The thing with November, especially this year, is that it was weird. Very weird. I had eye surgery again (3rd time in one year). My ex-husband died, I was nominated for another Pushcart (which I thought was a fluke last year) and well, the country decided to vote for a felon. I wrote a poem about the weirdness and I'm not going to submit it anywhere so here it is for you. I shared it at the 30 Days of Poetry reading live (always a challenge for an introvert). The CNAM fundraiser folks booked a venue at Smith College just the other night and as I stood there reading, I heard people laugh. I always appreciate a good laugh if I think I'm being funny. Here goes:

Retail therapy (working title)

everything’s weird
in that nightmarish way

where one thing cascades
into another --- and d o w n 

go the dominoes
the dots themselves

ovalized the way pores 
appear swollen on sunburned skin

one scene shifting into another 
what was and is -- and has always been

now this flimsy gauzy thing and at the same time
   --hammered down -- made of unshiny tin or copper gone dark

great gaps coming alongside the way rowboats don’t fit
together -- their curves so beautiful and apart

I haven’t any way to wrench it back –restart
who am I -- where will I go -- can I sit

when I need to stand - may I please rewind
and take the rough sandpaper of me

scrape it all loose I am the caboose--
 I am the lost wheel of the who I used to be

I used up -- all the all -- of me - and yet I’m full of all the stories 
God, please --- let me have my favorite orange cheese

and those shoes at REI -- Howser slide with herringbone 
in obtuse stripes –lining up like they should - like I can’t--

maybe I could shake loose like you see birds do when they’re wet--
    where the feathers fling right around 

I need those shoes - I’m sure I could step right into 
    the who I was        (before weirdness set in)

The other day a bunch of us were talking. We collectively confessed to be anxious about things in general. It was me who piped up: "What about the aliens?"

The unreality that set in with the pandemic's worldwide catastrophe-all-around-people-dying-by-the millions-isolated-and-no-way-to-stop-it "thing," has yes, softened. We're not as intensely scared as we used to be. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. And if habits take only three repetitions to be formed, then how is it even possible, after years of fear and isolation, that we now can "go back to normal." We do our best to cope and basically, we're pretending. But nobody talks about the pretense. Nobody talks about how the other shoe will fall --we just don't know how or when. Doesn't it feel just a little bit like we're farm animals and we've been herded into our corral? We've been herded into a sort of obedience. Am I the only one who feels this way? 

I personally don't think aliens is out of the question. I hear you laughing, but the feeling of unease that settles if you don't pretty much continually distract yourself is unnerving. There is an artificiality to life. Certainly, you admit that, right? News is filtered. How do we know there are not lots and lots of stories about aliens and they're just being squashed. I try to stay in touch with world news but it's challenging. How do we know what's going on in lots of places? Here it is 2023 and we should have a robust interface where news is a matrix with lots of news stations all working cooperatively so we can stay in touch. I want to hear the local stories about the world and not in an, 'oh you'll love this' kind of way. I'm tired of the segments of the world being parsed out like we have nothing in common with everyone else. We do. We're human and we share the world. Let's figure it out. Let's be kind. Let's be tolerant. Let's be smart and figure out how to manage the changes that are already taking place not to mention the scenarios too difficult to manage in any kind of individualized way. Countries need to cooperate. People need to work together. I hear you laughing again and you're right. You'd think by the 21st century people would be able to get along and not spend most of their time one-upping each other. We've got other fish to fry. Take for example, weather-related emergencies, which manifest on a 45-60 day basis. These events (that's what we call them now) are influenced by global warming and the behaviors that led to it. We're chipping away on that front but not as a cohesive cooperative world. By the time we're there, the fires will be self-igniting on the ground (hyperbole--but not a lot).

Is this perspective influenced by having watched Twilight Zone as a young teen? I remember that Rod Serling show and how theoretically unlikely things took place. You gen Z and whatevers ought to check it out. There was this one episode where a bunch of cul-de-sac-ers (sorry, I made up that word) got their self-satisfied backyard lives turned upside down and it was all because of a series of orchestrated events. The conductor (of the events) was--you guessed it--an alien. Is it so very unlikely? I wonder. I'm in denial, the same as you. I spend evenings worrying and petting my cat.