on Facebook this morning. Ranting is also good for waking up.)
I have a sadness: Our resident Great Blue Heron has died. We need to go do something to honor the body, at least place it serenely in the woods, so the People Who Deal with Death can do their work. The vultures and worms and their communities of goodfolk. I will take photos of the Beautiful One’s feathers. I just need to steel myself. I am not naturally brave with Death, although I value Her, and trust Her.
I also have a lovely happiness: I have no essays to grade this weekend. My soul is free for two days. I need to make something.
Gratitude List: 1. The birdlife here in the hollow. So sad to lose our Blue Heron friend, but this is part of the Cycle. Others will come in their time. Meanwhile, the small wingfolk are singing Spring. 2. Brunch at 301 Cafe! We haven’t done that yet, but it’s in the plan! 3. No big grading this weekend. I feel so light, I could float away. 4. Reassuring dreams 5. Meditating
Before I begin the rant, I want to make a point about Vice Presidents, in light of everything I am about to say. The choice of Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris as a running mate would go a long way toward attracting my vote, if there’s any choice left in this debacle of a primary campaign by the time it reaches Pennsylvania. Elizabeth Warren, too, of course, but the loss of Warren in the race was only the most recent blow in a line of killing the vast diversity of the overwhelming field of candidates. (I’ve never been sure what to do with Gabbard, and I’m not sure she knows herself.) (Also, I know that Sanders, as a Jewish man, still brings a little diversity–it’s not simply two old white men remaining. Just two old men.) (Ugh. And now I sound really ageist. In this context, the default seems to always be old white men, so that’s part of the story.)
I wrote this rant in pieces yesterday between naps as I was resting to fend off the worst edges of a bad cold. That bit was successful, at least, and I am feeling much better today.
Today, I am an enraged middle school girl. I am a third grader stamping her foot at the unfairness. I am a high school girl rolling her eyes at the absolutely stupidity of it, a college girl sighing yet again in defeat. All of these girls in me had their absolutely valid reasons for rage, and I cannot see over my own middle-aged rage to deal with the echoing memories of theirs. Mine. Ours. The layers.
I just have to say it. This has been a triggering experience for me. I find myself flashing back to younger versions of myself, living this fifty-two-year-old experience along with my college self, my high school self, my middle school and elementary school selves. I don’t remember the first time I noticed that a girl could be smart and articulate and shiny and dynamic, but she couldn’t beat out a goofy boy with a sense of entitlement. For anything. She couldn’t be heard above the clamor of an angry boy, no matter how lucid and smart her own ideas.
This is how it’s been my whole life: A brilliant girl tries for something—some honor, some leadership role, some place—and a goofy boy with a sense of kingly entitlement begins to talk about the inevitability of his own winning, and suddenly she has completely disappeared. No matter that she has a plan for EVERYTHING. No matter that she can talk her way around that boy ten times before he has put together a coherent sentence. No matter that she was born for this. And so he wins.
And today the goofy boy and the angry boy win again, beating out the brilliant girl who has been invisibilized and now erased.
I’m just tired.
I can live forward through this. I can “get on board.” Goddess knows, I am experienced at that part of the story. Still, I just get tired of hearing people talk about the inevitability of her disappearance from the story. And when the goofball wins, he gets the brilliant girl to assist him. Or the angry boy gets the nice girl to help him. Because they need her in order to truly succeed. But then everyone says, “Look! She’s got something anyway, doesn’t she? She should be happy now. Satisfied now. Everybody wins.” And she ends up doing his work for him or putting out the fires he starts. And he gets the credit. And the next time a girl is running against a boy, everyone says, “Now don’t be too hasty. She really can’t compete. If we want to keep the bullies at bay, we need a good strong boy to take the reins.”
I will vote for whichever of these boys takes the nomination, but I will do it with the rage of a middle school girl who has repeatedly seen her brilliant girlfriends completely marginalized and ignored for goofy and angry boys who have controlled the process for her whole life. I will be happy if she gets to be a good strong vice or cabinet something. Absolutely. But I will know, with the heart of my 12-year-old self, that she was always the best choice: Elizabeth, Kamala, Amy.
Gratitude List: 1. Feeling better. That first nap–three hours of serious sleep–felt like the most rejuvenating part of the day. Even the tossy-turny nature of last night’s sleep hasn’t thrown me back to the exhausted state of earlier in the week, and I feel like I can fight off this cold. 2. Friday. End of the week. Faculty Hymn Sing before school (every Friday–how lucky am I?), the International Women’s Day chapel planned by students. It should be a pleasant day. 3. Daffodils 4. The crocus are blooming, too, and in some strange and wonderful places, way out of the beds. Crocus always remind me to let myself leak outside the boundaries. 5. Nimbleness. How my child just leapt onto the bench to straighten the curtains. I think that one of my physical goals for the next part of this year will be to develop greater nimbleness. I think I have become more sedentary rather than less, and it is affecting my nimbleness.
