The Butterfly Effect

What is happening in this sprawling world
As you flex your crooked sunset wings?
I press them firmly between hot irons
Dry as paper, these delicate things
I admire your starry thorax, the blacks, my favorite part.
He just sighs and rolls his eyes
I call you “sweetheart.”
 
He laughs, “Let nature take its course!”
“Rachel suggests I should keep her alive;
She says she’ll stop eating if she’s ready to die.”
“They don’t have volition,” he snorts,
“I’ll crush her for you if you prefer.”
“An act of chivalry?” I sneer, then whisper,
 “You look straighter.”
Into what I think is your ear.
 
He relates his daring Mexico trip way back in ’82
“Disgusting,” he said, “A hemolymph rain!
Hell, I just plowed right through!”
But he is well traveled, and we are naïve
Single minded captives of asymmetry
Deprived of the trip would make us whole
 
I ask,
“Should I crush her fast or freeze her slow?”

Mandolin

 

 

What, besides fine dust, layers this object?

Joy, discovery, frustration, regret, fear, failure. 

To my visitor, it is a decoration

With its golden-brown body and its mother of pearl.

 “Why don’t polish it?” She asks.

I acknowledge the neglect and answer her,  

“You only see the dust.”

Christmas, 2020

 

 

This year, I will master silence
I will  make less noise than a snake’s tongue
Footsteps quieter than an ant’s procession
Words like the snap of a spider’s web
A blinking eyelash whipping the skin.
 
Instead of speaking, I will listen
The birds will praise my subtlety in song
And I will recognize each of their voices
In the night I will walk below a chorus of moon and twinkling stars
I will hear the brush of my ghostly gown along the pebbles
And the worms plowing the earth
 
Instead of moving, I will be still
Nests will be built in my hair
Possums will curl their bare tails around my limbs
Bats will crash into me and fall to the grass
and I will ponder the sound of each hair on each blade
For eternity.
 
And then, next year, I will master invisibility.
 
 

 My body has been

Against me all of my life

Ugliness, fear, pain 

 Little worlds in cracks

Sun stretched clung root persistence

I take your advice 

Number Five

When I moved to New Hampshire, I picked up the trash scattered throughout the forest all the way up my street. I dragged it home, carefully rinsed out the tobacco pouches and mud, and then, with my flashlight and magnifying glass in hand, I began the process of separation. There were a few glass bottles and aluminum cans. There were the typical number ones and number two plastics. The nip  bottles were mostly number one. The Dunkin’ cups? Number five.

Without the option of curbside pick-up that I had grown accustomed to, I hauled the booty to the recycling center. Soon after I arrived, my exuberance turned to dismay when I found that the plastic disposal area only provided receptacles for my ones and twos. A stern attendant stood watchfully nearby.  

“Remove your caps,” He said, “They pop off and take out the workers’ eyes.”

I immediately complied, tortured by the thought that up until this moment, my negligence in this area had resulted in serious eye injuries for millions.

“And rinse them out better next time,” He added, clearly unsettled by the number and variety of dirty nip bottles I was dumping into his barrel.

“Where do I put my fives?” I asked in a disheartened tone.

“We don’t take them,” he replied without sentiment. 

I was incredulous. I had always been able to recycle my number fives.

“China stopped taking our waste in 2018. It’s just going to a landfill.” He stated matter-of-factly as he strolled away, leaving me aghast, alone with my limp bag of Dunkin’ cups.

“What an absurd system,” I grumbled on the way back home, the irrepressible cups bouncing on the seat beside me. “Don’t worry,” I consoled them, “I’ll find a way to keep you out of the waste stream.” 

A year later, I still have that bag of cups, straws and lids sitting on my screen porch. I thought about displaying them out on the side of the road with a hand-painted sign: “This Forest is not your Dumpster”. I then considered filling them with sand and building a garden wall. An art piece? The orange straws would make a nice Christmas star. Yesterday, I vowed to ship the whole lot off to Dunkin’ with a note: “I found some of your stuff lying around and thought you might want it back”.\

“Once you buy something,” my boyfriend said as I attempted to find the CEO’s address online, “It’s yours.”

“Yeah, well, it has their name on it!  Why do you write your name on your underwear? Because it belongs to you,” I protested on my way down the basement stairs in search of a shipping container. 

“It’s not their fault that people are slobs,” he shouted after me.

I emerged from the basement, cobwebs sticking to my face and hair. “Even if you can change human behavior, it takes hundreds of years. Dunkin’ could change this problem in a day.”

“Really?” He looked up skeptically from his morning tea.

“Or maybe a week,” I muttered, cramming the cups in the box. 

