Bathsheba Monk's Blog

It might be the darkening days. Or maybe it’s the coolishair wafting in from the formerly frozen north reminding me that nothing ispermanent.

There’s a giant anvil hanging over our heads. It casts a bigshadow. The sense of peace I was lucky enough to enjoy in my lifetime is over.

Currently, there are 45 armed conflicts in the world, notjust the two—Ukraine and Gaza—that  arereceiving all the outrage. There are a lot more waiting in the wings too. The Pennsylvanianational guard is training to deploy to the Horn of Africa. NATO forces aremoving closer to the edge of Russia for the inevitable conflict.  Warships are practicing in the SouthChina Sea and cruising around the Mediterranean just in case.

What?

We’re covering the world in military hardware, selling it tohungry national buyers and law enforcement agencies and selling it to eachother in case we catch our neighbor pissing on our petunias.

Did I mention the mass migrations—caused by climate crisesand the resulting lack of arable land—which in turn causes a political shift tothe far right and authoritarian regimes? 

Happening here, under the shadow of the anvil. What can I,one lone crank, do?

But it’s Christmas and I’m trying to feel hopeful in theface of compelling evidence that man is a mad animal incapable ofself-awareness. Trying to see the light, like I tell everyone else to do.

At Christmas Vespers at the old Moravian Church in Bethlehemseveral years ago, I got a whiff of what it feels like to be hopeful. There’s apart in the service where the lights go out and everyone lights beeswax tapers.The student choir descends from the organ loft and files through the pews tothe front of the church singing an African hymn and moving gently to its beat. Iclosed my eyes, in the cold desert night with them, marveling at the supernova lightyears away in the sky and rejoicing at the palpable shift in energy. It was as iftime and all creatures froze and genuflected in the face of the goodness whichhad visited us in the form of a little baby.

I knew it was theater and mythology, but I cried my eyesout.

Because what did that little baby say? He said, love yourneighbor as yourself. 

Peace, love, and happy Christmas.

 

It might be the darkening days. Or maybe it’s the cool airwafting in from the formerly frozen north reminding us that nothing ispermanent. Not even us.

Yikes, ok. Especially us.

I’ve outlived enough generations now to know that achildhood spent cowering under school desks against a nuclear bomb attack isnot the same as a childhood spent cowering under the blue-light unreality ofTik Tok.

However terrifying and trauma-inducing those two experiencesare, we are not the same animals. The animal has changed stripes.

Here’s one example. I am shocked and embarrassed for youngwomen I see setting up their phones and prancing around for selfie videos.  Seriously? I would slink out of the ladies’room if someone caught me primping, ashamed someone would think that I thoughtmy appearance warranted a second thought when the world is burning.

Here’s the news flash: the world is always burning.  Always has been. These kids got the memo. Dieyoung, stay pretty. BE pretty. Even if you use filters to achieve prettiness,it doesn’t matter. It’s what’s on the screen that’s real.

Currently, there are 45 armed conflicts in the world, notjust the two that are receiving all the outraged press in the USA. (Thank youLucian Truscott III for pointing that out in a recent article in Salon).  Atrocities that we animals are visiting onone another are being recorded and passed around. War porn. The side thatrecords the most “thumbs up” videos wins in the international court of Tik Tok.

Americans understand the power of TT and are using it toestablish our moral superiority and invincibility. Our prettiness is intact. Thelast twenty years, the federal government forbade the media to run pictures offlag-covered caskets of our soldiers returning home, as if to make it not so.Schools are banning the teaching of our violent history to make it not so.  It’ll take 100 years for some newer modelhuman animal to discover what we are now in the process of forgetting. Or maybethe task will fall to AI.

Look at all the shit we already forgot. When the news ofHenry Kissinger’s death was reported, I would have found it amusing if itdidn’t show how stupid people can be, that we forgot how the US murderouslymeddles in other countries affairs if it is in our economic interest.

Excuse me, that’s wrong. If it’s in the economic interest ofbillionaire investors in those countries. Another issue, for another time. 

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. That discussion felloff the agenda as quickly as it was put up there.  As if, whew! Kissinger’s dead, so we’re notdoing THAT anymore. As if we ever stopped. Because we now do it under the cloakof shell corporations where Tik Tok dares not shine a light. There’s no filterstrong enough to camouflage what goes on under THAT cloak.

I keep wondering when the fall-out from those dealings willreveal itself.

In that sense, we haven’t changed. We’re still coweringunder our desks, waiting for the bomb to drop.

