Cycles of grief in a time of greed
A culture of death can only mean more death
Hello, Friends.
An observation: even critics of the current president, or should I say, those who detest him, act like him.
It is a time of grief for all things good. We can still find these things, good is all around us, but it’s vulnerable to destruction because what is actually in the ascendant is killing and taking. We kill nature and beauty to create money, but money does not create beauty or nature in return—all money has the power to do is manipulate what is real, which of course, is beauty and nature, not money.
We distract ourselves from this fact by saying we can own nature and beauty. Oh, Lord. If I hear one more word about property rights, I might slap a bitch and leave a mark for eternity. The Kali Yuga is real, and it lives in my back yard, even if by law I am not allowed to call it mine, although I pay far more attention to what goes on there than does the “owner”.
I’m feeling quite low about these things today because I have failed to make a difference, to protect something I love dearly, and I can only feel helpless as a result.
The field behind my home, the 18 acres teeming with life, is about to be paved—PAVED! All 18 acres—for an RV park with dinky, stupid aquatic attractions. The ones in power are all excited, and one even congratulated the developer for “figuring out something to do with that piece of land.” She might as well just called it a piece of ass for all the demeaning way she sees these 18 acres of beauty.
I’ve tried in vain to talk sense to the Powers The Be about the meadowlarks who will all be killed when the asphalt is poured over their nests that are tucked away in the tufts of bluegrass that is already a threatened species. The killdeer, too.
There also is a den of coyotes that I love to watch play when they come out from the little grove alongside the creek that will now have to absorb the water from the detention pond that is being built to take the run off from the asphalt that will surround the 141 RVs. Yes, 141 RVs, because apparently that is how many people have no capacity to imagine anything else to do with their time and energy but to sit in a metal box next to other metal boxes with a faux lazy river surrounding them. (Yes, of course we have real rivers they could also visit.)
But we all need a dream, and everyone is entitled to dream big. Especially in a time of the Prosperity Gospel, which is big in these parts.
The family of deer, the foxes and their kits, the red tailed hawks, the murder of crows, the frogs that click and croak at dusk, the life, the life, the life. All to be destroyed because someone wants to make money, blind to the value in the treasure they hold. But I am not allowed to have an opinion about it because I don’t own it.
And while I know from having spent three years observing the land every day, much of the day, because I look out the window often, or work from my deck where I can observe the life around me, that this land is going to flood, with all that asphalt, the fact that there will be a detention pond means it got green lighted by the Codes department. I told them wait and see, it will flood, but oh, well.
Meanwhile, because it will be like watching someone murder my best friend in slow motion, replete with back-up beep beep at levels that would outpace the noise torture used at Gitmo, I have been seeking a new place to live. And that is how I know that people talk out their assholes when they criticize the president while demanding as much money as they can pressure people to give them.
There used to be plenty of homes to rent, and that is all I am willing and able to do right now as I rebuild my life from the mess I made of it by getting married in my 50s. But all the homes are now owned by liberal Coasties, Prosperity Gospelites, and local lawyers, who bought them up, painted them, and called that a renovation, and now the prices have doubled, there are massive fees for pets, and first, last, and current rent is due with other fees.
Do not tell me that supply and demand is a real equation. It is not. Greed is all there is. Greed and killing for more greed. I am in a panic that not only will I have to move, again, but that I might have to move to another city because I can’t afford my own. My friends are telling me to get a roommate, especially since I nearly died and would have done had I not had a friend show up at the right time back in May when my heart was stopping. But I resent being forced into the failure of cohabitation for the sake of finances at my age, so I will not do it.
I saw a Fowler’s toad last evening when I took the dog out for her last pee before bedtime. I was so startled to see it just sitting calmly under the street light. My mind cycled quickly through the reasons I was so startled by it. Then I realized it was because it was the first time I had seen one in 20 years.
Then I stood there looking at it, slightly agitated by its appearance, because was it really that long since I’d seen one at the monastery where I used to take my son for weeks at a time so we could live on the farm with the monks and help them with their chores? I racked my brain. I know I have heard toads croaking in the cattails surrounding the pond left over from when this neighborhood used to be a cattle farm, but, why was he out where he was vulnerable to being smooshed by a pick up truck?
It just made me feel so sad to see him, a lone survivor, but likely not for long. And to think it'd been two decades since I’d seen a toad. As a child, I was that weird girl who tried to catch them with her bare hands. Frogs, turtles, toads, snakes—I was fascinated by all of them. I wanted to play with them, observe them, be around them, and I did all these things all the time. Now their appearance is a mysterious and upsetting surprise.
Once back inside, I went to sit on the deck and listen to the croaking in the night. The toad’s brethren were down in the creek, giving it their full-throated all. Maybe he’d gone back there himself (itself). I just felt so sad. So bereft. And after all the health issues—my cardiologist told me this week he was surprised and delighted to report how well I was doing, considering that he’d had serious concerns I wouldn’t make it—and the dissociation I’ve had from all of it, I finally shed a few tears. Not weeping, just bitter tears. What is the point of living in this world when I can do nothing to protect or care for what I love within it?
All I can think to do is call bullshit on the people who natter, natter, natter about how much they hate this president and then live out the same reality he exemplifies.
Before the encounter with the toad, earlier in the day, I’d attended the memorial service for a friend, Black Bear. He died at the start of this year, but for a host of reasons, many of which are unknown to me, the celebration of his life wasn’t until this weekend.
Let me tell you why I counted him as a friend, even though we didn’t spend much time together. First, we bonded over our love of animals. Then birds. Then American Indian art. He was a teacher and a potter. I have a small collection of works by American Indian artists and am interested in all things American West that aren’t Taylor Sheridan’s version of it.
But then, at some point, Black Bear started punching me. Literally punching me every time he saw me. It was always in my upper arm that he’d hit me. Hard. It was so annoying. But I knew if I told him to stop, it wouldn’t matter, so I just started punching him back in his arm. Hard. We hit each other all the time.
I got to the point where I looked forward to seeing him, because I knew he would punch me and I would get to punch him. It was so satisfying to hit someone. Because there are so many reasons to punch the fuck out of all the stupid faces that want to pave this planet. Black Bear, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, saw that I felt that way and let me let him have it, even though of course he wasn’t one of the stupid ones. He was one of the smart ones. He knew my rage. We never talked about it, he just knew I felt it. He knew it. He gave me a way to express it.
And I should say, one of Bear’s most well-known creations was a painting of the current president taking a dump. We all poop, Bear said. Yes, we do, and we all count our money, money, money.
Another friend, a gardener and one who is simpatico to the notion that we are collectively sleepwalking through a moment of money’s mass enchantment of our hearts and minds, had said to me on Friday that we live in a culture of death, and we kill to make money, then kill again to make still more money. He was there at Bear’s celebration of life, too. Standing at the buffet, I thought about that conversation. It made me want to punch a hole in the wall behind me. A hole where truth should be.
Thank you, Bear. May you rest in peace. I hope you are punching someone, hard. I will have to find another way to express my abject rage at the pavers and the grifters, but I am grateful you saw what is really inside of me and that you made sure to leave your mark for eternity.
Peace,
Whitney