I’m working to keep this blog positive for myself and you. I know we’re all aware of the coup, and the lies in the speech last night but today when I read that the Trump administration imposed a $1.00 credit limit on park employees, I felt my blood pressure rise.

Yesterday I was at the Muir Beach overlook.  I used the bathroom.  I used toilet paper. How are the employees supposed to buy toilet paper and resupply the bathrooms with no money?  How are they supposed to turn on the lights in the offices where they work?  How do they buy gas for the vehicles they drive to move from place to place?

What is the purpose?  It’s  cruel. 

I think of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, How Do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

For this administration their rule is: How do I hate and destroy this country?  Let me count the ways.  

The world seems turned upside down with the Trump/Musk/Putin trio, now acting as one.  I read The Cult of Trump, and saw how Trump was raised without love to hate and dominate, and yet, destroying the world seems a bit harsh in response.

I know he hates CA but threatening our water supply, again I ask, why?

With that, I was at the marsh yesterday and I offer photos of harmony and connection.  

I offer a poem by James Baldwin:

For Nothing is Fixed.

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

More and more I learn about the importance of the land where we live.  We moved a great deal when I was growing up, as did my husband’s family, and yet, when the two of us came to Marin, we knew this was “it”.  I looked out on the ridge and knew I was home.

The Coast Miwok lived here, peacefully.  It’s a peaceful, nourishing, nurturing place.

In my meditation today, what came up was Mr. Wheelwright who donated the land where Green Gulch Farm Zen Center now beckons and thrives.  He and his wife had lived happily there, and he wanted the land to continue to be loved and cared for.  It’s on the other side of the ridge from where I live, flowing down to the Pacific.  

I think of what brings happiness. When I was in Nepal, I read Dominique LaPierre’s book The City of Joy, about life in a slum in Calcutta and the joy he found there.

Musk wants to go to Mars. I wonder if Mars wants him.  Perhaps we need the devastation he’s creating to bring us together and remind us what matters.  It’s one planet, bound together economically, and morally, and not by the egos of a few.

Yesterday in the New York Times, I read M. Gessen’s opinion piece, “They Invented a New Language for War”. Gessen reported from Odesa, Ukraine where the poets of Odesa are writing a chronicle of life in wartime, and changing the language they use.

I am reminded of two poetry books by Ilya Kaminsky.  He was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977. In 1993, his family was granted asylum by the American government and came to the United States. Dancing in Odessa was published in 2004 in Canada.  The book is a marvel.  I see how much we need poetry. I offer excerpts from the poem “Praise”.

We were leaving Odessa in such a hurry that we forgot the suitcase filled with English dictionaries outside our apartment building. I came to America without a dictionary but a few words did remain: 

And he lists his own definitions for words we know: Forgetting, past, sanity …

The poem goes on and comes to this:

On the page’s soiled corners

my teacher walks, composing a voice;

he rubs each word in his palms;

“hands learn from the soil and broken glass,

you cannot think a poem,” he says,

“watch the light hardening into words.

His book Deaf Republic was published in 2019.  The book begins with the poem We Lived Happily during the War.  It’s about living in the “great country of money”, America, and ignoring destruction in other countries.

The last poem in the book is “In a Time of Peace” and shows how we go about our daily lives even as the horror of what is happening is seen on our phones.

I contrast his amazing writing and insight with the news that, as of 1921, Yosemite’s annual budget is around $30 million.  Trump’s trips to the Daytona 500 and Superbowl cost about $25 million.  Accounting, anyone?  Accountability?  Sanity?

Who and what defines, and what language do they use?