What to Do When the Light Turns Blue With Orange and Lavender Spots

When the light turns green you go

When the light turns red you stop

But oh, what do you do when the light turns blue

With orange and lavender spots?

--Shel Silverstein

HEY EVERYONE I AM SUPER NOT OKAY!

None of us are! So great, so glad to be part of this trash compactor of a world with SUCH people in't!

Though I didn't start this Patreon until well after the 2016 election, I remember devoting a few essays over the years to how anyone is supposed to make art in an an environment of such constant, deafening chaos and horror and psychological bombardment. How unfairly stupid work that seemed beautiful and important before disasters can seem afterward, even though it isn't, really. (I know I have spent the last week yelling I CANNOT WATCH OR READ ANYTHING ABOUT POLITICS OR THAT MAKES ME FEEL MY OWN FEELINGS RIGHT NOW. STUPID LOUD CHEERFUL BULLSHIT ONLY I AM GONNA FUCKING LOSE IT...so making stupid loud cheerful bullshit is by extension what a lot of people do need no matter how it feels.) How difficult it is to tell if the world is down or if it's just you, how baffling it is when your personal life starts falling apart at the same time that the big giant everything out there starts falling apart, and what anyone can do in that shitsoup to keep on swimming. Back then, I thought I had a few answers to that, or at least some coping mechanisms. Or at least...a climbing anchor shoved in the rock to maybe get up to something like an answer eventually.

WELP.

It would probably be a good idea to write some more about that, with "fresh" insights and a we can do it attitude, or at least pretend to, to help others, be a good community-builder, hand out some hope because even if it's false it'll keep you the fuck warm while you sort things out BUT I AM TOO BUSY HAVING A CONSTANT FREAKOUT.

Jeeeesus. I don't even know where to start. I keep trying to jump back into my work because I sure do have a shit-ton of eCoNoMiC aNxiEtY right now but turns out that one tiny little soap-sliver of hope that these undead jackals would turn out to be not quite so bad was REAL HELPFUL in 2016. I don't have that now.

And now I have a child, which was not a factor in 2016, and the fear I have for them is so much worse. So much worse. Everything I'm writing feels pointless right now, not knowing if milk is going to cost $15 in six months or if some slightly less insane capitalists will decide they, too, enjoy living in a stable society where proles are capable of buying their profitable products and quietly removes the tariffs permission slip off the Oval Office desk. Despite what I said above.

And I know. I know all the things I've said before. That art is always important, that even fluff can have soft and powerful effects, that we can take care of each other and find a way through, that they win if we give up being who we are and doing what we love and loving who we love. All of it. And I hope to fuck it's still true. We HAVE to proceed as though it is to have any hope of making it so.

BUT IT STILL FUCKING SUCKS SO BAD. I am so afraid, and I know you are too. I am afraid for my gender non-conforming household and the very precious, lucky life I was just starting to get back after years of pain. I am afraid for everyone I know. I am afraid of the economic effects of all of this, and the much worse social ones. I do not know what to do, or where to go that would be safer than this little island. I am afraid of and for the power of the internet, this thing that has brought so much joy and magic into my life, this thing I use to connect with all of you, and how it has been weaponized against all of us--a weaponization apparently soon to be automated, which seems like a great idea, what consequences could there possibly be?

So I go back and forth between: fuck it, America wants this, all I can do is tune out and hunker down and I need to do something to fight back and Man, I don't even know if I believe those election results (but I'm not going to storm the Capitol about it...but is that part of the problem, that everyone knows our side won't?) with a side of my baby and I have to find a way to get the fuck out of here despite that being an insanely difficult proposition even with our advantages and a dash of utter, light-swallowing nihilism.

But of course, I can't tune out. I went and made myself into One of the People Who Talk About Politics for some godforsaken reason. On a smaller scale, but enough. On the night, I saw a lot of people advising progressives to purge their online accounts of any anti-conservative posts, anything that marks one out as part of the "enemy within."

Yeah. So I can't do that, either. Even if I thought it was the right move to deny who and what I am, to silence myself pre-emptively, to hide and reject my long-held beliefs--because I have always, always spoken the truth out loud as I see it, right or wrong or inbetween or all three, I have not lied or postured or pretended at virtues I don't have, none of it, I've just been myself for so long I don't know how to fit a mask on anymore. Even if I thought doing that would protect me and my child, I've been publishing in print for twenty years. And posting PRETTY FUCKING LONG ESSAYS ONLINE for twenty-five. There's no way to purge all that. You'd have to be pretty thick to read one chapter of anything I've written and not know where I stand. I'm out there, and frankly, if midlist authors with big fucking digital mouths on islands in blue states become a genuine target of the government, we have such bigger, bloodier, more chaotic, more world-ending problems I can't imagine pretending I've always been a nice traditional girl in a farmhouse dress is gonna do a damn thing.

