Staring at the Sun
A while back my husband Victor and I decided, for a number of reasons, that we needed to sell our first small but much-loved home in the city, and find another small place, still in the city but in a different neighborhood. This turned out to be a much more fraught task than we’d imagined, and resulted in my finding myself temporarily isolated in a town far from the city, from the place we would end up, and from everyone we knew. The distance also caused, among other things, a long pause in a series of concerts and operas our small opera company had worked hard to produce and in which I was one of the singers.
Victor is amazingly resilient, and also benefited from having an office to go to, so that he did see his usual colleagues. So he handled it all pretty well. But I began drifting toward what became a major depression, although I didn't yet realize that's what it was. We finally found a house back in the city but it was in such bad shape that it cost less to tear it down and replace it than to fix it. We chose a modular home we partly designed ourselves, but had to rent in the small town for a long time while the modular house was put together. Months later it arrived in two pieces on the site, having been driven from another state on two enormous trucks.
We love it and live there happily now, but while waiting in the temporary town I was not at all resilient, I discovered, and experienced not only isolation but actual mourning for our first home and especially for the garden we planted there. Every plant was precious to me, yet I had no idea that I would feel the loss so deeply. As for the isolation, I knew I should try to be with people even if I didn’t know them, and the best places for that seemed to be the town’s coffee shops. But I found the extremely loud music and/or TVs in the shops unbearable, and every one of them refused to turn down the volume. I didn’t have noise-cancelling headphones, we were running out of money, and the local government of the suburban town where the new house was had been demanding large fees for things we’d never heard of almost every week.
The people I’d spent most of my time with before the move were other musicians and they were now mostly out of reach. They could not have gotten to rehearsals in the temporary town, so our concerts had to stop for a while. I didn’t have a car and in fact there were few other places in or near the town to go to. There was nothing to do but keep practicing the songs I was working on, and walk on a riverbank near where we were renting. This helped a little, as I saw ducks being born and raised on the river, met a baby muskrat, and watched a stately blue heron who fished there each night at sunset.
One day I decided I should try to read some books that I usually didn't have enough time for, and for some weird reason began with one called “Staring at the Sun.” It happened to be about how not to fear dying. (I now fervently recommend not reading books about dying if you're even slightly depressed.) Still it seemed as if it might be a reasonably helpful book for many people. (I wasn’t suicidal but thought, “let me take care of such anxieties now, since I have time, by reading this book,” which again was nuts considering my mental state.)
All this is to say that in the past two weeks the title "Staring at the Sun" has reappeared in my head every day. I had a miserable cold, watched the news more than usual, and as I followed events including the Republican Convention, I got caught up in a morass of emotions about the future of the country and the world. I guess more fear than usual took over.
As Trump arose from the stage proclaiming "fight, fight, fight," I felt certain that the moment he’d hit the floor the marketing expert in his head thought "great iconic photo!" Sure enough I later learned he probably did in fact think just that, making the secret service people put his shoes back on so he could stand up and turn himself into the hero he in fact will never be.
I’m relieved that he wasn’t hurt seriously, but it doesn't mean I trust him anymore than I ever did. The talk about his "courage"and his pushing for "unity" struck a false chord in me right away. But like many others, I briefly thought maybe he really did change in that moment. But as we know now, the unity he wants is just within his party and its democracy-destroying goals, and he in fact has not changed at all.
He made clear soon enough that all the frightening plans we’ve heard about are still just what he intends to force on the country should he win, including not accepting a loss if a Democrat wins.
The mystery is why so many followers love him but I’ve almost given up on understanding that. I do believe that with their desire to destroy the Dept. of Education, and with the many states that have banned books or want to ban them as well as banning the teaching of actual history rather than Maga-edited history, that Magas will encourage and expand what seems to be ignorance and lack of education in their followers. So more lying, racist, Christian nationalists can continue to remove the rights of all Americans including the Trump-besotted base. Reducing and/or perverting U.S. education gives Magas a better chance to further shape our democracy into the authoritarian-led land of misery they envision with such fervor. (Isn’t it interesting that VP-nominee J.D. Vance has a degree from Yale? I thought Magas hated “elite” educated people. Since Vance is so well educated, maybe he can define for any of the base who don’t know it, the word “hypocrisy.”)
So, while I try to avoid another season of black moods, I feel, should Democrats not beat Trump, that in a slightly different way I’m again staring at the sun, into a future in which women die for need of an abortion, immigrants are rounded up and put in pens, Ukraine is lost, NATO weakened, climate change continued with no U.S effort allowed to stop it, pandemics mishandled, and the world order shattered. And through it all supporters of Trump will go on praising him as if he were indeed chosen by God.
I tell myself, okay, if he wins and there are four awful years, we can then be rid of him. But what if we can't get rid of him? What if he keeps hiring Maga judges? What if he finds ways, as he has before, to give himself even more power than he’s already maneuvered for himself? What if he really does become a dictator? Will there be any good and honest people left in government with the power to stop him?
I want to be an optimist. But much as I love Biden, I join those asking him to step aside, only because I fear voters who don’t love him but also don’t want Trump may stay home. In any case we need an immediate, energetic, and solid plan if we’re to stop the hate-filled and destructive Trump train.
In the end, by the way, after about a year and a half, my depression lifted. (Yes, it can take that long, and I’d begun to fear it would never happen.) Singing again, a new garden, and new friends helped.