 

 

 

Barreling into the Thanksgiving Season the chorus ofgratitude begins.  Lord, thank you fornot making me homeless, shoeless, sickly, foodless, stupid, uppity, short, misinformed, ugly, or fat. The list is endless.  

Although Idon’t like to reference the Bible, not being an expert on its contents nor a subscriberto its Santa Claus boss, I do occasionally peruse it to see what my fellows areup to and there it is: Luke 18:10. A Pharisee thanking gawd for making himsuperior (he’s the bad guy in this story) and a Normie (the good guy) beggingfor mercy because he’s a sinner. Whatever the hell that is.

Sometimes bible subscribers ask me – for my own good -- what I’m going to do about my original sin. 

Say what?

If I was born with a defect, how is that my fault? Soundslike propaganda from a ruling class that wants to keep me in check. Ask the Manufacturerhow I got through quality control with faulty brakes. Don’t ask me.

But I’m not godless and I resent the casting of me as anatheist, a disbeliever in accepted myths. I’m a fiction writer. I very muchbelieve in the power of myths and mythical figures. Stories. I just don’tbelieve these mythical figures are sitting on my mantlepiece monitoring mybehavior and reporting back to headquarters.

I’m reading a giant book of fairytales right now, and Ithink they should be required reading in third grade. Fairytales are myth-likelessons in wisdom passed down through generations and they illuminate truthsabout human nature. 

Like, everyone wants a beautiful mate and will often waitthrough several permutations (frog, beast, somnambulant princess) to get one.

Like, greed propels people to do cruel things which are oftentheir undoing.

Like, the scullery maid knows a lot, a LOT, of shit and willsave the day and wed the prince.

These are mythical figures and I pay attention to theirtruths because they have weathered the storm of time. They aren’t gods.  

But, as I say, I am not godless. What I call god is theenergy force that powers me. And you. The energy force that powers my cats, thegiant oak in the back yard, the grass, the creek, the fox that scavenges theneighborhood on garbage night. We are all propelled by the same life force and I am highly respectful of that force. 

And I can live with grace as long as Irespect the rule it plays by, which is this: there is a time to eat and a timeto be eaten. Trying to force its hand by supplication and flattery and falsemodesty won’t get you anywhere—if by anywhere you mean immortality, a free passat death.

So Happy Thanksgiving to those who observe. Be glad you don't gobble. And becareful with that wishbone.

 

I knew I would love my house when I met the grandfathertree, a 250-year-old oak in the back yard.  “I have seen things!” he introduced himself.

I am privy to a few of the things he saw, some through art,most via hearsay.  He whispers gossip when I do yoga on his crispy fall leaves or meditate with the crows in thesnow.  Theneighborhood is alive on many levels and his height and depth assures he missesnothing.  Bugs, birds, worms, marauding coyotes and humans. I can’t tell you everything, because you have to speak tree tounderstand, and if you speak tree you already know.

He tells the neighbors about me too.  It’s part of the deal. No secrets in thegarden.

A maple tree brushed my window when I was a little girl. Shetoo whispered information to me, what happened before me, what was happening atthat very moment that my feeble human senses couldn’t detect.

I spoke tree better then than I do now. 

It was, in fact, my first language. I didn’t speak Englishuntil I was four and everyone thought I was going to be a big problem. “Jingeleish”I called it. But here’s the secret: I learned more from maple tree than I didfrom the nuns.  Sometimes I feel thatwords get in the way of understanding. And I’m a writer. I’d probably make abetter tree.

I went back to that house as an adult.  It looked like a crack house. Boarded up. Ashadow came out, wrapping itself around me, taking my measure, before going upin smoke.  A branch from  the maple tree wasgrowing through the bedroom where I slept as a girl. Punched right through. Ilaughed and  called to it, sure she waslooking for me—I had so much to say!—and she was, and she filled me in on whathad happened since, her orange leaves rustling in tree song, her old branchescreaking from the weight of stories which we scared each other with.  Happy Halloween.

 

 

Yes, I’m the mountain lion who tried to snatch yourbaby. I was hungry. Game is scarce. But I’m not sure I was stalking to eat. Yousee, a month ago my son was run over trying to get across your four-lane, andmy ill will hasn’t lifted because I saw it happen. And then, of course, thebaby was on a blanket on ground that once belonged to me -- before thedevelopment, before the four-lane, before your nonchalant indifference to theeffect of whatever you feel like doing has on me.

