That’s Stella, our black lab, every morning. Our friends love to climb the trail near our house and they often come with their two labs and pick her up to hike and swim with them. But they don’t come every day.
No matter, she waits each morning, laser-focused on the driveway, ears attuned to the particular sound of their Subaru Outback. After her breakfast, there is only one thing she cares about.
When they do drive in, tires crunching the gravel, Stella is ecstatic, running to the car, leaping into the air with wild joy. Upon arriving home, she, usually soaking wet, treks reluctantly to the door, gets toweled off by one of us and snoozes on her chair for the rest of the morning, totally satisfied.
The next morning, she’s in the same place again.
That picture stays with me. It captures something I feel right now, that of being suspended, hanging on, waiting for something to happen in what feels like the daily war we are living in.
But what?
November 3?
A vaccine, vetted of course by Dr. Fauci ?
A book or an article in the NYT, Washington Post, Atlantic, New Yorker, that will finally be what brings Trump’s campaign to its knees?
Being able to see and hug my son and his family?
The unfortunate end of summer, with it the chilly nights that will make gathering with friends outside impossible?
Our brief trip to the Rhode Island shore, a hoped-for sojourn to Maine?
Feeling the creative energy that will get me to open files of poems and begin creating a new manuscript?
The results of a positive COVID test and what that would mean?
Dying?
Too dramatic, you might say, the last one. But as my Buddhist teachers observe, waiting is simply life’s practice for our eventual deaths.
I’ve had so many ideas swirling in my mind about what to write this time, if I could even get out of this suspension mode and into a functioning one. But I keep succumbing to the bombardment of articles and conversations about the current political situation like this one by Peter Weiner in the Atlantic the other day, exquisitely describing those on “the other side”:
…..in the minds of Trump’s supporters lingers the belief that a Biden presidency would usher in a reign of terror. Many of them simply have to believe that. Justifying their fealty to a man who is so obviously a moral wreck requires them to turn Joe Biden and the Democratic Party into an existential threat. The narrative is set; the actual identity of the nominee is almost incidental.
Or this one, by Heather Cox Richardson:
Earlier this week, New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo warned that American democracy is ending. He pointed to political violence on the streets, the pandemic, unemployment, racial polarization, and natural disasters, all of which are destabilizing the country, and noted that Republicans appear to have abandoned democracy in favor of a cult-like support for Donald Trump. They are wedded to a narrative based in lies, as the president dismantles our non-partisan civil service and replaces it with a gang of cronies loyal only to him.
He is right to be worried.
As am I.
Or another by John Cassidy in the New Yorker :
It’s been two days since The Atlantic published an article claiming that Donald Trump had called U.S. service members who died in combat “losers” and “suckers,” and the uproar over the story hasn’t relented. Other news outlets, including Fox News, have confirmed various parts of the story, while some current and former members of the Trump Administration have called parts of it false. The best way to resolve the controversy would be for John Kelly, the highly decorated military veteran who served as Trump’s chief of staff, from 2017 to 2019, to say publicly what he knows. He ought to do this without hesitation.
I agree. Of course. I want to think it could make a difference, make people strip the blinders from their unwilling eyes and SEE.
Huh.
Anyway, his silence is telling us all we need to know.
We are living in a surreal world.
Catholic priests are saying it’s a mortal sin to vote for Biden, a life-long, devout Catholic.
And now Bob Woodward is telling us that Trump knew how deadly the virus was back on February 7th but told the country it was just a “little flu, ”and that it would be gone soon. That generals are “pussies” for caring about our Allies. It’s all on tape.
These statements should have triple exclamation points after them, but instead they are just, well—more news.
I think I’ve been reluctant to write anything recently because there is so much already out there, assaulting us hourly—like what I just quoted and so much more, and I haven’t wanted to add to the blitz. Reading magazine and newspaper articles, looking at TV news, has become for me and maybe for you, like watching a train wreck, both compelled and terrified by the horror.
But I needed to gather my mind, speak something to my commitment to write a post every few weeks, stay in touch with the many friends with whom I can’t connect individually, let them know how I am doing through what is beginning to seem like an actual war.
And I need to say, there have been good things too, like my last week’s recording of an “Enlighten, Uplift and Inspire” podcast with Deborah Adamy, a lovely woman who produces them weekly, and having a really good interview by a Trinity College alumna for yet another Zoom session on my new book, I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent. Listen/watch here: https://youtu.be/LICutl_dfms I’m excited to be be recording a half-hour poetry show for NewTV, which was recently named best community media station and has won several Emmys, at the end of the month.
Working on publicity for the book and receiving so much positive feedback has been grounding and affirming for me. Walking in the woods and playing with Stella, being hugged by my husband, eating corn on the cob and garden tomatoes, gathering with wonderful friends, both new and old, have been healing breaks from this strange state of suspension.
I’ve been allowing awareness of the dangerous political situation we are in to pull all the oxygen out of my air.
I need to fix this.
Gazing at at the picture, wishing for a how-to answer, I want to be like Stella, who lives her life one day at a time, accepting things as they are.
So I’ll wait in the doorway to whatever the next place is--- listening, watching, trying to breathe, and yes, hoping, like Stella, that joy may be possible tomorrow.