Sunday, January 3, 2021

A good and preposterous New Year


A year ago, I was wandering along that verandah, after having brunch with extended family at Strawberry Hill overlooking the Blue Mountains, at the end of a joyful week-long gathering to celebrate my niece's wedding in Jamaica. We all brought in the New Year in a penthouse suite overlooking the lights of Kingston harbor, and I remember reveling in the grace of being surrounded by all the people in this world I love best. None of us could have imagined the separation and loss the dawning year would bring. I think we would have laughed a little longer and held each other a little tighter.

At midnight this New Year’s Eve, the man and I toasted good riddance to 2020 with our niece who lives with us, sang Auld Lang Syne, then cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed. On New Years Day, I mostly worked, then climbed under the covers and finished reading Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker, a fascinating but sad account of mental illness in one family. I am now reading Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford, her memoir of being sexually violated by older boys as a fifth former at the prestigious St. Paul's boarding school in New Hampshire. I'm so taken with her voice in this book. She rejects the notion of being a victim and is claiming her full power in this telling. The way she does this bears studying. As far as I've reached, the narrative is so well done, a rallying cry to and for women. 

I'm so happy and relieved to be able to read whole books again. The concentration to do that went missing for a good long while. Possibly, the ground for its return was tilled by the absorbing novel I just finished editing, in which I completely lost myself. I'm noticing now that outside my window, it has started snowing, while in the reaches of my house, my niece is playing "Colors of the Wind" on her cello. To this lovely sound, I'm slowly clearing the decks of overwork.

I have this morning sent my subject's final changes on first pass pages back to the publisher. Their offices were closed last week, but they wanted to have the pages back in time to work on them first thing Monday morning, hence the Sunday deadline. The entering of insertions, deletions, and comments on the PDF was a fairly intricate process, not a tracking system I've used before, and it took some downloading of software and close study of the publisher's instructions to get it right. In the email to which I attached to first pass pages just now, I signed off by wishing everyone a "good and prosperous New Year." When I proofread the email, thankfully before sending, I saw that what I had actually done was wish everyone "a good and preposterous New Year." What the hell, autocorrect? But appropriate to the times, no? 

I mean, the imposter in the Oval Office until January 20, is more unhinged than ever as he mounts his last ditch efforts to overturn the election. This after his legal team's fifty-nine challenges claiming ballot tampering and voter fraud (but only in states where he lost) have already been ruled without merit by the nation's courts. We should be grateful that at least one branch of government stood firm against authoritarianism. The latest seditious effort by Republicans to reject Congress's certification of the Biden-Harris win on January 6 won't work either, and it's a pathetic spectacle. You know how they say walk a mile in my shoes? Well, I can say with absolute certainty that in their shoes,  I would rather give up the power of political office than pander to the cult of Trump. 

See how I'm trying to not devolve here into the profanity any contemplation of our current political reality always provokes in me? My elegant and dignified mother used to say, "The moment you resort to swearing, dear heart, you've lost the point." I don't actually agree this is always the case, but sometimes, I go with it just to imagine her smiling down at me, serenely nodding her approval.

25 comments:

  1. well, that left the door wide open, here is a cathartic moment for you, and you won[t even be judged or scolded! LOVE to you and may you have a preposterous new year, why not. Life is getting sillier as the days roll by in this covid lock down.
    https://musebycl.io/advertising/agencys-end-2020-psa-wins-prize-most-f-bombs-ever

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    1. Linda, tee hee, i saw that one. That's the narrative in my head!

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  2. Preposterous is a good word to describe what the Republicans are trying to do to our country. Any votes cast for them are fine but all other votes are illegal!? January 20th cannot come fast enough for me.

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    1. Ellen, and then you have Trump shaking down the election officials in Georgia on that seditious phone call. Unbelievable.

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  3. Your home is so beautiful. I have never been to Jamaica, sadly.
    The current attempt to set aside a certified election is just enraging. The spouse and I are just spitting mad. Cruz is comparing this effort to over turning an election in 1877 - as if it's relevant. It's intellectual dishonesty. Aaaargh.
    I'm happy for your return to reading books.

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    1. Allison, this is going to be quite a week. I just hope the Georgia races successfully flip the Senate blue!

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  4. Uh-oh, my daily language is rife with profanities. Hardly a sentence goes by without the "F" word these days. I'm going to have to work on that. I really need to make my points in a gentler way. Mmmm? Is that possible? I'm going to work on it.
    I actually like the autocorrect that PDF made. I'm glad you caught it, but it really does describe this utterly preposterous time we're in.
    Happy New Year to you and your beautiful family, my friend.

