Grief is a small room
one door: closed
one window: shuttered
four walls
ceiling
room enough for
me
one chair
a thousand thoughts
and a million questions
that begin with
Why . . . ?
Posted in Creativity, Poetry | Tagged grief, modern poetry, Poetry, tragedy | Leave a Comment »
This is who we want to be
We want our neighbors to go hungry
So we can enjoy the myth of our exceptional diligence
We want people to die of a preventable disease
So we don’t have to suffer the discomfort of a filter mask
We want kids to be stigmatized, bullied, and ashamed
So we can believe in the binary nature of gender
We want the oppressed to shut up and take a seat in the back
So we don’t have to think about the crimes of our ancestors
We want people to work long hours in unsafe conditions for paltry wages
So we can promote the fairy tale of corporate benevolence
We want women to bear babies, even if it kills them
So we can revel in our prideful righteousness
We want nothing to change, even for the better
So we can remain faithful to the tribe of our forebears
We want our children to be traumatized, maimed, and murdered
So we can have our guns
This
This is who we want to be
A nation without compassion, without sense
A nation without morality beyond our own selfish wants
A nation without shame, without courage
And we are succeeding
Posted in Culture, Politics | Tagged gun control, mass shooting, partisan, politics, uvalde | 3 Comments »
I’ve talked about purges before. Be it kitchen gadgets gathering dust at the back of a drawer or the varied detritus accumulated through decades of living, going through and clearing them out has become a habit for my wife and me. Every few years we take a deep dive into areas of our house and our lives, reevaluate what’s there, determine if a thing is being used and (more importantly) if it’s useful and, if we find it lacking, we repurpose, rehome, donate, and toss.
During the recent tumultuous times, we got out of that habit, but this year our commitment to the process has been renewed and, in keeping with our family motto*, it’s a big one. This time we are looking beyond clothing, books, movies, and games, extending the scope to big things like furniture, cars, and even (gasp!) television shows.
We all have shows that we watch simply because we have watched them. But shows change; sometimes they get better, and sometimes (most times) they don’t. Conversely, sometimes it is our tastes that change, while the shows stay true to their original methods. Still, in both cases, we often continue to tune in for each season.
Long ago, my wife and I developed “drop kick” rules, rules designed to provide an exit ramp from an activity that just wasn’t giving us what we wanted. We had the 40-page Drop Kick Rule for books (up to 80 pages, for longer works), and the 20-minute Drop Kick Rule for movies. This year, we added the 2-episode Drop Kick Rule for television series, and we’ve already put it into action. (Well, I have.)
The victim: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
I got myself into a speck of trouble when I mentioned on social media that this new product from the Star Trek franchise failed to pass my 2-ep DK rule. Turns out that, in some sci-fi circles, dissing Star Trek is on par with shooting a puppy in the face, a mortal sin punishable by shunning, humiliation, and digital defenestration. Luckily, I no longer put much stock in the opinions of people I don’t know, so I didn’t suffer much, but the reason for my dissatisfaction with ST:SNW is relevant and it boils down to one thing: my tastes have changed.
My complaint—that I don’t like being preached to, even when I agree with the message—was met with general derision, as my opponent (rightly) pointed out that ST:TOS was totally preachy. Yes, it was; it was progressive, groundbreaking, and preached a message of peace and unity within diversity. And I loved it.
I was also eight.
Since then, my tastes have changed, but that’s only part of the reason ST:SNW left me cold. The messages preached by ST:TOS were embedded in the world, a foundation that was simply there, and which informed the stories the show presented. Yes, the show had the first interracial kiss on network television, but it also didn’t shine a big old spotlight on it and surround it with neon arrows so we’d be sure to get the point. Each of the first two episodes of ST:SNW were (in my opinion) ham-fisted and distinctly unsubtle in their messaging, each one wrapping up with a little “and here’s what we learned” bow-tying epilogue.
By contrast, we also started watching Star Trek: Discovery (which somehow ran under my radar for its entire existence). This show I love, as it blends episodic storytelling with a longer “meta-plot” and character development arcs, all while incorporating the same progressive foundation as the other Star Trek offerings. This is where my tastes lie now.
My wife still loves Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; she loves seeing the younger iterations of favorite characters, enjoys the strictly episodic storytelling, and can’t get enough of Ethan Peck (my wife was once blessed by Gregory Peck, and has a soft spot for Ethan as he channels his grandfather’s voice on screen). So the show passed her 2-ep DK rule, even though it failed mine.
