Primaries Are a Good Time to Disagree (IRL)

First in a series inspired by On Tyranny:Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

A lot of the “obedience” triggers I’ve been experiencing lately have come from the pressure (both inner and outer) to “unify” with the (perceivedly) dominant Democrats, with the implication that if we don’t, Trump will be our fault. Sometimes, in my Bernie-ful neighborhood, my brain tells me I might be seen as at best a disharmony and at worst a threat. This isn’t the case, but it’s a tough feeling to wade through.

Urgent clumps of white men have become a mainstay at the Weaver’s Way Co-op corner (the very BEST corner if you need any kind of lefty signatures) and they feel like a threat to me, just as groups of white men can in any setting. When they first congealed there, I put on my quiet teacher voice and asked them to please talk with their teams about the bullying factor, (This NYT article had just come out: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-internet-supporters-2020.html) but mostly I just cross the street to avoid them, running the risk of tangling with the grumpy dry cleaner across the street. Ladying is hard, even in our Stars-Hollow-like corner of Mt. Airy.

In addition to working on my own petitioning for Elizabeth, the main way I can push back is with art. Not having a yard, I’ve been filling the local telephone poles with even more watercolor sass than usual, plus some nice big Warren posters from headquarters, all decorated with ribbons and silk flowers.

Every year as a Valentine to the neighborhood, I take out all of the art I’ve accumulated throughout the year and staple them to the phone poles, expanding my like-I-own-the-place reach beyond my usual 3-4 blocks. This year, I got a melancholy windfall of flowers that the aunts cleaned out from Grandmom’s house. Washing them in the sink took days, the years and grief and not-having-a-family-headquarters-anymore evaporating into the air as the flowers dried, weighing heavy on my heart.

Armed with my bag of art, my bag of flowers, and my trusty staple gun, I set out to freeze my hands on my Valentine project last Saturday afternoon. One of my first stops was to decorate someone else’s art, a Postcards to Voters sign put up by a mother-daughter team I had the pleasure to meet one glorious day. Imagine, being in like second grade and helping design Postcards to Voters signs—amazing! ( https://postcardstovoters.org/)

I was happily stapling when a neighborhood lady I sort of knew approached me. She had just finished chatting with one of the aforementioned white man clumps.

“I have a new acronym!” She declared. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Of course!” I said, stapling silk flowers around the sign.

“AVAT! All votes against Trump! No matter what, we have to unify and get him out of office!”

I was wearing an Elizabeth button and I (somewhat paranoidly) thought this might be an obey-the-Bern lecture. (Or worse! Obey the Bloomberg!) But still! She was right!

“That’s a great idea! I said. “You should make a poster!”

“I don’t want to make a poster. I’m not a visual artist. I sing and write songs. Just like you might not like to sing and write songs, I don’t have to make visual art.”

Her voice had an edge to it that made me nervous, but we chatted away about her acronym. Another lady happened by and asked how she could write with Postcards to Voters, since she wasn’t from around here, and I told her it’s online.

“Yeah,” said Acronym Lady, “You can’t really see the “.org”—you should make that more prominent.”

“This isn’t my work to change, but you can totally do that!” This is my standard response to unsolicited critique, particularly unsolicited critique of free-labor activism—make your own!

“She keeps trying to force me to make art,” Acronym Lady said to the woman who was no doubt regretting that she’d stopped to chat, “But that’s not what I do.”

Something was awry here and I wasn’t sure what it was, but I wasn’t quite done stapling up this batch of flowers.

Acronym Lady kept on with her unity-talk until I finally pushed back, in (I swear) the mildest and calmest way. I told her my usual stuff about how this is primaries, now’s the time to disagree! With one guy bypassing the system by trying to buy the election and another candidate who was backed by Russia in 2015 and 2016, (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-russian-effort-to-target-sanders-supporters--and-help-elect-trump/2019/04/11/741d7308-5576-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html) there’s plenty to argue about! Plus, a lot of us were really traumatized by Bernie’s followers in 2016 etc, etc.

“So you DON’T think I should be telling people about this acronym?”

“Of course you can! Just maybe leave a little space for those of us who are in trauma.”

“Well, I was just having this conversation with a Bernie Bro who was actually capable of listening…”

The “unlike you” was implied, I think. But I’d BEEN listening for like ten minutes at this point!

I told her to stop gaslighting me and go away. Sometimes people get REALLY PISSED at me when I have a personal boundary, I can’t quite figure it out.

“No, YOU go away! This is MY corner!”

Still, I wasn’t done with what I was working on, so I kept telling her to go away and stop harassing me. I made the motion of getting out the phone to call the police, which was really dumb because there are almost no reasons to do that. What kind of street artist WOULD?!

