Henry Ford

 Are we even here to make progress? It's been so syringed into me that Progress is Good I have never questioned it. Maybe we don't need progress. Progress of what? For who? Why?

Work smart, not hard. Should I keep calling my trash congressman? Part of me thinks it's human and True to never stop saying the right thing to power. But if the power never listens, should I instead conserve that energy for something more beautiful? Even if it's not progressive or "important"? If it's just a journal entry or lining a cheese plate with raspberries just so?

When I canvassed this past February for Elizabeth Warren and a local candidate, we we taught if anyone comes to the door and doesn't agree with you, just say thanks and leave. You may want to inform or educate but it's likely not going to work, so just move on. We ourselves, the canvassers with clip boards, are finite resources not be be squandered.

Last week I spoke with any angry Republican on the phone for twelve minutes while banking for my hopeful Democratic rep in Illinois. I gave the brief platform speech and he was immediately peppery. So full of confusion and victimization his voice was trembling. All these corrupt democrats! He started grouching. He didn't actually have anything against the platform I described. He also didn't specifically ask to be taken off the list or even say that he wouldn't vote for my person, so I asked him some follow-ups. What issues were his concerns? I could be a resource. He parroted back a handful of disjointed Fox News sound bytes. None of them were finished ideas or logical. Most importantly, none of them had anything to do with the district's Congressional race. Truly none. He asked things like "Does she think police officers should not be allowed to stop fights?!" "Does she think Chicago should get a playground!?" I mean. Sir. I was very calm and briefly summarized my candidate's viewpoint, reiterated these are more philosophical and local issues, and added a piece of her platform he might like. About defunding billionaires and adding more sustainability options to our farmlands. He raged on democrats who are funded by corporations and I gave him the data about the Republican running--how he is funded by hundreds of thousands of oil dollars. Twelve minutes later this man said he may vote for a democrat for the first time in his life. This makes me feel good. But I'll never know how he actually votes. Or, to be honest, if he actually votes. It could have been a waste of time.

But that returns me to my first question. What is a waste of time anyway? Maybe it's just about cleaning souls. Including my own.

Puhg and I were driving by a huge maskless picnic the other day. "I've decided not to think about them." He said. "They're so self-centered. And then when I think about them, I am just adding to that, thinking about them even more." It made sense to me. I'm trying to do it too. But it's hard when a free-faced runner is barreling toward me on the sidewalk, huffing like mad, and I have to all but dive into a rose bush to avoid their spittle. I posted on social media in May what am I supposed to do with all the hate I feel for people, specifically our leaders, specifically the orange? Malt reached out. We don't talk much. He said, "I think we're not supposed to think about him." His answer felt comforting to me. And also a little squishy. To ignore feels wrong. Feels apathetic. But maybe only if I ignore and sit in a floatie. Maybe if I ignore and make art and walk the neighborhood hanging fliers for a new City Council candidate and pick up fresh local pies that's okay. Or even good.

Dreams Are Painful

 Been watching Encore on Disney+ again. There's always at least one kid in every high school musical who wants to go to Broadway. Sometimes they go and fail, sometimes they don't go at all, sometimes they think they're still going to go with truly no plan or plot to do so. Dreams are dreams I guess.

There is pain in those teen dreams. Big, unnamable pain. To watch the touring production of a show from a balcony and think "I could do that and I want to do that but I have no idea how to do that and part of me knows I never will and that world will always be, exactly as I see it now, another world." There were other people who watched from the same adolescent cheap seats and thought, "I can't wait to do that!" With abandon. And maybe they did or maybe they became barbers. (According to Encore, at least.) Or maybe they got really close and are inching closer, but there are still always going to be people, usually unintentionally ignorant, who don't understand how incredible being so close is.

I knew that pain and absorbed it and decided to be small because that's what seemed realistic. I met with an advisor for ______ and said I was interested in the theatre conservatory, which was supposedly TOP NOTCH. The advisor, without knowing anything about me besides the fact that I went to public school in St. Louis and had no summer stock credits or New York workshops under my belt, told me I wouldn't get in. And I believed that stranger. Why wouldn't I? She had an official polo on.