And that’s the crux of a purge, isn’t it? To eliminate from your rooms, your house, your schedule, and your life the things that you no longer use or that you no longer enjoy. I’m not going to look down on anyone for liking something I don’t any more than I would shame them because they didn’t like salmon or loved brie. Tastes differ, and no one is hurt because you like ST:SNW or because I do not.
Seems to me that this is the main message of Star Trek, anyway.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some boxes of books to prepare for charity.
k
*Numquam in Dimidium Mensurae
Posted in Culture, Television | Tagged discovery, simplification, Star Trek, strange new worlds, television review | 3 Comments »
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more “interesting,” Justice Alito and the Doo-Wops serve up a new album guaranteed to top the charts and convulse the nation.
Among the many things we should learn from this—the uselessness of judicial confirmation hearings, the endemic mendacity born of high ambition, the obvious fact that we no longer live in a system of “majority rules” but one of “minority vetoes,” the toxic effects of religion on a secular society, the true intentions and blatant misogyny held by the conservative right—there’s another lesson we should not ignore.
Our rights are not guaranteed.
The Constitution can be amended, and amendments can be repealed. Laws can be passed and subsequently stricken. Executive Orders only last until there’s a new butt sitting behind the Resolute desk.
There is no right, no legal expectation, no course of justice upon which we currently rely that cannot be taken away by a minority bent on its removal.
None.
The good news is, we know what to do.
The bad news is, it won’t be easy.
What we need to do—Trigger Warning: this may make white cis-het males feel bad about themselves—is dismantle the patriarchy. We need to eliminate the veto power of the minority, and never, ever relent on codifying, implementing, enforcing, and protecting the rights society adopts. Only one in three Americans believe abortions should be illegal in most or all cases, and yet they’re the ones driving this decades-long battle to turn women of childbearing age into Incubators of the State.
Putting aside the incredibly reductive and retrograde reasoning put forth by Alito & Co. in their draft majority opinion (and some of it is really quite shocking when given even passing thought), it is clear that the conservative/religious right has a stranglehold on the GOP, and that they are bent on imposing their theocratic beliefs on the rest of us. (Note: these are the same people who screamed about their personal liberty during mask mandates; irony isn’t dead, but it is picking its battles.)
So, when we reestablish the rights of privacy, self-determination, and personal sovereignty—and I am convinced we eventually will—we need to deny ourselves that victory lap, that well-earned rest, and keep the barricades firm, because regardless the laws we pass and amendments we enact, they will come at us again.
Raise your voice.
Stay united.
Vote them out.
k
Posted in Culture, Politics | Tagged abortion rights, alito, mysogyny, patriarchy, reproductive rights, roe v wade, SCOTUS, women's rights | Leave a Comment »
My youth plays out in monochromatic Super 8, all shadows and light, soundless but for the clacking whir of the projector, each jumpy image spattered by specks of dust that flash past, gone before they even register in the mind.
Around me, I see the shining, sun-bleached hills behind our houses, wild land laced by the trails I hike in adventures that are my haven, my freedom, my escape. I see the black-and-white blurs of schoolmates as they race their Flexi-Flyers headlong down the sloping streets. I see my family—mother, father, sister—wave and laugh, speaking silent words to whomever runs the camera, as they go about their daily lives.
All is shades of grey, wan and distant.
In my home, though, moving past the dark stain of lawn, the walls of pale grey stucco, and the brightly trimmed opening of the doorway, beyond the shadowed living room where children dare not tread, through the kitchen with its charcoal-colored wood, and into the chiaroscuro of the family room, there is a red chair.
It is red. So red.
It stands in the ashen jumble of the room like an open wound, colored the red of blood, bright and arterial, shiny as a skinned knee. Upholstered leather is nailed to its frame by rows of brass tacks that glint in the streaming sunlight, their rounded heads faceted by the hammer blows that set them.
It is an old chair—I do not know a time when it was not there—a holdout from days before my birth. Wing-backed, claw-footed, it is large, its arms stained by the grip of a thousand hands. Here and there the leather is a bit dry and has cracked, revealing tufts of excelsior and batting. It creaks when I climb up, as if complaining, as if I am an unwelcome intruder, and perhaps I am, for it is my father’s chair, and his alone. I curl up in its empty embrace, breathing in its captured aromas of Old Spice and Bond Street.
And on this day, this one day, it is the chair in which my father sits and, for the last time in our lives, gathers me up in his arms, in his warmth, in his scent. It is the chair in which he tells me of my mother’s death.
