Write this an after working with people in George Floyd Square. 5 years on—and the city and the family and the many histories of that area, 38th and Chicago, have no common ground. Yesterday sat with granddaughters Kate and Mollie, 8 and 10, in the shade of a black walnut by my back door, in Minneapolis. Told stories, drew pics, laughed—and the whole time the cloud you describe hung over me. How did these evil (yes—evil) men get ALL the power and all the goddamn $$?? Im 81, if Kate and Mollie live 70 more years it will be 2095. What world then? We traded pics, made up stories—had snacks—walked to Lake Harriet, and can i keep from weeping? Thank you thank you for all you bring to the craziness. And thanks anyone who takes a look at my Substack. I gotta write it. Words. Threads.
Thank you, David - you've been such an incredible supporter of this quest from go (and now of @caravanwriterscollective, too - we appreciate you), and it makes such a huge difference to know you're out there. So excited about your new stack, just signed up and can't wait to follow this vital thread.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so simultaneously amused and forlorn. The neuroscientist’s conversation with the audience was like a dystopian Aesop’s fable, if the doctor were an elephant and the spectators were hyenas.
Your analogy of the wall of TV screens showing separate realities is so apt. I know a woman who, after the election, said, “Thank God we’ll have an honest man in the White House again.” There was no point in responding, but my forehead vein became sentient, burrowed through my skin, and tried to strangle her.
No one has a better deadpan delivery than you, Chris. Like, NO ONE. So glad/horrified to hear this resonated - I wish it didn't, but damn, I'm relieved I'm not the only one who sees the hyenas in the room. Thank you, as always, for reading. xo
Another powerful communique, sharing what we are all hearing.. thank you.
while the two most damaged immature boys are carrying on their public spat and name calling, the rest of us are truly wondering how to save ourselves, our country and our relationship with the world. I know that aside from letters and phone calls, most of us feel it’s beyond help now. Perhaps we could lock them into side by side cells and let them sling all the threats they desire, just keep them away from all the nuclear power buttons.
Fires, tornados, wind storms and other of nature’s extremes are flexing their arms, getting ready for the world to implode. I promise they aren’t following you.
Tho it might weigh you down, I hope that you are carrying lots of fresh water with you. Mother Nature is fighting back, kickin’ butt and takin’ names.
Light a candle, play some soothing solo guitar music in the background, and cuddle Luna dear.
Essentially, all that can be done in this moment is to remember to soothe ourselves in preparation for the battlefields ahead. Safe travels.
Tey, thank you - I've got extra fresh water, I've got the air filter, I've got all manner of things, but more than anything I've got what matters most, which is the awareness that I'm never actually doing this alone. So grateful for your words & support on the way. xo
Grateful for you, too, Amy, and thank you for letting me know there was some clarity to be found in here - connecting with you brings that clarity back to me.
Reading this in bed as I wake up in the UK this morning. I don’t know where to begin. No-one I think knows where to begin. I’m going to re-read this through the day but for now I just want to thank you for even attempting to find the words…
The in the future we need to do something - right - as if there is time? Does no-one actually, apart from in hindsight, look at history. Look at Ukraine, look at Gaza, Sudan, Afghanistan.....and on and on. The boys playing appeasement dressed up as geopolitics. Yes the hissy fit between musk and trump - their stylised cage fight, was boringly predictable.
Perhaps you are in fact in the right place at the right time - a passionate voice out there...
This is brilliant and heartbreaking, Marya. Thank you for your continuing efforts to chronicle the collapse of this empire. I know it comes with a heavy price tag.
I’m really touched by this. You are an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary person. I am very pleased to have discovered you in this special place.
I read this when it arrived and needed to let it settle in and read it again. It's a powerful witness. Like David, my mind is constantly on my grandchildren -- 7 and 4, so loved and looked after, so unready for a world gone to hell. Like all of us. Those years of thinking it would always get better and better -- not affluence, but humanity -- and here we are. Sometimes there are no words, but there is each other -- with gratitude. x
Jan, this note, and having your wise, warm presence in the Write-In writing room yesterday, goes a lot further than all the fancy words, and I've got a whole lot of gratitude for you.
this is brilliant. love every part of it, particularly the interruptions. the voice. the long thread. the photos. (who’s the other shadow; I thought the dog was a cat ref:curled in your lap.) thank you.
