Yep. The “easy path” is always obedience, isn’t it? Refusing the script means you’re the one out of step with the marching band — and that noise can be deafening. After enough years, you don’t just get used to it, you realize the only thing more dangerous than being out of step is falling in line.
Warren Zevon told us what was wrong in America years ago in a song: “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. America’s apocalypse rates only three horsemen, but shall be no less fatal for that. Your destiny is the car stalled on the railroad tracks; it was a gag but now the key turns and makes only feeble clicks.
“We are not stopping our lives; we are treasuring them more fiercely, defiantly, against the backdrop of collapse.” Same, girl. I am so overwhelmed with regular, daily life and then try to carve out understanding of what is happening, what I can do to help or protest or fight, just.....everything. Love you. I'm here. I'm listening. I so appreciate your parsings and opinions and cries for decency.
Rather than see this period as dreadful, I see it as a spiritual correction. Hard, but like chemotherapy for the soul for those of us who have grown up souls.
Writing through it is cathartic; and Gloria’s writing and thoughts are gifts we wouldn’t have without it. Love her writing!
MAGA is so inept they’re going to fail. The era of voting for the lesser of two evils will be over because our leaders’ souls will have to grow, too - our silver lining.
Until then we will all appreciate the good things we have much more.
Such a deeply moving piece, my friend. A kitten and a possible new pup coming soon? What heaven you are creating within your home.
Stay safe, and know that you may always stop by my place (near Seattle airport) as an oasis in a northward drive back to Crystals homeland if you have to.
I hope you can decorate your tall fences with lilacs and jasmine while the world outside goes insane.
This may be so inappropriate to cut and paste a reply, below, I had on another post, but I hope not, as it is relevant, maybe not specific to your actual moment in language terms. However, the response you gave me earlier, I felt a visceral chill in me, as I do understand without walking your actual path.
I feel at some juncture, with convictions, we will stand together.
My thought process was not a specific life or love or both. It speaks to how things, all things, are going to be handled in this nightmare we are in.
I, too, fear, for different reasons, that i will I not be in my home next year, with my partner and his everlasting pain on my patience, that I take for granted, my first and only true child, a dog, a gift, a reason to smile, that just passed last December, and all the memories, and my beloved cat, Pickle, who passed, last February. Will any of it be the same?
I have one thing you don't or vice versa. I believe I don't need to explain. I do not want to intrude any further into your thoughts of fear but fight.
Your story, your explanation into your world or a world, while having me at my best, to try and somehow understand, has given me much pause. Why, I don't know as I know from others but this felt different. Closer. Not weird, though!
It is so hard to do even when one tries to be the other foot.
I did not watch the eulogy or hear any comments but read enough to make me turn inward for otherwise I might dissent perversely.
The disdain for the projections, the implications, the falsehoods, the grandiosity, the excuses, the targets that are themselves at fault, the siren's call is sickening.
I read Judge Luttieg's 26 grievances, today, directed straightly at their target, or targets, and thought how do we redress?
I think too much but not enough to that linear approach I stated because the "Chans" as I'll refer to, all in general, are the true dark siren's call.
What one reads about the loneliness of men and their challenges yet we feed this monster like they are worthy of any crumbs.
Different eras I guess. I'm hardly sympathetic. Yet, I do feel something to those lied to, looking for honest, yet, ignorant change, and bought into it as that is how true indoctrination works.
Not PizzaGate, not books, not drag shows, not bathrooms, but the evil and ugly of the propaganda that the Koch brothers have spent decades and billions trying to imitate from Russia, the HOAX of hoaxes!
People say he is a genius. He being many, I suppose, but there is no genius, just a him with a call.
Just a better legal team. Just a bigger lie than I thought possible. Just a busy life that can't take a minute or two a week to understand Econ 101 versus how a government dictates that money and along the ride, one's life.
I hope this isn't too much and I asked for more so thank you. It is immeasurably a heavy load to carry and a reality of which I continue to want to understand .
A reply to another post:
The narrative is as old as dirt. This is not new philosophical material. Not by the right or left. Hell, this isn't even political newness, actually, but rather an old white siren with a blow horn that would never blow that horn with the question: what is all this doing to put money in your pockets, or make prices fall, or make your life better, or do you just THINK it is so because the siren says it is so? That siren knows the answer...NOTHING.
If he would he certainly could ask it.