After that day, I do not know what happened to that chair. I still see the wall of books, the ancient davenport, the old B&W television on its tubular stand, the corduroy love seat, the sliding-glass door that opens out on the too-bright patio, all these I see in the flickering cinema of remembered youth, but there is a dark spot, a lacuna, a patch of emotional blight where the chair once stood. After that day, I do not remember it being there. I do not remember my father ever sitting in it again. I have excised it from my past, wished it out of existence.
In my experience, time does not heal, but it does teach. Sometimes it teaches us to understand and adapt, while at other times it teaches us how to cope and survive. The disappearance of that red chair is just such a lesson, learned during the sixty years that separate me from that day. That chair, the cauldron of my earliest grief, has bled out, its color used up, the power of its memory spent.
And I can live with that.
k
Posted in Creativity, Writing | Tagged grief, memoir, short fiction, vignettes, youth | Leave a Comment »
We are:
falling raindrops
drifting snowflakes
crystals of ice
Alone:
insignificant
small
powerless
Together:
an ocean, carving the earth
an avalanche, felling all in our path
a glacier, grinding stones to dust
We do not have this power
We are this power
Do not give it
to those whose thirst
exceeds their capacity
to care
We are
k
Posted in Poetry | Tagged collective power, individualism, society | 8 Comments »
For six decades, my feet have touched the earth. This did not seem a consequential thing before, but I have learned otherwise.
I grew up on the shores of San Pablo Bay. While, behind me, the dark oases of live oaks studded the rolling golden hills, I walked unshod down the shingled shore, the smooth curves of wave-worn pebbles pressing upward into the flesh of my bare feet. I would gather kelp vines to use as bullwhips, challenge fiddler crabs to duels, and with a poked finger annoy the anemones until they spat. My bare toes gripped the ragged rim of a tidepool’s edge, and my arches provided stability as I balanced on weather-beaten logs. To my bare feet, the cool water and the hot stones were as natural as the salt air and the scent of baking seaweed were to my lungs.
Then, with shoelaces tied together and draped over my neck, I kept my shoes dry as I crossed the tidal marsh that lay between shore and home,. Navigating past clumps of reeds, gently pushing aside the serrated blades of pampas grass, I let my feet breach the brackish water, sink into the yellow mud, continue down through muck the color of rust, until they hit the underlayment of fetid black peat, the foul and oily rot squishing upward between my toes. Here, shoes were worthless, destined (if used) to be left behind in a muddy grave or, worse, to survive for a few brief and redolent hours on the front stoop before my mother gave up and threw their ruined stink into the trash.
When school let out for summer, my friends and I tossed our tattered Keds aside and headed up into the sun-bleached hills behind our homes. We followed creekbeds and ridgelines, slid on the fragrant mat beneath the eucalyptus trees, and winced as spiny oak leaves pierced our callused feet. Come late August, with back-to-school sales shouting from every newspaper and TV ad, I’d be given new shoes, along with my mother’s admonition to take care of them this time because she wouldn’t be buying me any replacements.
To be safe, I rarely wore them outside of school.
In the time between those days and now, I maintained my contact with the earth, barefooting my way through the years. Working in my gardens, shaded by their canopy of spruce and fir and maple, I felt with each step the sun-warmed grass, the cushioned mat of russet needles, the crunch of pinecones, the coolth of upturned soil, and always I reveled in the chthonic energy that flowed upward from earth to sole to crown. My feet are still callused, though now mostly from walking on pavement than traipsing across youthful hills, but lately, age has begun to make its effects known.
An injured ligament across the left arch and instep has required support beyond what my bare feet can provide, for which I resorted to an ankle brace and bindings. The foot has improved, albeit with glacial speed, to the point where the tight grip of the bindings is not always required, but sadly, the foot is not yet able to go it alone, and so a shoe (with arch support) is needed.
The practice of walking shod was melted out of my DNA by the sun of many summers and so, even though it lessens the pain, wearing shoes around the house feels alien and unnatural. I feel as if I’m just passing through my own home, on my way to somewhere else, some place where bare feet are a faux pas.
My heart holds tight the hope that this is a temporary condition and not the first step down some inexorable decline, and that by the solstice I will once again be able to feel the ground beneath my feet, but there is no guarantee. Meanwhile, I will practice patience; but do not be surprised if, now and again, I leave my shoes on the bottom step and walk out to spend a few minutes standing barefoot beneath the garden’s green-leafed roof.
k
Posted in Culture, Gardening | Tagged bare feet, barefoot, creative writing, getting older, memoir, walking barefoot | 1 Comment »
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 