I so appreciate this, Geoffrey - you may sigh and roll your eyes at this but - speaking of cats - do you know the poem Jubilate Agno - if not - it's the wrong spelling, but since your name is a much more interesting spelling, I feel you might enjoy this excerpt from the poem, which begins "For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry" - man, I'm taking my joy where I can find it these days, and I send this poem in that spirit. thank you! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno
Brings to mind this, by William Faulkner, buried in The Reivers, his last and most entertaining book, in which he outlines his view of the hierarchy of the animal kingdom:
From The Reivers by William Faulkner:
"A mule which will gallop for a half-mile in the single direction elected by its rider even one time becomes a neighborhood legend; one that will do it consistently time after time is an incredible phenomenon. Because, unlike a horse, a mule is far too intelligent to break its heart for glory running around the rim of a mile-long saucer.
"In fact, I rate mules second only to rats in intelligence, the mule followed in order by cats, dogs, and horses last—assuming of course that you accept my definition of intelligence: which is the ability to cope with environment: which means to accept environment yet still retain at least something of personal liberty.
"The rat of course I rate first. He lives in your house without helping you to buy it or build it or repair it or keep the taxes paid; he eats what you eat without helping you raise it or buy it or even haul it into the house; you cannot get rid of him; were he not a cannibal, he would long since have inherited the earth.
"The cat is third, with some of the same qualities but a weaker, punier creature; he neither toils nor spins, he is a parasite on you but he does not love you; he would die, cease to exist, vanish from the earth (I mean, in his so-called domestic form) but so far he has not had to. (There is the fable, Chinese I think, literary I am sure: of a period on earth when the dominant creatures were cats: who after ages of trying to cope with the anguishes of mortality—famine, plague, war, injustice, folly, greed—in a word, civilised government— convened a congress of the wisest cat philosophers to see if anything could be done: who after long deliberation agreed that the dilemma, the problems themselves were insoluble and the only practical solution was to give it up, relinquish, abdicate, by selecting from among the lesser creatures a species, race optimistic enough to believe that the mortal predicament could be solved and ignorant enough never to learn better. Which is why the cat lives with you, is completely dependent on you for food and shelter but lifts no paw for you and loves you not; in a word, why your cat looks at you the way it does.)
"The dog I rate fourth. He is courageous, faithful, monogamous in his devotion; he is your parasite too: his failure (as compared to the cat) is that he will work for you—I mean, willingly, gladly, ape any trick, no matter how silly, just to please you, for a pat on the head; as sound and first-rate a parasite as any, his failure is that he is a sycophant, believing that he has to show gratitude also; he will debase and violate his own dignity for your amusement; he fawns in return for a kick, he will give his life for you in battle and grieve himself to starvation over your bones.
"The horse I rate last. A creature capable of but one idea at a time, his strongest quality is timidity and fear. He can be tricked and cajoled by a child into breaking his limbs or his heart too in running too far too fast or jumping things too wide or hard or high; he will eat himself to death if not guarded like a baby; if he had only one gram of the intelligence of the most backward rat, he would be the rider. The mule I rate second. But second only because you can make him work for you. But that too only within his own rigid self-set regulations. He will not permit himself to eat too much. He will draw a wagon or a plow, but he will not run a race. He will not try to jump anything he does not indubitably know beforehand he can jump; he will not enter any place unless he knows of his own knowledge what is on the other side; he will work for you patiently for ten years for the chance to kick you once. In a word, free of the obligations of ancestry and the responsibilities of posterity, he has conquered not only life but death too and hence is immortal; were he to vanish from the earth today, the same chanceful biological combination which produced him yesterday would produce him a thousand years hence, unaltered, unchanged, incorrigible still within the limitations which he himself had proved and tested; still free, still coping."
Again, these are William Faulkner's words from The Reivers. A great yarn worth reading.
Well ... yeah. As the ancient Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times," and here we are -- all of us -- with a front row ticket to the apocalypse. It's no longer a matter of "if," but "when." Although things feel particularly fraught with the idiocy in Washington DC these days, we've been on the road to "interesting times" for quite a while. None of our leaders who tried -- Obama and Biden -- had the political clout to turn the tide, while tRump's blithe ignorance and vindictive narcissism seem calculated to bring it on ASAP.
I think we've crossed the Rubicon. Assumptions of convenience were made, the truth suppressed, and the profits banked, setting in motion forces that are massive beyond human comprehension or control. A certain level of catastrophe has already been baked into the equation, but how much? Time will tell.
Empires rise and fall -- we know that much -- and it's clear that we're witnessing yet another reshuffling of the global deck. How this will all play out remains a mystery, but the collateral damage to humanity - and what we've come to think of as civilization - will be huge.
