Tears come out of my eyes and wet my cheeks and go into my mouth and taste salty. I watch Atlanta’s mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tell the citizens of Atlanta to go home and I get it. This is no way to blah blah blah I get it, I hear the reason born of pain and oppression and I get it but I would be there too, wouldn’t I, if I were there. I would also be feeling that enough is enough, fuck it, burn...
I have lived so long with America, with its promise and its shame, with its beauty and its tragedy. I have lived so long now with America’s numbness to its own pain, its impotence, its blindness to its own shame and its own crimes. I have lived so long with this! I am in tears! I am in tears with all the rest of us who have lived with this for so long and have protested and written and spoken and...
Dear Cary, I met an animal communicator a few years ago, read the books she recommended on the subject, and was surprised to get verifiable results with several different creatures. (“Tell Carl I need my green ball, please,” and “The full moon is in three days.”) Now I am running out of things to talk about with my main communicatee, a dog. Do you have suggestions...
Dear Cary, Thanks for writing about grief. I’ve been grieving too, and any interpretation of grief helps me feel connected. I hope your lungs feel full of air for however you grieve. Telling stories or wailing that losses are always unfair or cycling uphill or laughing at a broken cup. I wonder what you think about change and upheaval. How do we put back together relationships strained by...
Dear reader, After last week’s column about emotional pain and suicide I wanted to write a nice lighthearted column. So I looked for a nice, lighthearted letter like I used to get sometimes at Salon. Couldn’t find one. Just people in deep pain. All over the world, people in pain, uncomfortable, forced to change, give up routines, give up comforts, face fragility, precariousness, lack of...