22 January

The date is only 22^nd January and the time is approximately 5:00pm, but the skies have light in them yet. Only one month from the winter solstice and the world begins to be ready to come alive again.  We are not yet at the moment of thaw: Thoreau’s glorious cry, “Walden was dead and is alive again!” but we are getting closer. Oh, it is wrong to consider that in winter the earth is dead: even now outside my windows squirrels forage about for their meals and carry leaves up the trees to their winter nests. Birds sit impatiently on naked branches, but they sit nonetheless. Inside, I sit in a room lit only by the gentle fire on the hearth listening to Anne Hills’ album Bittersweet Dreams and typing what ought to become the most recent post. Soon it will be the longest day of the year.

     The dark comforts actually, though I am glad that there is yet light outside. The lack of light leaves the room at peace. Even the dimmed ceiling track lights would pierce to consciousness too directly. And yet, paradoxically, I have lit my current darkened perspective with the computer. As if I could not be alone or stay too long in the dark. I don’t know if the technologies--for me, the phone and computer--have inspired in me the desire to be always accompanied and in the world, or that the world has demanded that I be always in some company, even if that companionship is to be virtual.

     I awaken every day with anxiety and a discomforting queasiness in my stomach. I feel as if I am physically ill. The Trump reign has made the world more unsafe, more precarious, and I fear every day that he will destroy us physically as he has already poisoned the civil life of not only the United States but of the world. The stench that emanates from the White House pollutes not merely the air we breathe but the entire social fabric by which we live. I am soiled not merely by by the policies of his very corrupt administration but by his repulsive discourse. He is no more than a bully and ironically only the Democrats are prepared to confront him. Trumps’s policies and those whose agendas those policies support have endangered our lives and that of our children all for the sake of his engorged ego and their economic greed. He has cowered the Republican Party to align with his deceit and I am disgusted by their cowardices, by their incivilities, by their unthinking defense of Trump. This is not the party of Lincoln; we are not far from the fascisms of the mid-last century. The impeachment trial in the Senate is a farce organized by Mitchell McConnell, one of the most unprincipled man I have understood in American history.

     Another meaningless rant that changes nothing and only aggravates my further. The fire needs replenishing. And I should eat dinner. Listening to Judy Collins 3 and “Anathea.” It suits the time.