The Night Before Voting Day

Kind Visitor, I realize if I don’t want to just curl up and lose my voice entirely, for my own sake I need to say something today. I’ll just tell you why I voted.

I voted because this Supreme Court may well strike down the ACA, taking health insurance from some 20 million of us, destroying protections for preexisting conditions and throwing our health system into chaos in the middle of a pandemic. I want someone in office who will at least attempt to mend health care for all of us.  Death is not the only lasting effect of this pandemic: some suffer lasting damage to lungs, heart or neurological function. Think “preexisting conditions.”

I voted because I believe that until we contain the virus we cannot right the economy and because I believe those losing their livelihood merit substantive help now.

I voted because I want to chase the fighting chance for a livable planet — for us and for every bird, mammal, fish and plant and scene of beauty —  rather than trash it all for transient gain and go down forever on the wrong side of history at an irreversible inflection point.

I voted because to me the phrase “no justice, no peace” is not a threat but an essential human truth. When we shoot an unarmed man 7 times in the back in front of his young children, when we yank children from their mothers and leave them stranded in limbo, we must take the high, hard road and address the underlying causes even if they seem immovable as mountains. Taking the lazy way out and using the government like a bludgeon to smack people down in their anguish guarantees violence.

I voted because I believe even a wounded democracy maintains possibility, while democracy ever more completely sacrificed to authoritarian ego and self-serving power will mute our cries and steal our voice. I trust we would still find a road forward, but it would be harder and longer and I for one would not likely see the fruition of it.

I voted because we are bleeding out those who serve us quietly in good faith. They are being fired or are leaving government because their positions are now untenable. I think of my grandfather and my father in the world wars.  We are alienating allies who have stood beside us for some 70 years since WW ll.  That makes us smaller and weaker and more unsafe.

I voted because I am exhausted by ‘alternative facts’ and unceasing lies, and ugly, thin-skinned  hissy-fits and just plain cruelty and chaos. I voted because I care about my LGBTQ friends and those who love them. I voted because I do not like to hear women called “dog," "fat pig," "slob" or  “horse-face” and I don’t think a ‘star’ has the right to stick his hand between your legs and grab.

I came upon a quote somewhere — I believe it was on a tea-bag tag -- from Walt Whitman:  “Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” I thought, that is exactly how I feel about this administration. It insults my soul.

I voted because I reject it.

Dear Ones, make tomorrow count.

Thank you.

Forest

My Great Hobby-Novel

Friends,
    No pictures quite yet, but speaking of the macabre, I’ll taunt you with a snippet from my hobby-novel, with which I play on occasion. Being that my ‘work’ is visual, I find writing a fine flight into play. My ‘book,’ which may well never advance beyond scraps & bits, is a... what to call it: a grotesque, perhaps, concerning a deranged liturgical artist, a woman who’s lost half her face to fire, and a mighty strange sanatorium with it’s own chapel. The deranged artist, Philip Waithe, is painting murals in the chapel, which have to do with my Fiendish Plot. It’s set around 1900. 
    I toy with this dubious opus in first person; a journal for each main character. While I don’t consider myself quite as deranged, and certainly not as homicidal,  as the artist depicted, it does give a place to ‘use’ my own creative processes and curious adventures.
    From Deranged Philip’s journal, which he scratches on the scaffold in the Deranged Chapel, as he lies on a narrow scaffold board in the dome:
...

Philip Waithe, date unknown:

“I have lain seven  hours with Lazarus, and still I cannot see his face. I have caressed the winding cloth with ocher and sienna, touched the feet with a merest sliver of vermilion, yet the head where the spirit must look out remains blind.

It cannot be forced.

I look away. I shift on my narrow bed, and am held in an arc of scarlet tipped quills and gold. I  spread my arms into nothing, feel the fever bleed out, feel my breath settle, still. I say, Beloved, make me transparent. I wait, I lose thought, quiet my spirit to a flawless water.  I see.  I see reflected there the Descent into Hell.

I have drawn it on the East wall.”
...

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Hell and High Water

    It is my observation that it is rarely Hell or High Water; these two have a penchant for arriving simultaneously. I say this fresh from an emergency root-canal. Now fitted out with a bottle of Vicodin & a massive jar of Ibuprofen, I return to a great and incredibly belated mailing of NIADA Souvenir dolls.       
    Musing on the dark yet somehow charming sense of the absurd frequently demonstrated by the Universe, I’m reminded of my languishing Memoirs. This magnificent opus consists largely of chapter headings at present. But oh, such fine ones:

FRUIT SCENTED SQUID: Who Can Resist Posterity?
NEVER HIRE A TIPSY SCAFFOLD BUILDER
GRANNY’S AX: Remember, You Need the Ice Pick and the Hammer
HE HAD A DREAM: Full Basement, with Urinals
HOW MY PARROT SAVED MY HONOR
FIRST, AN OOGLY MASH: Meditations on the Creative Process

More anon, sweet Friends.

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