Offend in Every Way

Occupied Land

I’ve been thinking about what it would be like if we didn’t live on occupied land.

What would be different if the land where we make our homes had not been forcibly taken from its previous caretakers? If the people who came from across the ocean hadn’t lied to, used, stolen from, enslaved, massacred, tortured, tricked, driven down, hunted, needled, manipulated, broken and laid waste to the people who lived here before?

I hear a lot of white people saying, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even alive then.” True enough, you weren’t. But just as the people who are descended from the people who were here first don’t get to choose for themselves whether or not they are subject to that legacy, neither do us white folk. It is our history, and we are stuck with it. And from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look good to complain so loudly about having come out on top in this particular conflict.

The life of a genocide continues even after the murders have stopped. It is no good to say “I didn’t do it;” you, fellow white person, and I have directly profited from the atrocities that were committed by our ancestors. The people who were here first were struck down so forcefully, with such aggression, that each successive generation has felt the impact of that blow. It placed white people firmly in a position of power over indigenous people, and we retain that power today.

The people who came to this land and took it created this fate for us: that we are divided. It is not the indigenous people who are asking for reparations, or apologies, or even just an acknowledgement of what is historical fact, who are doing the dividing. That division was made by white people in the past.

And there is no undoing the past. It doesn’t help for well-meaning white people to talk about how they don’t want the power and the privilege; how they want everyone to be equal; how they don’t think that land should belong to anyone at all, because it belongs to everyone. We don’t get to make that benevolent decision. It is not our land to give, because it was taken, and our ancestors took it. It is only because we are directly descended from those very murderers that it would even occur to a white person to ask a Native American person to forget what happened. To forget: what a privilege! Not an option for people whose entire way of life was erased and who are still getting shat on by the direct descendants of those who did the erasing.

I will never know what it is like not to live on occupied land, because I live here, now. I live exactly where I have been placed by history, and I must perform the job assigned to me by history. That job does not include telling Native Americans how they should feel about their land, or Thanksgiving, or white people. But it does include acknowledging that this land was taken, that it was done violently, and that I have profited by that theft. It includes listening to Native people. It includes understanding that mine is the dominant culture and that I need to use my power to promote voices of oppressed cultures. It includes promising to make amends in whatever way I can – and absolutely, without question or hesitation KEEPING THAT PROMISE.

My job is to remember what happened, to teach my children what happened, and to ask them to do the same with their children. Because white people do not get to decide when we start to forget.

The United States of Megachurch

Today everyone is up in arms about Pastor Robert Jeffress slamming Mit Romney for being a Mormon in his speech endorsing Rick Perry for president. He later called Mormonism “a cult.”

While it is a bit weird to hear someone who regularly speaks at something as creepy as a “megachurch” claiming to be anti-cult, what really stuck out to me was this quote:

“Do we want a candidate who is skilled in rhetoric or one who is skilled in leadership?” Jeffress asked. “Do we want a candidate who is a conservative out of convenience or one who is a conservative out of deep conviction? Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person, or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?”

Well, that’s obvious. We want a candidate who is a good, moral person. Right?

RIGHT???

“Rick Perry is a proven leader, he is a true conservative and he is a genuine follower of Christ,” Jeffress said. … “Every true, born-again follower of Christ ought to embrace a Christian over a non-Christian.”

I give up.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Today we went to Wagon Wheel, the local animal and plant supply store. They sell everything you could ever need for gardening and small-time farming – pet food, plant starts, fertilizer, baby chicks, and so on. They also sell fish and aquarium supplies. To me, the store feels like the inside of an old ship, with uneven wooden floors and walls that have greyed and softened with age, like driftwood. There are even two salty old parrots that fly around.

We went to get a replacement Otocinclus. This brave fish will be the third of its kind that we invite into our home. And though the new employee at Wagon Wheel charmingly asked us which specific fish we would like (out of a tank with at least 9 others exactly like it) we didn’t choose this fish on its personal merits. We chose it for sucking scum.

Nearly two years ago, I gave James a birthday present of two little African dwarf frogs I found at the toy store. They came in a mini aquarium, about 5″x5″ and 7 or so inches tall, equipped with rocks in the bottom and a little bamboo plant that was supposed to filter the tank. We named them Treibgut and Strandgut (roughly Flotsam and Jetsam in German).

