What can I say of love Of her beauty Of the smile from those blue cobalt eyes Of the mischievous turning away Of the nickname she called me, “Hide Your Head,” Because I ducked away often From that piercing gaze. It was the shortest and the truest love Of my life. I do not care that they called her a psychopathic liar I do not care that she destroyed my car’s engine in a fit of pique At me leaving on vacation without her. Pouring water deliberately in the carbeurator, Then, astonishingly, getting back in the car. Much as I would have preferred her asking me not to go. I do not care that she left and spent her life with another. When I think of beauty and love, hers is the face which appears And I judge myself the one who showed up unequal to the task Of allowing that energy between us. I hold her in no blame Although many think I should. It is a gift to have felt that even once in a lifetime Even briefly. And were I to go back, were I to have that chance again, I would be bolder, more fearless, Not less bold and more cautious. When she said, “Do you want to be my girlfriend? I don’t want to insult you with that term.” I would say, “Yes!” Instead of the reflexive, self-hating, sarcastic, “Well by all means don’t use that word if you find it insulting.” I don’t know what I expected to come of that, But I have not stopped regretting My inability To accept love To celebrate it
To say a resounding “Yes” to whatever language it came in. It was never that I thought she was not good enough, nor her words, But that I believed I did not deserve The loveliness, the indescribably beauty Of this women who I met at 31, and said to myself, That’s the face. That’s the one I’ve looked for my whole life. That’s the one I’ve seen in my dreams.
A woman holds-up a white T-shirt trying to prevent being shot, as Palestinians flee Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din street in Bureij, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)
White Flags, Heading South
I see you, with your white flag raised on a stick, held high.
Child on your shoulder, two little legs dangling beneath your ears,
The hand not holding the white flag is grasping your son’s ankle.
A daughter walks beside you, a wife or mother follows behind, wailing.
Out of all of the Arabic I hear in the video, I understand only Nakba ,
But that is said often. Tragedy; expulsion; we won’t be going back, it says.
Your face is dirty, I think you have not had enough water to drink, let alone to bathe
In, for a while. You look parched.
I look for your provisions; who is carrying the clothes you might change into,
The kitchen utensils, pots, pans, mattresses.
There is only you, and your youngers and elders, and one teenager
Carrying a bundle of clothes smaller than a suitcase.
He looks baffled.
I hear the words of the soldiers, hurrying you along.
They do not step into the picture to offer water, or comfort, or rest.
They are voices. I cannot impute any kindness to them,
Although you might convince me that a forced march from home
Is marginally better than having that home bombed and brought down on your head,
Doubling neatly as your tombstone and grave.
I see you, and I see my ancestors, in line to get on the trains in Poland.
Destined for Sobibor, Treblinka, Dachau, Auschwitz.
With their small bundles, and cluster of relatives.
Yes, those trains.
Don’t look away.
Didn’t we say, never again?
Didn’t we say, when you pen a people in a ghetto, then make them abandon even that
For a long death march to an unknown place where there are too many bodies and not enough
Water and food
Let alone space to lay down
Didn’t we say that was genocide?
Didn’t we swear to speak up next time?
The Trail of Tears comes to mind.
Old people falling dead on the way, and children.
Women refusing to leave their young ones, and staying next to them to die in the cold.
This is not genocide porn.
I do not enjoy these pictures.
But I have met the ghosts of earlier marches.
On a cold spring morning in TN, a long-dead woman showed me
Where she killed herself with a knife to lay beside her child.
Willing to walk to Oklahoma, but not to leave her baby behind.
She said to me, “in the hall there, you are all dancing and singing and praying and setting out food for your ancestors.
Where is our food? We lived here. Feed us.”
I set out food for them, and prayer and song, and took the memory with me.
The humans walking from Gaza City to Khan Younis will be on that road for a long time,
Haunting all of those to come. Rebuking any who try to move into that space
With the same demand, dead or alive. “We live here; feed us.”
Centuries from now, should mankind survive on this planet,
You will still be able to see a line of white flags heading north to south,
Hear the sound of shuffling feet tired beyond reckoning of lifting up and setting down,
Listen to the cries of children and the wailing of their mothers.
People like myself will be called in to do space clearings
And we will say, “I can’t tell them to leave. They live here. Just feed them.
Honor them.”