The timeline aside, the real question, it seems to me, is why is this my problem? Why am I racked with guilt over somebody else’s transgressions? I am not referring to the litterbugs, although a new round of public service announcements might be helpful. Change, in this case, is not going to happen from the ground up. Yes, I know, there are many innovative alternatives to single-use non-degradable plastic out there, but they are practical only for diehard deep ecologists and people of means.  The average American will buy what is affordable and accessible. Relying on public education and individual responsibility is not the answer; people like the convenience of single use and besides, with a pandemic ranging, it is almost a mandate.

I am pointing my wagging finger in one direction only: at you, manufacturers. I am stunned by the effort you put forth on a beautiful package without any regard for its not-so-beautiful future: lying around on the floor of a forest, floating down a  stream, stuck on the writhing head of a furry animal, choking the majestic whale and the innocuous sea turtle, filling the guts of the mighty albatross, piling up on our screen porches… it has your name on it, guys.

The solution is clear. Manufacturers, it is time for you to take responsibility for your packaging from cradle to grave. The technologies already exist, you just have to care enough to implement them. Right now, you reap the profits but absolve yourself of the consequences as soon as the product hits the shopping cart. We, the people, have grown accustomed to this unfair arrangement, but this is not the way it has to be. 

We are drowning out here in plastic

Journalists: Where are your binders?

Absurd: a tab in Kaleigh McEnany’s famous “binder” of talking points that, I must admit, was very satisfying to see. From the beginning of her ascension to the position of White House Press Secretary, I have followed all her theatrical performances, paying close attention to her scripted body language of which her incessant “binder flipping” is a part. Like some Tantalian folk tale, the binder teases me from behind the podium.  I am dying to see how it is laid out and what is inside. I imagine her lovingly piecing it together on the carpet of her living room, barefoot, in her fuzzy pajamas with a glass of merlot in her hand. Seeing even a bit of it was a total rush.

I started obsessively watching these conferences hoping they would set the world right. I had followed McEnany’s career enough to expect a phony charade and was certain she would not survive in a room full of seasoned journalists armed with the truth. Clearly, the briefings would be a validation of my need to have authenticity annihilate superficiality:  food for my soul.

If you have not had the pleasure of viewing one, McEnany’s press conferences are, quite obviously, formulaic. They are carefully designed to promote the actions of the president.  She shamelessly spins every question and rarely provides a direct answer. She uses her binder to present “facts” supporting her whataboutism, and her journalistic plant, Chanel Rion, to hand feed her questions. She begins and ends with an advertisement sometimes complete with propagandist videos.  Her tactics include scapegoating, lies of omission, serial positioning, cherry picking, and simply ignoring questions she cannot answer. She does all of this and more, but even from the perspective of this inveterate progressive, she wins every time. Though McEnany should be scrambling out of these briefings defeated and exhausted, she instead glides out like a self-satisfied movie star.

I have two potential reasons. First, what McEnany says is the unassailable truth or second, the press corps sucks. Though in my more Twilight Zone moments I have entertained the former explanation, to preserve my grip on reality, I usually side with the latter.

The press is playing bit parts in a show in which McEnany is the star. They arrive with pre-determined questions. Most of the time, the answers are hijacked, often just serving as a springboard to promote the President’s agenda. These sacred questions are posed regardless of what McEnany says, or if the question has already been asked and the answer already given. Rarely interrupted, her spin hangs there fully preserved and unchallenged. Maybe I am ignorant, but questions cannot be adjusted to respond to a real time situation?  Journalists: where are your binders?   

For a recent example, McEnany opened her 7/16 briefing with the following statement: “The president reversed the disastrous overregulation of the Obama-Biden administration…The cost of these burdensome regulations falls disproportionately and benefits disproportionately lower income Americans.”
Even my own half informed brain could identify issues:  omitting the benefits of regulation and the costs of not regulating, associating a long history with Obama exclusively, leaving out the fact that many regulations protect the public from the indiscriminate actions of the moneyed elite, the insinuation that Donald Trump is the champion of the poor… Surely somebody would oppose it. Surely somebody could flip to her tab labeled “regulation” or “the poor” and beat this one down. I understand we are in the middle of a pandemic, but we already know Trump’s position on masks.  

At the very least, I wanted one person to fact check this opening statement in real time, and at best, I wanted them all to toss their prepackaged questions out the window and corner the assertion like a pack of hungry wolves. Instead, it was allowed to stand, and, later, the main takeaway from this briefing? According to the press,  McEnany claimed that, “The science will not get in the way of us opening schools”, which she did, but then clarified it afterwards with comments that clearly exonerated her from the statement’s worst possible interpretation.

My conclusion? I am beginning to believe that the press is, as the Trump administration claims, after the president and not, as I rely on them for, after the truth.

Absurd, indeed.