 

They’re hunting for me, but they’ll go easy when theycatch me, and they will. After all, it’s not any of the violent barbarisms youroutinely practice on your miscreants that they’ll use on me. No. They’ll putme down –  a euphemism for murder me -- byeuthanasia. I’ll feel just like I’m taking a nap. Such noble humanism.

 

It’s happened to so many of my family, so many of myclan -- we who were here long before you clambered up our mountainsides withyour Indian guides and long rifles – that it’s become what your species callthe new normal. 

 

And oh, sincere apologies for the inconvenience my soncaused. Serious impact damage to the car. The police report says doing 80 in a 55zone. Your insurance is going to go up, you know how that works. And howabout the traumatized children in the back seat. My goodness, another thing to haveto work on in therapy.

 

I have a modest proposal that will even the playingfield. I think if you’re willing to be honest, you’ll agree its time has come.Euthanize the driver. Or better, turn the driver over to me.

 

The coin of the realm is knowinghow things work. Consider putting some of that coin in a piggy bank until youhave enough to buy something big. But jiggle them in your pocket now and then so you remember you have them. 

Speaking of pigs, I had a dreamthe other night that four big orange pigs were trying to get in my house. I googledit and the common wisdom is that hogs symbolize abundance, prosperity etc. 

Hooray! Right?

Truth:  those pigs trying to enter my house remindedme of Trump. I didn’t look THAT up because I suspected it meant I was addictedto Trump Porn. OMG, I’m a monkey in that circus. We’re all feeding that beast.That’s how it works. Put a coin in my piggy bank. Ca-ching.

A few times in my life whereI felt my world shift and I put a couple of coins in my piggy bank:

When we bombed Iraq in 2003. USwas the villain raining black death on the land. We weren’t the good guys. Ca-ching.

When Citizen’s United was passedby SCOTUS in 2010.  Big money runs theshow.  That's worth 2 coins. At least. 

When I realized and said aloud that I didn’tbelieve in a god with two eyes, a nose and a mouth and pissed off…well, Ipissed off everyone because I dared say it aloud.  But the truth is, Ialways got that god confused with Santa Claus. Making a list, naughty or nice? Old man, white beard, sees me when I'm sleeping?  Seriously? 

Speaking of Santa Claus, way back when the Easton Expresswas still a print paper, a boy I was dating was a stringer photographer.  They paid next to nothing and in fact wantedhim to write the captions and accompanying story without paying him forit.  They thought he wouldn’t notice theywere ripping him off and he should just be thrilled to be able to say he was a professionalphotographer. He got an assignment to photograph some school Christmas party in Roseto and when he gotthere he picked up one of the presents under the gigantic Christmas tree,shook it, and told the kids who had gathered around him, “There’s nothing init. See? A hollow promise. They’re ripping you off.” 

They hustled him out of there when the teachers figuredout why the kids were crying and back at the newspaper office, hisboss said, before firing him, “You don’t want kids thinking about that shit.They don’t have to know.”

But they do. Knowledge is power. Ca-ching.  

We are the UFOs that your gov-speak calls Unexplained Aerial Phenomenon. We’vebeen observing you closely since your Galileo’s heliocentric prediction earnedhim a lifetime of house arrest. Despite your cosmologic maunderings as to our existence,you’ve never drawn the self-evident conclusion that if you saw us it would onlybe if we wished to be seen.

 Well, here we are, in your faces, the orcas of your skies.

 Our initial optimism about you as a species was based on your seeming to havebrains that were embryonic facsimiles of our own. We were guarded – we’d erred inoptimism before. Our fallback was that if you continued in your predatory ways,like thousands of defunct species before you, you would end up disappearingdown a black hole of your own making. What we failed to reckon was that youwould take your galaxy’s beloved Earth down with you.

 Valhalla, Arcadia, Eden, Avalon, Rakuen. The Ellysian Fields. Shangra-la.So many names you conjured for a yearned for mythic paradise in the just beyond,when all along it was the ground right under your feet.

             Paradise Earth. We’d vacationed amongst you for millennia. Our favorite timewas the long temperate Mediterranean period that preceded your mania for conqueringnature. We would mimic the architecture of the epoch to avoid attention, or ifwe were forced to evacuate when one of your incessant armed arguments with eachother erupted nearby, we would call on a volcano to incinerate the evidence of ourpresence.

