SMALL CREATURES, ONE AND ALL

Okay, how's this for cute? 

It's Vixen, in all her perfect catness, sitting on the kitchen desk - which has become her dining spot.  Molly eats in the downstairs bathroom, up on the counter, and Honey of course eats on the floor.

My sister came out from D.C. on Thursday, as her daughter had the day off from school and only a half-day on Friday.  I had only my morning classes at the college, no afterschool program - so we had time for fun and frolic.  Not much frolicking on Friday, as it was a day of pouring rain, but Saturday we all spent outdoors at one thing or another. 

 With this child and a kitten around, who could stay gloomy?  She and her mom are lights in my life - it was a shining weekend, election or no election, rain or no rain.  We ate, drew, read, talked endlessly, worked in the yard, played with the beasts, slept long nights under down comforters.

 Here are three darling creatures on the couch - I'm surprised by how big Vixen looks in this picture.  Though Melissa was amused by Vixen, she remains loyal and true to Molly, whom she has loved with a passion since she first met her.  We had kinda sorta hoped Melissa and Vixen would fall in love with each other and Vix would go home with the girls.  But, no, a kitten's wildness is not what Melissa wants in a cat.  She likes the steady personality and rotund dependability of our old girl - whom we could never let move to Washington.  No, Molly will remain with us, as the queen of the house. As you can tell from the photo on the couch, she is beginning to accept the reality of the kitten.  Reluctantly.

I'll be back during the week, to read and post.  Renewed, refreshed, though still bewildered and somewhat lost.  And now there already begins a push to get Arnold elected.  Am I through the looking glass, or down the rabbit hole?  Is this a bad trip?  a bad dream?  Who is writing this script, anyway?

STRANGER, IN A STRANGE LAND

Although I currently feel that I am living in an occupied country, an alien in my own land - life goes on.  I made it through the week, taught my classes, worked with my afterschool kids on their homework assignments. On Friday afternoons we are supposed to be doing "enrichment activities" with the kids, since most of them don't have weekend homework.  So, this Friday I began a series of activities having to do with Native Americans.  Which is what I'll do for the next month, instead of the usual Thanksgiving propaganda about the wonderful Pilgrims sharing their bounty with the Indians.  They'll get enough of that crap in school.  Instead they'll learn how the white Europeans began what turned out to be a trend in American history, continuing to the present. 

The week was made both more fun and more difficult by the appearance in our lives of a kitten.  She had turned up at the home of a somewhat distant neighbor, the Presbyterian minister, who was giving her milk and hoping she'd go away.  She followed G and Honey (dog) home when they were out walking last Tuesday.  On Friday I took her to a cat rescue society, hoping to have her adopted over the weekend.  However.  When I got in the car to drive away - I couldn't do it.  Sitting on the sun porch watching the leaves fall, holding her in my lap and listening to her purr - these were the things that kept me from slitting my wrists Weds morning.  So, I went back in and said - never mind, I'm taking her home again.  We took her to the vet yesterday, had her tested for feline leukemia and AIDS, she got her shots and deworming meds.  She's entirely healthy, a beautiful little tortiseshell calico, her name is Vixen - and eventually Molly will stop hissing at her.  Or at least so we hope.  Honey thinks she's delightful, and it was because she fell in love with him that she pranced along and followed him home.  Pictures to follow.

Here, again, Mark Morford pours out the feelings in my heart in this most recent column:

Hello, Uranus? Got Any Room?
Must. Move. Away. Cannot endure more Bush. Soul about to implode. Right? Not so fast
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 5, 2004
I said it, you said it, pretty much anyone with a brain larger than a grape or a soul more nimble than a rock said it maybe a thousand times over.

And you probably weren't even all that drunk when you said it and maybe you were even a little more than half serious and maybe you said it just like this: If Bush somehow snags another election, if the unthinkable comes to pass and the Dubya neocon nightmare refuses to end, well, that's it. I'm outta here.

Done. Over. Gone. Moving away. To Canada. Or France. Latvia. Uranus. Anywhere, really, that doesn't have Bush as leader and that doesn't make me openly ashamed to be a citizen and that doesn't make me feel like a sickened disillusioned ulcerated outcast in my own happily divisive country every damn day including Sunday.

You want a place, you say, that doesn't right this minute seem to be working heroically to make homophobia and born-again fundamentalism and pre-emptive isolationist warmongering and environmental ignorance a national religion. A place where SUVs aren't considered minor deities and where gay people aren't loathed for wanting to slice a wedding cake and where brazen heavily narcotized denial in the face of a veritable mountain of presidential lies isn't the national pastime.