So what to do? Good question. Pay attention, spread the word, and vote, then hang on tight and hope for the best, I suppose. While talking about all this with an older neighbor last week -- who was once a venture capitalist, but now advises sixty startups dedicated to bringing environmentally beneficial technologies to market -- he concluded our discussion with this: "Perhaps humans aren't meant to inhabit the earth."
We will - I was hoping, unfairly and selfishly, perhaps, that we might not - I'm back your way in a couple of weeks, let's put dinner on the calendar - with the Rubicon in the rearview, friend, I could use a dose of your wisdom
Thank you for looking! Reporting beautifully with equanimity is a luxury you give us. But the fact that you are able and willing to look - that is so powerful.
I am always SO glad to find someone with an equally grim sense of humor ;) thank you so much, my friend - your piece last week was exquisite. Folks, if you haven't checked out @TheSolitaryRebel and their wonderful work, please do!
This haunts me lately, too. I'd have hoped, as a younger person, that we were moving away from that ossification of heart, but we've done quite the opposite. Here's to reminding one another to deeply feel.
I'm 53. I really thought, when I was a young, naïve woman, that we were getting a handle on all of this and were going to bring about the change needed (so drastically) to set things aright. I was so far off. Thank you for this. I'm unable to look away.
I'm twenty years past you, but thought the same thing back in the late 60s and early 70s -- that the corner had been turned and we were heading in the right direction ... and it all turned to shit. Whenever the status quo is seriously challenged, the Empire strikes back with a vengance -- but what we're seeing now is worse by an order of magnitude.
Marya—thank you—thank you. Your witness and your words are a thread, a rope, i hang onto. I write to survive—and read you to survive.
Freedom, Courage.Art
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidofallon/p/freedom-courage-art
Write this an after working with people in George Floyd Square. 5 years on—and the city and the family and the many histories of that area, 38th and Chicago, have no common ground. Yesterday sat with granddaughters Kate and Mollie, 8 and 10, in the shade of a black walnut by my back door, in Minneapolis. Told stories, drew pics, laughed—and the whole time the cloud you describe hung over me. How did these evil (yes—evil) men get ALL the power and all the goddamn $$?? Im 81, if Kate and Mollie live 70 more years it will be 2095. What world then? We traded pics, made up stories—had snacks—walked to Lake Harriet, and can i keep from weeping? Thank you thank you for all you bring to the craziness. And thanks anyone who takes a look at my Substack. I gotta write it. Words. Threads.
Thank you, David - you've been such an incredible supporter of this quest from go (and now of @caravanwriterscollective, too - we appreciate you), and it makes such a huge difference to know you're out there. So excited about your new stack, just signed up and can't wait to follow this vital thread.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so simultaneously amused and forlorn. The neuroscientist’s conversation with the audience was like a dystopian Aesop’s fable, if the doctor were an elephant and the spectators were hyenas.
Your analogy of the wall of TV screens showing separate realities is so apt. I know a woman who, after the election, said, “Thank God we’ll have an honest man in the White House again.” There was no point in responding, but my forehead vein became sentient, burrowed through my skin, and tried to strangle her.
Anyway, another brilliant piece, Marya.
No one has a better deadpan delivery than you, Chris. Like, NO ONE. So glad/horrified to hear this resonated - I wish it didn't, but damn, I'm relieved I'm not the only one who sees the hyenas in the room. Thank you, as always, for reading. xo
Another powerful communique, sharing what we are all hearing.. thank you.
while the two most damaged immature boys are carrying on their public spat and name calling, the rest of us are truly wondering how to save ourselves, our country and our relationship with the world. I know that aside from letters and phone calls, most of us feel it’s beyond help now. Perhaps we could lock them into side by side cells and let them sling all the threats they desire, just keep them away from all the nuclear power buttons.
Fires, tornados, wind storms and other of nature’s extremes are flexing their arms, getting ready for the world to implode. I promise they aren’t following you.
Tho it might weigh you down, I hope that you are carrying lots of fresh water with you. Mother Nature is fighting back, kickin’ butt and takin’ names.
Light a candle, play some soothing solo guitar music in the background, and cuddle Luna dear.
Essentially, all that can be done in this moment is to remember to soothe ourselves in preparation for the battlefields ahead. Safe travels.
Tey, thank you - I've got extra fresh water, I've got the air filter, I've got all manner of things, but more than anything I've got what matters most, which is the awareness that I'm never actually doing this alone. So grateful for your words & support on the way. xo
This was my last read of the day in California and I am deeply grateful for it, for you, and for the clarity it holds.
