the cassandra pages

Eclipse

 

 

After the Ocean

 

Back in the city, waves of people --

soft folds of sand-colored hair

pinned at a woman's nape,

light glancing off phones.

 

Flowers on dresses, swooping scooters

instead of gulls, flapping orange wings

of a cyclist's safety vest, the ceaseless lap

of traffic on de Lorimier.

 

And a little girl in black tulle, glimmering with gold --

like stars that night on the island --

tripping across Marquette, still unaware

of either infinity, or oblivion.

Which side are you on?

President Trump's remarks in support of the alt-right are worse than despicable: they signal what is to come if he stays in office. I've just written or called all the members of the Vermont congressional delegation, where I vote, and I urge you to do the same. If I were in the U.S. today I'd be out on the street with a protest sign and working with whatever coalitions I could on behalf of all marginalized people -- which means everyone who is not white, straight, and male.

It's absolutely incredible to me that America has a president who openly supports neo-Nazis and white supremacists with so little effective opposition. It is not surprising to me that he was elected, or that these elements in American society have come out into the open, because I have always known they were there; only those who have existed in homogeneous, naive, privileged bubbles could have missed this in their lives in America. Yes, the Democrats and a few Republicans have managed to block his legislation, and the courts have overruled his most egregious anti-immigration orders, but where are the people who will actually finally stand up and stop this? Where is our own Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King? Where is the present-day Edward R. Murrow, speaking out against McCarthyism? But let's not stop there. Where and who are you? Because the time has come when each of us must face the decision to stand on the sidelines, or to actively resist, shelter, and protect those who are being persecuted: Jews and Muslims, people of color and of non-European ethnicity, the poor, women who are not protected by their wealth or association with white men.

And I'm sorry, but isn't enough to write hand-wringing Facebook and Twitter posts to our like-minded friends, or even blog posts like this. Are you willing to go to Washington, or to protest neo-Nazi book burnings in your city, or police brutality against blacks, or hate crimes against Jews or Muslims? Are you willing to go to city hall, to write letters, to organize your neighbors, to stand on a street corner with a sign, to call and write your representatives not just once but every week? Are you willing to protect, comfort, and shelter those who are and will be persecuted?

I've been an advocate and activist for peace and non-violence all my life, but I do believe that there are values worth fighting to protect. My own father, still living, risked his life as a tank driver in WWII to fight against the fascism that Trump is now championing. I just spent a weekend with five Jewish people my age whose families came to America from Germany, Austria, Russia, and Egypt to escape the Nazis; some members did not survive. My mother-in-law's family was killed in the Armenian genocide; my father-in-law's Arab family only survived the Ottoman persecutions of Christians because a Muslim leader protected them; they immigrated to America, were educated and assimilated, and now face prejudice and persecution. Where does it end? What an irony and obscenity it is to have a president, 80 years later, whose definition of American "greatness" has nothing to do with freedom and equality for all people, but instead bases his definition on rampant capitalism, exclusion, racism, homophobia, misogyny and privilege solely for the benefit of wealthy white males exactly like himself.

Do not kid yourself: 80 years after that World War, there is a war for the soul of western democracy. Which side are you on, and what are you willing to do? People everywhere -- white people in particular -- and not just in the U.S., have to speak up, stand up, and demand that our democracies work the way they are supposed to. One thing I have learned in my own fairly long life is if you wait for "the system" to quietly fix things on its own, nothing will happen, and the voices of fear will always drown out the voices of justice, fairness, and reason. A government of the people, by the people and for the people only works when the people themselves stand up for what is right, and not only demand the changes they want to see but make the decision to BE and LIVE as courageous people of justice and inclusion in the face of dark forces.

By the Sea - 1

We've just returned from ten days on the New England coast, first for the wedding of J.'s sister on the Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, then a few days in Boston, and finally a reunion of a few of J.'s college friends on Block Island, off the Rhode Island coast between Long Island and Cape Cod. I've come back browner and more relaxed, with several bags of shells, bones and pebbles collected on the various beaches; happy about renewed friendships and new beginnings; and dismayed about political events.

There was a beautiful wedding of two people, both widowed after long, happy marriages, who have found each other now and decided to spend the rest of their lives together.

There was a house full of beloved relatives, above a rocky shell-strewn beach, where we made a party for the whole family one night, and the sun created a spectacle across the bay.

There were long walks on the beach and along the salt marches, with white egrets and gulls, and ospreys carrying fish in their talons, and stranded horseshoe crabs from prehistory, and regular crabs and mussels, and seaweed to nibble on, and the sound of the sea as we fell asleep, and in the night, and when we woke.

And this, from my journal:

One night, a nightmare: a party of friendly strangers turned dark, and I became hunted to the death by Trump's armed henchmen. I woke, tried to dismiss the sticky cobwebs of the dream, fell back asleep only to re-enter the same party, except now the men were strangling the women, one by one.

We're staying on Poppasquash Neck, a small peninsula in Narragansett Bay settled just after the Plymouth Colony was established. Narragansett is an irregular network of rocky coastline, islands, large peninsulas and and these smaller ones known as "necks." The larger Bay, named after one of the two native tribes of this region, has three divisions that the English settlers named Prudence, Patience, and Hope; their main settlement became the city of Providence. But not far from here is the site of the assassination of Matacomet, also known as King Philip, the chief of the Wampanoag tribe, who - unlike his conciliatory father - saw the true intentions of the white settlers and went to war against them. The English namers -- my own ancestors were of similar stock and time -- were served well by Prudence, Patience, and Hope, and it's their stone walls and old orchards, white-sailed boats, flag-bunting-festooned old houses, and wealth that have created the visual identity of this place.

The serenity is so studied and so well established it disturbs me, and so I walk on the beach of weathered slipper shells, scallops and quahogs: more comfortable in that graveyard, and the longer timeline of the sea.