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    1. robin, my daily language is usually rife with profanities, too. How could it not be? It was just an exercise, is all, because as I was writing I could suddenly hear my mom in my head, and I was missing her. But by my lights, even profanities barely approach the outrageousness and derangement we are witnessing.

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  5. And my mother, before she became a more loose and accepting woman, used to tell me, "Don't talk like that in front of me," so of course I swear like a sailer.
    Ha!
    I think "preposterous" New Year is probably the more accurate word but let's hope that it's not completely appropriate.
    I dreamed of you and yours last night! I was visiting you and you were all so beautiful and kind to me. Your apartment was set up around a courtyard and there were four doors leading off of it, each painted white and green and so pretty.
    Hold on to those memories of your home, keep them close to your heart. And know that one day you will be able to go back and hold each other again.

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    1. Mary, I think if my mom had used a scolding tone, instead of a velvet tone like she was stroking my cheek as she said it, I wouldn't even try on the exercise, holding back the profanity out of missing her in that moment. As you well know, I am right there with you, on board the same frigate!

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  6. A preposterous new year sounds about right:)

    I'm glad you're able to read again. I'd be lost without a book to read.

    Let's hope this year is better. Stay safe my friend.

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    1. Lily, my brain was so full of the news, it was like whiplash all the time, i think that's why I was having trouble concentrating. I will be glad when Biden is sworn in. He lowers my blood pressure tremendously.

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  7. Whenever I see your photos of Jamaica, I experience déjà vu. There is some element of the emotional reassurance that I experienced when I looked at the landscape and sky as a small child growing up in California. Something in the air. Something in the earth.

    Wishing you a good and preposterous New Year!

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    1. am, there are so places on this earth that I have never traveled to in this life, that are so achingly familiar i know I had to have walked them in a previous incarnation. Maybe that is how Jamaica is for you.

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  8. Preposterous is so right! I can’t wait until the 20th. In the meantime, everything feels fraught with peril. There is no shame or moral compass in the Republican Party anymore. All the best to you and your loved ones this year.
    Xoxo
    Barbara

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    1. Barbara, happy new year to you and your beloveds, too. The only thing that will contain the outgoing president doing his worst is if people around him manage to contain the detonation. I'm not seeing a lot of hope for that right now.

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  9. I was just thinking today that this time last year I was in Arizona, with absolutely no idea what was about to happen.

    What a beautiful setting overlooking the mountains. Let's hope and pray we have these moments again. Here in the UK we are about to go into full lockdown again. The sooner they get this vaccine rolled out to as many as possible, the better. Maybe by next summer life will begin to feel more normal again.

    Happy new Year.

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    1. LL Cool Joe, I remember your Arizona posts! As for the vaccine rollout over here, it is a clusterf*ck so far. And now they're talking about cutting doses in half, which of course doesnt comport with the trials. SMH.

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  10. Um, I think our mothers must have been friends. I have been reading Barak Obama's book, a Christmas present and much anticipated by me, and am rendered not speechless but profane (sorry, mother) at the contrast. I burned through A Promised Land, first reading, and now the husband has it. His comment on the first day of reading is that he notices Obama praises others for good ideas and things that worked, but blames himself for bad ones and things that didn't. North of your border, we have Mr. Photo-Op trying to run things, but at least he tries.

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    1. Mary G, Obama was a true statesman, and brilliant and empathetic besides. How far we have fallen. Happy new year, my friend, and may we have a less preposterous 2021.

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  11. Forgot to add, I had one holiday in Jamaica and loved it. Serious porch envy here.

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    1. Oh, I was definitely feeling that porch envy, too!

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  12. LOL -- I wound up swearing in my Trump post today. (Is "shitshow" swearing?) Your books sound interesting. "Hidden Valley Road" has been on my radar since I read about it several months ago but I haven't obtained a copy yet. It is very strange to look back on this time last year and think that we hadn't even heard of Covid yet. We were so blissfully unaware!

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    1. Steve, I do think our reality is forever changed. Hard to fathom going back to that state of blissful unawareness after all that has happened. And I think shitshow is a perfectly appropriate adjective for what's transpiring in the current White House. I am counting the days to Jan 20.

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  13. 2020 is definitely a watershed year. where this country goes from here remains to be seen. it was close, so very close, this time. will we be able to shed those republicans who seem to think that sedition and illegality is acceptable in the next two election years or will they consolidate and increase their numbers. either way, this country, is as you say, forever changed by the past four years. never in a million years did I expect one of our two political parties to brazenly try to overthrow an election just because their choice lost.

    I'm glad the pressure you've been under is beginning to ease and you can enjoy reading for pleasure again.

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