Tempting, isn't it? To just move away to a sunnier, clothing-optional utopia and wait for it all to be over, for the dark days to pass and the Shrub era to sink into the tar pits of history and the fog to finally lift?

After all, most all of us on the progressive Left feel we truly faced the dragon this election, and we put up a valiant fight and marshaled as potent an army of dissenters and intellectuals and moderates and liberal crusaders and feminists and enlightened activists as possible, considering.

And we supposedly had more of the youth vote and the disenfranchised single-female vote and the "Daily Show" vote and the Eminem vote and the celebrity vote and the humanitarian vote and the antiwar vote and the gay vote and the pro-choice vote and the Howard Stern vote and the immigrant vote, and still the dragon just sneered and hacked up another fireball of bogus fear and evangelical Christian self-righteousness and torched our glimmering sword of juicy hope into a smoking cinder.

And now, this. The nation has officially, stupefyingly handed the world's worst president a blank check to do whatever he and his cronies like, without fear of major repercussions or voter disillusionment or damage to an imminent re-election campaign, because there won't be one.

Which is to say, Bush now has no one to worry about now but his true constituents (hint: it ain't mainstream Repubs, or even the born-agains), no one to answer to but the CEOs and the energy barons and the military-supply corporations co-owned by his father, and nothing to guide him but his own deeply regressive, monosyllabic moral compass. Hell, why stick around for more of that?

But here's the catch. Here's the tough part to accept. Here's what everyone who's right now on the brink of packing their bags and checking the real estate prices in Vancouver has to know and has to have drilled into their disconsolate hope-crushed souls right this minute, before it's too late:

You cannot leave. You cannot drop the armor now. Why? Because you are needed, more than ever. You are mandatory to keep the energy flowing, the karmic vibrator buzzing, to keep the progressive and lucid half of the nation breathing and healthy and awake and ever reaching out to the half that's wallowing in fear and violence and homophobia and sexual dread, hoping to find harmony instead of cacophony, common ground instead of civil war, some sort of a shared love of a country so messy and internationally disrespected and openly confused its own president can't even speak the language.

After all, you don't hand over all your children the first time the flying monkeys bang on your door. You don't give up your dream house just because a bunch of gangbangers moved in down the block. You become a bit more wary and alert and you stock up on the superlative porn and the expensive wine and the deepened sense of true beauty and sex and love and hope and you hunker down and grit your teeth and dig in for the long haul, and you work on making your own goddamn garden more beautiful than even you could have imagined, because, well, the neighborhood -- and the world -- needs it, more than ever.

Look. No one said it was gonna be easy. No one said it was gonna be painless. And no one said it was gonna be quick. As I've noted before, the neocons have been planning this takeover for decades. The Bush regime, despite feeling like a massive indigestible incomprehensible fluke, is no accident.

The GOP is deeply entrenched and the razor wire is all around their compound and they are masterful at working the angles of fear and manipulation and of kowtowing to the least tolerant and least morally flexible segments of the population -- this is, after all, how Bush won a second term -- and hence they aren't about to just roll over at the first sign of outcry or dissent or a snowboarding senator, even if he's 10 times the man and a thousand times the intellect of the smirking lunk currently in office.

And besides, most hardcore Republicans would, of course, love it if you'd leave the country, and take your gul-dang gay-lovin' tofu-eatin' tree-huggin' pierced-labia values with you. They would love it, furthermore, if the libs in the morally shredded red states would split for the coastal cities and the major metropolises of America, all those godless heathen places where the neighbors won't yank the Kerry/Edwards sign outta your front lawn and chase you down and beat you with it and call it patriotism. Remember: bullies never deserve to own the playground.

And one of the most stirring e-mails I received during the outpouring of grief the day after the election was from a young female reader, "an artist, an intellectual and a Jew" who's been living in Mexico and who now says she's so enraged and saddened by the election's ugly outcome that she's preparing to return to the States ASAP, just so she can help, so she can join the resistance, keep the right-wingers from coming after our souls. Now, that's patriotism.

The bottom line: Don't disband the newfound army just because one ugly battle was lost. Mourn, commiserate, lick wounds, lick each other, drink heavily, spit out your stale gum of disappointment and pop in a fresh clove of laughter and spiritual heat and then regroup and sober up and take an even deeper breath and watch in hot wet spiritually emboldened amusement as the cosmic circus unfolds.

It's far from over. The tunnel is just a little darker -- and longer -- than we imagined.

Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

Mark's column archives are here

MEMENTO MORI

If I were still a drinker, my head would be in the toilet for most of the day today.  As it is, I put my clothes on and went to give my morning class a test, with only my heart and soul in the toilet.  I couldn't teach, every time I opened my mouth I burst into tears - so it's a good thing I had planned a test.

