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Ten Days Later
Nov. 18th, 2016 10:38 pmAnger and fear are settling down into what I hope is a sustainable banked fire, something to keep me moving and acting and loving for the duration. I keep encountering new indications that this will not be normal. Yesterday it was Japanese internment suddenly being invoked as a perfectly reasonable policy precedent. Today it's the threat of FADA, which both houses of Congress have said they will pass and T**** has said he will sign. Then there are the ongoing additions to the Cabinet of Deplorables...
I've made the first Congressional Office calls of my life, something I always left to the extroverts before. Yesterday my hands were shaking for an hour afterwards; today I just felt a little queasy. We've gotten a quote on solar panels. Going to a neighborhood Not On Our Watch meeting this weekend, hoping to solidify the looking-out-for-each-other energies that we've found talking with neighbors individually.
Before this, I had let the day-to-day business of job and kids and household come before actively working to repair the world. In the abstract, I felt that making a better world was a vital part of parenting, of householding, of a full adult life--but in practice there was so much I didn't get to. I'm not hubristic enough to think that me, alone, speaking up more would have changed the election. But me and thousands of other busy people, overwhelmed by the minuata of daily life... I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way now. I'm heartened by the number of people I see being galvanized around the country. Even hopeful, some moments.
I think my writing must be part of this repair. My "yay, 1st book coming out" excitement feels like an artifact of that brighter alternate universe. I'm trying to focus now on sharing strength and empathy, and speaking truth in the best way I know how. For a week before the election I was too distracted to write, and for a few days afterward too much in mourning. Now the words are coming again, the second book going in a slightly different direction than I thought it would, truths clarified by current events. I'm trying to weave solace and hope and truth: strange bedfellows. Aphra's stories have always been about understanding across barriers, fighting for survival with allies who are themselves eldritch to you. We have always described groups of people in monstrous terms when we wanted an excuse to treat them badly; therefore any description of a whole group as monstrous must be questioned deeply and forcefully. And yet we also need to know how to recognize and fight the real monsters...
A little of everything that needs doing, every day.
I've made the first Congressional Office calls of my life, something I always left to the extroverts before. Yesterday my hands were shaking for an hour afterwards; today I just felt a little queasy. We've gotten a quote on solar panels. Going to a neighborhood Not On Our Watch meeting this weekend, hoping to solidify the looking-out-for-each-other energies that we've found talking with neighbors individually.
Before this, I had let the day-to-day business of job and kids and household come before actively working to repair the world. In the abstract, I felt that making a better world was a vital part of parenting, of householding, of a full adult life--but in practice there was so much I didn't get to. I'm not hubristic enough to think that me, alone, speaking up more would have changed the election. But me and thousands of other busy people, overwhelmed by the minuata of daily life... I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way now. I'm heartened by the number of people I see being galvanized around the country. Even hopeful, some moments.
I think my writing must be part of this repair. My "yay, 1st book coming out" excitement feels like an artifact of that brighter alternate universe. I'm trying to focus now on sharing strength and empathy, and speaking truth in the best way I know how. For a week before the election I was too distracted to write, and for a few days afterward too much in mourning. Now the words are coming again, the second book going in a slightly different direction than I thought it would, truths clarified by current events. I'm trying to weave solace and hope and truth: strange bedfellows. Aphra's stories have always been about understanding across barriers, fighting for survival with allies who are themselves eldritch to you. We have always described groups of people in monstrous terms when we wanted an excuse to treat them badly; therefore any description of a whole group as monstrous must be questioned deeply and forcefully. And yet we also need to know how to recognize and fight the real monsters...
A little of everything that needs doing, every day.
