Hi Marya, I can see why you had to go back to the other story later. Are you actively keeping track of news? It's bleak, and seems to be getting bleaker and more cynical the closer we hurtle towards November. I ask because it all feels tied to what you are doing and what you are seeing, and what I'm seeing in the news cycles. You feel like we're getting close to some kind of ending?
The people like the campsite stewards, do you purposely preserve their false sense of security, their sense of likeness with you out of a belief that to shake it loose would have no impact other than making them pointlessly scared?
In a way, I'm scared. I never have been before. Not like this—not about elections. Part of the fear is that I, like everyone else, never expected electuons to be a realistic threat. I didn't feel that way until I saw that SCOTUS is poised to assist with creating a dictatorship. Elections "should not" elicit an existential sense of dread that they will catalyze the end of actual, real freedom in this country.
It's scary because for the first time, I recently engaged directly with a fundamentalist, intending to have a "reasonable" encounter, because I was being reasonable, was committed to being reasonable in the face of unreason. And this person's fundamentalist vitriolic hate just smashed my reasoning to bits like a ship foundered on rocks. I and my reasonable words were utterly swept away by the force of it.
Until this point, I had been dismissing all of it as being stupid to the point of insignificance. Not what they were saying. I've always seen the words and rhetoric as the threat it is, but I had not seen the individuals as threats, and now I do.
The "kids" in your story...my heart breaks for them. It's like you said, they're already left behind, forsaken. Not for what our country will be, but for what it is right now. And that's almost a greater tragedy than if we were to lose our Constitutuionally granted freedoms in January.
As always, I am so grateful for—and honestly made more hopeful by—your insight. I am also scared, and for similar reasons; that said, being out here makes it feel more human, more real, and in that way less abstractly frightening—which leads to a more amorphous sense of fear. What I feel is more personal than it used to be—not just for me/us/people I know, be for people and communities who/that I might not have had enough contact with to understand at an empathetic level. Now I have, and do; the people for whom I am afraid are no longer “them” but very much us, even when the specifics of our understanding of the world or the facts do not align. Yes, I’m following the news; my hope is that these posts create some kind of bridge between “politics” and people, because without that bridge the divides that already exist will become irrevocable, which some already are. To your question, and it’s important—why did I respond to the park hosts as I did: not out of any desire to preserve them or their understanding, except insofar as that was a means to an end. I needed them to go away, and allow the kids to stay. In order for that to happen, I needed to make them comfortable enough. It’s such an instance of reality politics: in that moment, it’s much more important for me to look at the end goal, not cling to my “ideal,” or “take a stand,” or get distracted by anything other than giving the kids a spot to park. Again, Carly, so grateful to have you here. 🙏🏻❤️
I do things that people often say I shouldn't, that I look at as merely being kind or of helping a person maintain their human dignity, or just help alleviate in a tiny bit of pain and suffering that I may witness.
I once worked at a front desk of a tourist-town motel, independent, family-owned, non-corporate. A young man walked in ten minutes before I was about to lock up one night, asking for a room. It was right before a region-filling event and we had one room available for $250. He was looking for a room because he had just gotten fired from his job with the local scum lord restaurateur who always hired a cadre of foreign students every summer and took more than half their pay for food and board in shitty, run-down shacks. His firing was for dubious purposes and the one courtesy of the boss lord was to call a cab to take the kid to the next closest town.
What I knew that I don't think anyone else could have known who might have been employed in my position at that time, was that this kid from the Eastern bloc was in need of a bed and a roof over his head for $15. I told him he wasn't going to find anything less than our own rates, and I knew that when he left, he was going to duck off the road somewhere and try to sleep in the woods in the rain.
When I left, I saw him walking back out of town the way he had come in, and I decided to turn my car after him. I rolled up to him and asked him if he wanted to sleep on my porch instead of sleeping outside in the rain. It WAS a very nice porch. My landlord had insulated it to create a comfortable four-season space. The kid, Vadim, stayed with me for about two weeks.
People told me I was nuts for doing that. That it was dangerous. I suppose he could have done me harm. I was only a little older than him, and questionably only a little better at life decisions. But I also knew that he was completely alone in a foreign country and no one was going to care about what happened to him or vouch for him. So I did that because it was the thing to do. I didn't stay in touch with him despite discovering the bizarre coincidence that we had the same birthday (four years apart), and we were both identical twins. I didn't seek to forge a lifelong connection with him, only a momentary one while he needed it. That was ok. It wasn't a necessary factor to do the right thing.