To my Jewish relatives I say this; you do not honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust
This is a not- obituary for a woman I barely knew. I only knew her peripherally, as a voice in the background when I called my friend M; as a figure by the door when I picked M up to go somewhere. I heard about her in discussions of house issues, when M and her husband took in yet another person who needed housing, this time a friend back from decades of busking in Eastern Europe, where that suddenly wasn’t possible.
G was not a person who thrust herself into any limelight. She mostly stayed home; I know very little about her career before she wound up on social security and kept mostly to her immediate chosen family.
Last week, G passed from complications of heart failure, as the doctors tried to replace two valves in her heart. This may seem completely unrelated to the shooting death of Lauri Carleton, who was shot for flying a Pride flag outside of her clothing store, but to me they are related. Let me explain.
When the media and the far right stokes hatred of LGBQT people, many of us brace ourselves for the violence to come. Certain speech is not violent in itself, or so people argue, but it is always, always followed by someone or many someones deciding they have to act to remove the threat.
When the far right in a concerted and sustained assault on reality declares that not only all trans people and gay people, but also everyone who supports our right to exist(I’m gay not trans) are pedophiles and groomers, and an active danger to “their” kids, someone is going to get hurt. Many people are going to get hurt. Get the populace worked up enough about children being mutilated and molested, and parents will see red and go looking for a perpetrator to stop.
It makes no difference that none of this is based in fact. Instances of transpeople molesting children are extremely rare. Especially if you compare that rate to Youth Pastors, or Catholic Priests, or even Republican politicians and coaches. I’m not sure why no one has taken the fight to those demographics; maybe someone can explain that to me. Perhaps it’s that the media never allowed a narrative of “all Catholic Priests are child molestors or child molestor apologists,” although that’s actually true. They kept the conversation centered on “a few” bad apples, both in the molesting and covering up wings of this crime. Long after huge swaths of the Catholic Church were shown in courts to be complicit, and required to pay out huge sums of money.
The press narrative then pivoted to , “OMG, is the Catholic Church going to have to sell property to pay off settlements.” Never, from the press, “is it time to shut down the Catholic Church altogether and never let them near a child again.” Which surely there was reason to at least discuss.
So while we were horrified, we were not shocked that a straight mother of nine could be shot dead in broad daylight for flying a Pride flag. The flogging of anti-trans hate memes had gone on long enough to make that inevitable. We praise her, and thank her, and cry, and move on.
What we pay less attention to is the quieter deaths. The people like G who maybe put off going to the doctor because it was too scary facing the public, facing strangers in a healthcare setting as a trans person. Knowing each decision to use a restroom could pose problems and maybe confrontations. Knowing she was opening herself to hate speech and angry stares just walking out the door.
So, G puts off going to the doctor. Or so I thought. In reality, she went to the doctor, and was sent to a specialist at the hospital. They found something unusual, but didn’t inform her what it is for months. They didn’t respond to her requests and reports of symptoms through the portal. Was this incompetence? Or casual transphobia? We’ll never know.
Her heart steadily deteriorates. In addition, her desire to live wanes. Her stress level is off the charts. She comfort eats to soothe herself and cuts back on any outside activity. She stays home even more. A woman who helped organize the March on Washington in 1993, then had to move off of Capitol Hill because local drug dealing gangs were threatening her, wonders what all the organizing and fighting back was for. Why did she put in all that work, just to see it reversed so many years later? She thought we had gained acceptance. Seeing it backslide was painful.
Who wants to live in a world that makes your very existence a crime? Who wants to be seen as a child groomer basically for choosing to wear a skirt instead of pants? Who wants to wake up after thirty years of fighting for rights, thinking you have them, and then being all of a sudden thrust back into the Dark Ages and seeing the pitchforks and torches coming for you?
Gwen, a recluse, who never bothered anyone, was not safe to go out in Kitsap County, a conservative county near Seattle. She could be certain most of her neighbors would ignore her, but she could not be certain that they all would.
When you mindlessly scroll past hate speech online and think it doesn’t apply to you, or that it’s harmless rhetoric, think of G. Whose housemates loved her. Who might have gone to the doctor sooner. Whose heart might have been less stressed had she not been confronted with hateful messages and memes every single time she went on social media. Who might still be with us, if people had just minded their own business. If people hadn’t been whipped up into a frenzy of hate and fear by the right wing media.
If you see a trans person on the street, smile, say hello. Think good thoughts at them. Understand it’s not yours to judge. It is the furthest thing from godly to decide you know better than Creator who that person should be. Trust that they know themselves better than you do.
