Rockslide

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote, “You can cut all the flowers but you can't keep spring from coming.” I very badly want to think he's right but the death toll is rising and I feel the weight of it like a rockslide. Two more mass shootings in one weekend and we are so crushed and numbed that the horror of it barely registers. It's another win for hate and cruelty and the despicable racism that the president promotes. Soon there may be no flowers left to cut.

If my daddy were alive, he would undoubtably tell me that I worry too much, that I'm taking things too seriously, that good always wins in the end. It doesn't. Regardless of who wins in the next presidential election, some of the damage that's been done will never be undone. “It's not about politics,” I recently read, “It's about morality.” It's about discovering who people really are, including ourselves, and then getting over the shock at what we learn. Losing friends who think the suggestion that we shoot immigrants is funny is no great loss. If that's what you think, then I don't want to know you no matter how much I may like your music or admire your love of and kindness to animals. Regardless of who wins and what happens, we're done. I'm only ashamed that it's taken me this long.

In the 60's, I was in my teens, one of thousands of young people living in and around Boston who protested the war, stood with the welfare mothers, was disgusted with corporate America and detested Nixon. I believed in peace and love and kindness to animals. I was willing to fight for the less fortunate, wanted treatment on demand for addicts and alcoholics, worked for the democrats and thought term limits might save the country from the corruption and greed of the rich. I gave up my Villager skirts and sweaters for beads and ragged blue jeans. I carried signs and stood on street corners and marched in protests. I wanted nothing to do with my middle class background or the status quo. I smoked and drank and slept with young black men. I wanted to re-make the country fair and equal and color blind. I didn't do drugs but I had no particular issues with those who did. Speaking out became a way of life and some 50 years later, it's a hard habit to break. Living in sin with the boy I later married was a badge of honor.

Coming from that place to now, it's almost impossible to stay out of the fray. I can't shake the idea that silence makes me an accomplice but at the same time I feel too helpless and hopeless to fight. I won't live long enough to see the consequences of the current administration and I see that as a curious sort of kindness.

Hate does not and should not come easily to us. Like pain, time tends to make it fade. But I hate - well and truly hate - the monster in the White House and all he stands for. We have cut down our own flowers and spring may never be quite the same again.