100 Proof

There are those, I know, who fought battles and lost for years before now, and who were already tired before the talk of walls and repeal and replace and fake news and bans. There are those who were bone-tired before we ever got to this.

This is no relay race. Entering this track means continuing, no matter how tired our legs, no matter how raw our lungs.

I may not have been here soon enough, but I am here now, and I will stay alongside you who have run on for a long time until I cannot run anymore.

From the window high above Oakland, I saw helicopters hovering over the part of town where people gathered for the women’s march. Then, I noticed a small plane making a wide turn where the city met the estuary, and I watched it make a low, lazy circle, curving back toward where I stood, then looping back down and around.

Surveillance plane, I told my father after its third go-round.

What do you think they’re looking for? he asked.

Maybe they’re jamming cellphones, I replied. It’s just part of the deal now. We live in a police state.

The rain is washing California bare, drawing out the mud that holds up spillways and trees. Why it’s raining? my son asks, and then he answers, Because the clouds are full of water.

So many of my people are inundated, the wash of bad news eroding their strength. We are sodden with worry, making calls with damp fingers, sending postcards into an impenetrably murky swamp.

Will we see the sun again? Will the clouds empty? I have my own questions. I don’t have answers. I am too busy filling sandbags as the rain erodes what’s left of my hope.

For years, I have seen a man and his schnauzer walking in my neighborhood. Each time I pass them, the schnauzer has been alert, quick-footed, briskly trotting along the curve of the lake.

Yesterday, though, I saw the man sitting at a café, the schnauzer standing, docilely, under the table, staring at nothing, and I wondered, How long does it take to become so tame?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, but these facts, these alternative facts, they are nothing but fake news. Do you see this true thing? No, you don’t, because it’s false, and if you think this is confusing, just wait, because the best people, the very best people, are working on something unquestionably counterfeit for you, something so authentically specious you will have nothing to do but stand back and admire just how tremendous it is. You will drop your hateful tone. You will acknowledge the ways in which the deception is bonafide. Stop asking questions. Stop asking. Stop.