             We’ve informed the animal and avian species of our decision. We’veassured them that our blow will be human specific so they’ve nothing to fear. Aband of their fiercest petitioned us to do to you what you’ve done to them. We understandtheir bitterness, but it is not in our character to be cruel. We pity youryoung who are beginning to walk the walk their 60’s forebears sang of. We’ve rapturedan articulate few so a firsthand account of your galactic atrocity is witnessedthroughout the entirety.

 We are sad, for ourselves as well as your young. In our fourscorethousand years we have never had to make such a decision – wiping out a fellowspecies, especially one with seeming intellectual capacity. How you could have broughtruin on your paridisiacal home mystifies us. There is nothing like Paradise Earthin any of the universes we are aware of.

 So now, in the name of the Wakan Tanka of all and ever, Blackout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going in!

I swore never to do this, but the specter of AI has me panickedthat the flavor of being human is going to be lost.  I’m pretty sure we should all be documentinghow it feels to be flesh and blood before the Big Forgetting. Before we losethe words to describe the imprint the sensual world makes on our individualpsyches and we’re forced to go to the Common Data Base to borrow a can ofmemory which will then pass for a soul.

So, considering all the press Barbie is getting, it’sfitting to start a blog about memory with her. 

First off, I didn’t own one, my mother thought Barbie lookedgrotesque—more on that later if and when I excavate the mother stuff. The yearI asked for Barbie, I inexplicably got an electric train set.

Presents are indicators of how people see you. Over theyears I’d gotten an atlas, a too-small fur hat, sexy dresses, a baby blueShetland sweater and matching plaid skirt all of which I would never wear in public.A guitar I would never learn to play. Half ownership—with a brother—in a boxedset of Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical. I gave him my share and the rest ishistory.

But one wondrous Christmas I opened a Smith Corona portabletypewriter. So, there’s that.

And Barbie did come into my life and changed it.  Like a lot of things I wanted, she came longafter I lost interest.  The universe alwayspays up, but she does love to play.

Like a cat playing with a mouse.

Anyway, Barbie. My ex-husband bought her. Not for me. Norfor himself.  

He was working at the Bank of Boston corporate loan department.

Mattel was a big client.

He hated his job.

When we moved to Boston after six years in Europe, we foughtover who would have to get the corporate job to keep us afloat while we pursuedour art.  He lost the coin toss whichdetermined that he would have to buy a blue suit and pound the pavement.

Interesting fact for the Common Data Bank, people could gointo a business and drop off a resume once upon a time. Sometimes, a hiringmanager would come out right then and there and interview you for a job. Sometimesthey would hire you on the spot. I know, right?

Back to The Bank of Boston, bastion of White Christiandom.They still celebrated Christmas, and ex’s department had a Secret Santa. Hepulled the name of the loan officer for Mattel out of the hat.

Ex spent a lot of time dressing Barbie. I had black fishnetgloves. He cut two fingers off and fashioned them into ripped stockings.  He used my eyeliner to both define and defileher eyes which then looked like Barbie had a VERY rough night.  He meticulously shredded a cat-o-nine-tailsout of a pair of leather gloves and glued it onto her fist.

He wasn’t fired immediately after the Mattel loan officeropened his present, but all corporations were downsizing then—Japanese businessmethods were the rage—and he was let go at the first polite opportunity.

Realistically, it wasn’t Barbie’s fault. Business waschanging, so he wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. Banks, which used tohire liberal arts graduates because they could think, starting hiring businessmajors exclusively because they presumably knew how to make money. 

The irony is that they didn’t.

But that, like the mother stuff, is for another day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 The RNC chair admonished republicans to not join the presidentialfray just to promote a book.

Wait…what? Is that anoption?

Anyway, aren’t they the ones who are BANNING books? What are they doing WRITING them?

I can’t imagine what they’re even writing about.  Probably some social ideal that never was butthey claim to remember.

Today, the air in my town is orange and smokey from forestfires in Canada.  It reminds me ofgrowing up when the blast furnaces were cooking.  I never knew the sky could be blue withfluffy white clouds.  I thought it was a ruse to sell calendars.

When the EPA passed a law in 1974 to curb pollution, in asleight of hand, the black smoke turned white. Titanium? Who knows how they finagled that. The air was still dirty nomatter what color the smoke. Another ruse. 

People talk about getting those jobs back. They forget theprice we paid for those jobs.

Hey, the orange air is making me nostalgic too even though Ihate that. I hate visiting the cathedral of my past. Very hazy in there. I didn’t have an idealizedRepublican childhood with no curve balls. 

I’m thinking today of a boy I knew in home room in high school.  Something La Rue. I forget his firstname.  

