I watch as Fiona takes Pink Bear to the diaper changing table; she first puts down a soft cloth, she wipes his bottom, telling me he has a poop, she’s as gentle as can be. She attempts to put on a diaper, but needs my help. I help her with the diaper, then go back to the kitchen where I am making dinner. Jack keeps asking about watching Mickey Mouse. I say “No”, he falls down crying. We repeat this scenario several times a day. He always forgets about T.V. after five minutes, or candy, his other true passion that he loves to whine about. Jack and Fiona are only two and a half, I forget that, I feel like they are so much older and wiser. Like somehow they can understand my total devastation and depression; fall out from my New American Administration. An administration I attest. Yesterday I said “Goodbye Cruel World” to my on-line communities, Facebook and Nextdoor. I sit here this morning missing my people, but yesterday I made the decision to get Off-Line and take to the streets. I made the decision to reach out, person to person, find ways to be involved in my community, meet new people in real life, make new friends in my neighborhood. On Friday night I felt like I was having a breakdown. A psychiatric breakdown, “911 what’s your emergency?” I reply, “Trump was elected president”. I needed a stronger drug, a tranquilizer. (that didn’t really happen, but I imagined it happening). Yesterday I took my babies to the park, met up with a friend. Jack and Fiona went off and explored every inch of the playground. I sat and talked with my good friend. They were all the sudden like little kids, not babies. On the drive home, I heard the announcement about Steve Bannon becoming Trumps chief strategist. After Jack and Fiona went down for their nap I researched Bannon. I started to feel physically sick, like I was going to throw up. That’s the moment I deleted my nextdoor and Facebook accounts. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle the furry of conversation and outrage online, I knew I didn’t want to focus my energy on posting and sharing articles on Facebook, I KNEW NOW WAS THE TIME TO HIT THE STREETS! I went to my stationary bike and worked out, sweat, then filled a hot bath, I lay down in the tub, under bubbles of lavender and sobbed, just as I did on Friday listening to Leonard Cohen. I sobbed with pictures in my mind of Jack and Fiona playing at the park, knowing that all the optimism and idea that racism and sexism was on it’s way out in their bright new world was dead. I sobbed with my mouth wide open, spit coming out, thinking of all the non-white people in American feeling scared as shit right now. I sobbed about the car posted on Facebook that had “Fagot” spray painted on it. I sobbed about the KKK not being stopped YET, that they are allowed to have a rally. I sobbed about how easy it is for white people to just “accept Trump, give him a chance”. I deleted my Facebook account and miss all my friends from around the world fighting the fights of justice. I will miss keeping in touch with them and everyone. But I am here. I am hitting the streets, there is too much to lose, too much at stake not to get involved, to stay on Facebook griping and moaning and sharing articles. I want to be a physical part of the movement. Me and my babies. I don’t know how I will do it, how I will get the information I need to be part of it, but they did it in the sixties, I’m sure I can figure it out today.
