the living is easy
fish are jumping
and the cotton is high
your daddy’s rich
and your mama’s good looking
so hush, little baby
don’t you cry
Saturday, September 1, 1923, an 8.0 earthquake killed 100,000 people in Japan. Homes shaken into ruins left millions of people homeless.
I ran across this bit of history in a book I was reading, and I realized: Trump is an earthquake.
Yesterday I was so, so tired, all I wanted to do was put together sticker puzzles. For the uninitiated: there is a paint-by-number looking page, and then four pages of stickers with bits of color, and one moves the stickers, one by one, to the picture. It’s not like a mystery what the picture is. It’s more like making a mosaic (one of my covid hobbies). I made three yesterday, which was kind of insane. I sat cross-legged on the couch and periodically picked a new youtube video.
The way to to enjoy them (the grown-up ones at least) is to have tweezers. I do not like “fiddly” things (sorry I’ve been watching a lot of British Sewing Bee), but the control and precision of tiny tweezer claws on a tiny sticker, and affixing it almost perfectly, is satisfying in the extreme.
I had a lovely morning, and I planned to go to party that evening, but all I could interest myself in was this hobby.
Hobby: that was one of the videos. How turning your hobby, a thing that brings you calm and joy, into a business, is often suggested but it generally a terrible idea. (Sorry to the historic clothing youtuber who has suffered to bring us this message.)
It got to be time for the party, and I hated everyone, and I did not want to see anyone ever again. Then I looked at the New York Times (has there ever been a more beloved friend, and a more painful messenger?), and the president had ordered bombings of Iranian nuclear sites.
We’re at war in the middle east? That was supposed to be the only thing he was good for: not getting us into wars overseas, no matter how noble the cause.
Trump is an earthquake.
I’ve never lived on a fault line.
(This isn’t true: there is an ancient and deeply asleep fault line near Kansas City, but it is so ancient and so deeply asleep that we never think about it. Or the fact that once it altered the path of the Mississippi.)
I hadn’t been sleeping well. I worked for three days, and the work was tiring, but not onerous.
Maybe it was onerous.
Maybe I get more tired than I think I will.
I have a lot of opinions on how I should feel.
After the earthquake in Japan, 6,000 people were murdered. In that way humans have of taking a painful situation and making it exponentially worse as a result of their desire to retake control, some decided the earthquake was the fault of people who were Korean. As you might have guessed, they also killed people who were Chinese and Japanese, because mobs aren’t discriminating.
Right-wing Japanese people still “express skepticism” that this happened.
People are terrible. It isn’t only western people denying the Holocaust, or denying that January 6th was a coup attempt. People everywhere are terrible. Democracies everywhere teeter in their democracyness.
It’s terrible, and I guess it’s normal.
One thing I’ve been repeating this summer is: “that’s part of a normal human life.” Depression? Yes. Anxiety? Yes. Joy? Yes. Questions about morality and what is endurable and why it is so fucking hot outside? Yes.
My dad still sings. We sing as a family, grace before a meal, or Christmas carols, or more spontaneous and random American songbook and standard musical theater fare. When the heat crushes us, I remember my dad singing “Summertime.”
He has a bright tenor. I remember most of the songs he sang to us as kids were mournful, though he isn’t. “Summertime,” but also “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and “Sixteen Tons.”
“Summertime” is a bit of our southern roots. Though we be solidly Yankee (as my dad recalls sadly my great-grandmother pointed out to him), we have a few bits of southern culture (good ones): black eyed peas and grits.
How did I know “Summertime” was a southern thing? I guess “the cotton is high.” Early in your American life you will probably identify cotton with the south, the War of Northern Aggression (yes), and mournfulness that comes from the tragedy that was (is?) the south. I guess it makes southern writers. I don’t like southern writers. (Sorry.)
(Aside: Stephen Sondheim described the lyrics to “Summertime” and another number from “Porgy & Bess” as “the best lyrics in musical theater.”)
The words tell you that it is all a lie (like the south): “the living is easy,” “hush… don’t cry.” My daddy was rich (relatively speaking). But none of that mattered, life was crushing as humidity, unbreathable.
And also beautiful.
One of these mornings
you’re gonna rise up singing
then you’ll spread your wings
and take to the sky
until that morning
there aint nothing can harm you
with your daddy and mama
standing by
Going On 