Emotions

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

---Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

The town of Roscoe sits at the confluence of the Willomec Creek and the Beaverkill River. It is tucked into a niche in the Catskills, a valley through which the Beaverkill traipses like a dancer. Unlike the Mississippi, say, or the Columbia, there is no sense that this is a river of broad, burly shoulders, pushing aside huge mounds of dirt on its way to the sea. No, this is a gentle river, home to thousands of lazy trout, and eventually, the river flows into the Delaware and eventually, Chesapeake Bay.
But back in late June, central New York state and northern Pennsylvania were drenched in ten inches of rain. And the tiny little Beaverkill became leviathan. Roscoe, Walton, Livingston Manor were under eight feet of water. People drowned. Houses were carried downstream. Roads were washed away.

The past two days, I walked along the river. It had returned to its pre-flood daintiness, and in fact, I was told that the river was now so shallow that you couldn’t take a canoe down it. You’d have to portage the canoe through the shallows.

The signs of the destruction were everywhere. Part of the motel where I stayed, a motel I’ve stayed at several times now because it sits on the banks of the river, had washed away. People told me how they’d watched the building run into the bridge, and then, smashed by the torrent, watched as it was carried miles downstream.

On the door to my room was a dark mark a foot or so above the door handle. It was the waterline. Inside the room, only the bare essentials had been restored. There wasn’t even a phone. Just a bed, and a couple of pieces of furniture that looked the worse for wear. The bathroom had been scrubbed clean, but the smell of bleach and mold was overpowering, sickening. In the corner of the bathroom grew a fungus that looked like kelp, something neolithic, as if it belonged on the sea floor.

So, I did a lot of walking. The sky was a shade of blue that would break your heart—so much deeper than forget-me-not, but not as dark as the indigo indications of an encroaching storm.

How to describe the ripple of water over stone? As I walked along the Beaverkill yesterday, the sun on the back of my neck, its warmth on my shoulders as if someone had draped his arm there, the water moved. The movement is subtle in most places; your senses tell you that it’s in fact, still, but the water moving across the stones dispels the notion of stillness. The sun glints in such a way off the angles of the water, the disruption on the surface as the water moves over stones. And the stones are testament to motion. The stones are not jagged. There is not a rough edge left on any of them. They are ovoid, softened by the caress of water.

I’ve noticed these changes in my face of late. My face is softening, like a baby’s face, the skin that used to cling so tautly to the bones beneath are letting go, sliding. Maybe I have smiled too much in my life. Perhaps I’ve focused on too many things out of my reach. The furrow in my brow now is a gorge, a chasm in the otherwise smooth plain of my forehead.

Get the Pope, the President and the Prime Minister on the phone, quick! I've had an epiphany, a flash of understanding about the nature of the divine that should literally SAVE THE WORLD.

It's revolutionary, you ready?
Come closer.
Here it is --

Every person on earth is a nonbeliever. That's it.

Every person on earth is a nonbeliever. Even the most devout believers in each religious tradition are therefore nonbelievers of everything else, no matter what doctrine or denomination they claim as their own, or whether they claim any religion at all.

Every person on earth is a nonbeliever. Of someone's else's religion. Of someone's else's truth, and lies.

Every person on earth is a nonbeliever because in order to believe one thing, you must disbelieve everything else.

For any one given religious belief, most of us will be in its nonbelief camp.

Every person on earth is a nonbeliever.
The recent post from Thomas Jefferson 198 years ago, got me pondering all this:

"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion.

Harshness in parenting. We've seen it across cultures, certainly.

But what is it really? It's a less harsh scenario than what that parent grew up in.

They've managed to lessen the blows they pass on to their young one.

But how?

Through sheer goodness. Through sheer love for their child.

And sheer hatred for what happened to them.

They decided back then, back when it was so hard, to never inflict that same crap--the harshness they found themselves receiving--onto another human being. Ever.

And now you'll hear them lament that they are "just like their mom", "just like their dad."

They aren't.

They are less harsh, less mean--even if only by a fraction. But their parenting lets you get a glimpse of how it was for them as children.

But that stuff happened. And it goes into one's brain like a recording.

It doesn't seem to matter whether I saw someone be mistreated or I was actually mistreated myself. Being that small and mostly unable to stop the unfair and senseless harshness--in whatever form--is a hurt.

And hurts become oppressor patterns down the road. (In the case of POC internalized oppression.)

Unless!

Unless a natural healing process is allowed.

Day two of this financial thing.

Had a lot of feelings.

Notice that I am cranky and not trying to hide it. (I'm showing myself, one of the things I admire about poc and raised poor folk, generally speaking) But in my case, it's all the oppressive stuff coming out at usually white, working-class or poor people. At least I'm not doing the polite middle-class thing but no, this just is not right and it's my chronic privilege stuff. I can feel it and it doesn't feel good. (Feeling good is not the goal, ending racism is.) But it has been there all along. I haven't gotten through it yet.

There's a deeper level I need to go. (But Max knew that.)

It shows right when I'm hot and sweaty, tired and impatient. The thing that prompted this was searching for an air conditioner and going from store to store and they were all sold out. Even the fans. I just kept getting less and less friendly to whoever I came in contact with.

Like the "I'll get mine and screw you" syndrome which typically typifies classist and racist chronic conditioning. (Argh but get me MY air conditioning. No! I don't THINK so white girl!) ;-)