So, then why are the Loomer's, the Miller's, the Patel's, the Bondi's, the RFK, Jr.s, the Kegsbreath's, that think they are the god-like visions of telling America, hell bent on vowing to protect themselves, have guns, do as if, allow them to say much of anything to them like: Hey, we are your reason, your existence, your values, your god, your thoughts, your money, your heath, your livelihoods, your futures, if you just BELIEVE? WHY IS WHY? To own a LIB? To advance a thought? To hate a person or wish to harm?
If indoctrination is the issue I've got swamp land to sell you in Antartica.
If one thinks for themselves no indoctrination should be a concern. Free thought, free expression, free discourse, free speech. Now they won't allow it. WHY?
What is the belief getting them? A message from a political party. OKAY.
Then the Dems. Progressives. Independents. They should say that the most "modern" version of a MARXIST is occupying the OVAL OFFICE NOW. Truly.
Marxism doesn't need to lead to the end version of Communism.
Just as Capitalism doesn't need to end with a serfdom of failing people who work just for the right to say I work for the ghoulish billionaire. Nothing does.
But why are we picking fights where we aren't welcome, domestically or internationally, or where we don't belong or where our strength is compromised, for example, by a Christian Nationalist, born of an addict's DNA, and tattoos, who can't read past the Old Testament?
What is the value being conveyed? Don't you already know without it?
He has the ear of the siren needing that loyalist who in turn capitalizes on ignorance to feed the siren's ego in effort to harm one or two things.
1. The rest of humanity to the siren's delight.
2. To believe himself worthy of the unworthy siren.
3. Perhaps, Both.
Time for us to ask.
Is it about the dark narrative we keep coming back to or is it about a false sense of who you belong to other than yourself?
Who is your enemy if violence and death are the answer? Look closely in the mirror and I hope you walk away knowing your truth is that death and violence are of the weak men/women. All weakness of all men/women.
Strength is in inclusion. Strength is in listening. Strength is in helping the struggle. Strength is in knowing your weaknesses and allowing those to be shown in the light and not in some dark corner of the internet or in your own heart. Empathy IS NOT THE END OF HUMANITY.
Empathy is the end of the ego.
That's why those that hate empathy turn to the darkness.
I would be a paid subscriber but can’t be just yet. My God , it feels a little lopsided right now , and like the exceptional therapist I’ve been gifted with, after reading your posts I always leave with more than I came in with. Your writing is a gift to all of us.
This is an OMazing piece. There are days that I feel like I’m drowning in anger and frustration … and then the sun comes up the next day and I try to hit pause on all of the information spilling into my awareness. My oldest child, my beautiful son, mid 30’s, shed some tears last night with me as he choked out the words we hear on replay almost every hour of every day now: we live under fascist rule now.” More tears. Hugs. I respond with the words mothers respond with reflexively when our children are hurting: “ it will all be ok. “ Let’s not lose hope fellow readers . We will get through this. And tomorrow the sun will rise.
As the world spins faster and faster, I remember more clearly how to stop the spinning wheel of fear and hesitation - an iron rod n the spokes, as you watch the shards of malevolence undergo an "unplanned spontaneous disassembly event".....as a perpetrator is fond of saying. Let us resolve that if the circumstances of our lives present us with the opportunity, we will be the iron rod.....
Powerful and breath taking, again, sweet Gloria, you've written another outstanding letter this evening ✨All of us who hover around and above, with our combined voices, are shooting arrows at that Bubble and hopefully soon, will burst it. Thank you, my Substack friend, Blessings to you and your readers,and will reStack ASAP 🙏
I hate that we are on this path, but I treasure the fact we are on it together. Jim is gone for the week for a zoo conference, so I am fully on duty and not able to get caught up in the news... and with him gone, I don't turn the TV on. I am finding so much refuge in books right now. It may be escapist, but it fills my soul. xoxo
I truly have felt dead for a number of weeks, following outrageous news, through caring for family, through a COVID attack and struggling through employment challenges.
Then just two weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote, "I WOKE UP DISAPPEARED". I knew it was a beginning of something.
So, today I would like to complete what I believe is a Haiku poem of inspiration to renew my efforts to fight for our Liberty.
I WOKE UP DISAPPEARED, BUT
I OPENED LAPTOP
WORDS FROM SHE WHO STIRS THE STORM
I am reading again and am gaining courage to doing whatever I can do, postcards, letters, rally's
Yeah, deciding not to be a good follower never is the easy path, but at last I'm used to it after mumblemumble years.
Yep. The “easy path” is always obedience, isn’t it? Refusing the script means you’re the one out of step with the marching band — and that noise can be deafening. After enough years, you don’t just get used to it, you realize the only thing more dangerous than being out of step is falling in line.
