Catch Me

My daily running ritual came to an abrupt end last week when I found myself hurtling through the air, wondering whether I should give in to physics or fight my way to some kind of survival.  It was one of those moments where time literally hiccups and allows your brain to review various scenarios.  In the end, it wasn't quite the Humpty Dumpty thing, but enough to shake up my runner's denial of clinical age... with blood, a knee-dislocation and general banging.  Like a piece of bruised fruit I limped home, realized I needed some x-rays and reluctantly checked into the ER for an inordinate time.

Of course, in a medical institution, one must be patient and polite-- grateful for a simple chair and an icepack, uncomplaining that the overnight queue for an x-ray seemed absurd given staff appeared to vastly outnumber us-the-sick-and-wounded.  Plenty of time to mull over the well-documented shortage of supplies and simple drugs-- the astounding poor quality of the small accessories they provide, while thanking Jesus I was able to think and move my fingers.  

As though life had not slowed enough, it's now snail-ish.  I am well aware the running thing was like some kind of illusion of speed-- an antidote to pandemic reality, not to mention a kind of meditative salve.  We are profoundly changed, many of us... yes, the covid years aged the ageless rockers, deprived us of our lifelong passions... dethroned our heroes, even took away our sense of smell, as though fading vision isn't quite insulting enough.

But there are people-- some of them friends-- who buried themselves in the pandemic-- crawled into its salty covers and hid.  They dressed in its camouflage, the way narcissists and drama queens slip unnoticed into parades and march and sing without rehearsal in the uniform of histrionics. People who are dangerously gifted, prone to isolation-- they wrapped themselves in bedsheets of nostalgia and their past, binged and fooled themselves on Facebook.  

And now what? Like Rip Van Winkles they sit at their windows, their long beards the only hint of existence-gap.  Procrastination, not cancel-culture; our physical age has for now become the tortoise that beat the hare of creativity and production.  We arrived-- disheveled, unshowered and like bewildered dogs without scent--  at some unmarked finish line.

We have grieved, we have lost-- directly or indirectly-- Alan, Buzzy, Ian, Howie Pyro, Andy Storey... Naomi Judd whose three weeks in the same nightclothes didn't faze us at all.  We were right there with her, a whole race of unwashed people wrapped in our own stench, baptized into the comfortably numb by the new religion of covid. 

Not to mention the climate of unsettled mistrust-- the fear and skepticism we have acquired from following bad instructions.  No wonder crime is up-- there are few outlets for public screaming... the protests have for the most part died down... across the ocean, the horror of war has far eclipsed covid.  We feel helpless and guilty-- lucky and cursed at the same time.  We wait for directions... and no one seems to agree.  

A couple of generations ago, I wrote a novel-- a post-911 narration in the voice of a teenage girl.  Last week I was sending it to a friend and I noticed at the opening of a chapter... 'so it just happens that the first years of the 21st century are turning out to be the Age of Personal Mediocrity-- no punks, no graffiti, no more Nirvana, no elephant-shit-smeared Christ-images at the Brooklyn Museum, no presidential blow-jobs.  Like those terrorists have taken the edge off us, scared us into a round corner.' 

It felt like a refrain.  How profoundly changed we were by the 2001 political climate.  We happily engaged in wars that made no sense and gave up our personal privacy in exchange for the sense of protection.  But where are we now?  As if the endless rippling of this virus wasn't enough, we have shooters and-- Curious George disciples, we-- monkey-pox.  We line up to have sticks stuck in our noses and receive the gifts of Big Pharma in our arm-- again and again. We want to be safe, and are anything but, we who have honed only our procrastination skills and are about as sharp as an old butter-knife. Of course a few of us leaked ink from hearts, gushed lyrics on the telephone, but for the most part we remained as we were, which in the language of physics translates as traveling backward. 

As I tripped and spilled and waited for the final verdict, I thought how close the words falling and failing--  undoubtedly lifelong neighbors on the dictionary page and to the average clouded senior eye virtually indistinguishable.  I will heal, I suppose-- a little worse for wear, but our culture-- my context-- my heroes... too many have stopped answering phones and hearing doorbells.  On the streets people are smoking themselves into a kind of oblivion.  This summer will have no landmark title... I will name it 'another'.  

There are days when I almost believe we must go back to the past to go forward-- to find our old vinyl and remember how we watched these oracles spin on repeat until we were changed.  And then there are the nights when I find the prayer of poetry and swear I will walk-- maybe even run into some future.  Amen.

Roe is Me

Okay.  I was born in the 1950's, when we wore white gloves to the theatre, when our mothers cautioned us about how to sit, how to cross our legs, spread our skirt just so on our seats, to place our hands correctly, to button up our blouses and even how to curtsey-- yes.  

As a teenager in the 1960's all bets were off.  We were free-- we fought for civil and feminist rights-- we wore overalls and workboots or flimsy gauzy dresses with no bras and shouted and shed clothes and celebrated our bodies.  We had access, as minors, to Planned Parenthood and the clinics; we embraced sexuality and took the consequences.  Many of us as young women were disrespected by the men around us-- teachers, bosses, our friends' parents, pederast uncles-- priests, rabbis...who took advantage of generational boundaries, the fact that few of us discussed intimacies with parents. But even my mother, who blushed at the word 'sex' and never discussed it with me, who was horrified by feminism, volunteered at Planned Parenthood.  It was the 'right' thing to do. 