And please spare a thought for the children who actually are molested. Often in their own home by heterosexual relatives, or a hetero friend of the family, priest, coach, neighbor. Those children are not served by all this distraction and hysteria. They are not protected by it. Media should be shouting from the rooftops that statistically, a child is many many times more likely to be sexually abused by their own parent or grandparent or uncle than by a stranger in a restroom, trans or otherwise.
I have not always fallen on this side of this issue; it took some long conversations with young non-binary people for me to understand this. That I cannot tell someone else who they are. Anymore than I would accept them telling me who I am.
Let us all honor each other in ways which support our ability to live in a healthy way on this planet. The time we are given is short enough already.
I honor G for her courage, and wish her peace in the place she inhabits now. My prayer is that not another trans person need die from hate crimes or from the subtle wearing down of their ability to exist on this planet in this time.
One of the ways I work as a psychic reader is to catch the overflow and wreckage from con artists who call themselves psychics. There might be a nicer way to say that, but I’m not moved to use it today. Using psychic ability to suss out what words a client most wants to hear that will keep them coming back and spending money is a misuse and an abuse of that client and of the gift. If they have one.
Most often, the misinformation goes like this: “Yes, he/she is your soulmate. You are destined to be together. They don’t realize it yet, they’re working on their issues”; or, “they know that but are in rebellion against it, still getting over an ex, not in a place to commit.” Or, “they will come back as soon as you work on your issues”. How this manifests in the client/psychic relationship looks like this: someone will call me and tell me another reader told them six months ago that their ex was going to come back, or their current booty call was going to commit, and could I please tell them when that will happen because it has been six months now. I have to remind them that I didn’t tell them any of that. And here’s this person who very sincerely waited, or waited and worked diligently on their issues, and the other person they are waiting on is going about their business much as before. Or worse, the psychic convinced them that they were working on the reluctant partner’s issues, without that partner’s knowledge or permission. This is thoroughly unethical and ineffective.
While it might be true occasionally that someone you love is not available right now but will throw themselves at your feet further down the line, or that you are not ready and the love of your life knows this and is waiting for you to be ready, it is very seldom the case. More often, the person who is unavailable or only interested in booty calls now is unavailable or only interested in booty calls six months from now. Six months during which you could have moved on , six months during which you could have saved yourself the hundreds of dollars you gave to the person who promised they would be back and be everything you wished. Six months during which you could have healed from the hurt of actually believing what someone you claim to love told you.
I know! This sounds harsh! But really, truly, it’s best to believe what people say about themselves, or what they show you. If they tell you they don’t want a full time commitment, they do not. If they don’t want you to meet their friends and family, but they spend a lot of time with friends and family, they are not looking for a long term commitment with you. Most likely they are seeing someone else who DOES know their friends and family.
It is utterly cruel to use the psychic title to feed clients a line of BS and string them along hoping someone will come back. Sometimes readers are just afraid to say things that will hurt their clients’ feelings out of codependence. That’s not a good reader. More often, they know that the client who is looking to be lied to and promised a return of lost love will move on and never book them again if they are told the truth. I’ve been that client, I know that client exists . Trying to deal with grief and loss by finding someone to tell me she or he will be back. The readers I respect told me to get in the present and move forward. It is not at all kind to lie to anyone in that situation. Even if the partner they are grieving was known to them over many lifetimes. In this one, in the here and now, all you can do safely is pick up , get what healing you can, and move on. The planet, your friends, your relatives, your work, and yourself all deserved better than to be holding onto a delusion, especially one mostly watered by the financial greed of another.
In May, I will reach 26 years free of cocaine and alcohol. That might seem like a small thing, but I was in IV cocaine user for some years in my 20s, had DTs at 24, and I was not expected to live to this venerable age of 61. On the streets and way outside the law, I weighed 106 pounds when I stopped the longest run. I am trying to remember the last time I had a craving for cocaine, and I cannot. Same thing with alcohol. It was at least ten years ago but I think much longer. I can’t remember, and that says a lot right there.
Recently, I read a repost by a well-meaning ally which waxed very eloquent on the subject of recovery from addiction being a daily battle, fraught with angst every single day of the addict’s life. I’m here to tell you that while that might be true of some people who put down the drugs and never find any peace, it’s not true of most of us after a few years. The first six months, for sure. The first year or two, not uncommon.
