Our New Dystopia

(Listen to this song while you read this, listening to it, inspired this post.)

November brought us a lot of sad. Our nation confirmed to the world, exactly who we are. Regardless of the doctrine you currently choose as your own, we know exactly who we are. There are no more excuses or explanations, we are exactly who we have always been.

I have felt them all… the sadness, the anger and the pain.

I have never truly believed in God, but I have believed in my nation.

Then on the evening of November nineteenth, a bomb cyclone descended on my beautiful little city.

I remember shaking my head when I read the forecast. Why do they have to come up with new names? But they were right, it was a bomb that traveled like a cyclone through our forests, parks and yards.

We lost power early that evening, but we had our flashlights and power banks ready. We had all the other things my sweet Susan had bought and said, “just in case”, this was a just in case kind of night.

On that night we felt the unmitigated power of the wind and its roaring that ravaged everything in its path. Our home vibrated and shook for hours and all the while I heard and felt trees on the north side of us, smacking the side of the house, over and over again. I never thought about leaving, not from bravery or any such nonsense, I just didn’t think of it.

It was oddly quiet as I got ready for work at 4:30 that next morning. The storm had stopped shaking us about an hour ago and I wasn’t sure what I would find as I pulled out of the garage. The first tree I saw down was just across the drive. It was laying across the visitor parking spot my neighbor always parks in. He didn’t park there last night.

It was so dark… and there was debris everywhere. So many trees lying in their dying throes, lying as corpses yet to be gathered by the morgue…

My headlights were the only light that morning. They illuminated a parade of debris, limbs and utter darkness. I came out of a deserted roundabout and my headlights landed on a car sitting in the middle of the road, it was completely dark, and no one was anywhere to be seen. I drove around it and passed trees that were mangled, and trees with their root ball dangling in the air. Weeks later, there are still so many that were just pushed off the road, cut into logs or laying where they died.  When I finally turned into the little shopping center where my neighborhood grocery store resides, I was struck with awe.

All of our lights were on… it was a beautiful site.  

By brilliant foresight and a tiny bit of luck, our regional manager secured a generator big enough to power everything in the store and they worked during storm, to get it wired in. For four days, we were the only grocery store with everything running for miles around us. The second of those days I walked around the store giving away bouquets of flowers to random beleaguered customers. I told them I had a little power outage joy for them…

For just a moment, I didn’t think about elections or doom, I just thought about my coworkers, our neighbors and how we were going to walk through this. I am not sad anymore, at least not today.

I believe Them Coulee Boys have something to say to you. I believe this song has some magic for you. This song was for written for you and this song was written for our new dystopia.

“I am not sad anymore

At least not today

See the chemicals have all aligned

And the sun is out to stay

Gonna hold my hands out smilin’

Gonna kiss you on your face

I am not sad anymore

At least not today”

When my anger needed a place to hide, I found this song. When hope was starting to get slippery, I found this song. This song gave me some words to write. “I Am Not Sad” is a beacon of joy.

If you are sad, this song has something for you. If you are happy, this song has something for you and if you are like me… sad one moment and hopeful the next… This song has something for you.

I am not sad anymore, at least not right now.

No one really heard about the storm that roared through my little city, it didn’t make the nightly news or even make much of a clamor on the interwebs. Some would say it’s the result of so few deaths… but I can’t say.

I walked through the parking lot of Hammond Ashley today and it was just so sad. So many instruments lost, the violins, violas … the cellos. Giant stacks of instrument bags and their still singers inside of them. The giant tree that came crashing down on this home to so many creative voices, was still there, broken and twisted into the wreckage of a business that had toiled there since the sixties. Sometimes it is really hard not to be sad.

We are at the foot of so many mountains and I know that on occasion they want to remind of us of their wild. This storm descended upon us and changed things. If even for a moment. Every place I walked today still has trees down, massive trees, tiny trees and so many in-between. It really is like a bomb ran though us…

We had our power restored sixty-five hours and twenty-six minutes after it went out. It was getting really cold, but we are ok, and my sweet Susan kicked my ass in cribbage.

I am not sad.

“I am not sad anymore

At least not tonight

See I found all of my failures

and the ties I try to fight

So, when one hand forms a fist

Hope the other shines a light

I am not sad anymore

At least not tonight”

I am a pluviophile, and I live in the wondrous Pacific Northwest. 

A co-worker and friend called me a pluviophile one day and I asked her what I had done wrong. She laughed and told me to look it up… Probably the most accurate thing I have ever been called.

A pluviophile thrives when it rains, and they thrive in the joy of it dancing across a stream.

Pluviophile’s marvel at the power of dark clouds that crack and roll and define what thunder means to us. Pluviophile’s spend long moments marveling at the cycle of rain.