So here we are. Stuck in a time loop. Nine years stuck in a time loop with this bizarre homunculus of a man who somehow has the power to warp perception and reality around his ego and keep the time loop going. It's a kind of hell. At least we're here together--but that doesn't make it less hell.

And BECAUSE IT'S HELL, we all still have to go to work every day. For a minute, I thought the worlds in my head were a pretty solid place to hide. I was so bodied by 2016 I couldn't produce anything for months. This time...I'm so numb, but I felt like I could, I felt like maybe it was the only thing I could do. then I sat down to write and my brain went AHAHAHA GO FUCK YOURSELF ALL WE GOT IS SHADOWS AND DESPAIR UP IN HERE.

I'm still trying.

And that's all there is, I guess. We all have to keep trying. I remember when that felt like a pretty hopeful thing to say. Right now it just feels grueling. Maybe it's particularly rough for those of us raised in the 90s on a diet of "this is the end of history and things aren't going to be like they were anymore" to get stuck in this monstrous, self-inflicted Civil War/WW2 hybrid devil baby. Of course we are the cynical and ironic and jaded kids, but we thought maybe we'd...have different problems in the future, not have to play out the past over again with slightly updated wardrobe.

I still don't know what to do. I see the cabinet appointments roll out and a jubilant media already laurelling itself as new heroes of the resistance and Democrats walking straight into this goddammit and Elon Musk acting like our new king (oh my god every SINGLE geek who got angry at me for saying Elon Musk was a complete piece of shit, never going to Mars, exactly like all the other billionaires and no one's Tony Stark--except in that Tony Stark is also a piece of shit--OWES ME A WRITTEN APOLOGY AND FLOWERS. I LIKE PEONIES) and my body physically rejects reality to the point of actual palpable pain IT'S REAL GREAT.

And still there's the empty page and the bills due. I have no chill. I smile for my baby, and the faking it helps a little. I keep trying. A little at a time. If we all just accept it, it happens. It might happen anyway, but it definitely will if we just lose our will to hold onto this country that we all talk a lot of rightful shit about, but that no one gets to just set on fire because the heat makes them feel alive.

I have a neon sign on my porch. I posted about it when I had it made. And I knew when I had it made that sometimes it would feel beautiful and hopeful, and sometimes it would feel grim and awful. That was why I put it up.

Over the last week, it's made me want to throw up every time I walk by. Even though I know it's factually utterly correct: these last weeks of the year will be the good times in a few months. And those few months will be the better days a few months after that. And so on. Maybe it will get better. Maybe it won't be as bad as we fear. Maybe they can't do it all fast enough to prevent 2026 and some check on it all. Maybe they'll be as incompetent as always and only get a portion of the damage they crave done. But the times we hold each other and know each other and protect each other, the times we make space and respect and help for each other--the good old days are the days when we have the strength to do it. They can't take our hearts from us, no matter what they want or believe.

So we keep trying. I keep writing. Even if it's fluff. Fluff comforts, warms, softens the blow. You keep writing. You keep creating. Even if it's just knitting a scarf for a cold human or cutting a sandwich into a heart shape or making up new lyrics to a stupid pop song. Creativity is corrosive to authority. That's precisely why as soon as AI was good enough, the powers that be instantly went about replacing artists first. Because human art is a wild free radical mutative force--it flies in the night without stopping and changes people quietly, forever. Robot art is controllable.

Ours is not.

We are not.

A few days ago, Bastian asked if Harris Walz won the election.

I said no, honey. 

They asked if Donald Trump was one of the people who like to control others.

I said...oh love. Unfortunately yes.

We'd had a talk in June about why they couldn't go to the Pride dance on the island anymore. The real answer being because Republicans got super weird about drag and kids and they made it 21+ even though it had always been a family friendly event. I said that some people don't believe boys should be allowed to dress as girls or girls as boys, or boys to marry boys or girls to marry girls, or anyone to not be a boy or a girl or change from one to the other.

They said: but Mama that's us! Why are they like that?

And I was tired. Even though now June seems like a world of energy and drive. Ok, the true grown-up answer is that the world is hard and scary and some people think if they can control what other people do and think and say and who they are, and make them all the same, then the world won't be so hard and scary anymore. They're wrong, but they try anyway.

And this beautiful little creature I have to protect marched off through the garden store full of flowers, clenching their tiny fists, tossed their hair back, and announced to the geraniums: well, NO ONE can control what I am. OR what I do.

So, when we talked about the election, and they asked if Trump was one of those people, I took Bastian in my arms and said: Hey, remember when we talked about Pride and you said no one can control what you are or what you do? Well, that's the truth. No one can control who we are or what we choose or what we do. You were so right. And that's what we have to be now: exactly who we are, whatever happens. And we have to protect each other, so everyone can be what they are. OK?

And they seemed to accept that. I hope.

We all gotta be that kid among the geraniums. Clenched fist. Head high. NO ONE can control what we are. OR what we do.