Forenote: I haven’t been around this place for a very long time. Not a lot of people know me.
Those who DO know that I wasn’t even supposed to LIVE this long: I was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer in Dec ‘17, with a prognosis of 6 months to a year at the time. My treatment began with a craniotomy to remove a life-threatening tumor from my brain. And yet, here I am. Since then, every step I have taken, every breath I have breathed has been on borrowed time. It’s my “least common denominator”-tie to RBG, I suppose, and partly what inspired this free-association RANT. I am a cancer survivor. And like ALL cancer survivors, the fact is that I am always already dying. “Cancer-free” is a myth. Progression free, sure. NED=No Evidence of Disease. Sure. But cancer, especially stage IV, is forever. It’s the gift that keeps on giving; the toll that keeps on taking. RBG knew that better than most, and she wore it well.
Last year around this time, I was recovering from a week-long hospital stay (one of several). Since then, I’ve been on and off supplemental oxygen. Goes without saying that I have not left my own property more than 10 times since March, and most of those “outings” have been medical. In telemed visits conducted on my staircase, one of the strategies my physical therapist taught for managing respiratory issues was to stop and catch my breath—literally, to stop moving, take out the pulseoximeter, do a reading, breathe deeply until my O2 levels are safe enough to take another step. I see in that an apt metaphor for what we all need to do. Now. Until Nov 3. Until Jan 20.
Here goes.
Good morning.
It's a beautiful, mid-September Sunday morning at a time in this country, and indeed the WORLD, that rivals the worst of times by any measure, and I'm in the mood for F-bombs.
Because this time it's not just the country that's on the line, not just a matter of human suffering/loss/death, but the PLANET.
I'd be the first to concede that I don’t know the language of the natural world well: not as well as I should or could. I don't know it as conservationists do, as scientists do; not as farmers do, or REAL gardeners, but the way I know "mother nature"--you'd really have to conduct yourself like a major fucking ASSHOLE before she came out cussing and swinging and tried to shut your fat ass DOWN.
So before I get up and participate in the drought-driven rote exercise that gardening has become for me--that is, go out and waste tons of precious water hosing down plants with artificial hydration from the spout, just enough to keep them hanging on for these next few weeks--I'm going to take a stab at translating what I hear "mother nature" saying.
And I'll hope this speaks more loudly than all those whose personal/political pains and grievances have driven them to the brink of .... what shall I call it? Insanity? Despair? ... Dunno. Only know that, yes, I, too, have been there. Have lashed out in disrespect. Said and done things that put my ancestors to shame. Been out-of-control, over-the-top. Starkravinglunaticradical. Or something like that.
Now, though, here's what I hear unwavering on the winds, withering between the lines:
Fuck you. Fuck you humans with your petty grievances and perpetual pity parties."But. But. But.""My issue. My issue. My issue.""Me. Me. Me.""Woe is me. Woe be mine."Woe, woah, woke?Fuck woke.Broken fuckin' record woke.I'm dying. Do you hear me? I am dying.And the best you can do is bitch and piss and moan, about this ache, that pain, this loss, that gain.Roe. LGBTetc. BLM (2 counts on that one if you're Indian: you figure it out.) ACA. ADA. DACA.You say "mother nature" doesn't cuss. Wouldn't drop the F-bomb.Fuck you.What the fuck do you think birds divebombing dead to the ground are saying?What the fuck do you think climate fires screaming out their SOS all the way around the world are SAYING? To YOU.Seriously, WTF? WTAF? WTALF?I am on fire. I am drowning. The sound of my decay is deafening.You all are proof of that!Dance on someone else's grave.Dance, dance, dance till gravity's gone.
The End.
****
Me again.
The time to ACT was 2000. Bush v Gore. Never should have happened. All of us bear some responsibility for that. ALL of us. We fucked ourselves.
Hindsight is always 2020, innit?
But now? Now is the time to STOP. Just fucking STOP. STFU. About everything but this: making it stop.
Special note to purity trolls, Bernie Bros, Steiners, NeverHillaries, single-issue voters, protest voters, non-voters, still out there screaming your heads off like goats on the way to slaughter at an African market.
If you think I'm talking about you, then I probably am. Check yourself. I'll do the same.
Pull yourself out of your goddamned pity pit. Whatever the color or consistency of the pitch that's sucking you in: Don't be a sucker. Because suckers suck. And when suckers suck, losers win. Don't let them sucker you into a win.
Stop.
Vote.
Vote blue.
No matter who.
Don't call it a "win." It's not.
Don't call it "lesser of two evils." It's not that either.
It's just terminal punctuation point. A period. Exclamation mark. Full stop.
Breathe, motherfucker, just fucking BREATHE. While you still can.
And think. Even if you've never bothered before. Even if you think you're the only one who's ever been thinking all along. If you think you've thought this all out and thunk this all through, and good god almighty aren't you the thinkingest brotherfucker on the planet!
At this moment, NO lives matter. No human lives, that is.
You don't fucking matter, people.
You are totally irrelevant but for the fact that you alone hold the fate of the planet in your blood-scatted hands.
The only thing a "blue wave" will do is buy us a small--very small--window of time. To decide. Whether we have the courage to go on living on this planet.
Understand: this window is BROKEN. We are unlikely to crawl through unscathed. The shards will cut. Deep. And every step we take on the other side will be taken not on bated breath, but with labored breath. Gasping for air.
But the alternative is to drop like birds. Splat.
We buy ourselves one breath of air. One.
Or we don't.