Day: February 3, 2025

Be/wilder (With/standing)

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January Month In Review

SHORT STUFF

  • I am keeping a list of the Top Ten Days of 2025. So far, January has failed. The only (weak) contender is January 26th, when we ate decent nachos. A tasty moment in an otherwise indifferent stretch of time.
  • “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky. What is the “something more”? Patience? Instinct? Juice? Is it juice? I don’t like juice.
  • Sleep is a flirt. I am a willing fool. I chase, I lose, I am tired. Who else belongs to the 4 AM Club?
  • December’s cozy hibernation exited stage left when January hit like a brick, and suddenly I’m expected to make responsible choices again. Terrible system. Do not recommend.
  • Seth Godin says slow down. I am listening. But also I am not. But also, I should be. This may be why I am in the 4 AM club.
  • My January 2025 had a soundtrack. It is, as my kids would never let me say, “a bop.” 

LONG STUFF

I cried at the dentist.

Not because of the scraping. Not even because of my idiotic need to be LITTLE MISS FUN PATIENT. (Let’s be clear, I am fun because I am hilarious.)

It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t fear.

Perhaps it was inevitable.

The night before, I forgot to season my vegetables (not a euphemism), which is not like me. I know how to cook and how to make things better. But I didn’t. And so we ate them, joyless.

When the body runs on fumes, you stop doing the things that make life taste like something.

Maybe it was inevitable because I haven’t listened to much music lately. This is also not like me. Normally, music is everywhere in my life. A soundtrack, a story, a signal. But now? Silence. Or just enough ambient music to fill the spaces, to keep the walls from pressing in.

Music is its own kind of story. And I cannot absorb another story right now. Certainly not while eating sad vegetables. Not while being Little Miss Fun Patient. Not while *everything else.*

Anyway, remember how I cried at the dentist because I just told you I did a few paragraphs back?

It happened when the next song came on. My dentist tries to calibrate the playlist to the patient — something generational, something soothing, something that says, “Pay no attention to the tiny metal hook scraping your bones.” Do I need Megadeth blaring while I’m power-washed in the mouth like a neglected patio? MAYBE. But probably not.

In the lonely space between cleaning and exam, a song came on.

And I cried.

Okay, yeah, it was “Chariots of Fire.” On the cornball scale of tear triggers this, ranks up there with a screensaver or a commercial about butter substitutes. Or “Bubbles” by the Free Design.

There are plenty of respectable reasons to cry, including being at the dentist, practically flipped upside down in the chair, mouth agape, and drowning in the indignity of it all.

Perhaps, though, it was not that.

The world these days is very “The Bear Went Over the Mountain”

On the other side of the mountain is Mount Doom.

After that, Mount Crumpit

And then the tiny sledding hill in my backyard where my kids, without fail, would somehow manage to steer directly into a tree even though the closet tree was about 20 yards away.

Climb one mountain, find another waiting. That’s how it works. So you throw the grappling hook and reach down to pull others up. (Am I a seasoned mountain climber? No. Do I like looking at mountains on Toblerone wrappers? Yes. Same energy.)

I also cried because my heart is with New Orleans, California, Las Vegas, and every neighbor who feels alone and helpless. My heart is not enough and tears unhelpful after a point, so we choose and we do. Because we see what we can see.

“Look for the helpers,” Mr. Rogers said.

Try to be one.

My background and expertise are scattered —  writing, education, social policy, the arts. A hodgepodge, but a purposeful one. A toolkit.

The goal now: Help fully. Help precisely.

Say “yes” carefully, but say it generously. 

Everyone’s capacity is stretched thin. I’m no exception, but am seeking and finding good community. Lord love a duck for that. (It is not a duck community, though perhaps it should be.)

Still posting my dumb little jokes (Are we connected on Bluesky?). Still writing the blog, working on the book, and seeking joy as we withstand and work.

A photo of Mel Brooks with his quote “Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye. It’s a defense against unhappiness and depression.”

We can choose to be wild through actions and care, through public voice, through fiercely defending our peace, through a combination of those.

Also have some nachos if you like them. They help.

(Despite it all,) Here are some splashes of marvelous from January 2025

One of the stories in mass circulation today is a very old one, but it’s taken on a new vigor: women in general are out of control and feminism in particular is to blame… men are no longer in control, mothers are not what they used to be, and it’s the fault of Germaine Greer, Cosmopolitan, and headline stars.

  • An excerpt from Rumi’s “Where Everything is Music” Because sometimes you need Rumi.

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

  • Sometimes my 70-pound screw-loose pitbull mix gets the zoomies. It is short-lived because he has zero stamina and the spatial awareness of a potato. But he tries. He is all heart and demolition. I will try to film it.
  • Need a corny cry break?

Until next time, here’s a combo I ask you to consider: books, pen, paper, us.