Warren Zevon told us what was wrong in America years ago in a song: “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. America’s apocalypse rates only three horsemen, but shall be no less fatal for that. Your destiny is the car stalled on the railroad tracks; it was a gag but now the key turns and makes only feeble clicks.
Yikes
“We are not stopping our lives; we are treasuring them more fiercely, defiantly, against the backdrop of collapse.” Same, girl. I am so overwhelmed with regular, daily life and then try to carve out understanding of what is happening, what I can do to help or protest or fight, just.....everything. Love you. I'm here. I'm listening. I so appreciate your parsings and opinions and cries for decency.
Rather than see this period as dreadful, I see it as a spiritual correction. Hard, but like chemotherapy for the soul for those of us who have grown up souls.
Writing through it is cathartic; and Gloria’s writing and thoughts are gifts we wouldn’t have without it. Love her writing!
MAGA is so inept they’re going to fail. The era of voting for the lesser of two evils will be over because our leaders’ souls will have to grow, too - our silver lining.
Until then we will all appreciate the good things we have much more.
Hear the noise then be your own noise but better!
Such a deeply moving piece, my friend. A kitten and a possible new pup coming soon? What heaven you are creating within your home.
Stay safe, and know that you may always stop by my place (near Seattle airport) as an oasis in a northward drive back to Crystals homeland if you have to.
I hope you can decorate your tall fences with lilacs and jasmine while the world outside goes insane.
Gloria,
This may be so inappropriate to cut and paste a reply, below, I had on another post, but I hope not, as it is relevant, maybe not specific to your actual moment in language terms. However, the response you gave me earlier, I felt a visceral chill in me, as I do understand without walking your actual path.
I feel at some juncture, with convictions, we will stand together.
My thought process was not a specific life or love or both. It speaks to how things, all things, are going to be handled in this nightmare we are in.
I, too, fear, for different reasons, that i will I not be in my home next year, with my partner and his everlasting pain on my patience, that I take for granted, my first and only true child, a dog, a gift, a reason to smile, that just passed last December, and all the memories, and my beloved cat, Pickle, who passed, last February. Will any of it be the same?
I have one thing you don't or vice versa. I believe I don't need to explain. I do not want to intrude any further into your thoughts of fear but fight.
Your story, your explanation into your world or a world, while having me at my best, to try and somehow understand, has given me much pause. Why, I don't know as I know from others but this felt different. Closer. Not weird, though!
It is so hard to do even when one tries to be the other foot.
I did not watch the eulogy or hear any comments but read enough to make me turn inward for otherwise I might dissent perversely.
The disdain for the projections, the implications, the falsehoods, the grandiosity, the excuses, the targets that are themselves at fault, the siren's call is sickening.
I read Judge Luttieg's 26 grievances, today, directed straightly at their target, or targets, and thought how do we redress?
I think too much but not enough to that linear approach I stated because the "Chans" as I'll refer to, all in general, are the true dark siren's call.
What one reads about the loneliness of men and their challenges yet we feed this monster like they are worthy of any crumbs.
Different eras I guess. I'm hardly sympathetic. Yet, I do feel something to those lied to, looking for honest, yet, ignorant change, and bought into it as that is how true indoctrination works.
Not PizzaGate, not books, not drag shows, not bathrooms, but the evil and ugly of the propaganda that the Koch brothers have spent decades and billions trying to imitate from Russia, the HOAX of hoaxes!
People say he is a genius. He being many, I suppose, but there is no genius, just a him with a call.
Just a better legal team. Just a bigger lie than I thought possible. Just a busy life that can't take a minute or two a week to understand Econ 101 versus how a government dictates that money and along the ride, one's life.
I hope this isn't too much and I asked for more so thank you. It is immeasurably a heavy load to carry and a reality of which I continue to want to understand .
A reply to another post:
The narrative is as old as dirt. This is not new philosophical material. Not by the right or left. Hell, this isn't even political newness, actually, but rather an old white siren with a blow horn that would never blow that horn with the question: what is all this doing to put money in your pockets, or make prices fall, or make your life better, or do you just THINK it is so because the siren says it is so? That siren knows the answer...NOTHING.
If he would he certainly could ask it.
So, then why are the Loomer's, the Miller's, the Patel's, the Bondi's, the RFK, Jr.s, the Kegsbreath's, that think they are the god-like visions of telling America, hell bent on vowing to protect themselves, have guns, do as if, allow them to say much of anything to them like: Hey, we are your reason, your existence, your values, your god, your thoughts, your money, your heath, your livelihoods, your futures, if you just BELIEVE? WHY IS WHY? To own a LIB? To advance a thought? To hate a person or wish to harm?