The good news is I don't like acting that much. I did then, but I think this turn in tide was inevitable, so I am grateful I wasn't in the deep end, potentially in mountains of debt, trying to make that adjustment. Instead I stayed in the kiddie pool, wading for what would be suitable for an average person like me and gradually walked forward until one day my toes didn't touch.

And now I am full-out swimming, which can be exciting, but brings a whole new level of pain. Pain that couldn't have been considered at 17. Pain of almost getting a dream job and not and then seeing billboards for that dream job everywhere. And then asking yourself if you're going to masochistically watch the dream job or ignore it at let the dream die. There's a whole THIRD level of pain to GET said dream job and fight inside of it about what should happen there and maybe you don't win and you have to be part of a thing you end up not even loving the way you thought you would. Or worse yet, you get the dream job, you fight for your voice in it, you win, you share the dream job with the world, and they DESPISE IT. I mean! Dreams are painful!

Fifth Grade, Listening to OAR

"I'm in fifth grade" I said to Puhg. We had turned down a quiet street in the neighborhood. It feels suburban even though traffic is behind the houses and the observatory is under the moon. It's so hot in LA, which made me cranky last summer. But this summer we have a new AC unit. Now the August mug feels right. I had my own body at 11. The playgrounds become equipment when they used to be castles. In three more years they'd be hangouts, places to lounge around and gossip. I remember when three of us were draped across the slides behind my old elementary school and someone brought up how N_____ S_______ had jumped up and down at a graduation party and exposed her tummy which was surprisingly soft and pudgy. We'd all honed in on the exact same moment, our collective hive brains humming, "But I thought she exercised." But in fifth grade there was only regular and fat.

I didn't know what middle school would look like and I never thought about it. I had signed up for four weeks of summer camp, but I didn't guess what would happen there. The future existed but I hadn't begun to consider it. In 6th grade when I went to the pool I looked at the lifeguards and wondered if I worked with them who would be my friend and if I would man snack bar or the deep end. I drew myself in a sketch pad holding one of the official red inner tubes. I had a nose ring. I don't know where that image came from, but it came to be, what, ten years later?

The future has been better and worse than expected. What sounds good on paper can be excruciating and what sounds terrible can be pretty good. And awareness can make it all the worse or better.

But so this feeling is here now, I notice. It certainly helps that in the evening we ate raspberry blue gummies, watched Last Action Hero, and ordered pizza. If that isn't 90s vibes. Nevermind the gummies were organic and the pizza vegan (delivered via application) and the movie digitally rented from a super conglomerate streamed straight to our Apple TV. Nevertheless. It was night and there were no plans for morning or forever for that matter. I couldn't hope if I tried. Swam in the afternoon and I'll do it again today.

Everyone Is Doing Their Best

 That's what my therapist says. It upsets me. Because it doesn't seem like it. I guess strangely it's easier for me to believe some of the worst people (The Cheeto) are doing their best. They are ignorant, broken, and have probably never been happy in their life. They don't even know how to be better. But people around me do know. People I am close to. They know, and still. I mute friends rapidly these days. People going to restaurants and having parties and taking vacations in a pandemic. They don't shoulder most of the blame, of course, that's our government. But I think they shoulder some. I watched The Reader last night.

I don't think I'm always doing The Best, but maybe that is My Best. Certainly I've been on the cusp of a better choice and still chosen unwisely, less selflessly. I have. It was short and it was quick. I guess I refuse to believe in a world where selfishness is honored. There is acceptance if I want to go on. But isn't acceptance anti-activist? And if everyone is doing their best and we are meant to accept that, haven't we proven there is no free will? The cosmos aligned to get you right here after all. How is that your fault, or anyone's? Even a serial killer has a burst brain set up by a trillion pinballed atoms throughout history. Am I to believe I was born on a roller coaster, strapped in with only two choices--flail or sit?