A - one of many
Dreaming - hearing and seeing the possibilities.
Prophet- speaking truth to power.
PART ONE
I am remembering.
Remembering is painful.
My dreams were once apocalyptic.
I dreamed a dream in those few days before the 2024 election, only six months ago.
It might as well be a lifetime ago.
I dreamt that Kamala Harris was arriving to the place I was, a big glass building where a large crowd gathered, and she arrived in a long vehicle with lights flashing. But she didn’t arrive in a cavalcade and exit the car. Rather she was rolled out of the car and pushed to the entrance in a wheel chair draped with a red cloth. But the door to the building was too small, and I cussed as her handlers bumped her head against the low threshold.
Just then, great storm clouds erupted with hurricane winds and we all scattered looking for shelter. Most of the people ran for the glass building. But I knew we needed an underground shelter. After a series of missteps too numerous to mention and the absolute nonsense of conversations and situations found only in dreams, I emerged into a windswept and cleansed world. The glass building was still standing but the bridge near the shelter behind me disintegrated and I barely walked fast enough to reach safety’s edge before it all fell into the vast chasm at my heels. I teetered for what felt like an eternity until a last puff of air pushed me flat on my face on solid ground.
Individual dreams are not prophetic, or fortune-telling, but they do reveal the concerns of one’s soul.
I am always happy, grateful and refreshed from an extra hour of sleeping, but that night in my dreams I felt the nauseous optimism I had for the next eight weeks between November 5 to January 6.
Yes, I was nauseously optimistic, not because I believed Harris would lose, but because at that time I believed she would win by very slim margins. I believed that with a Harris win the ugly patriarchal, racist, Christofascist minority would lose its collective mind in its Trump stolen election delusion and we would all suffer.
If only.
She lost and we suffer even more.
I knew then that I did not want to live in Trumpworld, but I didn’t have a choice. Whereas my worldview includes even those with whom I disagree, their worldview most certainly does not include me.
PART TWO
Amidst the distress of our lives in Trumpworld, I escaped to the world of Andor yesterday. But there it was. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, indeed, and yet, that galaxy ain’t that much different from this galaxy.
I can help but remember what my daddy always said - it's not about what it's about.
On this side of the galaxy, or in that galaxy, an election it’s apparently not about what it's about.
It's not fully about the economy, although price gouging is real. It’s not really about the price of eggs or gasoline.
It's not just about cultural issues, although blaming LBGTQ+ for everything morally wrong always riles up the base.
It's not even about misogyny or racism, although Americans always find a way to act on their unconscious bias fueled by the first 200 plus years of our existence as an enslaving culture of women and people of color.
The reelection of Trump goes much deeper than issues.
I am convinced that the only way to understand his election, and his governing style of patrimonial kingship, is to see a big part of the American populace as in a psychologically abusive relationship with Donald Trump.
The pandemic created collective trauma for the American underclass and working class. This trauma, these grievances, open ones psyche up to promises of a conman, a strongman promising security and lifting up the importance of our purely American breed of hyper-individualism.
Trauma bonding is real. It requires two things, an uneven boundary of power and intermittent rewards and abuse. Many of Trumps supporters can therefore be viewed as victims, and those supporters who are not victims are bullies, conmen and abusers themselves who applaud his normalization of vitriol, words of hate and threats of violence.
I have little hope that we will not emerge from the next four years without all citizens, every single one of us, experiencing significant levels of trauma caused by the abuser in chief. The big, beautiful bill will see to that.
And to add insult to injury, for the next four years we will be subject to that voice and its word salad, those slimy soliloquies. Trump’s voice is the equivalent of the black mold on the bathroom tile of the worst cheap ass Fairfield Inn I had the pleasure of staying in near Cedar Point in 1995.
PART THREE
Here we find ourselves, twenty four weeks past the election, seventeen weeks living in the regime.
I look out my window, waking up in Trump World and I see it.
First Light.
Hope.
Next to twilight, my most favorite time of day.
I wake to the second half of my day, the first half being the cleansing ritual of my brain cleaning out the cobwebs and opening up space for the new experiences of the next waking hours.
The ancients knew this. ‘And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day’. They had absolutely no knowledge of what the brain does, but they knew that sleep comes first. For them, intellect and emotion were both seated in the heart, the actual muscle that decided life and death with every beat.
Maybe it’s the extra hour of sleep, that extra opportunity for the unconcious brain to make more space for more life, but I am feeling especially bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning.
If you are so moved, I would appreciate your thoughts in the comments about how you will open yourself up to new experiences here, today, in Trumpworld.
For now, a blessing, a good word for your day
May you wake up in Trumpworld holding fast to the truth.
May you wake up in Trumpworld holding on to your humanity with every beat of your heart.
May every day be your first day of every new year and every first light a time of gratitude.
Peace.
Let's see what the Senate says about his bug ugly bill