If indoctrination is the issue I've got swamp land to sell you in Antartica.
If one thinks for themselves no indoctrination should be a concern. Free thought, free expression, free discourse, free speech. Now they won't allow it. WHY?
What is the belief getting them? A message from a political party. OKAY.
Then the Dems. Progressives. Independents. They should say that the most "modern" version of a MARXIST is occupying the OVAL OFFICE NOW. Truly.
Marxism doesn't need to lead to the end version of Communism.
Just as Capitalism doesn't need to end with a serfdom of failing people who work just for the right to say I work for the ghoulish billionaire. Nothing does.
But why are we picking fights where we aren't welcome, domestically or internationally, or where we don't belong or where our strength is compromised, for example, by a Christian Nationalist, born of an addict's DNA, and tattoos, who can't read past the Old Testament?
What is the value being conveyed? Don't you already know without it?
He has the ear of the siren needing that loyalist who in turn capitalizes on ignorance to feed the siren's ego in effort to harm one or two things.
1. The rest of humanity to the siren's delight.
2. To believe himself worthy of the unworthy siren.
3. Perhaps, Both.
Time for us to ask.
Is it about the dark narrative we keep coming back to or is it about a false sense of who you belong to other than yourself?
Who is your enemy if violence and death are the answer? Look closely in the mirror and I hope you walk away knowing your truth is that death and violence are of the weak men/women. All weakness of all men/women.
Strength is in inclusion. Strength is in listening. Strength is in helping the struggle. Strength is in knowing your weaknesses and allowing those to be shown in the light and not in some dark corner of the internet or in your own heart. Empathy IS NOT THE END OF HUMANITY.
Empathy is the end of the ego.
That's why those that hate empathy turn to the darkness.
On X anyone?
I would be a paid subscriber but can’t be just yet. My God , it feels a little lopsided right now , and like the exceptional therapist I’ve been gifted with, after reading your posts I always leave with more than I came in with. Your writing is a gift to all of us.
This is an OMazing piece. There are days that I feel like I’m drowning in anger and frustration … and then the sun comes up the next day and I try to hit pause on all of the information spilling into my awareness. My oldest child, my beautiful son, mid 30’s, shed some tears last night with me as he choked out the words we hear on replay almost every hour of every day now: we live under fascist rule now.” More tears. Hugs. I respond with the words mothers respond with reflexively when our children are hurting: “ it will all be ok. “ Let’s not lose hope fellow readers . We will get through this. And tomorrow the sun will rise.
As the world spins faster and faster, I remember more clearly how to stop the spinning wheel of fear and hesitation - an iron rod n the spokes, as you watch the shards of malevolence undergo an "unplanned spontaneous disassembly event".....as a perpetrator is fond of saying. Let us resolve that if the circumstances of our lives present us with the opportunity, we will be the iron rod.....
As always, your writing inspires. We hang on as
each week seems even uglier than the last.
I’m old but do not feel it until someone in “authority” speaks of death for the vulnerable! Involuntary but sanctioned death for homelessness.
A horrible idea made even more horrible by the casualness of the event.
Powerful and breath taking, again, sweet Gloria, you've written another outstanding letter this evening ✨All of us who hover around and above, with our combined voices, are shooting arrows at that Bubble and hopefully soon, will burst it. Thank you, my Substack friend, Blessings to you and your readers,and will reStack ASAP 🙏
I hate that we are on this path, but I treasure the fact we are on it together. Jim is gone for the week for a zoo conference, so I am fully on duty and not able to get caught up in the news... and with him gone, I don't turn the TV on. I am finding so much refuge in books right now. It may be escapist, but it fills my soul. xoxo
A powerful essay. Totally with you. Thanks for sharing.
Gloria, your words open my heart.
Hearts are pulsating organs, they open and close. They are the fuse that pumps life through us.
Love and courage are choices.
In these times especially, we must remember to surrender to the pulsation.
That way, life.
🙏🏻
I truly have felt dead for a number of weeks, following outrageous news, through caring for family, through a COVID attack and struggling through employment challenges.
Then just two weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote, "I WOKE UP DISAPPEARED". I knew it was a beginning of something.
So, today I would like to complete what I believe is a Haiku poem of inspiration to renew my efforts to fight for our Liberty.
I WOKE UP DISAPPEARED, BUT
I OPENED LAPTOP
WORDS FROM SHE WHO STIRS THE STORM
I am reading again and am gaining courage to doing whatever I can do, postcards, letters, rally's
and walk the streets.
Thank you Gloria for your words!
Jerry