the fairest of seasons

I don’t know what it is about 60s psychedelic rock that makes me feel most myself, but I always feel right when I get on a kick.

I’ve been listening to a 60s-70s rock music critic named Abigail DeVoe, and she has mentioned a couple of times that the late 60s was a time of intense optimism even amidst war: optimism about the future, about humanity’s ability to change the way we think away from control, power and possession toward something with social solidarity where love is given freely and being in the present moment is one’s reward for being alive.

Unfortunately my generation missed out on that sense of uninhibited optimism. Anyone who is paying attention knows that stupidity and staunch individualism rule everything around us. A hippie lifestyle is frankly unsafe at this point, since anything artistic, anti-fascist, witchy—anything which disrupts the dominant social order—can be punished. I’m lucky enough not to have children, which puts me in a much better position in case I need to be used in the ever-forming revolution, or if I need to flee to another country. Still, I have incredibly deep emotional attachments to my niece and other family members who I know would not be willing to leave the land their children are buried in.

I guess John-John could be deterred and relocated, and we could just take Lairen’s ashes with us, but I know for a fact my grandparents are not in a place physically or mentally to start over somewhere else. Grammy has even balked at the idea of moving back to Canada, and that’s where Grammy and Poppy’s only surviving relatives live, apart from their children and grandchildren. Honestly though, Canada isn’t far away enough. And their Prime Minister is dating Katy Perry mid-divorce, so I know he is messy too. That’s mostly a joke, but I truly do not even want to be on the same continent as the current United States regime. I literally open my Instagram and am inundated with videos of the genocide in Palestine or of Latino families being attacked and ripped apart.

It’s also impractical for Golden and I to leave the United States while his papers are still being reviewed. He’s worked hard to get here and establish his businesses, and if we were to leave the country, I don’t think I have the motivation myself to be the cheerleader for both of us, especially considering it would mean me leaving behind my entire family and everything I know.

For now I’m watching and waiting to see what the Revolution does. I fear a lot more evil will occur before anything major is accomplished. That said, we must be close, because the entire so-called democratic system that everyone has grown up with has come to a halt and is crumbling. Cities like Chicago and L.A. are creating barricades against ICE, and perhaps that is where it will start. I think about if I saw ICE tearing a mother away from her child, what would I do? Or what could I do if I didn’t have a weapon? If I did have a weapon, would it be worth it for me to wield it against a federally-funded militia, after which I would be immediately jailed, my future destroyed?

Going back to school and getting my teaching certification, especially in Spanish, the primary language under attack in the United States (ironic, since Spanish is a colonizer language), is the best idea I have right now. To teach tolerance and the value of a multicultural, polyglottal society.

I am also seeing a lot of Revolutionary material right now that focuses on class consciousness, or a bottom-up approach to fighting fascism as opposed to a lateral one in which the people impoverished by the regime fight amongst themselves in a false binary of Left versus Right rather than attacking the few billionaires who siphon all of the shared resources.

Yesterday someone posted about an anti-Black Friday retreat with guided yoga and nature walks, and that gave me hope that as a society we are starting to recognize the tragedy of consumerism. Wanting to appear fashionable, clean, and expensive, laboring for money we are only going to funnel immediately into fast fashion and materialism when we really need to direct our energy towards serving within our communities and re-connecting with nature.

I did notice that I look very nice today, and everything I am wearing is either thrifted or gifted. I also went to Diabolical Records today and found a vinyl for $3 that Carole used to listen to as a kid. She named it as one of her favorites, a trajectory-forming one for her as a girl, when I asked her on our drive through Banff. I called her to confirm that it was the one and told her I was thinking of her, and I could tell it meant a lot to her. I needed that moment today, especially with her. I have a lot of anger towards her and Papa these days, especially as their conservativism becomes more rigid as their neural pathways do. It’s hard to love people who perpetuate some of the most evil and intolerant beliefs in the world today.

Now that it’s time
Now that the hour hand has landed at the end
Now that it’s real

Now that the dreams have given all they had to lend

I want to know: do I stay or do I go
And maybe try another time,

And do I really have a hand in my forgetting?

My heart breaks for the world, for my family, for myself, the children in my family who are growing up in a world that hates them. All I can do is maintain strength, create my art, and believe that the place I am currently planted is going to give me opportunities to create love, to give love, create and give from a fountain inside of me that never ends.