Four thoughts that might or might not be related

or half-composted material for a future essay

One: Bob and the endless hand grenades

Yesterday was the last day of teaching for the year for me. I drove out to hear the class I don’t teach read their poetry. My drive: teacher appreciation chocolate, a sandwich with jam my mom made, NPR and freeways. Genocide, nuclear weapons, SNAP cuts, the military deployed unasked for to LA. A molasses-thick heavy dread in my muscles.

Then a room full of happy, enthusiastic kids, mostly 9-11 year old boys, proudly reading their stories and poems to beaming parents, who held up cell phones like rock fans with lighters, recording their backlit children read hidden behind sheets of lined paper. And it was beautiful and happy. And yet. With a few exceptions (including the bravely sung and hilarious Ballad of a Cheeseburger) almost all the kids’ writing contained unprocessed violence: violence meant to be drama or humor or justice. Violence without horror or empathy or pain. Violence as resolution. Violence for claps. And again, these children were aglow with pride and the ease of happy kids in a place they love. I’m so glad for them, and I think their teacher made a really special space for them this year. And I also think that my job next year, as I plan the curriculum and share it with their teacher, and as I teach my own classes, is to nudge the kids past constant cartoon violence, towards empathy and genuine emotions. I think they deserve to be expected to have that breadth, and to practice it. Fiction writers like to back-slappingly talk about how fiction is an empathy-creating thing, so I guess what I’m saying is I want to hold myself to that, and put fiction to work.

Two: philosophy at the grocery store

It’s a strange time to feel happy. The grocery checker and I agreed on this today. Both of us are having a great year, personally. As they put it, “At home, things are great, but 2025….” The shelves of the store were half empty because of the UNFI cyberattack, many shoppers looking a little stunned and uncomfortable. “I kind of feel like a monster,” I said. “It’s OK,” the bagger told me. “Enjoy your happiness.”

But I’m thinking about that a lot these days, now that I feel like my life has more give than it did a few years ago when I was solo parenting a toddler through the pandemic, for instance. I’m thinking about responsibility outside my personal sphere, and in it, and about the importance of happiness but also of it not being at the expense of others, at least not more than I can help it. I mean, I want happiness to be good for everyone, and I feel like it can be, but isn’t always done that way.

An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, yes, but can happiness also be viral?

When we first got this house, A. dreamed of having a garden on the street, full of flowers and a sign inviting people to pick them. This year, that garden has grown in, and we have flowers enough to share. If she still wants to, I’ll let her put up a sign.

Two winters ago, A. and I spent breakfasts dreaming over a cottage garden book. Now, the roses it inspired have begun to bloom, and they smell better than any rose I know. The bush is so short I have to kneel to smell them, so I do. The rose is out front too, where anyone can kneel and smell it.

Three: grooving and flailing

For a long time this spring, I was in the writing doldrums. No wind, no momentum, just heavy stillness. The possibility of failure. I’ve been querying a novel for what’s starting to feel like a real long time. It’s disheartening and I’m mad about it. I want my novels to be published. Like Gerald the Elephant, I just want to be read.

I vacillate between feeling like I’m in a groove and feeling like a big dorky literary cringefest. I’m not trying to put myself down — this is how it feels. Sometimes, most of the time, the groove is an internal one, and I’m flowing on the writing itself. Sometimes other art gets me going. Sometimes the groove is a social one, like when something I read is well-received, or I’m in an artistic conversation that feels sparky and satisfying. Sometimes too, I won’t deny, it’s getting accolades.

The cringe is like the feeling of standing just outside an interesting conversation, trying to break in, but nobody seems to hear you. It’s like being stuck in clothes that suddenly mortify you. It’s like door-to-door snake oil sales. It’s the lingering smell of yeasty vaginas in a public restroom. It’s teenage me’s whole family in matching full-body electric blue rain clothes. It’s like making earnest things nobody wants, and watching everyone hurry past your stall so they don’t have to say no.

I know both these feelings are just part of it all. But it also feels like I fall off some kind of rail, or lose some kind of electrical connection, just start flailing in loose air. I can do the same action and once it connects and another time it flails. If anyone has any insight into this, please share!

Four: democracy, for real

I’m not protesting tomorrow, for family/plan reasons, but I do want to say, protest well and thank you, everyone who is. Let’s kneel before roses and otherwise stand tall.