But eventually, for those of us who work a traditional 12 step program, and for those who find their solution in church or sweatlodge or rational recovery(atheism), and those who just one day wake up and say this isn’t how I want to live my life, the desire to drink and use is lifted. And by that I mean, it doesn’t occur to us, we have different habits, passions and interests. We can walk down the wine aisle and not flinch; we can sit at your dinner table and watch you drink a dinner wine with impunity and not cry ourselves to sleep or reach uncontrollably for the bottle.
The post I read was written by a psych nurse, and so assumed to be gospel truth. I pointed out that by definition, a psych nurse will be exposed to the very worst cases of addiction impacting mental health. Those cases exist. By all means, let’s support those people and give them all the treatment they need. But let’s not assume that each and every addict in recovery is in that situation, of battling mental illness and drug cravings the rest of their life. Especially the drug cravings. It’s simply not true, and putting it out in the public sphere that way is grossly unfair to those who have lost their cravings. Well-meaning people won’t invite them to parties or dinners or even lunch, in the fear that they may pick up if anyone else drinks socially. Well-meaning people study them for signs of relapse, refuse to give them any responsibility, and drown them in pity. The assumptions are relentless and they are harmful.
Pity is not required or helpful. Leveling your view of addiction to let it mean addicts are all low-bottom street hypes is not useful. Plenty of addicts live in mansions and make tons of money. Don’t we know this from all the celebrity overdoses? Need we assume all addicts live in tents and steal from your car at night? I had a defense attorney who was very hyper in the courtroom; I was in on some serious theft charges related to drugs, and could not get him to listen to me. At the time I thought he was on coke. Turns out a year later he was busted with a pound of coke. He was sent to rehab. I was sent to jail. That’s the class system in action. He was as much an addict as I was; he just knew how to hold down a job. Until he didn’t, clearly.
I WAS a street hype, living in hotels and sleeping outside when I couldn’t make rent. The rest of that story is for another day, but suffice it to say I shot up in a car in the parking lot of 7-11 a few blocks from the police station one time. And I do not have cravings, today or any other day. Haven’t for some decades. So recovery is possible; no one needs to monitor me. I am free by the grace of a loving Creator, and by virtue of having diligently worked a 12 step program. By the same token, I have met people who just one day decided to stop and did, and that’s fine too. If I can walk about free on this planet, so can other addicts. There are things I regret about decisions made in recovery, but that doesn’t mean I’m crippled for the rest of my life and need to be monitored or pitied or watched around your medications.
I know dozens of recovering addicts who are the same. Some are annoyingly addicted to meetings ; some proselytize way too much for my comfort, but all of them I trust are living their lives without craving drugs on a daily or even occasional basis. They have found recovery, and are engaged fully in living their lives. Many still attend meetings, not as a stopgap to keep them from using again but as a way of passing on to others the freedom they found. And as a social support system, since even the well-meaning among normies continue to see us as freaks who might relapse at any time.
So please, if you want to advocate for more accessible treatment for addicts, I’m right there with you. If you want to advocate for dual diagnosis programs, I’m right there with you. But don’t paint the problems of addicts as if they have no solution ; don’t imagine healing isn’t possible. That just tells me you’ve never met an addict in recovery or if you did, you didn’t listen to what they had to say. Listen to us. Healing is possible. Recovery is possible. The only people with a stake in thinking it’s not are those who make their living managing long-term drug dependence who will be put out of a job if too many recover. It is like the bureaucracies for homelessness which would be put out of business if we actually find housing for everyone. And for heaven’s sake, don’t think a psych nurse whose experience is entirely inside mental health wards has seen a representative sample of recovering addicts.
True recovery usually involves family of origin work, trauma work, addressing codependence, addressing any underlying issues that feed the addiction. These are the triggers. The physicality of the drug is not the trigger. In my experience. The drug is only ever something we take to medicate emotions and thoughts we haven’t healed. This doesn’t mean we are mentally ill and experiencing cravings the rest of our lives; this means we need to face our trauma histories, codependence, and whatever else lead us to become addicted in the first place. Notice that nowhere did I mention medication. I’m not a doctor. I don’t know who needs psych meds. I know they were not the answer for me, and here I am 26 years later, with a life I could not have imagined I would have, when I smoked that last rock in my Mazda RX7 on the corner of 22nd and Madison in Seattle. In front of Deano’s which no longer exists.
