matter of reflection

There's so much to be grateful for every day—running water, food, heat, electricity, the freedom to move, democracy. We've got infrastructure that pretty much works, and grocery stores regularly stocked with essentials for our homes. We've got restaurants in which to dine, and hospitals where we can (hopefully) heal if we're ill or hurt. We've got Amazon and Apple, Zappos and Google, Netflix and Zoom. We've got public servants: librarians, teachers, fire fighters, legislators, road workers, bus drivers, garbage collectors and cops. We've got farmers, truckers, builders, manufacturers, artists, musicians, chefs, servers, grocery store and retail clerks. We rely on all of them to supply what we need and want, and to get shit done. They're there for us despite some people's petty tendency to complain and protest. 

There's so much to grieve—war, illness, debt, death. So many things to love, to loathe, to lament. These are strange and harrowing times. The world is turning upside down and inside out. Millions are hurting while billionaires continue to enrich themselves by exploiting the labor of others; they pocket record profits by gouging the rest of us (blame them for stagnating wages and inflation) and by not paying their share of taxes. And there's another power grab: the unjustified, unprovoked war that Pootie is waging against Ukraine. It's all so sick and twisted.

I consider the Ukrainians, and others in war-torn nations, whose homes, livelihoods and families are being blown to smithereens. Because of Pootie's war, they have little to no access to their homes, their schools, their hospitals, their critical medications to treat chronic conditions. I imagine legions of them seizing, not just from epilepsy, but from traumatic brain injury, diabetes, dehydration. And what of expectant mothers, new mothers, infants and preemies? Pootie's troops are bombing children's hospitals and maternity wards. His lies and crimes against humanity are unfathomable. Someone has got to bring him to heel.

Here, I reflect on my fortune. I recline on a comfortable couch with a full belly, a small glass of red wine and a large one filled with clean water from a tap that never runs dry. My only palpable worry at the moment is whether my epileptic child might seize tonight. Even then, he's likely to make it through, unlike so many of war's refugees trying to flee besieged cities.

Wartime calls to mind a favorite rumination from, The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Inhabitants and Productions. It goes:

How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth—the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted—is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

—Christiaan Huygens, 1698

It is clearer now than ever how much Pootie and his stooges' evolution as human beings has been stunted. I wonder what tainted ingredients make such depraved megalomaniacs.

My thoughts return to little Calvin sleeping safely and soundly upstairs. I wonder what he dreams about. I wonder if one day he'll be orphaned. I wonder if one day soon war will return to these shores. Then, I recall images of the innocent Ukrainian people caught up in the Russian invasion: a mother and her children shelled while trying to escape bombardments; a man pushing his bicycle through ravaged streets strewn with debris; a father clutching his dead child riddled with shrapnel; bodies wrapped in black plastic being thrust into mass graves; mothers grieving over their dead boy soldiers; a pregnant woman dying on a stretcher. And I wonder again, like I do about Calvin's suffering, how much these good people can endure, and what more I can do to ease it.

Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

besieged

Last night just before eight, my son began to seize. While his body convulsed, his lungs were cut off from oxygen for a minute or more. His lips, fingers and toes turned blue. Watching him, I thought of the dusky, lifeless face and hands of the schoolboy who was shelled by Pootie's Russian troops over the weekend. He died in the street beside his mother and sister while they were trying to escape. Others died too. Here at home, after his spell, my boy simply drifted off to sleep, safe and sound.

Of late, my thoughts are almost exclusively with Ukrainians. When I walk alone on the back roads, the skies are free of enemy aircraft. I'm keenly aware of not being shot at or shelled. I wonder if this Maine landscape looks at all like Kyiv or Mariupol. Wonder if those places, too, are beginning to thaw. Halfway through my misty morning walk, at about the two-mile mark, I feel a dryness in my mouth. I think about living in a city under siege, surrounded by an enemy intent on strangling any and all sustenance. When I catch droplets of mist on my tongue, I know my thirst can't be quenched, and I wonder for how long a body can go without water. Not long.

My thoughts turn to my boy who is only five-feet one and ninety-two pounds; still, he's a giant compared with the puny little unloved men who manage to stay in power only by strong-arming, issuing threats, telling lies and spreading propaganda. You know who they are. They use the term "fake news" with reckless abandon. They brazenly lie to their constituents. Enrich themselves. Rewrite and whitewash history. Engage in ethnic cleansing. Squash the tenets of truth and justice. Commit genocide. I don't believe in the place, but if it exists, I hope they go to hell, and soon.

My nonverbal, incontinent, uncoordinated, epileptic, autistic son is so much better than them. He not only loves unconditionally, he very literally envelopes people with his affection and is afraid of no one. Most of all, he doesn't discriminate. And though his antics and afflictions often mess with my well-being, he's not like the effing fascist autocrats bent on ruining the world with their vile, narcissistic doings.

Meanwhile, I weep while reading the good news. News about American veterans heading to Ukraine to help in the fight against Pootie's fascist tyranny. News about Ukrainian troops getting married under gray skies like these, surrounded by friends and rocket-propelled grenades and antitank missiles at the ready. News about the secretive vigilante cyber group known as Anonymous which is hacking into Russian streaming services and State television to broadcast footage of the bloody and destructive war their president is waging. About the flood of Airbnb bookings in Ukraine by people abroad not intending to check in but hoping to help ease the suffering of the besieged.

After calvin's seizure, as usual, I woke up several times. It was quiet. I pulled his cover up over his shoulders, gave him extra cannabis oil to thwart any further spells, gave him a few sips from his bottle, then went to get a drink of water. Outside the bathroom window I saw Orion in the southwestern sky with his belt and club, shield and sword. As always, I imagined him not as hunter but as protector of underdogs. And I thought again of Ukrainians—each one of them underdogs besieged in their own way, cut off from family, democracy, freedoms, food and water, husbands, sons, fathers, brothers ... breathing—hoping they can withstand the constant pummeling somehow, just like my own little Calvin.

a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Because Ukraine, because tyranny, because artists like Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, because the power and beauty of music that calls us to think and weep, resist, ponder and dream.

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall 


Written by Bob Dylan and performed by Patti Smith