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Nineteen Days Later: Moments
Nov. 27th, 2016 01:28 amI'm at the Fort Totten train station, on the liminal boundary between DC and Maryland, colony and state, travel beneath the earth and above it. On either side, a grassy slope cuts down to the platform. It's late afternoon, and leaves drift down like snow, and the light shines through like an oil painting. Two deer stand in the light, dipping their heads to taste the green. Their tails flick lazily even as the trains rumble past.
I'm at our neighborhood rally--"Not On Our Watch"--listening to a Hawiian Sovereignty activist. She tells us how she wore dark glasses to vote. The people around her were so excited about the likely Clinton win, and she didn't want them to see her crying. Clinton's policies would do terrible harm to her people and her cause--and she mourned that this was the best option on offer.
My daughter smiles when I lift her from her crib, and babbles, new words every day. She's the only morning person in the household, so we're the first downstairs. Even the dog is asleep; this is as quiet as our house gets. Outside, a squirrel is eating the pumpkin we left out on the stump, bushy tail waving. M demands "mana" for breakfast. When I give her the banana, I ask, as I always do, "Can you say thank you?" For the first time, she responds: "Dak oo!"
I'm watching Zootopia and crying. It seems so painfully and wonderfully optimistic. This week I have also cried at Belinda Carlisle's "Summer Rain" and the mere thought of putting on Hamilton.
My landlord is eating stir-fry in my dining room. We're listening to a pitch for solar panels--we've been talking for a couple of years about getting them on the house eventually, but we've agreed that it's time now. It turns out that the solar sales guy is from the same small Colorado town as one of our housemates; they're joking about snow. The sales guy seems relieved to be pitching to people who understand both architecture and math.
I'm in a Day Job meeting about innovation and crowdsourcing when I make the mistake of checking Twitter. This is how I discover that, over the weekend, the building where I used to work rented space to a bunch of nazis. I run into the bathroom and manage to avoid throwing up; a friend on Twitter talks me down so I can finish up the meeting.
I'm playing the old FASA Star Trek RPG with my household--my household is in fact a college role-playing group that decided to raise kids together; now we all chip in for sitters so we can game. We're trying to track a federation vessel that shot at a neutral ship, before it starts a war. We're convinced that it's a breakaway group of Andorian terrorists. Instead it turns out to be a bunch of refugees who got away from a fight through time travel, and think their own war's still going on.
"Are you okay," we ask everyone we meet. "How are you holding up?" Some people have already experienced the open bigotry, had to make new medical plans, realized the loss of possibilities that depended on particular laws. Some are still stuck on finding arguments for their own reassurance. I think about how the incipient dystopia permeates everything, and yet the moments of beauty and joy keep happening. I try to imagine how those moments will feel when the dystopia is no longer incipient. I try to fold myself around them, to store them, and to remind myself that they will keep occuring, in some form, regardless of what happens around them.
I'm at our neighborhood rally--"Not On Our Watch"--listening to a Hawiian Sovereignty activist. She tells us how she wore dark glasses to vote. The people around her were so excited about the likely Clinton win, and she didn't want them to see her crying. Clinton's policies would do terrible harm to her people and her cause--and she mourned that this was the best option on offer.
My daughter smiles when I lift her from her crib, and babbles, new words every day. She's the only morning person in the household, so we're the first downstairs. Even the dog is asleep; this is as quiet as our house gets. Outside, a squirrel is eating the pumpkin we left out on the stump, bushy tail waving. M demands "mana" for breakfast. When I give her the banana, I ask, as I always do, "Can you say thank you?" For the first time, she responds: "Dak oo!"
I'm watching Zootopia and crying. It seems so painfully and wonderfully optimistic. This week I have also cried at Belinda Carlisle's "Summer Rain" and the mere thought of putting on Hamilton.
My landlord is eating stir-fry in my dining room. We're listening to a pitch for solar panels--we've been talking for a couple of years about getting them on the house eventually, but we've agreed that it's time now. It turns out that the solar sales guy is from the same small Colorado town as one of our housemates; they're joking about snow. The sales guy seems relieved to be pitching to people who understand both architecture and math.
I'm in a Day Job meeting about innovation and crowdsourcing when I make the mistake of checking Twitter. This is how I discover that, over the weekend, the building where I used to work rented space to a bunch of nazis. I run into the bathroom and manage to avoid throwing up; a friend on Twitter talks me down so I can finish up the meeting.
I'm playing the old FASA Star Trek RPG with my household--my household is in fact a college role-playing group that decided to raise kids together; now we all chip in for sitters so we can game. We're trying to track a federation vessel that shot at a neutral ship, before it starts a war. We're convinced that it's a breakaway group of Andorian terrorists. Instead it turns out to be a bunch of refugees who got away from a fight through time travel, and think their own war's still going on.
"Are you okay," we ask everyone we meet. "How are you holding up?" Some people have already experienced the open bigotry, had to make new medical plans, realized the loss of possibilities that depended on particular laws. Some are still stuck on finding arguments for their own reassurance. I think about how the incipient dystopia permeates everything, and yet the moments of beauty and joy keep happening. I try to imagine how those moments will feel when the dystopia is no longer incipient. I try to fold myself around them, to store them, and to remind myself that they will keep occuring, in some form, regardless of what happens around them.