I'm not elevating myself. I just want to illustrate my discovery that traveling on the margins is where one tends to meet marginalized people. And there are a lot of marginalized people in this big beautiful country of ours. Like "your" kids, sometimes the marginalization is bureaucratic. You don't have the right kinds of papers to exist. When it's put like that, that's...ludicrous. That you can look at a person, really look at them, see that they are there, that they think and feel and have souls, yet you tell them to their faces, "You don't really exist." It's a big fucking problem.
It can't be addressed—won't be addressed—when there is an existential threat that occupies a larger, more immediate part of our attention. Yet we've had a lot of time before this existential threat to sort out the human side of existing, to unbind ourselves from limitations imposed by the legal, paper side, and we seem to have failed at that. If I am cynical, I'm sorry. I'm glad that you, Marya, say you retain hope for the human side. Your writing certainly does that for me, which is why I keep coming back to read it.
Unbelievably beautiful. Damn and damn again! I will think about this for a long time. Remember when it wasn’t a normal thing to have to rent out our houses in order to keep living in them? America is so sick. I am so glad you are out there to prevent us from sliding off the rails. What a good human you are.
Forgot to mention I also have a daily silent writing salon on Zoom. We chat a bit and then write with our cameras on. It has helped me stay on course for my book. Just showing up each day is a little miracle: https://thedailydive.substack.com/
Marya, I love this piece. Not just because it captures kindness and bonds between strangers and deep truths that can be hard to see without these kinds of connections but also because it captures one of the many reasons I love life on the road. Thank you for sharing it.
All I could think about was the fact that this gentleman could still run for president even though he has a felony. He just couldn't vote for himself because he's a felon. This world....
Hi Marya, I can see why you had to go back to the other story later. Are you actively keeping track of news? It's bleak, and seems to be getting bleaker and more cynical the closer we hurtle towards November. I ask because it all feels tied to what you are doing and what you are seeing, and what I'm seeing in the news cycles. You feel like we're getting close to some kind of ending?
The people like the campsite stewards, do you purposely preserve their false sense of security, their sense of likeness with you out of a belief that to shake it loose would have no impact other than making them pointlessly scared?
In a way, I'm scared. I never have been before. Not like this—not about elections. Part of the fear is that I, like everyone else, never expected electuons to be a realistic threat. I didn't feel that way until I saw that SCOTUS is poised to assist with creating a dictatorship. Elections "should not" elicit an existential sense of dread that they will catalyze the end of actual, real freedom in this country.
It's scary because for the first time, I recently engaged directly with a fundamentalist, intending to have a "reasonable" encounter, because I was being reasonable, was committed to being reasonable in the face of unreason. And this person's fundamentalist vitriolic hate just smashed my reasoning to bits like a ship foundered on rocks. I and my reasonable words were utterly swept away by the force of it.
Until this point, I had been dismissing all of it as being stupid to the point of insignificance. Not what they were saying. I've always seen the words and rhetoric as the threat it is, but I had not seen the individuals as threats, and now I do.
The "kids" in your story...my heart breaks for them. It's like you said, they're already left behind, forsaken. Not for what our country will be, but for what it is right now. And that's almost a greater tragedy than if we were to lose our Constitutuionally granted freedoms in January.
As always, I am so grateful for—and honestly made more hopeful by—your insight. I am also scared, and for similar reasons; that said, being out here makes it feel more human, more real, and in that way less abstractly frightening—which leads to a more amorphous sense of fear. What I feel is more personal than it used to be—not just for me/us/people I know, be for people and communities who/that I might not have had enough contact with to understand at an empathetic level. Now I have, and do; the people for whom I am afraid are no longer “them” but very much us, even when the specifics of our understanding of the world or the facts do not align. Yes, I’m following the news; my hope is that these posts create some kind of bridge between “politics” and people, because without that bridge the divides that already exist will become irrevocable, which some already are. To your question, and it’s important—why did I respond to the park hosts as I did: not out of any desire to preserve them or their understanding, except insofar as that was a means to an end. I needed them to go away, and allow the kids to stay. In order for that to happen, I needed to make them comfortable enough. It’s such an instance of reality politics: in that moment, it’s much more important for me to look at the end goal, not cling to my “ideal,” or “take a stand,” or get distracted by anything other than giving the kids a spot to park. Again, Carly, so grateful to have you here. 🙏🏻❤️
I do things that people often say I shouldn't, that I look at as merely being kind or of helping a person maintain their human dignity, or just help alleviate in a tiny bit of pain and suffering that I may witness.