She was shouting by the time she crossed the street. “You know what? You’re an ASSHOLE,” she hollered. “I thought you were a nice person, but you’re not.”

“Good job with the unity!” I childishly yelled. “It’s going really well!”

I’m not sure why I was the person she chose to resist, but I’m so glad she did. Her unhingedness and my own give me faith that we haven’t been swallowed up yet by tyranny, be it left or right.

But also, neither I nor Acronym Lady are okay right now. We on the left are all scared and weird from the acquittal, the missing Philadelphia snow, from the troll farms, from our own blind spots and entitlements. Amazingly, my fight or flight didn’t even activate during this exchange. Plenty of loving neighbor interactions followed—accidental canvassing, art bonding, general love. Still, Acronym Lady filled up my heart the most.

The Dueling Troll Farms of the left and right want us obedient, silent, scared, and complacent, so I hope we can hold to our IRL prickliness, our effrontery, and be downright difficult. This is a very good time for us to argue for what we believe in. It’s time to challenge each other and make each other uncomfortable and push for what’s right. This is Acronym Lady’s corner and mine and (though I wish it were very much less so) even the Bros. Fear can’t be allowed to simmer us down.

Birthday Heart Inventory: More for Age 41

Probably “more” has been my keyword for all of the years, but now in particular I want to expand, to think a little bigger, to feel like I deserve the hopes and dreams hanging around the notebooks of my extraordinarily blessed everyday life.

Yesterday as I was getting in the car to drive to work, I had the music turned up and this song shuffled on. A grumpy man across the street glowered at me and I gave him the biggest grin and decided it would be my song of the year. I would like to say goodbye permanently to guilt and shame, to my tendency to apologize for my existence, to false good-girl compliance, and embrace being maladjusted, both in the Dr. King sense and in the regular way. So:

Forty was the year of friends. I realized my dream of being best friends with Amy, and while that may not be the move-oniest thing, it is certainly a source of joy and my favorite pleasant work boredom. I’ve gotten closer to my church friends, made poetry part of my life again in a small but significant way, and had the best friend-life since probably middle school. There was a spate where all of my friends lived in other cities and though I still love my far-flung family of pals, I’m glad to have expanded to those who can just barge in or, as my next-door neighbor did this morning, surprise me with spontaneous festiveness.

This was also the year that I truly loved being single, where getting in my own little world has been the best and happiest treat, whether I’m writing, painting, organizing the shelves, or just snoozing on the couch rewatching Gilmore Girls again.

And for making my own little world so pretty, the MVP award definitely goes to my apartment. The story of how I got it is how I want to let life be more often: One Sunday morning I was all grumpy because my divorce apartment was filled with cigarette smoke from the creepy downstairs neighbor. I was so crabby I couldn’t even deal with finding a parking spot at church, so I came up to the prettiest street around to take a walk. I overheard my now-landlord talking about showing the place and I stopped, butted into her conversation, and came up the driveway to see. The walls were painted a hideous pumpkin orange, but she said I could have any color, and she got my robin’s egg blue exactly right.

This is the first place that ever really felt mine, the place I most truly belong. In the mornings, I open the door and let the cool air in, stand there with Frannie and see how many morning glories bloomed. It’s a still and safe place that reminds me of the countryside I grew up in, but with an independent bookstore three doors down.

The apartment became the home of Fun and Games Poetry Class, which was definitely the biggest and happiest accomplishment of the year. That I made money for praising wonderful writers and helping them bring out their best work feels like such an incredible gift. I’ve written them so many thank you notes already, but the curiosity, generosity, and imagination at the heart of my poet pals is a force of nature and I’m honored whenever I’m in their presence.

The same goes for my made-up creative coaching careers. That my friends have trusted me with something as personal and delicate as their creativity, that I get to foster breakthroughs and encourage indulgence and celebrate expression at my own kitchen table is a dream come true, and I would love to see it expand in the coming year.

I’ve already said a lot about the year’s losses, but they need a little paragraph. It still hurts that classroom teaching didn’t work, that I’m not able to work for justice in the way that I wanted to. The harsh, tenacious, beautiful lives of my students still haunts me, will never leave me, and I hope that I can honor them in this new life. As soon as one more clearance comes in the mail, I’ll be back writing poetry with the library kids, so that’s a start. Though the panics of school haven’t left me yet, I know I’m getting stronger.

And okay, I’ve put off writing about him long enough, there’s a guy. It’s too soon to tell what we’ll be to each other but he is a man. He makes plans, he takes me out on real dates, he remains unfazed when the darkest parts of me come out. He lights me up. I don’t want to say more or I’ll jinx it, but it’s nice to be hanging around with someone who makes sense for me—it was a long way to get here.