We were reading a science fiction story in which the people do not eat real food, but only some kind of artificial goo.
“That’s like what my cousin had,” a student said. “She was out of her mind and drank drain cleaner, so they had to feed her through a tube.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
The next day, a student was telling me he was tired because he’d been up late helping his mother, who is a cleaner. “One time, before covid,” he said, “we went into this one place that was so filthy, and I found a guy in the bathtub with a needle in his arm. He was dead.”
“Oh, my God,” I said.
Later I said, “You have been through so much. It’s amazing you’re such a nice guy.”
It’s easy to forget that my students are the high scorers on the trauma scale. It’s just our day to day. It’s just our small town, where a teacher sees one of them, smiles and greets the kid overenthusiastically, and the sullen student’s lips turn up just a tiny bit. We love them down to size. On our good days.
We don’t often talk about our students’ traumas. First, because we are not therapists (some of them have therapists). Second, because we don’t want to dwell. If you’ve been through hell, let’s focus on what we can control, which is right here, right now. Thirdly, because going into re-traumatization mode can be emotionally overwhelming, and take time away from getting something accomplished. It feels good to accomplish things.
The Epstein files are released, with the president’s name featured 38,000 times.
I saw a post that said he was mentioned more often than Jesus was mentioned in the Bible, which I thought was a joke.
Nope: Jesus comes in at 1,300 appearances.
Over the weekend, I attended two Mardi Gras celebrations. (It was our big weekend.)
The first was a party I’ve attended for many years, at a neighbor’s place. They set up a yurt in the backyard, and I perched on a stool to provide room for my feathered hoop skirt. Friends on either side. I marveled, at one moment, how lonely I was when I lived in New York, how excited I was for my social interactions. Here it is so easy to be surrounded by friends and acquaintances and people who have been in the periphery of the scenes I also acted in.
We strolled, we danced, and I had a lot of maneuvering to do with my hoop skirt, I tell you. I tried hard not to be rude with it. But also it was a feminist statement of taking up space.
We stopped by another friend’s house and enjoyed the sign on a bathroom door, which forbid pooping in that particular bathroom. People got beers from the porch because it was that cold.
The next day, another party, and though it was hard for introvert me to gear up, I did. This time, in my pigeon costume, with pigeon makeup, and a nice red cape with my krewe name, and my krewe necklace. We gathered on a snowy street. This party has lots of kids, which I love. Some of them ride their scooters or their trikes the whole way. The hosts had built a ten-foot-tall abominable snowman. Horns and drums and tambourines played all our songs. There may be many other traditional Mardi Gras songs, but I know the ones people wanted to sing here. Those are our songs.
At the end of the stroll, before we headed in to the indoor part of the party, someone climbed a picnic table and led us in a song written by a Mardi Gras community member who died in the last year.
The song went, “Open your hearts and minds, motherfuckers/We’re gonna get shit done/Open your hearts and minds, motherfuckers/we’re gonna have some fun.”
Approximately that. We yelled it, for the writer, Erin Keller, a person I didn’t know well. What I knew about her is that she was beloved, a musician, and that she traveled with a banner last year. It said, “Donald Trump Is An Evil Motherfucker Have A Nice Day.” I told her I loved it. I got a selfie with her.
It’s manna in the desert. So much darkness to walk through, so much pain to stub your toe on, to break your back on. Keep marching, friends. We’ll find what we find.
Going On 