There are no words, except for those in my second novel (working title Chances) which have been flowing steadily since late January. Because, I think, creativity can be an act of self-preservation. Because creativity can be an act of resistance. Because creativity, when destruction is everywhere, is vital.
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
James Baldwin
There are times when writing flows and times when it ebbs. For me, for months now, it has been ebbing. But with the dawn of this new year, a year in which it seems to me that creating art, in whatever way we do, will be imperative, I had to find words that inspired my own to flow again. This quote from James Baldwin’s 1963 bestseller, The Fire Next Time, are those words. I write because I believe being willing to be vulnerable reflects strength, rather than weakness. I write because I must remove that mask I “know I cannot live within.”
The Jeff Bezoses of the world don’t really need more of your dollars, but every cent spent at a small, local business matters to your neighbors, your community, and your state. Shopping local supports the families of the folks who work at these shops—the shops that prioritize the people in YOUR community. Shopping local also supports your cities and states through tax revenue.
I’m a long-time bookseller, and now a partner, in a beloved local, independent bookstore in Albuquerque, New Mexico—Bookworks. And Holly worked at, and now owns, Bottle & Bottega in Portland, Oregon. These businesses support more than ten families in their respective communities.
From necessities picked up daily at The Merc a few minutes from my house to the art on my walls from the Wild Hearts Artists’ Collective, small local businesses make my life better. Is there a shop around the corner from you that makes your life better?
Vincent Van Gogh said, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Take these words to heart, please, and support the local businesses in your communities—small purchases add up to big differences!
My values are not for sale.
Integrity. Competence. Excellence. Kindness. The scientific process. Considering facts in decision-making. Not calling names (My mom taught me that before kindergarten. Didn’t yours?). And did I mention integrity?
My values are not for sale. Not for a tax cut. Not for a “drill, baby, drill” pennies-at-the-pump gas price decrease. Certainly not at the cost of destroying the democratic experiment we’ve been conducting in the U.S. for 248 years.
Unlike the stock market, which spiked at the prospect of bigger corporate tax cuts and loosening business regulations, my hopes are at an all-time low. They’re going at fire-sale prices. Make me an offer for them, as I’d love to believe hopes are worth something.
But my values, they are not for sale. Not now. Not on January 20, 2025. Not ever.
So, those are some thoughts. And feelings, well, let’s start with profound sadness. But what will I do? I’m working on that.
What are your thoughts, feelings, and plans?
In the aftermath, I choose to put one foot in front of the other, to focus on the beauty and serenity of the natural world. I am privileged to live in a place filled with it, and also to travel to places that are truly spectacular, like the Grand Canyon. In my last post, I took you along on my recent four day backpacking trip there, and I choose to go there again in my mind and my heart.
I hope this short journey back down the canyon’s trails brings some light to your day, as it does to mine.
The canyon, grand, pulls me back.
Nine times I have loaded a heavy pack
and hiked—down, down, down for days.
There is beauty, yes, but there is more.
It is a journey through deep time.
Reaching with my right hand, my fingers brush
the fine sand of windblown dunes built
hundreds of millions of years ago.
And my left? On some of this canyon’s trails,
my left hand extends over an abyss of hundreds of feet.
That moment, right hand upon a carved crossbed, left in thin air,
demands my attention be as firm as my boots upon the narrow track.
I must stop, if I’m to admire a mud crack preserved for more than a billion years.
I must stop, if I’m to take in the dangerously steep and stunningly beautiful walls
of sculpted schists formed nearly two billion years ago.
I must stop, to let my heartrate slow from the climb, but quicken in amazement.
One partner, decades ago, was paralyzed by the realization that she could fall and disappear
in the vastness. But for me, that realization—my smallness in the canyon’s immensity in space
and time—feels freeing.
Starting the descent, this ninth time, in the chill air of an October morning, I walked with two others.
Partners who relished the realization as much as I. Those days with them, with our focus (on paths
along precipices), with our awe (at the enormity), with our appetites (could reconstituted freeze-dried
green chile mac and cheese taste so good anywhere else?), with our laughter and our sighs, along with
the Canyon wrens’ songs and Canyon frogs’ chirps, a concerto of companionship of women walking
together in this world.
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