10 Ways To Get Through This–

–That stopped working. #1 Self-Help Tip: Go to Your Washington 2-17

I wake feeling flat as a flounder side-mashed to the bottom of a half-empty pool. I wake with a curse hucked quietly into the underneaths of a very nice goosedown comforter. “Ffffffeck.” I contemplate my body. It’s the recipient of excellent preventative health care, fresh from its first colonoscopy and up-to-date on the usuals. It is well-yoga’d and has, I am told by Larry the Aenesthesiologist at the bum ream, “an athlete’s pulse.”

This body is about as eager for the day, though, as a scrap pile of screwed-together 2x6s waiting out back for the next dump run. I say okay out loud, push the comforter away like I’m breaking up with my best friend, and get this pile up. I lumber dayward. Because people get up. That’s the first of 500 “okays,” I think, if the past week is anything to go by. Okay.

A far pink miracle of sunrise glows at me through one of a bank of custom-built thermal barrier windows, as I head down for coffee. I’m stopped at the top of maple and ipe bedroom stairs built and satin finished by a skilled and generous husband. I slant my scroll-tired eyes at the blushing sky and grinch, “WHATEVER.”

One of many loved ones in residence has already ground good coffee beans into a big steel French press, and filled it from our near-boiling spigot at the sink. It is ready. I pour fresh, hot coffee into a mug I love and add the half-and-half we never run out of because another loved one not me makes sure we don’t. I look for a second at that soul sucker that crashed my night, the phone, and there is a funny, loving message from one of my two vibrant, living, industrious and affectionate parents.

I move to the door and let not two, not three but four of an assorted comedy of dogs inside. I settle on a plush couch I picked THE FABRIC for when feeling flush, and take that first very best sip. The dogs are arrayed on the floor before me like palace fools and courtiers. I stare, they stare back. It is a good, good life. And still – I could chew screws.

I am not the hunted, the hungry, the muzzled, the unhoused, the fired or the fearful. But when the extravagance of my American life, health, the morning’s own tenacious beauty, and the everywhere love of dogs and humans gathers like a velvet display rippling out to the very horizons, all before the second cup, and yet – I could overhead smash ancient axes into everything and just about spit concrete at babies? What then! Everything that was working stopped working.

Now in memoriam, I did have10 Things That Worked until Monday, February 3rd, 2025. I had it all so concocted that between:

1. sewing pajama pants for everyone (badly, but still)

2. celebrating the universal lessons of death (including the party trick “Okay Say We’re All Dead Already” - it’s marvelous)

3. working, and community (no notes, all hard)

4. reading only 18th and 19th-century literature (everything true now, true then)

5. fending off headlines from people (like they carried fistfuls of concertina wire)

6. playing the Britbox Drinking Game (eg. “Hello, who’s there?” dark basement, you drink, or seagulls, drink; eat candy if sober)

7. deciding “25 years worried is enough” (re: American politics; flirted scandalously with “didn’t work anyway”)

8. buying Italian boots and a wool dress (clothes, the sleeper narcotic)

9. reciting: “I am just a human being that happens to be on this earth at this time”

10. and hugging longer like I used to HATE, other,

I was rolling along in this inexplicably sturdy gerbil ball of happiness.

It smashed apart on that Monday. Yes I know it started earlier, but Monday is the day the war on us that is the Musk-Trump “Bad Humans Winning” Assault really couldn’t be battened out any longer by even the most determined. It scattered every heavy piece of furniture my Inner Well-Being Director had jammed up high against the door since November.

Now that nothing works, today I have just two rules. They don’t pair naturally:

1.) Be careful with your fellow humans, your work, and your body right now. In these realms alone, dismount and proceed on foot. My husband has project weekends where maybe the table saw blade whirls too close to flesh, a chainsaw kicks, then a ladder doesn’t quite seat. It is rare, but on these days the warnings like electricity in the air add up, and he stands down for another, safer day. Things feel like that right now. Threads aren’t quite threading, fastenings are loose, the wind’s up and gears between people are slipping. It’s a time to assume everyone has a big angular fray going on inside that has nothing to do with you. It’s like Mercury Retrograde but for a whole human society. Get limber and cautious for yourself and others until it ever shifts. Be more tender or at least more quiet to others, than you might feel.

The unnatural pair to that is:

2.) Go to Washington. And get loud to others. Right now. By that I mean, go to your Washington, right now. If it’s DC like me, that ideal but whatever Washington is available to you, and as you are able. If you are fortunate enough to have the health and resources, and people aren’t too dependent on you for their care, show up at your Washington with your body. And a sign. Show up now and daily, but definitely starting with this Monday, February 17th, noon, see below.

Bring your beautiful body to the street either in Washington or your State Capitol or the Golden Gate Bridge or a street corner or outside your too-quiet Senator’s office, or City Hall or an overpass or downtown. Daily ideally but definitely the 17th and as called. (Note 1: Anyone up to 50 people can be on the Golden Gate with signs without a permit for up to 2 hours. I’ve marched across it alone and mad, and it’s awkward but good. I’ve stood alone with a sign and a baby at Tam Junction and it was just pathetic, but still good. Note 2: If California Senators Padilla and Schiff, for example, aren’t being as loud as Chris Murphy, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Ken Swalwell, Jamie Raskin, who else, then they ARE NOT BEING LOUD ENOUGH. Call them, numbers are everywhere. The loud people are safer in numbers, and it’s wrong to leave the courageous alone.)

We are in a commodity moment. The “mass” in mass mobilization is sheer body count. Knowing that the rules of human power never change, when has stand up, fight back not been the answer to low quality power grabs by weak, wrong, blustering, dangerous men? And who am I not to add my own body? Each one of our human units is of value and necessity now.

The one merciful thing about being at war, is the simplicity of its questions on any given day: Today, can you get your body and a sign somewhere others will see? Daily until further notice but especially as called, like this Monday the 17th. If you’re not a lawyer, a federal employee, the press or an elected official, there is nothing more clever to do. IT IS SIMPLY OUR BODIES that are needed right now. Loud and in real life. Okay, getting this scrap heap dressed and checked in, xooxo, Megan