Grateful for you, too, Amy, and thank you for letting me know there was some clarity to be found in here - connecting with you brings that clarity back to me.
Reading this in bed as I wake up in the UK this morning. I don’t know where to begin. No-one I think knows where to begin. I’m going to re-read this through the day but for now I just want to thank you for even attempting to find the words…
My deep thanks, Mark - thank you for throwing your support behind this venture, thank you for your thoughtful readership and your words. Onward -
The in the future we need to do something - right - as if there is time? Does no-one actually, apart from in hindsight, look at history. Look at Ukraine, look at Gaza, Sudan, Afghanistan.....and on and on. The boys playing appeasement dressed up as geopolitics. Yes the hissy fit between musk and trump - their stylised cage fight, was boringly predictable.
Perhaps you are in fact in the right place at the right time - a passionate voice out there...
I think I am in the right place, at least for times that are deeply wrong. Thank you 🙏🏻💙
This is brilliant and heartbreaking, Marya. Thank you for your continuing efforts to chronicle the collapse of this empire. I know it comes with a heavy price tag.
I cannot entirely explain why this of all things made me tear up but I imagine you get it. Thank you, Christina. Means the world.
I’m really touched by this. You are an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary person. I am very pleased to have discovered you in this special place.
Likewise. 🙏🏻♥️
I read this when it arrived and needed to let it settle in and read it again. It's a powerful witness. Like David, my mind is constantly on my grandchildren -- 7 and 4, so loved and looked after, so unready for a world gone to hell. Like all of us. Those years of thinking it would always get better and better -- not affluence, but humanity -- and here we are. Sometimes there are no words, but there is each other -- with gratitude. x
Jan, this note, and having your wise, warm presence in the Write-In writing room yesterday, goes a lot further than all the fancy words, and I've got a whole lot of gratitude for you.
this is brilliant. love every part of it, particularly the interruptions. the voice. the long thread. the photos. (who’s the other shadow; I thought the dog was a cat ref:curled in your lap.) thank you.
I so appreciate this, Geoffrey - you may sigh and roll your eyes at this but - speaking of cats - do you know the poem Jubilate Agno - if not - it's the wrong spelling, but since your name is a much more interesting spelling, I feel you might enjoy this excerpt from the poem, which begins "For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry" - man, I'm taking my joy where I can find it these days, and I send this poem in that spirit. thank you! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno
Last line a gem: "For he can creep."
Brings to mind this, by William Faulkner, buried in The Reivers, his last and most entertaining book, in which he outlines his view of the hierarchy of the animal kingdom:
From The Reivers by William Faulkner:
"A mule which will gallop for a half-mile in the single direction elected by its rider even one time becomes a neighborhood legend; one that will do it consistently time after time is an incredible phenomenon. Because, unlike a horse, a mule is far too intelligent to break its heart for glory running around the rim of a mile-long saucer.
"In fact, I rate mules second only to rats in intelligence, the mule followed in order by cats, dogs, and horses last—assuming of course that you accept my definition of intelligence: which is the ability to cope with environment: which means to accept environment yet still retain at least something of personal liberty.
"The rat of course I rate first. He lives in your house without helping you to buy it or build it or repair it or keep the taxes paid; he eats what you eat without helping you raise it or buy it or even haul it into the house; you cannot get rid of him; were he not a cannibal, he would long since have inherited the earth.
"The cat is third, with some of the same qualities but a weaker, punier creature; he neither toils nor spins, he is a parasite on you but he does not love you; he would die, cease to exist, vanish from the earth (I mean, in his so-called domestic form) but so far he has not had to. (There is the fable, Chinese I think, literary I am sure: of a period on earth when the dominant creatures were cats: who after ages of trying to cope with the anguishes of mortality—famine, plague, war, injustice, folly, greed—in a word, civilised government— convened a congress of the wisest cat philosophers to see if anything could be done: who after long deliberation agreed that the dilemma, the problems themselves were insoluble and the only practical solution was to give it up, relinquish, abdicate, by selecting from among the lesser creatures a species, race optimistic enough to believe that the mortal predicament could be solved and ignorant enough never to learn better. Which is why the cat lives with you, is completely dependent on you for food and shelter but lifts no paw for you and loves you not; in a word, why your cat looks at you the way it does.)