There's nothing left to do but grieve and retrench.  I have never felt less like an American, never felt more ashamed of this country, never felt so bereft by anything political.  How I feel is exactly the way I feel when someone I love dies.  Grieving and retrenching may take some time.  I don't know what I'll do about journaling for a while.  Not much, I suspect.  I will read,  walk in the falling leaves (a lot), visit the children in the families, do my best at both my jobs. 

For someone who expresses our feelings particularly well, go read Mark Morford's column today. 

See you, after the waters are crossed.  And may the force be with us.

REALITY OR ABSURDITY? WHICH WILL IT BE?

I've noticed that many of my political journal buddies have added "member of the reality-based community" to the tag lines for their journals.  And I'm wondering where this expression began - did it begin with Ron Suskind's NYT piece on Dubya's faith-based madness, "Without a Doubt?"  That's the first place I came across it.  Did someone else coin it before Suskind?  I like the expression a lot, although it seems to posit that faith is no part of reality.  And I do think it can be, though certainly not in the way that our leaders are currently experiencing (or at least that's what they're telling us) faith.  Faith also includes a lot of doubt, something our leaders haven't yet acknowledged.  Of all the many things that infuriate me about this administration, and this current load of hogwash about a Christian Nation, the most infuriating is the way that faith and Christianity have become some bizarre sword and shield of inflexible morality and a basis for terrible inhuman actions and decisions. 

Were Jesus to get John Ashcroft, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, et al, together in a closed room, I don't think he would be particularly gentle with them.  Same goes for most of the leaders of the Christian Right not actually sitting in Washington.  Likewise the talk show hosts spouting Christian Nation nonsense over the radio waves.  I think we'd hear the pissed-off Jesus who drove the money-lenders out of the Temple giving these guys a piece of his mind.

So, anyway.  Reality-based community.  I thought about adding it to my tagline here, too.  Then I read a swell article called Time to Hit the Barricades, on salon.com.  The writer, one Katharine Mieszkowki, posits the "unthinkable" - what will you do if Bush wins?  And then asks a varied group of bloggers that question.  It's a lot of fun, actually made me laugh a couple of times.  Get the daypass and go read it.  My favorite was the "nebbish in chief" of a blog called internebbish, who said "I think I will give everyone I know a lot of duct tape to try to hold their skulls together so when Bush talks their brains don't shoot out of the back of their heads."

In the group quoted was a Professor John-Paul Spiro, of a blog with the great name everything's ruined, who said he would no longer call himself a member of the reality-based community.  He would become a member of the absurdity-based community, and live in an absurd universe for four years.  I kind of like this idea, myself.  So - I am reserving my decision until after the election is decided.  Will it be reality I live in?  or absurdity and fantasy?  It all remains to be seen.  None of the people asked what they'd do for this article said they'd move out of the country.  And I myself have decided that I will stay and fight on.  My sister in DC told me the other day she'll be going for the molotov cocktails and matches if the Junta comes back.  She thinks anarchy is the only hope.

EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

Now, and for the next few days, I am trying to remember there is a world beyond the elections, there is a life of the mind, heart and body that will continue after November 2.  Towards that end I am striving for some sanity and peace.   Everyone I talk to agrees that what we have begun, the resurgence of political awareness, passionate caring and involvement will go on after the election. The fight will continue, no matter what.  If you saw Fred Trippi on Bill Moyers last night you know what I mean. But so will the cycle of life, the seasons, love, family and some sort of hope. 

My contribution to sanity and hope today is a poem I wrote a few years ago at this same time of year.  I love the autumn, this huge change of weather, scenery, bird and plant life.  It has always been the true beginning of a new year for me.  It is the new year in the Jewish tradition, it is the new year for academic life.  Much of my life has been spent in academia of one sort or another.  And for 23 years I've lived with a Jewish partner.  So, happy new year, let us all continue to fight like hell for the living and pray like hell for the dead.

  ALL HALLOWS

These are the days of long shadows,
houses, trees and barns,
telephone poles,
stretched across the stubbled fields,
the heartbreak of October light.
And then the geese:
morning and evening wedges
crossing the horizon
trailing autumn in their
busy mournful cries;
trailing memory,
the scent of apples,
dark leaves, morning mist.
The season of ghosts,
souls returned,
blowing past like leaves,
cold mornings, early dark;
trying, like the geese, to tell us
something we almost remember,
something we almost hear.

ABUSE ABOUNDING

How about them Red Sox?  I can't imagine Boston last night.  Madness in the streets.  Hopefully no one else got shot in the madness.  I'm happy for the Sox, for my former city, for the rising of the underdogs everywhere.  But I hate the whole "free agent" thing.  I liked it when teams stayed together and you could really be a loyal fan to a whole group of guys for a long time.  Ah well, I'm an old fart, there's no denying that.

