The Grasshopper #71: The Unexpected

I’ve missed a week and here is why

Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash

Hello everyone, sorry to miss my self-imposed deadlines for publishing The Grasshopper and The Witness Chronicles this week. Saturday night, after drinks with friends, I came home and had another. Bad idea. On my way to bed I fell and planted my face into the glass of a print on the wall, which shattered.

70 stitches and several hospital visits later, I am recovering and reassessing. I cut my eyelid and had surgery yesterday, which went well and will heal, but right now my vision is limited. As for me, my healing process will involve some big lifestyle changes, all overdue. I’ll keep you posted.

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Another week, another set of crazy weather and equally crazy politicians. I’ve only skimmed the stories due to my accident, but this morning was struck by a relatively small story about the State of Texas taking over a school district in the state’s largest ‘blue’ city, Houston. Their first action was to fire all the assistant librarians.

Yes, in the middle of a national educational crisis they are firing educators. This really isn’t a small story because these people represent the future of our country, as they teach students about reality and how to cope with it through books. Knowledge is power as the saying goes and the right are depowering these kids, teaching distrust of any truth they disagree with.

I have no words, other than these. But the writer in me is determined to double down on telling the truth as I see it. And I believe that is the goal of writers everywhere, regardless of political leanings. Excepting the propagandists on both sides of course. They are despicable.

In the hospital I was asked by a worker what I did got a living. When I told her I was a writer, she was genuinely interested and said she had never met a writer, a common response for me. In our writer fishbowl where it seems everyone aspires to be a writer and write well, it is easy to forget that writing is increasingly an exotic profession. 

Not too many years ago it was common for writing to be at the center of basic American education and many people wrote daily, if only to communicate with those in their circle. Now we have local and state governments who censor our work and discourage children from discovering truths of life in reality, not some version designed by extremists.

Our last President was known to hate reading and to have the vocabulary of a third grader and was admired for his willful ignorance, so this is not a minor change in our culture. Many dread having to write even a simple email. I have been paid well to write emails for CEOs and other business leaders who simply found the task too time consuming or challenging.

This top to bottom devaluing of basic communications skills is not accidental. When dictators set up shop, enforced ignorance is one of their most powerful tools for solidifying their hold on that power. That starts with censorship and punishing those who seek to tell the truth.

This means two things to those of us who write and create: the need to fight back and the understanding that our work has real power and impact. Take the power seriously and in turn use it to become a better communicator and educator.

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Idalia, the first major hurricane to make landfall in the US this year, is still ravaging the East coast. Cities in the west are under fire warnings even as they alternate between deluges and hot dry weather.

My life has two aspects, the personal and the professional, that are converging in ways I’m just starting to absorb. My own self-destructive actions have forced this reevaluation and it is overdue. Simultaneously, I’m reevaluating my work and my future. 

Addiction has dark connotations to most of us, bringing up images of people in alleys shooting up or dealing with violence and death. The reality is not that picture, which was a political creation of politicians like Richard Nixon who used these fears to keep himself in power by portraying addicts like this to show how poor and people of color lived on a daily basis.

The reality today is much more complex. My own addiction takes place in very nice places, drinking costly drinks, and having conversations with interesting people who likely have no clue that it includes events like those that I described earlier, an apartment covered in blood and days in hospitals.

Addiction is another means to political control and power, but I can’t blame that reality for my own issues. They are self-Inflicted, but nonetheless serious, and I am taking steps to deal with them. But I will still be writing and having our conversations about life. It’s part of my personal therapy.

Have you written today?

Thanks so much, Martin

821 words

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