Lear

 

The tragedy of Lear is that he was a once great and noble King whose fall into dotage is both heartbreaking and universal. There has never been anything great or noble about Trump and there is nothing heartbreaking about his fall. He's a two bit huckster with just enough patter to mesmerize the rubes while he picks their pockets. He doesn't move us to Aristotelian pathos, he enduces nausea. May he wander lost and raving on the ash heap of history.

Solstice

 I am doing everything in my power

To attract the help and resources I need

to fulfill my aim.

My aim is peace.

After this long year of fear, isolation, depression, helplessness, hopelessness, I will act in my best interest.  I will take care of myself. 

The End

 All of these sad, sick, Nazi sympathizing Trump supporters are flailing in their failure. They have been returned to the dustbin of history where they so richly belong. In a few years, finding grandpa's MAGA hat in the closet will be akin to finding his Klan hood or Swastika.  Your grandchildren find you abhorrent. Go back to your caves and your paranoid, racist fantasies. The adults are talking now.

Walking at Night

 Walking at Night

Louise Gluck

Now that she is old,

the young men don’t approach her

so the nights are free,

the streets at dusk that were so dangerous

have become as safe as the meadow.

By midnight, the town’s quiet.

Moonlight reflects off the stone walls;

on the pavement, you can hear the nervous sounds

of the men rushing home to their wives and mothers; this late,

the doors are locked, the windows darkened.

When they pass, they don’t notice her.

She’s like a dry blade of grass in a field of grasses.

So her eyes that used never to leave the ground

are free now to go where they like.

When she’s tired of the streets, in good weather she walks

in the fields where the town ends.

Sometimes, in summer, she goes as far as the river.

The young people used to gather not far from here

but now the river’s grown shallow from lack of rain, so

the bank’s deserted—

There were picnics then.

The boys and girls eventually paired off;

after awhile, they made their way into the woods

where it’s always twilight—

The woods would be empty now—

the naked bodies have found other places to hide.

In the river, there’s just enough water for the night sky

to make patterns against the gray stones. The moon’s bright,

one stone among many others. And the wind rises;

it blows the small trees that grow at the river’s edge.

When you look at a body you see a history.

Once that body isn’t seen anymore,

the story it tried to tell gets lost—

On nights like this, she’ll walk as far as the bridge

before she turns back.

Everything still smells of summer.

And her body begins to seem again the body she had as a young

      woman,

glistening under the light summer clothing.

the politics of mom

My mother did not shop in thrift stores. She didn't even like to go to K Mart. My mom grew up in real poverty, not enough to eat poverty, cold all winter long poverty. She grew up wearing ragged hand me downs and worn out shoes. She picked cotton for other farmers to earn money for school clothes because her daddy sure wasn't going to pay her for picking cotton at home. When she escaped, she did not look back. She left poverty behind and worked herself to the bone to make sure I didn't know what real poverty was. Money was often tight. Some weeks we ate roast beef,  other weeks we ate beans and hammocks, but we never went hungry,  ever. My mom wore genteel office lady clothes that she bought from JC Penny's. As someone who grew up dirty, cold, and aching, she loved a hot bath better than anything in the world.  She was not flamboyant and didn't want to be the center of attention, but she was funny as hell and could make everyone around her laugh. She was kind in a way that people still remember 15 years after her death. 

In 1968 she voted for LBJ and my dad voted for Nixon.  I was shocked when she told me. I thought wives had to vote the same as their husbands. She quickly disabused me of that notion. She was humble but fiercely independent. No one was going to tell her what to think. She was the only pro-choice southern Baptist I ever knew.

She would have found the current president repellent. 

 And so my witches, what shall we do for Halloween this year? How do we celebrate the high holy Days of the Dead in this year of of death? 

You likely know all this, but it bears repeating.

October 31, Halloween or Samhain, the witches' New Years Eve, when we get on our brooms and fly.  My wedding anniverary.

November 1, All Saints in the Catholic tradition, the celebration of the holy ones, the anointed ones, the bodhisattvas. 

November 2, All Souls, Dia de los Muertos, the day we visit with our beloved departed and feed them wine and sugar skulls. 

November 3, Election day. 

Talk about a powerful conjunction. 

Late stage capitalism has conspired to drain all reverence and mystery from our high holy days. Halloween has been commodified. Super Stores are filled with cheap wigs made by slave laborer. Costco is lined with shipping pallets full of candy but I haven't had a trick-or-treater in years. Who takes time to greet the ancestors, much less feed them? Young people hit the bars and drink till they puke, old folks turn off the lights and go to bed early. Only a very few set up altars to the ones who have crossed over. Very few of us spend time contemplating our own mortality. 

Too many have crossed over in isolation and panic this year. It is not the right time to hit the bars in a sexy kitty costume. Trust me, I have spent more than one Halloween engaged in epic debauchery, I have no problem with a sexy kitty costume. But, it won't do this year, not when death stalks the land and our future hangs in the balance. It won't do.

So, I ask you again: what shall we do for Halloween this year? 

In my mind, I see women in black lining the main street of my town. I hear a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I join my voice with their's and cry out against the darkness. We wail for the needless, preventable death and suffering, we rage at the crimes against humanity. We howl over the theft of our future committed by the elite few against the vast masses. And as our voices lift and surge, I feel a cone of power spiraling around and upward. I am become light shining up and out, light shining in the darkness.

This is what we must do, my witches. We must shine more brightly than we have ever shone before. We must light the way for our beloved departed. We must drive out the darkness.