My sobriety date is 5=24=96. I am an addict in recovery. My name is Amy. No, you do not have to monitor me the rest of your life. Yesterday I paid way more than I wanted to to the IRS, a thing I could never have imagined. My biggest problem in life today is I’m invited to more ceremonies than I can reasonably go to. And this is a luxury problem indeed.
Next time you see an addict, know that it is possible for them to recover. It might take a lot of support, but don’t assume they will suffer from addiction forever, or you become part of the problem holding them down. These are my words. I have spoken.
Upsetting to have to write this, in 2018, but here goes.
The year was 1970; I was in sixth grade at a local public school. Sixth grade was the last grade before graduating and going to a big, scary Junior High. In sixth grade, you were supposed to be at the top of the heap and beyond teasing and bullying, because there were no older kids. A false sense of security set in, I suppose.
Every morning, I walked half a block straight up a hill to stand at a busstop with ten or fifteen other kids. This was way before helicopter parenting days; our parents made sure we ate breakfast, were carrying lunch in a brown paper sack or lunchbox, or carrying lunch money. Books, homework; boots, gloves, hat, scarf in winter. Check. Out the door and on our own.
Some winters there was a lot of snow. All winters there was some snow. The township plowed it early in the morning so that unless it was really severe, snow never meant missing school. Still, we would glue ourselves to the radio, listening for our call number. “Schools 003, 005, are closed.” We were 301, I think. Rarely closed unless there were five inches or more of snow overnight and it hadn’t been plowed yet.
Every morning, we got to the bus stop five or ten or fifteen minutes ahead of the bus. Because the bus could be early, and if you missed the bus, you really didn’t want to deal with Mom having to drive you to school. Back then, most Moms in my neighborhood were home and could actually do that.
So we arrived 15 minutes early, and stood in the snow waiting on the big yellow school bus. Sometimes we had snowball fights. Those were mostly good natured, but there was one boy named Jerry Paris who liked to put a rock in the middle of his snowball, or make ice balls, which were much harder. He’d target girls or kids smaller than him. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t safe.
I had the soul of a rescuer, even at that age. For some reason, I thought it was my responsibility and calling to protect the weaker. More than that, I couldn’t stand the smug satisfaction on his face of getting away with it, being top dog, knowing no one would challenge him.
I stooped, picked up some snow, packed it real tight, took aim. From twenty yards, I hit Jerry Paris right in the back with a snowball. A general gasp went up. Everyone else’s tactic had been to submit, ignore, avoid retaliation. None of them threw snowballs at Jerry. I heard “you’re gonna get it”, and realized no one was going to cover my back, lie for me, or neglect to tell him who did it.
I don’t remember what happened after that. There was a moment’s satisfaction of having “got” the bully. There was a wild flight of fantasy thinking he would mend his ways. Didn’t all those kids’ books say that if you stand up to a bully, he’ll stop doing it? Yeah, sure. That happens.
After that, the dread set in. What’s he going to do to me. It will be something. I think in that moment Jerry laughed it off, but as I write that, the memory of watching him load up a snowball and speed it back my way surfaces. I remember the fear, not the impact.
The year is still 1970. This standing up for the downtrodden hasn’t worked out the way I thought, but I’ve more or less chalked it up to experience and moved on. I don’t know if I threw more snowballs at Jerry Paris or not. I remember feeling like the lone outrider on a trail no one else even saw.
Except for my friend Nancy, who also defied every norm she could spot. We would meet up on the playground twice a day at recess. She was a year behind me, cute in a baby butch way, and infinitely fun.
I knew I was attracted to girls by then, but she and I had not discussed it. She went on many years later to be a picture on the front page of the NYTimes for one of the first gay marriages.
Back to 1970. Rows of desks with laminated wood tops and enamel chairs. Bright lights, boring subjects. New books. We were the spoiled ones of suburbia with pretty good curriculum and 30 in a class. Mostly well-behaved.
The bell rings recess. We are allowed outside in the snow. I push back my chair, stow my book in the metal shelf under my desktop, stand up, put on coat and knit cap and gloves, make my way to the door. Not ten yards from the door, as I’m walking fast past a jungle gym and scanning the snow covered field for my friend Nancy, I hear a noise behind me of several boys running and joking. “There she is, get her!” They push me from behind, hold me face down in the snow. One on each arm, as I struggle to raise my head and torso and get up. I can’t get up, they’re too strong and too many. One opens my coat in front, pulls my sweater out, and shoves cold snow down the front of my shirt. I scream. There’s the cold, and there’s having a boy shove his hand down my shirt. Both bad.
