Kumbaya, I’m Still Singing

As per my most recent sign

May 16, 2017

What’s new? Oh, nothing. Just a regular Tuesday. The President contradicts his staff’s lies about his brazen acts of treason, as per usual. AND THAT WAS JUST THE MORNING.

JESUS CHRIST. My fucking HAIR is turning WHITE with this shit, and not just because I’m closing in on 48.

Should I go through today’s litany of despair? Should I describe the people who engaged me, and told me that –despite the once SHOCKING BREAKING and now TOTALLY PEDESTRIAN news that Trump gave away intel to the Russians after sending his boys to say he didn’t — nothing will stop this living nightmare?

One of them was in her 80s, blond and glamorous, formerly a history professor in Argentina. She fled Argentina because she knew what was coming in her country. “They always go after the intellectuals. They don’t want you to know your history.” She’s been here for twenty years now. “This is like Argentina now.”

There were others. I try to be positive. “But we’re resisting,” I say. “Every phone call we make, every email and tweet we send…”

“It does nothing. They’re not going to do anything.” It’s said gently, though, by a very sweet man in his 50s wearing tan corduroy pants. “I tried writing. I wrote to John McCain…”

“MCCAIN!” I say, smacking myself in the head. “What the fuck, McCain?”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to happen,” the nice man says, almost like he’s reassuring me.

I concede this with a nod and a shrug, and fall silent for a minute. “But…can’t you imagine the party in the streets if he gets impeached?”

He winces at me like, “I guess?”

Well, I can imagine it. And it’s one of the ONLY THINGS that’s keeping me going. That, and the bent over elderly guy on the street who gave me a big smile and thumbs up and croaked, “Keep going!”

And the teenager who gave me an eager smile and nod from across the subway car — at the next stop, a pregnant woman got on, and he sprang up from his seat like he’d been waiting for her.

Then later I’m sitting on a bench outside the West 96th Street subway station, writing my notes, and a woman in her 70s sitting at the next bench points to the sign and says, “Isn’t it the truth?”

And we go on to have a conversation about how every day we’re given is a gift. The weather was perfect today, we agreed. Sometimes it’s a pleasure just to be alive. “Isn’t it the truth?”

I can’t wait to party in the streets with her. That’s what keeps me going. But even she tells me it’s hopeless. And, like the smiling guy, she says it with equanimity. Radical acceptance. Maybe I can get there too.

Going home, I see the same guy I saw on Monday, when he was sitting in his Beemer at a red light and pantomimed, “You are a screwball” at me. He’s in his car again, going into a garage on my block. So I guess we’re neighbors now.

I’ve never seen him outside the driver’s seat, but I think he’s probably in his late 20s-early 30s, handsome and well-groomed and preppy, with a wide, satisfied smile. And he’s only the fourth blatant dissenter in four months who wasn’t white.

He took a picture of me on Monday as I sang to him. I did not get a picture of him because my hands were full of sign. So today, when I happened to look over and see the same guy waiting for a chance to pull into the lot, I stopped on the sidewalk, pulled out my phone and took a picture of his car. He smiled hugely when he saw me, as I did upon seeing him, and we gave each other a friendly wave — see ya around!

I think I’m done being a neighborhood celebrity.

I think I’m putting the sign down soon.

Then I arrive home, and HIGH HOLY HECK, it’s ANOTHER BREAKING BOMBSHELL. I think of all these people I spoke to, wonder how they’re reacting as they hear this evening’s SHOCKING BREAKING NO BUT REALLY SHOCKING THIS TIME news. Are they thinking of me? Shaking their heads and saying, “See? It only gets worse and worse, just like I told her?”

I know! I get it! Trust me, I’m despairing too!

But in the meantime, the weather really was perfect today. We almost never get a real spring in New York; we go from turning on the heat to turning on the AC in the course of a week. But today was crisp and sunny, with a breeze that felt like optimism, and even as we talked about hopelessness on a bench on 96th Street, we agreed, it was a pleasure to be alive.

(To read Kumbaya, Motherfucker in chronological order, click here.)