The safest place to be away from home, after the local coffee house, is inevitably the library. Out of necessity I am not at home. Outside of the library window, there is a blizzard. I am at the library in front of the fireplace with my books and my layers of coats and my knitting and my Chinese takeout. Said “happy new year” to the man behind the counter at the family restaurant – across the street from the waterfall – that burned down shortly after the pandemic hit. They had to rebuild and it is so, so beautiful on the inside now. When I said “happy new year” the man behind the counter smiled.
Hospitals and churches are no longer safe sanctuaries from the icecream trucks which are making their way through my city. We’re still shipping billions of dollars in weapons across oceans; may the ceasefire endure. There is no foreign aid being sent anywhere, including to the places that desperately need it. This administration is aggressively going after access to medicine and inclusive care. They are also withdrawing support from programs meant to tend to public health and ameliorate the effects of climate change. My two primary sources of information right now, aside from word of mouth, are National Public Radio and The New York Times.
A friend quotes the saying “when people tell you who they are, believe them.”
Certain elements of the press are cultivating an atmosphere of fear – this is not difficult, in many cases it is simply accurate reporting.
With “an open hearted hope and a closed hand full of friends” (Foy Vance) I am digging my heels in against the way I would usually respond to being afraid. I would usually freeze up and shut down, unable to think or do anything, and get stuck in a cloudy haze of dread. Or I might flee and literally run away and hide and stay hidden under a kind of seige. Or I may even fawn and fall over myself to try to please everyone and let people say bigoted and empirically false things in my vicinity without speaking up because it too much of a risk. Or I could fight. God, sometimes I would love to be able to fight. Yell and scream and dig my nails into the flesh of the problem and hit it with my fists and kick and bite and scratch and go for the eyes like an animal backed into a corner.
But none of these will do, not really.
The kindest thing to do is to stay informed without feeding into the fear.
It occurs to me that if I have ever needed a backbone it is probably now. If I have ever needed a stiff upper lip and a chin held high, it is now.
Even in the midst of all of this grief and worry I still feel safer than I do almost anywhere else in this beautiful sanctuary that is the local public library. A librarian tells me they don’t close for hours and I can stay as long as I need.
A mother walks in with her daughter and is afriad she owes money in late fees. She is told that she doesn’t owe them for late fees on her library card because the library doesn’t do things that way anymore, and they would like the books back. Her daughter is maybe three years old, long hair, dressed in primary colors. She can’t stop looking at the fishtank. Later she doesn’t want to go home and when they have to leave she cries. I cannot turn off the instinct to look across the room and make sure she is okay.
