What Happens When Hate Wins? by Sara Wright

Do the sandhill cranes stop singing?
Do the junipers cease to release their scent?
Do the stars fall into the sea?
Does the white moon weep??

I want to keep writing stories…

The wind still ruffles fine sand in the wash.
Cottontails leap, jumping through twilight.
Scaled quail still peep as they scurry over red ground.
The thrasher gobbles his suet without restraint.
A woodpecker taps at my window.

I want to keep writing stories…

My heaped up heart aches with loss.
It’s not just a bloated misogynist’s win
It’s the loss of personal power and hope.

I keen for the women with wings –
women who support women
through difference, vowing
to meet on a common plain…

I want to keep on writing stories

Where are the women with wings?
(And the men that support them)

I listen to the sandhill cranes cry out
as one holy body in flight.

United in purpose

they know their destination
cannot be reached in isolation,
by splitting parts from the whole.

Birds know betrayal by name
and do not choose it.

Oh, where are the women with wings?

Scattered like seeds of wild grasses,
keening as they journey on.

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Working notes for the first Trump election:

November 14 2016

Grief: the problem with grief is that it isolates us from others, especially those whose anger turns outwards in blame, targeting one individual or perhaps a whole group. Those individuals or groups then become scapegoats for the rest of us who do not have to suffer having a hole ripped through our hearts.

Historically a scapegoat is called a “sin eater.” One person is cast out of the group and that person takes on the sin/burden for all – a chilling reminder of what humans are capable of doing to others. This devastating election has brought the sin-eater to life as HRC. Our country continues to blame Hillary even though she has lost the Presidency. I personally am exhausted by the anti –Hillary rhetoric and would like us to begin to focus on how we are going to survive the dangerous new world we are entering – the one where the earth is trashed, where women have lost control of their bodies and their self hood, a world where human decency and integrity is mocked and humiliated, a world in which lesbians and gays, other races and immigrants are under constant threat of attack.

Walking through the desert has been my greatest solace during this first week. The sandhill cranes are migrating south. Their haunting collective cries comfort me, reminding me that for now, at least, the skies are still full of birds… I can give thanks for their songs.

Sandhill cranes are an ancient species. Some say they are the oldest bird fossils ever found, and they can be viewed from Northern North America to Siberia. Others believe they are souls of the dead To see them in the sky and to listen to their calls reminds me that in Nature, at least, reciprocity in relationship is still commonplace.

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Working through grief on the first day of a second Trump win:

11/ 6/24

I’ve been writing about the cranes for a week.

Last night I dreamed:

 Deep Cellar Scare: 

 The dogs and I talk in English but they are my dogs too – we are a threesome – we live together on a ground floor but there is a dark and dangerous cellar beneath us. We go down there because we hear NOISE and CHAOs erupting – is the outside door open or shut? It’s open – disturbing – we investigate – nothing – but then something scares us and we run upstairs  – we’re so scared but we go back down and then the door is shut – and we didn’t do it – who did?

 SOMEONE GOT IN.

 I woke up. It was 10 PM.

 Late yesterday afternoon while walking my girls I had a nudge. ‘Don’t listen to election coverage’ that little voice said. I complied, and because I was not living under the illusion that Kamala would win the presidency I was surprised to have had this dream.

What’s ahead is apparently going to be much worse than I imagined. Why else have such a dream (dreams never tell us what we already know).

Like everyone else I am living in the space in between.

My Vet and I have discussed our beliefs around the November election for months. Both of us are well grounded in our bodily selves, and trust those bodies to know what we might not know otherwise. Both of us couldn’t imagine how Kamala could win. He doesn’t have a background in mythology like I do but responded immediately to my suggestion that this election had mythical undertones. My point was and is that we have strayed too far. And that all actions have consequences. Trump could be viewed as an intergenerational consequence. Beginning with the Indigenous genocide that began the day colonists entered this country, we have slowly been piling up atrocities. The first of course was what we did to the peoples who lived here.We killed them and stole their land. We brought in slavery and a system that immediately morphed into the European power over structure that we call patriarchy. A war dominated mentality. We created a constitution based on Indigenous democracy but forgot to include women. We kept on killing. With the Industrial revolution machines entered the picture. Life got easier, and we wanted more, and more and more. Money and Power. Lives based on Progress and Comfort. We kept on killing. By the time Rachel Carson entered the picture with dire earth ecological warnings in the 60’s we had logged every forest in this country at least three times, mined every mountain we could scale, dammed precious rivers polluted waters. In the seventies women became visible for a time. One house wasn’t enough; now we needed at least two.The machines got bigger. More pollutants entered the air, the waters, wetlands disappeared. Nature was dead.Time to strike out for the moon. Cruise the solar system. Behind the scenes the rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer. The so called middle classes started to disappear. Strip logging replaced forests that were cut; we were running out of wood. Enter the internet. Small businesses disappeared swallowed up by bigger companies.The country was in the hands of a few old white men and military might. What happened to ethics, integrity, compassion, honesty empathy? Community became almost non existent, replaced by clubs most of them virtual. Today this country is run by robots and owned by 4-5 conglomerates. Freedom is a joke. We no longer communicate in person and are accountable to no one. Because this slow descent into hell has been a process that has occurred over 400 years it is probable that most have been unaware until recently.

 The 2016 election forced too few of us to take a hard look. In the beginning of his reign as king I was sure that Trump would be removed because I believed the man was insane. By May of 2016 I was forced to concede.The public was entranced. I dropped out of politics and never went back. I began to ask myself: how did we get here? I paid close attention to the amount of media coverage that kept this monster front and center realizing that it didn’t matter what the man did – he didn’t care. All he wanted was attention. And so it has remained through the last nine years with Trump gaining ground every year thanks to the non – thinking, non -questioning American public who I believe simply wanted to be entertained by the all too willing media. Yet one more distraction. One more addiction. Shooting children is sanctioned, we have to have our guns. I won’t bother to address the normalizing of hatred revenge and rage that have destroyed the last shreds of an oligarchy that has the arrogance to claim democracy. Other nations have come to despise us, but we don’t care. As a culture all we want is for things to stay the same. A warming climate barely gets a nod, as giant gas eating trucks speed by my road and I turn on a light. We have all become part of the same problem willingly or not. And Trump is our current savior. A terrifying thought. Money and Power won out. If I sound angry it is because I am. Grief is a complex process and I have been grieving all year. Where have we been during this last eight years? How could we not see what was coming our way? Just yesterday I ran into a woman who said reprovingly after I expressed my belief that Trump would win with “you must hold the vision”. So much for new age thinking. Another in the grocery store hooted at my I voted sticker. “I haven’t voted since 1972 and am proud of it”. No place to go with that one but remarks like these and others about incantations show me where we’ve been. Of course there are exceptions but exceptions don’t produce a win. We are about to enter the Underworld, one of mythical proportions and I think it’s critically important to acknowledge this as truth.I am not sure how this storyline will play out, only that it’s happening and that some will suffer more than others.

The cranes are silent.

When I spoke to my Vet this morning his first words were “I thought I was prepared for this but I am not”. Either am I.  What we can do as individuals will vary from person to person. he refuses to have his roof replaced by anyone who is a Trumper. I stopped in the middle of this writing to put white lights on my beloved cedar tree. I’ve kept them on all day. A tree for life. ‘You are my guardian tree’ I told my seedling when I dug her in the ground in 2017. “Some day you will be tall enough to light up the night.” That day has come.