“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

There isn’t much more to say about the past week in this country – a country I no longer recognize, as much as I am unsurprised by where we are. Most of these silly posts were programmed in advance of recent days, but there are a few that address it because our silence is our complicity. People may not like political posts, but when politics become a question of morality, it is our obligation to speak up. Now, a look back at the previous week, when just a few days ago things felt only slightly less awful…

Backlit and blurred – a time before an image… I do not remember it.

Holy mackerel!

Hitting all the red lights.

Pre-populating these winter thrills.

Sounds of the seasons.

Do you know the muffin man?

Mind your busy-ness.

Pie of humility.

Longing for these underwear-clad days.

Caught in the knit.

The law of the cellular land.

As the rolls rise.

The sanctity of ritual.

Locating the sliver of extra light.

A wintry silver lining.

A post of pause upon the murder of yet another American citizen by ICE.

Hey MAGA, didn’t many of you vote for Trump to protect your 2nd Amendment rights? Well, the government just shot and killed a man for legally carrying. They took his gun, THEN they shot him, point blank, multiple times. It’s on video and we can clearly see what happened. They are treading on YOU.

Two days before that murder, these seven House Democrats voted to continue funding ICE. I fear many more FAFO moments are in store for our struggling country.

Sitting down to a cup of peppermint herbal tea, still scalding hot and sweetened with just a spoonful of honey, I would normally send out a volley of texts with the photo you see here, captioned simply, “This is cafe culture.” A silly and foolish way of staying in touch with friends.

Today, it feels pointless and stupid and too sad to do such a thing, as our own government just ruthlessly murdered yet another American citizen on our own soil. Watch the video and see for yourself; don’t listen to the media or the White House at this sad point.

You wouldn’t know it here in the sanctuary of a cafe. The staff still serves its coffee and tea and food stuffs. Clients still find their friends and sit down amid laughter and bonhomie. Talk of football, snowstorms, and the typical winter banter spills out from other tables. Because really, it’s just another Goddamned day in America, and this is what we supposedly voted into office. Well, not me, and not most people I know, but too many to stop what some of us knew was coming. Here we are.

And so I pause.

I read. I sip tea. I meditate.

Selfish self-preservation, because no one seems to care.

Ladies, gents, and all who defy such limiting labels, I give you the silver lining of what is to come.

Enjoy.

Relax.

Take it easy.

Luxuriate.

Revel in the insect-free zone of the year.

It’s not important what I write.

It’s not important what I wear.

It’s not important what I even do.

What’s important is that I’m here, sitting in the cafe, honoring ritual and tradition and carving out a new set of habits to see me through the winter.

These words are mostly hollow and empty – vapid vessels that give my hand something to do in pushing pen across paper – and it’s good, it feels good. There is joy enough in physically writing, in finding the flow of letters, slowed in my head for having to write them all out. Writing, in its physical hand-wrought form, is becoming a lost art, and a favored indulgence.

At one of my early jobs with the state as a Keyboard Specialist (now called Office Assistant) I remember the head Secretary (now called Administrative Assistant – we have come so far!) being given something to type out, and the person doling out the assignment asked somewhat sheepishly if she would mind typing it out.

“No, it’s been a while since I got to do straight typing, and I kind of missed it,” the Secretary said.

I understood exactly what she was saying, how good it felt sometimes to execute a routine, especially one at which you excel and do well. Going through such physical practices can be soothing, almost meditative in a way.

There’s a similar feeling I get as I write out these words on lined paper. It is structure, it is order, it is ritual – all at a time when those things move further from comfortable reach. Most of all, it is a process – and I’ve always loved the process and the practice more than the result and finished product.

The little pockets of time in which humans sometimes have to wait have always fascinated me – and I usually attempt to make them mean something more than the killing of time. What an awful phrase and concept – killing time. I’ve always hated the expression, as time is one thing I’ve genuinely valued, perhaps more than anything else.

In the end time always, and only, wins.

When given a time window – for furniture delivery or furnace repair or that hour for letting a batch of cinnamon rolls to rise – how do you prefer to spend the minutes? While I say I’m going to read or write something, more often than not I simple pause and let my brain roam wildly, recalling all those other suspended hours of waiting – the day I waited for a new bed in Boston, watching th sun slowly pass over the hardwood floors – or the morning I spent in the waiting room while Andy had his most recent medical procedure. Losing myself in thoughts is how I spent those moments, and a little philosophical exercising is good for the mind.

I happened upon two knitting clubs in the span of three days, surely a sign that I need to get back into the yarn game. The first was at a yarn store, the second at my usual cafe. The yarn store group seems a bit more serious – the members sat quietly and intently at their work, the leader guiding them with a general stitch comment, while the cafe group seemed looser, with food and drinks and more talking.

My knitting journey will likely not be part of a group, and will actually not be knitting at all, but crocheting, as I can barely handle one hook, much less two needles. The loose and gentle plan is to improve and practice technique with the basic granny square and grow from there. My first project – this blanket that took literally forty years to complete – was too long and too ambitious to be a good starting point. In the end, I conquered it, but I’m not going to do it again; I don’t have the years left. So granny squares it shall be for now. Baby steps, baby stiches… they pass the days of winter.

Unpopular opinion #8,547: I don’t love pie.

No matter what kind, I’ll take a slice of cake over pie any and every day.

I don’t hate a pie, it’s just not my preference. And if it’s a humble pie in the metaphorical sense, I’m just as un-enamored of it, even as I find myself eating them more and more the older I get.

Personal unpopular opinion #5,711: I’m not perfect.

That’s a bitter little pill to swallow, and I’ve had a persistent and lifelong prescription for it because I make as many mistakes as anybody else. The most difficult lesson for me to learn has been in acknowledging those mistakes, and then learning from them. The learning past has been easier than the acknowledging, but both have come a long way these past few years.

Life teaches you when you are ready to receive the lesson, and it will keep trying until you get it.

How much of our lives are simply about being busy? Whenever I wax philosophical about human beings and what occupies our time, I’m struck by how silly and trifling our pursuits are when presented in context with the basic requirements for survival.

Take sports – and the mass hysteria for events like the Super Bowl or World Cup. If some alien from another planet were to study humanity, and why we do what we do, how would one explain something like the Super Bowl – or the celebratory parade that follows in the days after?

Or take sports out of it, since so many will be offended by any criticism of their favorite past-time, and think of any parade. How ridiculous it would appear from a place of distance and disinterest. Animals don’t parade around without purpose – they do so to get somewhere, to stay safely together, to protect themselves.

Humans parade for arbitrary dates, self-imposed days of import, man-made holidays. We are a strange species, and I often think our subjects for activity and celebration, perhaps even purpose, stems from a fear of not being busy, not having to something to occupy our time – when really we should be embracing moments of not having anything to do.

To simply be.

To breathe.

To exist.

Why is that no longer enough for us?

The business of being busy is like a hamster wheel for humans, and too many of us are afraid to get off.

I have a friend who only eats the tops of muffins, leaving the rest in the wrapper or cupcake tray in which they were baked. When he visited us once, we awoke to find a pan of muffin bottoms only, like some wild animal had come in and ravaged them in the night. I don’t want to embarrass him by naming him outright, but it’s Chris and he knows it.