I’ve been filled with a poignant melancholy these days, reflecting over the past year with my heart as mirror. It’s almost breathtaking — this year everywhere I turned there has been a death: my best friend’s lover died of bone cancer; my brother-in-law’s mother died peacefully in her sleep; a member of our theater company lost her mother to cancer; an old friend from work died suddenly of a heart attack in her bathtub at the age of 48. An old work comrade finally succumbed to her years-long bout with pancreatic cancer.
The realization of the closeness of these endings shocked me. I’ve been clawing through this year like a coal miner, watching the signals coming from political, artistic and social spheres for what was to come, what was to be done.
Yet, as I plowed through this year cognizant of what was going on around me, I never gave myself emotional time for processing what was happening in my life. The emotional impact on me was not expressed, afraid that once I started grieving, I would not be able to stop. Time this year was not a linear progression of days, but a broad ballroom of change dancing around me, with death taking partners close to my most inner circles. It was an expression of Totentanz — the Dance of Death.
On a larger scale, this was the year that witnessed the beginnings of the end of an era, and the birth of something new yet to be fully defined and named. Imagine this: over forty years ago the rise towards America’s current conservatism began, accelerating around the time of the Nixon ascendancy, and building to a head after Watergate, and the Ford and Carter presidencies. A recession hit the economy, plunging the market into its first big crash since the 1920s. An anti-tax movement in reaction against government was fully underway.
Fast-forward 40 years later and we’re witness to that era in a slow death spiral. We do need government. We do need tax revenues. We do need government regulation. California voted Yes on Proposition 30, a tax increase initiative. As of this writing, Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has been approved for a seat on the Senate Banking Committee. Her appointment to this post has been every Wall Street banker’s nightmare since her first appearance in the public arena as leading advocate for a federal Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau (CFPB) — an agency established to protect consumers from the kind of banking, brokerage and loan industry fraud that led to the economic collapse of 2008.
It is dawning on Congressional Republicans that the White House not only fully expects that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will expire, but that new revenues will not be entirely off the backs of the middle and working class. And they have a mandate to support that
Make no mistake, conservatism is not over, and progressivism is not yet a completely viable movement, not by a long shot. Though the voters rejected the extremism of the Tea Party anti-government movement of 2010, there is still enough of a Tea Party (corporate) movement and interests to keep their agenda front and forward in political discourse. The attraction towards progressive ideals is still burgeoning, with a majority rising among moderates and even some conservatives across the country.
Yet there is still too much overt and subconscious cultural noise and social pressure for people to let go and let a truly complete socio-economic revolution sweep up this country as envisioned by the Occupy Movement. But labor unions are gathering steam across the country, starting with strikes against Walmart, and now fast-food industry workers are uniting for higher wages. Something is beginning, maybe bringing us back to a more balanced square one.
Major corporations still have front door access in Congress and the White House, and hold the microphones of major media, including MSNBC. There are too many who have been so conditioned not to think for themselves that it’s going to take nothing short of re-programming to get them to see reality. The Democrats, now in a more commanding majority in the Senate, begin a slow, anxiety-laden and tentative process for filibuster reform. Whether it’s the bully Republicans they fear or not, the electorate of 2012 recognized even before the election how stuck we have become.
That is the shape of the grand ballroom we have today.
There is so much more for our government to do. It seems their first order of business is to wake up to that fact. You might grind your teeth with angry impatience, but government is a slow and cautious beast, kind of like a tree sloth. It’s unfortunate, but without some kind of direct political action and involvement by us, it may take the actual condition of the Earth and her people to do what politics cannot: bring those who are reluctant and fearful face to face with reality. Even then, we’ll still need to drag them off so they can sulk in safety on ground high enough from the floodwater’s grip.
Reality begins with recognition that some ideas and ideals — once considered the canon of conventional political wisdom — have died in the eyes of the majority before leaders can begin to visualize credible responses to the broader challenges ahead. A process of grieving is implausible in the ego-driven world of politics, but in order to come to a place of dealing more credibly with reality, maybe this has to be done. This process needs to replace plowing ahead with what they think they have to do to protect themselves, their select constituents and their special interests, otherwise we may find ourselves with a large number of brooding expatriates living resentfully and bitterly in their own country, longing for a time that has long since died.
Some may grieve and come to a clearer focus, others may not. Time will tell. It still takes two — parties, in our current political context — to partner up and dance in the great ballroom of democracy. Only some may face the consequences, seeing the end of their cherished values and ideas. Some will not. But everything dies. It is the nature of humanity, history, politics and the world. Letting go and moving on is natural, if allowed to happen. What we’re watching going on around us is that kind of processing (or its denial), on a political scale that bears our witnessing and presence in order to make the best transition happen more easily.
The music is changing, as well the players. Escort out the old for the new. How appropriate for an upcoming solstice.
Fe – thank you. I, too, am glad to have you here, and having you to help lead us forward is a blessing. You put your thoughts out for us all, and I hear echoes from within, and from far away.
Imece, friend.