We had a couple boys commitsuicide that year and that year was a long time ago.

One of the boys had long hair and was very handsome. Hisdaddy, an executive at the steel company, was rich. He couldn’t have been crazyabout his son’s long hair. The boy always had a paperback in the back pocket ofhis jeans. A loner. Always reading instead of playing sports, which boys like himwere expected to do. He took acid and jumped off a bridge.  That was the official word.

I couldn't be sad, because I knew him: I didn't know him. I was sadbecause he was enough like me that it took my breath away. I read a lottoo. 

The other boy, Someone La Rue, I saw at the swimming poolthe summer between junior and senior year. I was with my friend, Janet.  Wewere looking through Glamour magazines trying to find the right “look” for ouryearbook pictures, which we had to get taken the next week before schoolstarted.  La Rue was sitting on a stripedgreen towel close to us, although we had to look twice to recognize him. If Ithought about La Rue at all, which I didn’t, it was that he didn’t have anyfriends and the homeroom teacher, Mr. Butz, always seemed particularly kind tohim. That day at the pool, he didn’t see us until Janet laughed loudly atsomething in Glamour, and he turned to see us. Then he stared straight ahead,daring someone to say something about the bright yellow 2-piece string bikini onhis skinny body and bright red lipstick that clashed with his yellow mop ofhair which he had obviously permed.

Janet punched me and whispered. “Hey, is that?”

I’m not a saint. I giggled. I didn’t have words for what Iwas looking at.

Maybe if I did, I would’ve said, “Hey, La Rue. Want somejelly beans?” or “Hey, La Rue, want to look at Glamour magazines with us?”

No words, though.

Maybe if I had had a book.       

 

 So yesterday, I was traveling around in Kate Middleton's matchy matchy coat.  That's what fiction writers get to do. We put ourselves in someone else's shoes--in this case someone else's COAT 'cause I'm not good with spike heels on cobblestones--and have a look around.  

I was thinking about pearls and Karl Lagerfield and the Met thingey.  My first question is why any woman would allow a man who hates women (Karl Lagerfield) to dress them, much less why would women celebrate him? Second question: what's with all those stupid pearls?  

See, Kate doesn't wear pearls.  She has SERIOUS jewels, one of which would put a family of four on easy street for the rest of their lives. 

I'm not criticizing her. Not in the least. I mean, great earrings, tiaras etc.  Even the matchy matchy coats!  I wouldn't mind some of those cast offs.  (Keep the hats, though.) And how can you not admire that stiff upper lip and those 6 inch heels?  On pointe. Never teeters. That smile. Always on.  

I see some holes in the fabric of her life, though.  

Like, who the hell is William anyway?  I don't think I've ever heard him say a word.  Her either for that matter. But they laugh together. I know that because their lives are well documented.  Something's amusing, they're always laughing at....something that I'm pretty sure I would find perplexing.  

But no voice. What does she think about, that princess with no voice with the husband with no voice? What do they talk about after they put the kids to bed and put their feet up to read in front of the fire? 

What priceless jewel am I going to wear tomorrow, dear? No, that's snarky. She wouldn't say that.  Probably, nice charity event today, dear.  You, too!  You shook a million hands! Don't forget to wash.  Because it was a CHARITY event after all, and you know those unwashed masses with their teeming and yearning. 

I guess that's the part that galls me.  I see the number of charity events that each of the royals bless with their presence and I don't think, wow how marvelous of them taking their impeccably groomed selves to mix it up with poor unfortunates. I think, what's wrong with a system that needs literally thousands of charity events to shore up its citizens?  Not to get all commie, but isn't something wrong with the distribution of wealth that so many people depend on the kindness of strangers?

Why doesn't it gall Kate? 

And now, she's being promoted to Next In Line. 

I hope someone gifts her some potent mushrooms on coronation day.

Maybe she'd rip off her million dollar necklace and toss it into the crowd. Pearl earrings too! Next off, those glass slippers.  Pitch 'em, baby!  Leave 'em for Cinderella's sisters. Gather her kids in her arms (although I think it's too late for Georgey, look at his expression, he's a towel snapper) and run as fast and far as she can in the direction of a meaningful life. 

I can feel the cobblestones on my bare feet.  The freedom of not carrying centuries of jewels on my head and my neck and through my ears. Jesus, I didn't know I could run this fast.  OMG! The spell has worn off and I'm turning into....whaaaaaa?  Oh, no. 

At least, that's how my novel starts.