The state of L’État

Winter left Los Angeles this week; it’s 80 degrees outside and I’ve run the air conditioner a couple of times “just to make sure it works.” I saw a t-shirt this week that read something like: Los Angeles: Earthquake. Fire. Flood. Democrats. The first three plagues brought a half-sigh from me, as in “Yeah, we’ve been through it, haven’t we.” Especially the fires. Those were scary and I mourn with the people who lost so much. I’ve never known a person whose house burned down. In two days, I knew six.

But…Democrats as a plague? Would that such a plague descend on the whole of the nation! Evidently, my political people have recently decided to experiment with Taoism. “If you don’t resist evil, give it nothing to cling to, it goes away on its own.” WHERE ARE THEY??? Aside from a few quips and a kumbaya gathering outside USAID offices….crickets. MAGA says this is because “the Libs” are exhausted. Maybe. Anybody who feels the connection between recent calls for President Trump to ignore federal courts and Andrew Jackson’s 1830 orchestration of the Cherokee Nation’s Trail of Tears, or finds the President’s reference to Napoleon’s rehashed version of “L’État, c’est moi” a bit…repetitive, has got to be exhausted. Again with the fucking Empire???

It’s not that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it; it’s that those who know history are doomed to watch. It’s exhausting. It’s this….again. And again and again…because it’s the nature of the nation. Even drugged-out poverty-stricken I-Ching-ing Philip K. Dick realized something was coming to the Land of George Wallace and Home of Floridian HellQueen Anita Bryant. It’s just not that hard to imagine Nazis and Japanese Imperialists taking over a nation that already thinks it’s sport to scare the living daylights out of displaced Haitians and laughable to not laugh at Puerto Rico’s dignity because “it’s just a joke, man.” We weren’t ripe for the picking; we were already on the conveyor belt.

Which Is Why I’m putting out my first and perhaps last recommendation of What To Watch Next:

No review. No plot spoilers. Just Watch It. It’s like truth serum. Heroism is not automatic and neither is resistance. Both are chosen. And come in different forms.

If you’d like to read my take on HOW TO RESIST (I’ll leave heroism to the likes of Sophocles), see my French-channeled piece “Résistance.” (Click the word before “Click the word”) Centuries of ancestors whispered for weeks in my ear: Always remember, they’re hunting you. It was a sobering realization, one every single non-white-non-straight-non-male non-rich person understands intuitively if not physically. The only question is how we respond to the current pogrom. We might be tempted to sit still rather than face the fact that people who scare others into invisibility or cause nightmares that parents will be taken or stand mealy-mouthed behind exquisite pulpits cannot be our friends. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be reasoned with or hoped for. “Maybe they’ll miss us, maybe they’ll change, maybe they’ll…..”

No.

Resist. Pray for them if you must, but resist.

How you do so depends…on you. As Kala tells ever-beautiful yet tragically familied Wolfgang after he’s exchanged gunfire with his uncle’s organized crime syndicate in the wondrous Wachowski piece Sense8 : “I’m not like Sun. I do not know how to use my fists, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fight” — right before she uses spices and a few kitchen implements to blow German criminals sky-high (or at least down the hallway).

She’s a chemist. I’m a thinker. You’re a whatever — lawyer, mother, teacher, bus-driver. We all know how to fight in a way that’s true to our nature. My Great-Great Grandpa-priest fought by running off with my Great-great Grandma-Nun and…BOOM! Me. Fight the way you know how. Because, as Kala says after she destroys Wolfgang’s enemies, “I am not ready to say goodbye.” Not even close.

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For your reading pleasure:

I’m really getting into the whole microfiction genre. If you want a great collection, pick up Robert Scotellaro’s New Micro here. If you’d like to read my latest entries, you can do so here. Of course I like them all, but “Matches” has received some really good feedback (the word “universal” was used). As in all things, have fun reading…which is much easier to do when the story is one-n-done in 300 words.

And just so you know that I know what a podcast is…

I’ve been listening to the Open University on poetic inspiration — as in how to I get inspired? Here’s the link. It’s awesome…and the Irish accents are so, so sexy. If you’ve found yourself where we’ve all found ourselves, time on the hands and nothing to say, listen. It’s about a place to start that DOESN’T involve sacrifices to those horrible Muses.

And for the weirdness factor: there’s a group-cast I listen to all the time called The Whole Rabbit. They cover an incredibly wide range of topics, but principally center on awareness and occult interests. Watch the one on QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS here. Because everybody’s got to have a side-interest.

Until later, thanks for clicking your way to me. Be well. And remember, if people who hate like you, something’s wrong.

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