I am gifted the endless days of grey, and they recharge me. I understand who I am, and I am hoping that the joy I gather in these days of darkest grey will bring you warmth and hope. From my musings, or we may get to meet at our neighborhood grocery store. Either way, I see you and this is what I have to give to you.

“I am not sad anymore

At least not right now

See the ones that go before us

They have truly lost somehow

One hands reaching for the light

Hope the other reaching out

I am not sad anymore

At least not right now”

My city is nestled amongst the beautiful pillars of nature. The trees that live all around us are one of the magnificent reasons we live here. I have a very good friend who teaches that the down branches make good medicine. I believe she is the bravest of them who would go throughout these downed branches and gather all their medicine… just so she can give it back to you.

I have very good friends.

I live on Snoqualmie land. They are the ones I thank for my great fortune that is this most beautiful place. My little city, east of Seattle, sometimes known as trailhead city, and the home to one of your favorite warehouses… it sits, nestled at the feet of its namesake… between a cougar and a tiger.

Those sixty-five hours felt like a week, but I really enjoyed my moments with my sweet Susan. I am not sad anymore… at least today.

here we are

our new dystopia

“And I know I’m gonna feel them all today

The sadness, the anger and the pain

But there’s a debt between us I can’t pay

I can’t pay”

Have you ever looked at the definition of dystopia?  “an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives…”

It feels a bit like we have moved on from the imagined and into dystopia as reality. People leading wretched, dehumanized and fearful lives.

How do we not be sad?

I remember believing that this nation stood up to the oppressor. I remember thinking we were good. I remember when I was naive enough to believe that racism was a part of our past.

I remember the very moment when a colleague told of their lived experience that contradicted everything I knew to its core. It cracked me open, and once there was a crack in that shiny story I’d been taught, the rest began to unravel. I was born into privilege, even though my parents were barely able to feed us, I was born into privilege. I got to make a lot of mistakes that would have ended differently had my skin been darker.  

I have made so many blundering mistakes in unpacking my whiteness, but I will persist, and occasionally I see a few tiny steps that bring me closer to understanding how all of this could end up happily ever after. I believe with all my heart that we can be better, but first, we have to be honest.  

Colonialism, religion, and racism are all kindred spirits, and they are easily identified once you understand the blood and triumph of our history. The Trail of Tears, the enslavement of the African, the enslavement of the Chinese… the Japanese internment camps… boarding schools and the war on drugs, the list is very long.

Throughout every era and age of our history we have committed atrocities in the name of God and country. There have been so many good people who fought and died to change things, yet here we are.

So, what do we do, what is the course ahead?

“I’m not sad anymore

At least not today

See my friends are all around me

And the band is gonna play

Gonna dance with one hand waving free

And another on your waist

I am not sad anymore

At least today”

You… you are the course ahead. From my days as an ice cream truck driver, a ditch rider and especially my time as a technology wizard. In every ramble and bob my path took me, I have seen you. In my checkout line in our neighborhood grocery store, I see you. You are my neighbor, and you give me hope.

I see you and there’s a debt between us I can’t pay…

Each of us will have to make choices that do not include moving abroad or seeing the western states secede from the nation. We have to be prepared for some shit, this is our new dystopia. Our nation may unravel; the rule of law is all but gone and the hunger for unbridled wealth has reached a braying crescendo. The United States could fade into history.

We can choose, as sentient and relatively intelligent beings, to shine a light on the fact that we have two pathways, let this ship slide off into the inferno of forever and embrace the new dystopia… or we could choose to carve out a new path for humanity. One that acts with integrity and with the interest of every being, human or not. We have the collective knowledge to solve a great deal of the world’s problems, but we have to find out how we move forward without capitol. Capitalism is the driver for everything, musicians competing for streams, regardless of the folly of thinking music is a competition. Food, education and medicine are profit centers and even the care of your grandparents is for profit. We could choose to believe in a place where you are more important than profit. We really could…

We could acknowledge our debt to the indigenous peoples. They prospered for tens of thousands of years, and we have unraveled this thing in a few hundred. There is a collective wisdom that we have stifled and drowned out, just to make a profit. Maybe we should change that.

In all verses of the universe, there is only one you, there is no one more important than you. Begin to see the power of you, begin to see that everything and everyone around you is just as unique and just as powerful. I want desperately to find out how to bring our power together. I do not care how you voted or what you think of me, I just want to find out how to enable every soul in finding their own power. I believe we will find our hope there, if we are spending our time empowering those around us instead of building wealth, we could be so wealthy.

No one gets to explain to you, what you is… but you have to be that.

Step back and breathe. You are the most beautiful you.

In each of us there is a song of hope. You may sing it with your voice, you may sew it with your hands or you may solve it with your math. It is up to us to find our song and sing it, very, very, loud.

Listen to the bridge of this song… a beautiful stroll through quietness, strength and joy. Thank you Them Coulee Boys, I am not sad anymore, at least not today.

Listening, learning, and growing