Category: Choices

activism, Choices, community, Determination, disability, Learning, long covid, Mindfulness, Take Action

Chronic Resistance: Notes on Surviving the Horrors

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Photo by Majestic Lukas on Unsplash

Half the US reels from this first week of mayhem. A good portion of the rest of the world too. As always, Democratic party leaders are unwilling to make the radical changes necessary to produce a coherent strategy. Grassroots organizers are paralyzed by attacks on multiple fronts at once, scrambling to serve already vulnerable communities now facing direct threats to their existence. And the failure of mass protests over the past decade to sway policy in a more humane direction has left many without a collective mechanism for voicing outrage.

Just as in the first sickening months of His Monstrosity’s first term in office, the goal is to keep us off-balance. To make us so dizzy with fear and confusion that we end up like Oz’s scarecrow: stuffed full of the shredded hopes of 100 million people, stuck in place and pointing in every direction at once.

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Choices, growth, Letting Go, Poetry, Relationships, Writing

The Next Day

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Photo by Mikel Ibarluzea on Unsplash. Color image of a forest of tall evergreen trees towering over a trail that leads to a small gray stone cabin in the distance

Tonight you will dream yourself into a highwire act
free of goblins prowling the edges
unraveling the net.
You will wake to winter’s striped sky
last seen when the world was still green.
You will robe your fingers
in silver
gloss your lips
with greeting
free a trickle of light
from the rusted tap
you have to use a wrench
to turn on.

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Choices, disability, Learning, long covid, Music, Poetry

Goblin Polyphonic

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Photo by Santi Bentivegna on Unsplash

for the times we ignore the price tag, may we forgive ourselves

He strides up the steps
in his purple velvet coat,
trailing the welcome stink
of burnt sugar
and rosin, 
a gait so light even the oldest boards
hold their breath. 
He closes the distance 
before you clock his game,
pulls a quarter from behind your ear.

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activism, Change, Choices, community, disability, health, long covid, Reading Beyond

To Spin a Yarn: Notes on Curse and Rescue

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Inside this illness, many of us inhabit two opposing states at once: grateful beyond measure for the knights and godmothers and helpful mice in one’s own tale. And burning with white-hot rage on behalf of afflicted siblings punished without end by the failures of our kings and the ones who permit their reign.

Photo by Yevheniia on Unsplash. Picture from inside a barred tower window with jagged edges looking out over a dark, adjacent tower and the countryside below at dusk.

You know how to spot the villains the moment they step onto the page. Briar Rose’s wronged fairy, Jack’s giant, an entire genus of jealous stepmothers who would rather kill their husband’s children than compete for scarce resources. All you have to do is look for the most jealous, greedy, power-hungry characters. The ones whose motives make your skin crawl.

You also know from reading these stories that the villain is a straw man. He draws your attention away from where the real threats lurk. The resident miscreant, no matter how vast his appetite, can’t hold a candle to the more dangerous elements driving the plot. 

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Choices, Living in the Moment, Mindfulness, spirit

Just Stand There

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cristina-gottardi-tunnel

At this point, I check the news only three times a day. The rationing is keeping me steady. When this all started a few weeks ago, broadcasts from the various corners of the world helped me make decisions. I pulled my son out of school a day before the county caught up. The conversation with his dad about the decision was tough — I had to make the case for why our boy’s academic well-being was less critical than flattening the curve. This meant providing evidence from the Italian news, from scientists who were begging for distancing in the absence of any kind of coordinated response from our leadership.

Like so many people, I read and read and read. Tracked curves from around the world, learned why South Korea looks so different from Iran. Then not 24 hours after I made the call, our school board followed suit. That early vigilance validated, I continued to gulp down news from every source I could find.

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body, Choices, Love, Poetry, Relationships

How to Write a Love Poem

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dance-couple-john-moeses-bauan

1. Here is your blank page.
A crease deepening in the fold of their neck.
A spiderweb alongside the eyes.
Knuckles nicked and gnarled
from every saw blade that has ever gone sideways.
Their hull with its jagged seams lashed back together
more times than even they can count,
Yet strength enough still to flip you like an egg
over easy, your wet yolk intact (but not for long).
Their silhouette against the moonlaced slats,
looming, flesh-wrapped,
lifting the crenulation of your ribs
smoothing the oil they somehow coax
from pockets
you forgot you’d sewn into the edges of your whispers.

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Brain, Choices, Determination, spirit

Power Failure

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bangkit-prayogi-cave

We saw everyone around us smiling and repeating “I’m fine! I’m fine!” and we found ourselves unable to join them in all the pretending. We had to tell the truth, which was: “Actually, I’m not fine.”

– Glennon Doyle

It pulls in all the bad stuff: guilt, despair, shame, anger, disappointment, confusion, worry, exhaustion, and pain of all varieties. The ShopVac of Suffering. It sucks into its belly the cobwebs from the corners and the black mold from the basement and the decades-old crud buried deep in the carpet.

Engine growling, it whips this mix into misery soup.

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Choices, Friends, Letting Go

the world is glimpsed through veils

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glass sculpture ben young 3
Sea of Separation, Ben Young

Sometimes you sit in a room with someone who is doing something hard. You sit with them and let them do the hard thing. You sit with them not doing the hard thing for them. You sit there not answering the questions facing them unless the questions are some version of, “Can I do this?” The only answer you say out loud is, “You’ve done hard things before. Of course you can do this.” You offer them sips of water. You keep the glass filled.

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activism, Brain, Change, Choices, Mindfulness, Take Action

Global Dissonance

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tunis-muralfist

Maladapation or simply adaptation?

When experiencing cognitive dissonance, a person has two options. Three really, if remaining in a state of crazymaking incongruity counts as an approach. Assuming that easing the dissonance is the goal, however, you can go through one of two doors.

Door A is adjusting your beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, and values to fit the situation.

Door B is changing the situation.

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