And speaking of Our Daily Bread: Fe, you probably have heard of the 1934 film of that name, but in case you have not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Daily_Bread_%281934_film%29
For anyone who has not seen this movie, it’s available on the internet archives; here is a direct link: http://archive.org/details/ODailyBread
The content is absolutely on point for so much in the original post and in the comments here…happy viewing, all!
christy:
One of the more startling realizations for me this year was made while doing a performance on the food industry in a show called “Our Daily Bread”. In it, we not only discussed the loss of food traditions and the corporatization and social stratifying of nutrition, but the loss of connection across many cultural lines. I wrote a section about our experience as a family in the agribusiness in California, and the losses of life just within my family alone over the space of my childhood from 5 – 18, wherein I lost my grandfather, uncle and father over that space of time to cancer and heart disease.
I realized while doing that show, a review of most of my early history, that I was carrying so much unexpressed grief that it had crystallized over my heart. I was literally plowing through feelings of grief just in order to cope, and my heart sealed off in order to move ahead in this culture. Doing the show’s run, reviewing all that had happened opened up wells that turns into cisterns, that turned into aquifers. So deep you could drown. But as I explored and continue to explore these feelings, there is a gentleness that has come over me, a kind of grace.
Grieving is an opening to grace, and I am grateful to experience how deep these waters flow in me.
Adjutrix:
Yes yes yes. Something about those stats brings to mind a lesson that was brought home to me this year — actions speak louder than words, and we are realizing, contrary to Mr. Glenn Beck, Mr. Limbaugh and others, that we are not a center right nation, but a center LEFT one. WE surround them. And the more of the veil we strip off of those power interests and realize how powerful we really are, the better. I have a feeling though, that their death throes, which is at the gist of this article, are going to take awhile. Looking forward to the next eight years when Pluto leaves Cap and enters Aquarius. What a ride!!!
dfrahmann:
I’ve read in a book called “Generations” that our generation would be partnering up with our grandchildren to secure the change we were fighting for at their age. That is totally coming to pass. Now to learn how to use Twitter, FB and all other new social networks to be part of that mainstream! Of course, I still have to wait for my nephew to set up and sync my new Apple toys. Ahh, the 21st century…
Len:
If nothing else, I am feeling gratitude for being able to be here at this moment, pondering my life and in awe of the scope of life and death around me. Like being in the hospital room of someone who is living life by its remaining inches, you appreciate the value of all the moments we’ve got for us. And I am very happy to be healthy and alive at this moment.
You mentioned that “Something is beginning…” and “The music is changing.” Indeed yes!
In 1980, long before the presidential election occurred, a palpable shift began. Then, the “something” that was beginning was a generation of conservatism and decades of giving away individual authority and power. Now, however, that time has been turned on its head, literally, as can be seen by comparing the 1980 and 2012 voting statistics:
2012
Obama: 63,714,092 (50.7%)
Romney: 59,782,295 (47.6%)
Minor candidates 1.7%
Obama up by almost 3 million votes.
1980
Reagan 50.8%
Carter and Anderson together 47.6%
That the percentages essentially mirror each other gives us a clue that the tide has turned, the wheel has moved. Today, the forces ushered in during 1980 have been upended.
In 1980, the Republicans declared their razor margin of victory a “mandate”–saying it often enough, with force, that many came to believe it was true. Today, as you said, the White House and progressives now “have a mandate” of their own, just in time for the coming solstice.
May the Sun’s time of greatest darkness, followed by renewed light, inspire all on the inner plane to take new, wonderful, joyous steps toward greater light and love on all planes. Here’s to our brilliant and beautiful collective future…
Fe, you capture such tenderness here,“I’ve been filled with a poignant melancholy these days, reflecting over the past year with my heart as mirror. It’s almost breathtaking -“ and as I read it, I catch my breath, too. I realize I’m kind of holding my breath. It’s felt like ‘the veil’ has been even thinner this autumn than it is usually, and I’ve experienced more people I know, and also lots of friends’ pets, either dying or receiving dire diagnoses this season than the whole rest of the year. So in a part of me I am holding my breath, wondering what’s next, who’s next.
But with this, you remind me to breathe, and to let myself feel that poignant melancholy. I think maybe that’s a part of what it is to feel all the way alive. I wish you, and all of us, a grieving that is full and not too much to bear, and that we will hold ourselves with kindness and gentleness and not be afraid that it won’t end (or that even if grief is always part of life, it won’t be all there is, not at all), and that we’ll be able to lean on love.
Fe–I’m awake at this ungodly hour feeling exactly the way you describe about the same (or similar) things. Totentanz is a new term for me, but, damn, it’s appropriate. There’s also monumental impatience–“Get OFF of me!” and an urge to kick down the walls of my stall and run free, devil take the hindermost.
I’m an old gal, and I remember being young back in the 60’s. We were so optimistic about changing the world back then; we thought that our ideals were so positive and good for everybody, how could they resist? Little did we realize just what (and who) we were up against, how powerful they were, that they had no intention of giving up their privileged status quo, and how viciously they would defend their turf. Then, as now, there were also many “regular folks” who clung to the status quo, with all its inequities and injustices, because it was familiar, and they took a dim view of us radicals who seemed intent on upsetting the applecart. So maybe there’s more than a little deja vu going on with me as well, and I’m allowing the past to color the present.
In any event, you’re right, Fee. Things HAVE to change, and they ARE changing, tho’ not as fast as we’d like. Thank you for this wonderful piece!
Fe: Thank you so very much. Sometimes you speak to my heart, sometimes you speak as if from my heart, but none of your words have been anything less than the truth. We could use a lot more like you, so please make sure you are among those who stick around.