Keep Punching

Those two words have become the tagline for so many of my communications.

Now they are directed at me. Why? Well, I see so many I admire and respect doing exactly that – punching on and on. My ex-wife Suze has just compiled a great video of Minnesota poets urging voters there to do exactly that – VOTE! The great Lucian K. Truscott IV has another spot-on column on Salon, this time on Trump's hair. Stephan Salisbury is whacking on Trump day and night. My cousin Sue is writing her “Messenger” column for our Blog, HOCUS POTUS: Travels With Trump. My old pal John Meyerson is on FB constantly, never letting up. Tim Hayes is sharing on FB his days as a true revolutionary and his role today as a vital community activist.

 

I am humbled by these folks' untiring punches. I am also so tired and so worried. Trump's ceaseless onslaught on America has me winded mentally and physically. And now with the death of RBG, so much more care is being heaped on this already care-worn country. The smoke from the West Coast wildfires has clouded my vision of America. Millions are jobless. Hundreds of thousands are dead from a pandemic that has spread from the White House to the farthest reaches of a defenseless nation. Despair beckons. 

 

So I must heed my own rejoinder and reach back and keep throwing these punches. They are my contribution. They should keep coming, as much for me as for whoever reads them. Worry is useless. Ex-wife Suze has hipped me to the Dalai Lama's take on worry, which is that it serves no purpose other than wasting energy that could be put to positive use. She actually had a come to Jesus talk with a friend whose worrying was getting the better of him. She stopped their walk on a bridge over the Mississippi and gave him the news. It helped.

And that is what we must do in these perilous times – help each other in any way we can, support each other, comfort each other, fire each other up, calm each other down. But keep punching. 

 

November 3 has been the locus of my worries. I have run so many possible scenarios through my poor addled head that they have become a pastiche of paranoia. This is the wrong approach, I have mostly convinced myself. No matter what I can imagine, it won't be what happens. History guarantees this. Just as we couldn't have imagined the crazed country we find ourselves in – although the signs have always been there for those who could read them – so can we not really imagine what November 3 will bring. 

 

In the place of worry should be the action so many are taking – ceaseless, creative, impassioned, vital action. I have to remember that. I have to do more than tell others to keep punching. I have to do it myself. So consider these few scraps of prose as a left hook coming off a hard jab.

 

It's all I can do right now.