Gratitude List: 1. Joy runs underneath it all, like an underground river, even when things on the surface are dry and barren. 2. Misty mornings. Sun shining through the mist in the mornings. 3. How last year’s plans inform this year’s work. 4. Rhythms, seasons, cycles. 5. Color, texture, pattern–in the visual field, and in writing and speaking and music.
I was an usher at a school production of Beauty and the Beast this weekend. There are wolves in the show. Actors dressed in toothy masks chase Maurice through the woods, and later the Beast chases the wolves away from Belle. I checked in with some of the kids in the audience about the wolves. Some of them thought they were scary. They all loved the wolves, scary or not.
One mama of a small child said, “A wolf ran past and growled in my face. I growled right back!”
I thought that might be a good way to deal with scary creatures. What a marvelous way to answer the things in my brain that scare me: growl back. I said I might try that in my dreams the next time I was confronted by a scary thing. I would growl back, right in its face.
The small child said, very matter-of-factly: “I wouldn’t do that. I use my candy.”
Candy? We pressed her for details.
“I leave a trail of wrappers for them to follow.”
Now I was getting confused. I thought we were talking about monsters. “Who do you mean by them?”
“The monsters,” she confirmed. “I want to see if they’re smart enough to follow the trail of wrappers.”
Instead of running from the monsters, instead of simply confronting them with their own growling attacks, this fearless child does psycho-social experiments on the monsters in her dreams. I’ve heard people say that one way to deal with the unknown, to respond to strong emotions, is to stay with your curiosity, to keep yourself in the place of wonder. This tiny person has worked that one out for herself in her dreams. Hmmm. How smart are these things, really?
Ask: “What would happen if I. . .?” And then engage. Instead of running away from the things that scare us, what would happen if we turned our curious minds to wondering about the fears themselves, and left a glittering trail of candy wrappers to see if they follow? How could I do this with my big worries: About the state of my country? About climate change? About the future for my children?
What if, instead of getting lost on the endless hopeless trails of anxiety about the unknown, I would simply walk forward toward whatever possible solutions the future might hold, leading the monsters behind me? Poke them. Prod them. Tickle them. What will they do?
Gratitude List: 1. Being in a show again. Along with my usual ushering duties, I sang with a small group in the pit, to boost the sound on the big chorus numbers. It was a delight and a joy to participate in a really small way. 2. The show is over. Wondrous as it was, I am glad to get back to a regular schedule. 3. Last night, I sent my application for a writer’s residency. Now I can let go of that. I’m a small fish in a big pool for this one, but even applying has been delightful, thinking about Edwidge Danticat (the judge) reading my writing. 4. The poetry of Julia Esquivel and Ernesto Cardenal, both Guatemalan poets. I’ve been reading her poetry in response to an article about her in Sojourners magazine, and last night I heard that Cardenal had died, so I have read some of his poetry in response. They both use their words to confront the violence of systems and empires. 5. I heard geese in the dawn a few minutes ago. It’s particularly haunting to hear them so early. I like haunting sounds, like geese in the dawn, like a faraway train whistle, like a solitary sparrow in a quiet hollow, like leaves rustling underfoot.
“Why would he lie?” That’s what Chris Matthews asked Elizabeth Warren this week about the numerous accusations against Mike Bloomberg and his company over the years: sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and sexist and harassing comments that contribute to a hostile workplace. Anna North, in an article in Vox, refers to at least 65 women making accusations against Bloomberg and his company in about 40 cases.
“Why would he lie?” Matthews asked Warren about Bloomberg’s denials that he had told one pregnant employee to “kill it.”
“And why would she lie?” rejoins Warren. “That’s the question, Chris. Why would you assume. . .?” And then he interrupts her.
He said. She said. Why would you believe her? Why would you believe him? He’s innocent until proven guilty. Bloomberg, with his dozens of non-disclosure agreements with women. The president, with twenty-seven accusations of sexual assault. Kavanaugh, with his three accusers, one at a public confirmation hearing. Why would you believe her? Why would you believe them?