The fact that abortion is a legislated issue at all seems not just absurd to me but a little medieval.  Until covid and the onslaught of online medicine, we were protected against sharing privileged medical information.  This was private-- exclusive... our own unique medical profile.  Who has biological control?  We do.  What happened in my Ob-gyn office stayed there.  My personal doctor had written a 1970's book called Healthy Sex which laid out without judgment the various sexually transmitted diseases-- risks and how to avoid these pitfalls.  A pregnant college student was treated as she requested... respectfully, clinically, safely.  From the age of 15 I've shared confidentialities with my Gynecologist.  He knows me for more than fifty years; I trust him. 

Any woman who has had an abortion knows this is not an easy decision.  It's a painful choice, an unhappy one; there are risks, yes... complications for some... and a post-procedure emotional response that is unpredictable.  I remember paying cash for my procedure in the 1970's.  Whether that was an indication that it was a deliberately undocumented choice-- I may not know.  Birth control, I recall, was out-of-pocket and could be procured at free clinics.  

The Affordable Care Act ensured basic contraceptive rights were protected and covered.  Unfortunately Obama-care became the targeted symbol, for the Republican conservatives, of everything that was wrong with the Democratic left.  To go back and attack the issue of birth-- to unravel 20th century logical human progress-- is not just absurd but twisted. 

The so-called moral majority that emerged in the late 1970's began this strategy of weaponizing religion for political ends.  They helped Ronald Reagan to get elected and planted the seeds of what America reaped in spades in 2016.  It was beyond ridiculous that these people were ethically or morally motivated.  Especially when the heinous abuses of the Church were revealed as their movement gained in popularity.  Trump couldn't be farther from a believer, and yet he managed to suck in a whole electoral population who suddenly became more aggressively religious as they found themselves with unprecedented power.

This country was founded on religious freedom-- on separation of church and state.  Where are ethics, morality, humanitarianism and kindness?  How is religion turning the Supreme Court on its own head? It's as though the undermining of American institutions has become a contest-- like Donald Trump's golf games and financial hocus-pocus maneuvers.  When did a major court decision simply leak out, for political reasons?  When did the word of a Justice nominee become disposable?  

For me, it began with Anita Hill-- the bravest woman I recall in American history. She bared her humiliations before the American public in the interest of saving the Court.  Day after day I watched that testimony... listened to the heinous descriptions of a man who abused his personal power and disrespected her dignity.   I read about her polygraph tests, and the ones Justice Thomas refused to take. This man-- who is now part of the Supreme Court backline-- gets to deliberate the fate of women, to unravel the process of justice and autonomy every person deserves, by dint of our Constitution, if nothing else.  I often wonder if the Me-Too movement had taken hold in those days, could any man accused of these transgressions be allowed to sit on a revered and powerful bench? Even one year later, the tide began to turn for women.  So is it any wonder that thirty years later we are handed our fate by men like Thomas?  And others who owe their career to political obligations and promises which belie the mission of their office?   

A friend of mine was violently raped in the 1970's by a high-profile man.  She agreed to testify in court, despite what it did to her career-- despite the humiliation her family suffered.  They were southern and judgmental and disowned her for her courage.  With no DNA testing in those days, her attacker was found not guilty.  He was maybe socially ostracized for a few months.  She, on the other hand, was blacklisted by her industry-- married badly, suffered depression and other physical ailments... decided not to have children. 

Anita Hill was born a little early.  We witnessed her intellectual and emotional lynching in a public forum-- we learned that honesty in a politicized justice system rarely pays.  She and so many of us had to cull our strength and go on with our lives while these men took office.  Then there was Donald Trump, the ultimate Disrespector of women who ties the Evangelical movement to his rear bumper like old cans on a bridal getaway car. 

We are born with bodies; we are not Gods.  We have brains and we think.  We have choices, and we are not constitutionally compelled to think one way or another.  We can worship as we please, and follow whatever individual beliefs we choose, as long as we don't interfere with another's rights. We protect these bodies from harm, from ourselves and from others. What we put inside ourselves is personal. The medical decisions we make are our own inalienable right, assuming we are in compos mentis.  To remove our ability to decide is tantamount to taking away the right to vote.  

Anita weighed in on the Kavanagh confirmation; beside Thomas, he looked like a choirboy.  But it was like a memo-- the past will come to bite you.  Already the sanctity of the court is broken by this leak. Personally I have lost respect for the Institution. Two of my classmates-- both women--  sit on this version of the Supreme Court. I have been proud of their thinking and their careful deliberations. Both have exercised their right not to have children, and beyond this fact, their choices are none other than private and personal.  Barack Obama saw the writing on the wall.  He did what he could to write into law certain protections.  He tried to appoint a reasonable Justice, to guarantee these assurances, but was prevented by the conservatives who were hungry for revenge. No better pathway for Trumpists  to undo the Affordable Care Act than pro-choice issues-- the ultimate wolf in the sheep-costume of evangelism.  This is not what Jesus meant.  Personally,  I always thought the courts were there to protect our rights, not to remove them.