"The dog I rate fourth. He is courageous, faithful, monogamous in his devotion; he is your parasite too: his failure (as compared to the cat) is that he will work for you—I mean, willingly, gladly, ape any trick, no matter how silly, just to please you, for a pat on the head; as sound and first-rate a parasite as any, his failure is that he is a sycophant, believing that he has to show gratitude also; he will debase and violate his own dignity for your amusement; he fawns in return for a kick, he will give his life for you in battle and grieve himself to starvation over your bones.
"The horse I rate last. A creature capable of but one idea at a time, his strongest quality is timidity and fear. He can be tricked and cajoled by a child into breaking his limbs or his heart too in running too far too fast or jumping things too wide or hard or high; he will eat himself to death if not guarded like a baby; if he had only one gram of the intelligence of the most backward rat, he would be the rider. The mule I rate second. But second only because you can make him work for you. But that too only within his own rigid self-set regulations. He will not permit himself to eat too much. He will draw a wagon or a plow, but he will not run a race. He will not try to jump anything he does not indubitably know beforehand he can jump; he will not enter any place unless he knows of his own knowledge what is on the other side; he will work for you patiently for ten years for the chance to kick you once. In a word, free of the obligations of ancestry and the responsibilities of posterity, he has conquered not only life but death too and hence is immortal; were he to vanish from the earth today, the same chanceful biological combination which produced him yesterday would produce him a thousand years hence, unaltered, unchanged, incorrigible still within the limitations which he himself had proved and tested; still free, still coping."
Again, these are William Faulkner's words from The Reivers. A great yarn worth reading.
Such a stunning novel - and lord, what a magnificent meditation on a mule.
Well ... yeah. As the ancient Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times," and here we are -- all of us -- with a front row ticket to the apocalypse. It's no longer a matter of "if," but "when." Although things feel particularly fraught with the idiocy in Washington DC these days, we've been on the road to "interesting times" for quite a while. None of our leaders who tried -- Obama and Biden -- had the political clout to turn the tide, while tRump's blithe ignorance and vindictive narcissism seem calculated to bring it on ASAP.
I think we've crossed the Rubicon. Assumptions of convenience were made, the truth suppressed, and the profits banked, setting in motion forces that are massive beyond human comprehension or control. A certain level of catastrophe has already been baked into the equation, but how much? Time will tell.
Empires rise and fall -- we know that much -- and it's clear that we're witnessing yet another reshuffling of the global deck. How this will all play out remains a mystery, but the collateral damage to humanity - and what we've come to think of as civilization - will be huge.
So what to do? Good question. Pay attention, spread the word, and vote, then hang on tight and hope for the best, I suppose. While talking about all this with an older neighbor last week -- who was once a venture capitalist, but now advises sixty startups dedicated to bringing environmentally beneficial technologies to market -- he concluded our discussion with this: "Perhaps humans aren't meant to inhabit the earth."
We'll see.
We will - I was hoping, unfairly and selfishly, perhaps, that we might not - I'm back your way in a couple of weeks, let's put dinner on the calendar - with the Rubicon in the rearview, friend, I could use a dose of your wisdom
I look forward to that!
I'm not sure I can offer much wisdom ... but dinner, I can offer.
Thank you for looking! Reporting beautifully with equanimity is a luxury you give us. But the fact that you are able and willing to look - that is so powerful.
I keep seeing Akira Kurosawa's quote lately - "The role of the artist is to not look away" - you do the same thing, Kara, and thank you.
This entire piece is absolute gold 😍, laughing out loud and crying inside 😂
I am always SO glad to find someone with an equally grim sense of humor ;) thank you so much, my friend - your piece last week was exquisite. Folks, if you haven't checked out @TheSolitaryRebel and their wonderful work, please do!
Whaha, well met then friend...and Thank you ♥️ blushing to my nethers...yes please do check out!
Your writing is fierce and fabulous, Marya. It's good to know there are writers out there with so much courage. Thank you.
I'm incredibly honored to hear this, James. Truly. I appreciate this, and you.
This haunts me lately, too. I'd have hoped, as a younger person, that we were moving away from that ossification of heart, but we've done quite the opposite. Here's to reminding one another to deeply feel.
I'm 53. I really thought, when I was a young, naïve woman, that we were getting a handle on all of this and were going to bring about the change needed (so drastically) to set things aright. I was so far off. Thank you for this. I'm unable to look away.
I'm twenty years past you, but thought the same thing back in the late 60s and early 70s -- that the corner had been turned and we were heading in the right direction ... and it all turned to shit. Whenever the status quo is seriously challenged, the Empire strikes back with a vengance -- but what we're seeing now is worse by an order of magnitude.
So, so much worse. Honestly it's terrifying.
yes. xo