It

Exhaustion, anger, depression – and getting up again

It. Must stop saying it. Standing in for all the things I think and want to say. My brain whirling too fast to describe what it is. Perhaps it – or my sense of time moving too fast, or the endless sorting and pattern matching of observation – is due to laziness. It – the action of describing what one feels, or what one truly wants to say – has been rendered even more difficult due to the endless news cycle, the pictures that haunt one, of fish dying, of children without legs, of tents being incinerated, of women screaming for their children, of masked, jackbooted thugs in online cosplay fascist gear pushing citizens of a country to the ground. But no. We are supposed to become ever more inured to visions of destruction. To the point where my current boss, new boss, as I like to call her, mentions the apocalypse when referring to job and budget cuts. Only the very rich can feel that all this is a video game. The rest of us know that it – our lives and habits, the beds we sleep in, the food we buy, the children we hug – is fragile. And it – the sense that all this could be taken away, not in the Joni Ernst bad parenting do I have to explain the tooth fairy while exhorting you to be a born-again christian – small c purposeful – but the true momentary significance of any breath in, breath out – is fragile, like a bubble made by a baby when we hold their tiny body in our arms. We look into their eyes and love. Love is the hope our souls need. But the day-to-day of fighting for rights is far from the soft skin of infants. Like the clip that I saw this morning where a representative in government said don’t legislate about people until you see how they live, don’t legislate for the poor until you understand what they go through.

Everything is wrapped up in politics now. Even ignoring what is happening is a political act. My boss, now on holiday, still helping the “tiger team” work on draconian budget cuts. It – this pretense of running things – is all cosplay. Like the NYT today, again with the both-side-isms, one side saying that the destruction of government is dangerous and must be stopped and the other side blaming it – the failure of all systems – on a surfeit of middle managers. Again – it – the pushing away of blame onto others – moving slightly up. First refugees and people of color – I do not agree with this hierarchy or accept it – the way they see things – but it – the sequence in which those at the top or who have the luxury of not needing to care – activate the attack on the 90 percent at the bottom. Then – middle managers. People who have decent jobs, not great. People who still can’t buy homes unless there is some family wealth involved. People who have union jobs, and support the substructure of this country. Then – where next? Perhaps onto the people who feel that they are immune to all this.

The other day, I described the waiting room of a RMV office by saying it – the room in which one waits, after they have checked in, with their numbered ticket, looking at the screens where Fox News and their numbers are listed – was similar to where one waited when you went to apply for food stamps. The person shuddered, visibly, and made a face as if to ward off the evil eye of poverty. They own an apartment, they have family with money, they make at least 4 times what I do. But their face showed revulsion. Perhaps I knew that would be the outcome. Perhaps that is why I said it. But it – what comes next for all of us, as the country slides into the dictatorship that is hovering, while we are encouraged to comment on the middle school arguments of billionaires – is unpredictable. 

Sitting in a room with a numbered ticket, while watching the screen that tells us what to think and when our number will come up – could there be any better metaphor?

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