They laugh. They get up and leave before the teacher on playground duty says anything at all. Perhaps she’d blown a whistle at them, I don’t know. I get up. I find the playground monitor teacher, an older woman with platinum coiffed hair and a plaid coat. Probably the same woman who threatened to send me home earlier that year for wearing pants in six inches of snow. Understand, that in this shoving down in the snow, I was wearing a skirt.
I tell the playground teacher what happened. I am looking forward to her rounding up the boys and scolding them and sending them inside. I expect to be told that she’ll make sure it never happens again.
I’m wrong. She says, “well, boys will be boys. Horseplay. It’s not a big deal. Don’t play with them if you don’t want to get hurt.”
They came up behind me. I was just outside the door. I didn’t walk past them or provoke them; I have no idea why they chose me. Maybe for being the best student in the class?
Maybe just for being.
I don’t remember who those boys were. It was not Jerry Paris. I will never know why they picked me. It was random, it was an attack, and when I reported it, I was told immediately to disregard my own feelings and to reframe it as anything but an assault. In fact, I was blamed for being in the way of it. Told it was the price of recess, and I could stay inside if I wanted.
That is what I have to say to all the men who want to dismiss attempted rape as “mere horseplay.” First of all, no it fucking isn’t. And second, you don’t know what can of worms you’re opening with that. Horseplay isn’t as harmless as you think; it’s another word that’s been weaponized to cover up for all manner of assault and injury.
In my vision, hordes of people, not just me, walk into a QFC or a Safeway, and approach the management, and say with one voice, “We don’t want all this plastic. We don’t need all this plastic. We’re not buying another donut, another cake, another loaf of bread, another slice of cheesecake, or another sandwich here until you find a way to package it in something sustainable. Hemp cardboard, hemp plastic, butcher paper, we don’t care. But not plastic.” And they spin as one on their heels and walk out.
Because America believes in a free market more than in regulation, unless it’s to regulate the poor and the refugee and the asylum seeker and the uterus, in this vision the hordes of people walking into Safeway and Thriftway and QFC and yes Whole Foods and PCC and declaiming against plastic, then walking out without buying a thing-these hordes are heard. Up the corporate ladder runs the message: really, boss, they won’t buy anything until we stop. We’ve fooled them long enough. They care about the beach. They care about the whales and the dolphins. They care about eating fish which has eaten plastic. Go figure. We’re going to have to do something different.”
And in this vision, the corporations knuckle down and change their packaging. And while they’re at it, having been so knocked off center, they also cut down on sugar content and HFCS and all manner of additives. Because really, who wants a Twinkie in edible leaf wrapping, or a Ho Ho in hemp cardboard? No one!
And in this vision, the people who have found their hearts and their voice and their feet feel energized and empowered. And the animals in the sea and the birds in the air, those that crawl and walk and slither and swim and fly all hear about the choices these brave hordes are making. And they honor those choices, and lend their energy and their prayers to these American people. And because these animal allies feel they can work with humans, and honor them, these American people mysteriously find themselves being healed of their depression and anxiety. Which never was anything but a symptom of their violent daily disconnection from the natural world and all their relatives there.
And in this vision, circles flourish and drums and flute and all manner of music and art. And because there is less to make, because the people have finally stopped their headlong rush over a cliff to consume and consume more until they consumed themselves, because there is less to make, there are less hours to work. And people go to the beaches and the forests and the fields and clean up the mess they’ve made. And they sit and pray and sing and meditate. And they rise and play and worship. And they tell stories for the seventh generation, about coming back to a way of balance.
And the QFCs and the Safeways and the Thriftways and yes even the Whole Foods become, in time, museums and schools. Museums like Auschwitz and Treblinka are museums. Where children are brought and people make pilgrimage to see the ways that we used to kill each other and ourselves.
Some are converted to healthy markets and gardens. But more are used to teach the young ones and the old ones what lies down the path of “more”.
And in this vision, the sky over Seattle is again blue, not brown. The blue I remember, thirty years ago.
And there is peace, and there is hope. In this vision, the waters of Lake Washington are cold till July, and they are clear. In this vision, the longhouses rise again. And the shootings cease. And there is civility and dialogue because first there was justice. And none are homeless and all are fed.
soundandmountains 