And this morning I have Arianna Huffington's last column pre the election to offer you.  On a subject I have been mulling and stewing, ranting and raving, choking and gagging over in the past weeks more than ever.  It's what she calls "faith abuse."  She links to Ron Suskind's article in the NYT magazine a couple of weeks ago, I think it was Oct. 27, a hair-raising look at how this president is making decisions, running a government, a war, and ultimately all our lives.  I've wanted to write a post linking to the NYT article as well as several other sites where this is being discussed, and haven't had the time.  Now, Arianna has done it for me.  I don't know that anything anyone says will deter those who see all this as America's salvation from voting for Bush, but the rest of us need to do everything we can to alert sane voters and get them to the polls.

FAITH ABUSE: WHEN GOD BECOMES A CAMPAIGN PLOY

By Arianna Huffington

This is my last column before Election Day. With less than a week to go, I plan on doing everything in my power to defeat George W. Bush (need a ride to the polls?). Then I'm going to get down on my knees and pray to a higher power.

As someone for whom faith is incredibly important, and who regularly prays for all the people and things that matter to me, I'm hopeful that God is as appalled as I am with the way His name is constantly being taken in vain on the Bush campaign trail, and with how the president is abusing his faith to justify to himself and to the world his disastrous policies.

Lord knows there's a very long list of things to be angry with Bush about, but this one has moved to the top of my personal hit parade because, as Catholic theologians teach us, "The corruption of the best is the worst." And George W. is truly corrupting faith and dragging it into the political gutter. In two fundamental ways:

First, he's using it as a spiritual inoculation against uncertainty and complexity.

Ron Suskind's recent piece  in the New York Times Magazine painted a chilling portrait of a presidency in which thoughtful analysis and moral questioning have been replaced by "God-given" certainty, and where facts and open debate have become an anathema.

Suskind reveals a president who uses his faith to numb himself against reality. It anesthetizes him in the same way a stiff drink — OK, 20 stiff drinks — used to, and allows him to drown out the voices of doubt. Yet great thinkers throughout history have extolled the virtues of doubt. As Paul Tillich put it: "Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith."

But not in the Bush White House, where doubters are treated as traitors, and inconvenient facts are the work of the Devil — because facts can lead to questioning, and questioning undermines faith. And that would be blasphemy in an Oval Office where unbending resolve has become a holy sacrament. No wonder Bush is unwilling to admit to even a single mistake.

The second way the president is corrupting his faith is by using it as a marketing tool designed to garner support among the over 60 million Americans who identify themselves as evangelical — particularly the 4 million born-again voters who stayed home in 2000.

Nowhere is this blending of church and campaign more evident than in "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD being distributed to tens of thousands of America's churches.

Although not officially the work of the Bush-Cheney campaign, it obviously has its approval, and indeed was screened at a party for Christian conservatives hosted by the campaign at the GOP convention in New York.

In the documentary, President Bush is presented as a man with "the moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet" — and is shown sharing a beatific split screen with the Son of God himself.

So, in 2004, Jesus is not only the president's favorite philosopher — he's his surrogate running mate. I'm surprised we haven't seen any "Bush-Christ 2004" bumper stickers yet. It would make for a heck of an October surprise.

All this pious posturing is also being used as a cudgel with which to attack John Kerry, portraying him as a sorry second in the faith sweepstakes.

Forget that Kerry carries a Bible and a rosary with him on the campaign trail, used to be an altar boy, and has said, "My faith affects everything that I do." The Bushies have made it seem as if they are running against Joe Pagan. Just check out the "Kerry: Wrong for Catholics" page  on the official Bush-Cheney campaign Web site.

What's next? Attack ads from Altar Boys for Truth claiming Kerry never actually swallowed the body of Christ during communion?

What the president calls faith is actually nothing of the sort. It is fanaticism, pure and simple. The defining trait of the fanatic is an utter refusal to allow anything as piddling as evidence to get in the way of an unshakable belief.

This zealot's mindset is what allows President Bush to take in the death and destruction in Iraq and see them as "freedom on the march." And it's also what allows Abu Zarqawi and his followers to coldly put a bullet in the back of the head of four-dozen unarmed Iraqi Army recruits because they are "apostates."

"Either you're with us or you're against us" plainly cuts both ways.

"This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about al-Qaida and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy," explained Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy advisor to Reagan and Bush 41. "He understands them because he's just like them."

I pray that every American of real faith keeps this in mind when stepping into the voting booth on Election Day.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.