My house smells like bleach. Not because I’m cleaning, nor am I drinking it. I’ve reverted to my punky 12 year old self and to keep from screaming every time the news comes on, I’m writing an anything I can with a Clorox Bleach Pen.
I sometimes feel that my belief in the power of words, and of Democracy, is naive and will never lead to anything but yelling at the television and disappointment. But, I keep at it. I have faith that it and we can be better.
I believe in the power of words, of fashion, of voting, and of peaceful protest.
If nothing else, bleach is an outlet, a pillow to scream in, and one more small thing I can do, in addition to writing letters to voters through The Big Send and votefwd.org and donating financially what little I can. On January 20th, I want to be able to say that I did everything I could to preserve what’s left of our Democracy and to defeat the sociopathic baby now in charge.
So, until then, I’ll just be over here with my bleach stick, pen, envelopes, and stamps, researching guillotines and trying not to scream.
Vote.
Wear a mask.
Wash your hands.
I’ve had some strange birthdays in my life, many actually, but something tells me 41 might be the most bizarre yet. Stranger than sitting through a five hour long Wagner opera with the flu while on a trip to Germany when I turned 18, weirder than turning 15 in London with my English pen pal, and more bizarre than my 31st, when I was yelled at by a not to be named First AD for “talking behind camera” and ended up crying in a porta potty (just so we are clear, the camera department was wishing me happy birthday and I was simply responding thank you, but anyway….)
Oh, how quickly things can change!
Every once in a while I look around at my life, I should really do it more often, and marvel at how I was never not going to be where I am. It was never not going to happen.
I have to say, at least I still make myself laugh! Like that time I moved to LA in large part because I saw 40 approaching and was totally freaked out that it would arrive to find me in the same house, city, and career I’d been in since my mid twenties. Or that time I moved back from LA into that same house, city, and career and breathed a sigh of relief that they were all still there, two years later, patiently waiting for me to realize that none of those outward things had anything to do with inner peace, contentment, or joy.
I was recently granted one of those rare opportunities to step back into the past for just long enough to see how much everything has changed. As Zora Neale Hurston wrote in her book Their Eyes Were Watching God, “there are years that ask questions and years that answer,” and, after so many spent in the question phase, it is a relief to feel and see answers popping up all over my life.
smagik 