I once worked at a front desk of a tourist-town motel, independent, family-owned, non-corporate. A young man walked in ten minutes before I was about to lock up one night, asking for a room. It was right before a region-filling event and we had one room available for $250. He was looking for a room because he had just gotten fired from his job with the local scum lord restaurateur who always hired a cadre of foreign students every summer and took more than half their pay for food and board in shitty, run-down shacks. His firing was for dubious purposes and the one courtesy of the boss lord was to call a cab to take the kid to the next closest town.
What I knew that I don't think anyone else could have known who might have been employed in my position at that time, was that this kid from the Eastern bloc was in need of a bed and a roof over his head for $15. I told him he wasn't going to find anything less than our own rates, and I knew that when he left, he was going to duck off the road somewhere and try to sleep in the woods in the rain.
When I left, I saw him walking back out of town the way he had come in, and I decided to turn my car after him. I rolled up to him and asked him if he wanted to sleep on my porch instead of sleeping outside in the rain. It WAS a very nice porch. My landlord had insulated it to create a comfortable four-season space. The kid, Vadim, stayed with me for about two weeks.
People told me I was nuts for doing that. That it was dangerous. I suppose he could have done me harm. I was only a little older than him, and questionably only a little better at life decisions. But I also knew that he was completely alone in a foreign country and no one was going to care about what happened to him or vouch for him. So I did that because it was the thing to do. I didn't stay in touch with him despite discovering the bizarre coincidence that we had the same birthday (four years apart), and we were both identical twins. I didn't seek to forge a lifelong connection with him, only a momentary one while he needed it. That was ok. It wasn't a necessary factor to do the right thing.
I'm not elevating myself. I just want to illustrate my discovery that traveling on the margins is where one tends to meet marginalized people. And there are a lot of marginalized people in this big beautiful country of ours. Like "your" kids, sometimes the marginalization is bureaucratic. You don't have the right kinds of papers to exist. When it's put like that, that's...ludicrous. That you can look at a person, really look at them, see that they are there, that they think and feel and have souls, yet you tell them to their faces, "You don't really exist." It's a big fucking problem.
It can't be addressed—won't be addressed—when there is an existential threat that occupies a larger, more immediate part of our attention. Yet we've had a lot of time before this existential threat to sort out the human side of existing, to unbind ourselves from limitations imposed by the legal, paper side, and we seem to have failed at that. If I am cynical, I'm sorry. I'm glad that you, Marya, say you retain hope for the human side. Your writing certainly does that for me, which is why I keep coming back to read it.
“How's that one little lady makin all that dang noise by herself?” 😂🥰 Kindness can be found in so many places. ♥️
Lordy, you are so right. 💕☺️
Unbelievably beautiful. Damn and damn again! I will think about this for a long time. Remember when it wasn’t a normal thing to have to rent out our houses in order to keep living in them? America is so sick. I am so glad you are out there to prevent us from sliding off the rails. What a good human you are.
Kara, thank you—I am so thrilled to be reading your Stack, and truly grateful for your insight, readership, and support. Xx
Forgot to mention I also have a daily silent writing salon on Zoom. We chat a bit and then write with our cameras on. It has helped me stay on course for my book. Just showing up each day is a little miracle: https://thedailydive.substack.com/
So happy to have found you!
Marya, I love this piece. Not just because it captures kindness and bonds between strangers and deep truths that can be hard to see without these kinds of connections but also because it captures one of the many reasons I love life on the road. Thank you for sharing it.
Holly, it’s such a pleasure to read your work lately, and an honor to share the road with you. Thank you for being here. Xx
Incredible.
All I could think about was the fact that this gentleman could still run for president even though he has a felony. He just couldn't vote for himself because he's a felon. This world....
So glad, my dear!! 🥰