And that’s just it. The women’s stories are always accusations. Always awaiting that adjective: credible. Always waiting to be proven, always a likely or possible lie, until proven. Sexual assault. Sexual innuendos and crude talk that create hostile and unsafe environments. Pregnancy discrimination. She has to prove he did it, said it, suggested it, made it unsafe. And he is always innocent until he is proven guilty, and until then, she is a liar. She is guilty. Guilty of lying until she can prove he’s the liar.
And he is (usually) white. And he is powerful. And he is male. He is (often) wealthy. He is the default for all the power dynamics: for truth and believability, for threatening posturing, for the pay-off.
Innocence until guilt is proven is an important tool in our legal process. In an ideal world, you are protected from conviction without strong proof of your guilt. It’s backbone, foundation, bedrock.
So what do you need in order to prove guilt? Tears? Hidden cameras? Secret recordings? Semen? Blood? Twenty-seven women coming forward with similar stories? (I’m looking at you, Mr. President.) How many women’s truths does it take to outweigh one rich man’s lie? What is the tipping point when we suddenly stop seeing Cosby, America’s dad, and start conceiving the possibility of Cosby, sexual predator? How do we go from Bloomberg or Trump, wealthy and powerful political leaders, to sexual harasser and sexual predator?
What does it take to believe the woman in the story? Why would you believe her? Why would you believe him? She is the accuser. Always. She is always the accuser in the story, and so her burden is proof.
In the secret stories that women and girls tell each other, he has groomed her for silence, or intimidated her to silence. He has gaslighted her until she can no longer separate his false reality from her truth. He has stepped over so many boundaries with such deadly skill that she no longer knows where the first boundary lay. He has paid for her silence. He has cajoled, intimidated, forced her to sign the non-disclosure agreement. He has told her the devastating truth that no one will believe her anyway.
I am not necessarily advocating for the elimination of innocence until guilt is proven. It’s foundational to our understanding of legal justice in this country. But I think that there is something terribly broken about the way we use it. It privileges the powerful, the wealthy, the white man, the abuser; it makes eternally possible Chris Matthews’ question: “What would you believe her?” It is a cloak behind which the rapist, the predator, the hateful misogynist boss can hide, with a fair degree of certainty that no one will believe her anyway.
Gratitude List (Beauties I See on Saturday Morning): Saturday mornings are for birding-watching from the kitchen table. 1. That cardinal is the purest scarlet I may have ever seen. 2. A flock of goldfinches has claimed the thistle sock. They’re beginning to glow gold around the edges, gold shining through the olive, leaking onto their wings. They look so delicate and faerie-like next to the muscular house finch who has zipped in to share the thistle. 3. I heard the doves call this morning. Haunting. 4. The ground under the feeder seems to be alive until you let your eyes focus on the little flock of sparrows, juncoes, and doves feeding. 5. Something in me flies, too. Something sings. Something rises in the cool dawn.
Gratitude List: 1. That our school offers a series of safety nets for students: from caring teachers, to an incredible group of Guidance Counselors, to classes that build resilience and self-awareness into the curriculum. I want to be ever more conscious of building those skills into my classes. 2. People who fearlessly speak truth to power. 3. Grateful that this is Friday. If I am this tired, I can only imagine how it is for the people who sing and dance and play instruments for the whole show. It’s absolutely amazing to sit in the pit–the conductor and instrumentalists are actively ON at all moments. I’m agog with admiration for the work of the students and others who have created this show. 4. Supper with the family last night. Jon went home and got Josiah and brought him all the way back to Lancaster so we could at least eat together. 5. Yesterday’s chapel: Songs of the Civil Rights Movement, led by students, supported by our incredible music teacher. (That’s another thing about my colleagues–they’re good at supporting students to become leaders, to take risks, to speak up.)
I should be used to it by now: I wrangle ushers for all the shows at my school. I shouldn’t be internally startled that the show opens on Thursday, but somehow it always confuses my days for me. It feels like it should be a Friday. And tonight, I have to train my ushers to do both the usual jobs as well as the intermission and end-of-show jobs because I will be running up to the stage to sing in the pit. I’m excited to be in a show, even if I’m back in the shadows, simply boosting the sound.
Gratitude List: 1. The incredible talents of the young people in my school. They are pulling off a major production this weekend. 2. The organizers and directors and costumers and musicians and choreographers who coach and assist and counsel the students to create the show. 3. Rest, in the between spaces. 4. Red. I am wearing a red scarf today for energy. 5. This not-so-little kid beside me, doing a puzzle and whistling something classical. I think it’s from Grieg. I don’t think we play enough classical music here, but he seems to have picked up some motifs.
Mockingbird Chronicles 