Alarm

A few nights ago, in the middle of deep slumber, we were awakened by the loud, piercing shriek of an alarm.  Hearts pounding, we bolted upright in the bed, frantically looking around and reaching for our cell phones and flashlights, trying to ascertain the source and the cause. It was the smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector, and as there was no smoke in the apartment, we had to acknowledge the possibility that it was alerting us to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. Windows were open, and we did not appear to be near death, but the alarm continued its mysterious, intermittent blaring until Monte took the thing down and deactivated it.

Sleep of course eluded me in the hours that followed. I began to think about the alarms we are subjected to daily, the barrage of bad news, electronic beeps and AI intrusion, the lunacy of unfiltered social media, a narrative shoved along by the use of fear, and my own perennial proximity to panic. Awake in the night, my inner alarm receded gradually into the familiar sense of dismay about what is happening. But dismay isn’t much better than panic. I just wanted to get back to sleep and begin tomorrow rested.

We are living in a small, temporary apartment right now while our house is being renovated. I am having hip replacement surgery in a few weeks, and a friend has lent me a walker, crutches, and other mobility aids that are lined up against the wall in front of me like soldiers awaiting the call to duty. It reminds me daily of my vulnerability, but also my fortifying connections to friends. And I am apprehensive about the surgery but grateful that my problem is fixable hardware and this is a relatively routine procedure. I will be sidetracked for a while to recover, but I’ll shift to indoor projects and writing and planning and fervently adhering to my creed of never giving up.

Among these at-home projects will be tending to my oral history website, The Living Stories Collective. I visited the archivist of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum recently for some advice about that. It was weirdly hot outside, but I entered  the cool peaceful oasis of his workspace, and I appreciated his patience and focus, the kind and respectful way he helped me to revisit my own website and better understand what it needs to be more functional and accessible.  Afterwards, I walked through an interesting exhibit called “Finding Saint Barbara” about Santa Barbara’s patron saint. The picture above is one depiction of her; she always looks worried, if not alarmed.

I am still uncertain what will happen to the website after I die, and I do not intend to die any time soon, but I accept that I am in the final quarter, and it would be nice to know that all those interviews will not simply dissolve into the ether when I stop paying the annual hosting fee. In any case, I believe in its intrinsic value and I appreciate the fact that there are people like the archivist who care about this stuff, who understand that we are all part of a greater story, and, as Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

Come to think of it, in her final interview, aired a few days after her death, the great Gloria Steinem mentioned the importance of story. “Please tell your own story,” she says, looking straight into the camera at her unseen future viewers. “This is the most important thing we can do for each other: to know each other through stories." She also urges us all to do what we love, which surely also means to fight for what we love. We are each trying to figure out how to navigate these times, and how we can contribute.

Wendall Berry, another of my heroes, died in the same week. I have drawn upon his gentle wisdom and poetry for many years, particularly in exploring my relationship to nature and to place. When we sold our property at the Ranch, we realized that for all those decades, it owned us far more than we owned it, and that no titles or technicalities could erase our connection to it or alter the impacts of our active love and stewardship, and we could not be disappeared, because we are part of it.  But we are directing our energies elsewhere now, baffled but determined to be on the side of good, and again my kindly Kentucky farmer friend Wendell offers guiding thoughts:

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

I am an impeded stream, literally singing. The Resistance Singers have a gig in the community garden tomorrow, and we will move on to more protest-oriented events. There is much joy and solidarity in these gatherings.

And there comes that word—joy--again. We are allowed. It is sustenance. It is more powerful than panic, and even if it tips toward hysteria, a little light-headedness and laughter is liberating. I am alarmed, as we all should be, but not defeated, not even close.

Monte and I go for a neighborhood walk each evening in the cool of twilight. The friendly dog-walkers stop to chat, Venus shines like a lantern in an indigo sky, the streets smell of earth and summer’s end and rain, a mix of real and wished for.  

And I don’t know what I am doing, but I trust my daughter’s advice: keep flailing until it becomes a dance.

So let us know each other. Let us speak our stories and fight our fights and sing our songs and flail around until we dance. Let us stay alarmed and ready.