Scones for Breakfast

 

“Whatever it takes” has been my lifelong motto for pursuing the work I value and that includes getting anything I write that rings true out to an audience of readers. This Blog an obvious example of that, as well as my books and articles. But despite the way it feeds into the coffers of too-rich ungenerous men (Jeff Bezos), I also use Facebook in the same way. Sometimes re-printing something I’ve written here, sometimes commenting with something I don’t include here. 

 

The one thing Facebook offers that this Blog doesn’t is instant reaction from readers— both the number of “likes” and short comments. (This Blog also had a feature for comments, but for various reasons I turned it off). It’s an interesting way to take the temperature of the public mood by noticing which kind of writing seems to touch a collective nerve and which falls a bit flat.

 

For example, I recently shared the Anti-Fascist Dictionary post which I thought was both insightful and clever and got 34 likes, 7 comments and 3 shares. My poem TRUE DEMOCRACY got 55 likes, 2 comments and 4 shares. By contrast, my post about being back at The San Francisco School got 210 likes (in one day—more to come) and 20 comments. What’s the lesson here?

Three things:

 

1.   Personal rather than abstract. People are hungry to hear other’s stories more than their thoughts or ideas. They’re more interested in what something makes them feel than what it makes them think. 

2.   Inclusive. Something others reading it were part of, reminding them of a time and a place and a community that offered something memorable and uplifting to them. Ten of the twenty comments were from former students/ alum parents. 

 

3.    A respite from the daily horror. While I believe the direct confrontation with the consequences of not paying enough attention, not educating ourselves enough, not caring enough about justice to do the hard work of protecting it is the lesson we’ve needed to learn (one that has led to a massive awakening—10 million out in the streets in the recent No Kings Rally), we all would prefer to be left alone to live our lives pursuing the simple pleasures of friendship, satisfying work, good meals, walks out in the park. In the first No Kings Rally, I noted the sign: “If Kamala had been elected, I could be having brunch right now!”

 

The Facebook “likes” from my simple story of the pleasure of having done good work in a good place with good people and the blessing of being back in that place continuing to do all of the above, touched people so much deeper than the most insightful analysis of what is going down and what to do about it. The tightrope walk is how to acknowledge and celebrate our deep human need for normalcy without sliding back into denial and avoidance. To somehow hold together the two notions of the world as an out-of-control 4- alarm-fire edging toward full-blown catastrophe and the world as a warming fire with the family gathered around the hearth with hot chocolate and the sleepings dogs at our feet. 

 

Elsewhere I wrote about the difference between living defensively, having to constantly react to the next now un-surprising outrage (the AI photo of the Maggot-Man as God healing the sick) and living offensively, firmly grasping the ball and controlling the play to score the goal.

 

Three poems to accent our desire to just get on with living well.

 

At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border

By William Stafford 

 

This is the field where the battle did not happen,

where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the field where grass joined hands,

where no monument stands,

and the only heroic thing is the sky.

 

Birds fly here without any sound,

unfolding their wings across the open.

No people killed—or were killed—on this ground

hallowed by neglect and an air so tame

that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

 

What History Fails to Mention Is

               By Gary Snyder

 

Most everybody lived their lives

With friends and children, played it cool,

Left truth and beauty to the guys

Who tricked for bigshots, and were fools. 

 

Scones

By Ron Padgett

 

Snow falling from gray sky,

It’s time to bake,

scones, I mean,

and right out of the oven

take one and butter it,

with jam, teapot hot in hand,

and exult in the face 

of everything horrible.