Distractions For The Time Being

/ Laura Grace Weldon
Back yard view last week.

~

I have taken the day off from work. Not one job on the clock other than (waves hands around) a few essential tasks. I am also not checking the news or listening to dire prognostications or giving in to worry. Yes, I am aware this is an incredible privilege.

Instead:  

I will sit on the porch reading the last chapter of Leigh Ann Henion’s Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark before turning to poet Danusha Laméris’ newest collection Blade By Blade, artist Kreg Yinst’s Everything Could Be A Prayer: One Hundred Portraits of Saints and Mystics, and novelist Claire Keegan’s Foster. (I don’t settle into a seat with one book. I settle in with a whole meal of books).

I will enjoy watching leaves scatter from trees and clouds curl into blue skies. I will appreciate the ecumenical gathering of birds, ducks, and one friendly groundhog around our daily offering of birdseed and peanuts.

I will excavate nearly a year’s stockpile of gifts to send to beloved ones overseas.

I will make a mélange of what’s left in the garden for my lunch – peppers, tomatillos, onions, beans, and lots of herbs –a lunch I never have to share because no one around here wants such oddities.

I will, most likely, post yet another hope-centric quote like this and this on social media because I can’t not.

I will dig into this paper by Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan–How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis–showing how a world without poverty for anyone anywhere is indeed possible while bringing resource use back within planetary boundaries. As Jason writes when sharing the paper, “If we organized production around well-being, we could immediately end poverty and ensure good living standards for 8.5 billion people. Decent living standards that include housing, universal healthcare, education, transit, heating/cooling, induction stoves, fridge-freezers, washing machines, internet, computers, mobile phones etc — all of this can be provided for 8.5 billion people with only 30% of current global resource and energy use productive capacity. This leaves a substantial surplus for additional consumption, scientific advancement, and other social investments.” (Arts! I add, yelling from the sidelines. And fun!)   

I will take a walk with the bundles of enthusiasm named Fergus and Archibald.

I will gear up to pressure President Harris for an immediate end to all military funding which endangers civilian populations, particularly causing the horrific ongoing slaughter of innocent lives in Palestine and Yemen. And for her to take every serious measure to mitigate the incredible damage our industrialized world has done to the climate. More marching, more divestment, more pressure starting day one.

I have no illusions that distraction will only be necessary on election day. Certain very angry people, backed by certain very wealthy people, are planning to disrupt voting, vote counting, and vote certification. Let’s fill up on all the peace we can because we’re going to be busy.

~

SORROWFUL POSTSCRIPT:

ELECTION 2024, MORNING AFTER

When even a giant duck-shaped cloud can’t lift my despair
I remind myself to take the farthest distant view.

If gravitational force were a billionth of its strength stronger
the universe would have collapsed after the big bang.

If attraction between electrons and atomic nuclei were too strong,
atoms couldn’t bond and molecules couldn’t form.

Truly, anything in this marvel of existence,
in your marvel of a lifetime, is possible.

I know every civilization eventually falls but damn, it’s hard
to watch its own citizens knock down the pillars supporting it.  

Back yard view today. Change is the constant…

11 thoughts on “Distractions For The Time Being”

  2. Thanks for this, Laura. The article on what needs to happen to lift the world out of poverty is especially enlightening.

    Take care and let’s hope for a good outcome of this election and then keeping up the good fight for a more just world.

    Joanne

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  3. I’m not well-practiced in the whole spend the day relaxing thing.

    So far:

    I cleaned up a Suspicious Spot on the carpet which may have been left by the younger gentleman dog. I have since stepped in the still-wet spot at least five times.

    I stood from the table after eating my usual terror of a breakfast, this one including onions, mushrooms, cauliflower, tofu, brown rice, and hot sauce fermented from our garden’s peppers. Somewhere in the process of standing I knocked ever so slightly against the spoon resting in my bowl. I overreacted so badly to the clattering sound that I shrieked and flapped my hands around. I can’t sing or dance, but I can startle reflex like nobody’s business.

    I have ideas for several new writing projects which I scribbled down so that, later, I won’t have any idea what I was thinking.  

    I have observed today’s weather is perfect for miraculous serendipities to happen everywhere.

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  5. I read and deeply loved Keegan’s Foster but your other courses of books are all new to me. I am hopeful that my library has a copy or three!

    I agree, it is such a privilege to tune out. I have voted, and I have faith in the outcome. No worrying here, which is also a privilege.

    Thank you for taking the time today to share your gorgeous view and your wisdom!

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  6. In the run up to results being announced, I have reverted to ostrich behaviour. It’s not as if this stuff is happening in isolation. We will all be impacted, but without the power to influence the outcome. My life will become worse as a direct consequence because some people have lost the power to think critically, logically, unselfishly, globally and bravely. And so will the lives of countless billions of others. It’s almost at endgame level, a sort of destructive flail to preserve the lifestyle of a very small, very bigoted, very privileged few at the expense of many. And I see that I sound bitter, but I saw what happened outside the US the first time round. And the problem is back, only worse.

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