Dreaming the World

This morning is showery with thickening fog, warmish, or rather seasonal for late March. The witch-hazels are in bloom and have been for a few weeks. Some of the other early-to-leaf trees are showing growing buds and the mocking birds are singing in the morning. Yesterday we saw our first great white heron on the marsh, busily fishing. We seem to be in spring.

While we had an essentially snowless winter, friends to the north where it was a snowy winter are still sloshing through remnant snow and waiting for the daffodils and skunk cabbage to poke through.

I had some idea that after I retired I would work my way through the pile of unread books I have accumulated. This, however, has not been the case and the stack has continued to grow. On top of that, I have my eye on a few “must reads.” I’m working hard to limit my new acquisitions; this is challenging as everyone else appears to be devouring books at a good pace, then acquiring new ones.

I’m in the second half of my synthesizer course and for the first time really, I am feeling overwhelmed. At our last live class the instructor opened a discussion of imposter syndrome, acknowledging that even now as a very much in demand composer and performer, she often imagines herself a fraud. The conversation seems to have hit home as the class discussion board now has a lively ongoing conversation about the relationship between being stuck and feeling the imposter.

Nori the cat is doing well. At the moment she is watching the world through a window by my workstation. She has settled in atop the sofa, her back to me, eyes closed, yet guarded least I grab her, which I won’t. Earlier she was on the three season porch. It was warm enough for us to leave the door open for half-an-hour or so and we all enjoyed the fresh air and bird song.

Further afield, we note that book banning and burning has returned, along with determined attempts to erase slavery and the Native American genocide from history on the basis that they make white people uncomfortable. I never, in my wildest dystopian fantasies, imagined we would get to this place but here we are. When entire colleges and departments are abolished in the name of comfort we have entered Huxlian territory for sure. I guess white fragility really is a thing.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised given the ongoing erasure of Native history and culture, but taking race out of the Rosa Parks story in textbooks is taking things to an extreme, even by U.S. standards. This is happening at the same time as reproductive rights are being withdrawn and elections decided by the local party in power. We seem to be back in the 19th Century which I find pretty astounding.

The totalitarian impulse has been a consistent theme in American discourse throughout our history, rising and falling over time. As long as there were Native lands to grab for expansion the population at large pretty much went along with things as they mostly were unaffected and might even benefit. Now, with a population of 331 odd million, almost evenly split on these matters, things seem headed for the proverbial cliff.