Category: emotion
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Heavy Shit. I let my boobs bounce free today and wore my Hilary Button on my shirt. I cried talking about the election and had a strange encounter with a Trump supporting kid at the park. I’ve been blasting nineties hip-hop in the car driving the babies around, Jacks learning to chair dance. I feel mad, sad, and ready to fight for Democracy in America. I will NEVER accept Donald Trump as my president. I DON’T care what that stance costs me. I will NOT let this fly. I do not see the silver lining in it, except for my eye balls being ripped open, my callused white, liberal, life that left me thinking that “things can’t be that bad” during the “Black Lives Matter” movement, to knowing now, that things are that bad. My eyes have been ripped open to the systemized racism in America, the pitfalls of our national education system that’s left people ignorant and mislead. My heart bleeds for the pain and suffering for our world, in this country and all other countries. How can we come together? How can we be that final movement to end this constant oppression and theft of our innocence and inherent kindness? The past two days I’ve hugged and kissed my babies harder than ever before. I see their pure love towards everyone and everything. They want to help people, to be nurturing, to be kind. Children do this naturally. Children are taught hate and prejudice. They are taught to only care about themselves, to be selfish. So many of us wonder, “How can people not care about the Syrian refugees?”. They don’t even want to help when they can. They give all the reasons why not, instead of thinking about just helping people. Where I live in San Rafael, we have a good homeless support system, a St Vincent’s, A Ritter House, residents of San Rafael are constantly trying to make services for the homeless move somewhere else. They complain about too many homeless people, instead of having some compassion and thanking God that they aren’t homeless themselves. Drop off a Turkey people! Sorry, that was a rant. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now. I can’t help but blame myself for not staying involved in politics for the past fifteen years. After seeing the live bombing of Iraq broadcast on TV after 9/11 I’ve been dismayed. Since being in Marin, working at Nordstroms, where I was told I wasn’t aloud to talk to people about the war and how we needed to end it. I was told once during an art class I was taking that a person was very offended that I talked about animal rights and asked her to donate to PETA. The government shut down made me so mad. I was harassed with my Obama sticker on my car in Marin. My car was keyed and my Jerry Brown sticker ripped off in Marin. It’s scary and I’m a white suburban housewife. Things are not good in this country right now. Forget about being a teacher, I need to be an activist. We can never become complacent.
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I can’t remember why we were naked, maybe it was after I had given Jack and Fiona their bath? I had a sports bra on, we were practicing jump roping, so I had taken off my shirt to put on my sports bra, I had taken off my underwear after jump roping because jump roping makes me pee my pants! My underwear were wet. Somehow we moved into my studio, I can’t remember what drew us here. Oh, I remember now, we were playing hopscotch and I wanted to draw a hopscotch on my painting. “I just want to do one thing” I say to Jack and Fiona. They reply “O.K.” and follow me into my studio. Alan is upstairs on the couch, Jack and Fiona haven’t taken their nap. It is my fault, we went to the pumpkin patch, to lunch, then “To the ice cream store” Fiona says. It was already after 2:00pm when we got home, (oh and I forgot, we also went to the Halloween mega store!) We had to put our skeleton bones out, play with our costumes, take a bath, so I decided to let them stay up and hopefully they would go to sleep early, so Alan and I could gain some alone time. I start by drawing on my canvas, adding some collage, mix some blue ink for Jack and Fiona to play with. They start off slow, Jack comes and goes, taking breaks to play with his trucks in his room. Fiona stays with me the whole time. We are all barefoot, “watch out for the Pins” I tell them. We should have shoes on. Fiona and I stay painting, getting more and more into it, getting paint everywhere. Fiona falls in the paint, it’s all over her leg and butt! I grab a plain piece of paper and tell her to sit on it. She does and experiments for a while. She plays with water, washing my paintbrushes, she’s in her own world and so am I but we’re so connected. Jack comes in and plays with paint, makes some lines, I think it’s a lot for him to take in. Fiona starts chanting a song, I join in. It sounds like a ritualistic chant, perfectly paired with the October sky last night, the strong gusts of wind, the naked painting like cavewomen or a nomadic tribe. It’s brilliant.
Now I am back in my studio, Monday morning. Ready to get started on my painting, but my studio is such a mess. My paintings are such a mess. Over worked and ambivalent. But I know what I want, the feeling, the feeling of passing time, moments we never get back, a ritualistic chant that crosses boundaries and goes deep inside, scooping out that childlike freedom of creation. Embedded with the pain and loss of adulthood. Alive with the knowing that this is all temporary, like that one magical gust of October wind, with the slight chill, reminds us that the Earth can open like a crevice and take us back into herself, like a baby returning to the womb. We turn into dust like the disintegrating moth on the kitchen window sill. Layers of paint creating this history in front of me, leaving a memory behind me. But what is now? I grab the paint, the medium, my brush or palette and try to enter into that space. Childlike and adultlike simultaneously, trying to not overthink, trying to remain in the ritualistic chant Fiona taught me last night.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 