Cognitive Dissonance

The cognitive dissonance of our current collective nightmare is getting to me. It’s not that I had my head in the sand about the rise of fascism. I’ve done a lot of organizing against it and made a lot of noise about it over the years. I saw it coming. I was braced for it. Or I thought I was. It turns out, though, that at least subconsciously I was expecting that life under a fascist regime would be all gray, all grim. That you would be confronted by it in your every waking moment. Blame it on my Cold War childhood. But it’s not really like that, is it? At least not for those of us who aren’t yet in the crosshairs. The news is terrifying, enough to send me into panic spirals several times a day if I’m not careful, but at the same time, the lily bulbs I got from a neighbor a few years ago and planted next to our front steps have been a glorious riot of color every morning. The other day, on a whim, I bought a pound of fresh apricots to share with my daughter and they were sweet and delicious, perfectly ripe.

I go out for walks in the late mornings before it gets too hot, and there are bees bumbling along in the flowering weeds in the parking strips, and there are people out walking their dogs. As we pass, we give each other those specific small smiles that we save for strangers, smiles that hide our teeth, that show that we aren’t a threat. I walk for a good long time, and I think about my personal worries, and they’re the same ones always, running in a loop. My children, my career, the cost of college tuition, my aging body, the relentless passage of time… And then I think about the larger worries…worries for this country, for this planet…worries for all of humanity, because shit is so fucked up. I think these same thoughts over and over. No solutions. Just chewing over the same shit, day in and day out.

But I’m walking in a lovely, friendly, safe place. I’m moving my aging but strong and healthy body.

Today I’m headed to Fred Meyer to buy gum, because I’m out of gum and because I like to have a destination. I’m walking and I’m greeting a knot of crows picking at a stray hot dog bun at the side of the street, and I’m stepping around overripe cherries that have fallen from a tree to the sidewalk in wet lumps, and it’s a beautiful, sunny morning. Not too hot yet. Just right. And I’m thinking about myself, my children, the weird thing in my husband’s leg that’s probably nothing. Small worries. And I’m wondering what to make for dinner, and I’m wishing I didn’t have to make dinner. And meanwhile, there is a concentration camp in Florida. Meanwhile, masked agents of the state are snatching people up off the street and from their workplaces and from courthouses where they’ve gone because they’re trying to follow the rules. People are disappearing into a system that is cruel and dehumanizing by design. And here I am walking to buy some gum on a beautiful day in Portland, Oregon. I’m walking through my sweet, fortunate life with a quiet terror buzzing always in the background because of these things that are happening. I’m aware of my own safety, my own privilege, but I am aware also that my safety, my privilege, are conditional. They are temporary.

I don’t know what to do with all of that. I don’t know where to put it.

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Upcoming Classes

My Whole Novel Workshop will return in September. Do you want to workshop your entire manuscript (up to 400 pages) in a small, dedicated group? If so, this one’s for you. The application window is now open and there are still a few spots left.

Registration is also open for the 9-Month Novel Intensive that I teach for Literary Arts. All levels and all fiction genres are welcome, as long as you intend to workshop a novel or novella. (If you’re working on a story collection, this isn’t the class for you.) You can come with just the idea of a novel (or not even that) or with a project well under way. There are two sections offered, to accommodate demand. Here is the link to the Wednesday evening class, and here is the link for the Thursday evening class.