Treibgut and Strandgut coexisted happily enough in their watery little world for about a year before tragedy struck. Treibgut became just a tiny bit slow and reluctant to eat. Strandgut got pushy at feeding time. She grew very fat and bullied poor Treibgut out of eating any food at all. (This whole dynamic is eerily similar to James’ and my relationship. -Ed.) Treibgut lost weight and got sickly. We tried distracting Strandgut with extra pellets to give Treibgut a chance, but he just watched the little food pebble sink to the floor. Finally he died, his tiny froggy body floating gently to the surface of the water, all skin and slender bones.

For a while we resented Strandgut, so fat and triumphant in her watery cubical. We knew intellectually that it wasn’t her fault Treibgut had died, but had it been necessary for her to nip him so? We felt she could at least have behaved more respectfully. Where once we had heard Treibgut’s faint singing, the sound of a sweet and tender king, the aquarium now sat silent, ruled over by his indifferent queen.

Time passed, and Strandgut’s excitement at feeding time came to seem less sinister. She shrank in our imaginations back to a tiny, innocent frog. And then the Grey was born, and I’m ashamed to say we didn’t spend nearly as much time watching her swim, though we did at least remember to feed her. But her tank was getting cloudy.

Enter Otocinclus #1. This little suckerfish cleaned up Strandgut’s tank and kept it sparkling. It seemed content, too, until one day it vanished. There were no witnesses, but circumstantial evidence (Strandgut’s renewed nipping habit) and simple physics certainly point to Oto’s tank mate as the culprit. We waited, not wanting to sacrifice another tiny being to Strandgut’s monstrous appetite, but the scum threatened to take over.

Next was Otocinclus #2, a hearty specimen. He Hoovered his way around and in two days had cleaned the entire tank. Within a week, though, he had expired. This time it was hard to blame the frog – there was no way Strandgut could have eaten that beast. It’s quite possible that the task was too much for his digestive system and he succumbed to scum.

I suppose we have grown accustomed to death, because we barely mourned Oto #2 at all. Of course, we hardly knew him. James pulled him out of the aquarium with a fork. His body was hardly cool in the trash bag before we introduced his successor, Oto #3, to the tank.

Relationships are hard. In such a tiny world – 175 cubic inches and a bamboo plant – any personality looms large. If Strandgut is messy and Oto is a neat freak, how long can we expect peace before one of them decides that enough is enough? But we’re not giving up. Maybe this time, it will be a case of opposites attract.

An afternoon to master swordplay

The last few days with the Grey have been incredible. I’m having a hard time believing he’s almost a year old, but even harder to believe is the number of skills he has checked off his to-do list this week. Waving, clapping, standing without support, mimicking, clearly responding to directions… it goes on.

You know how, in movies, the hero will quickly acquire a new skill that would, in reality, take years of practice to achieve? Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote a song about it.

James and I call it “taking an afternoon to master swordplay.” Which is exactly what the Grey is doing, though minus the sword, obviously.

Three days ago, he was bringing his hands together softly.

Two days ago, he started clapping confidently – he grins and claps if an indulgent and addled parent says “YAY!!!” (So all the time, basically.)

One day ago, he decided he wanted to clap while standing, so he quit using his hands to support himself against the couch or a chair and stood on his own two feet, clapping.

Today, he’s realized that standing is a pretty useful skill even if you’re not clapping. It allows the stander to hold two toys instead of one, and even to bang them together, if such an activity is appealing. (It is.)

At the rate he’s going, I expect the Grey will be fluent in French tomorrow.

The Grey has also mastered climbing in and out of the drawer under the stove.

Here and There

Autumn sunlight is very different from summer sunlight. I’m not just talking about the fact that it is cooler, or that it shines from a different place in the sky, or that there is less of it, though all of those things are true. Autumn sunlight is somehow more poignant. It brings into focus things like change, fragility, and decay, all of which were until recently hidden or simply unnoticed amid the bright, saturated colors of summer. Autumn sunlight causes two simultaneous feelings to occur:

1. Powerful nostalgia that burns behind your eyes and in your sinuses, and

2. Restless ambition that makes your limbs twitch and gives you the energy to do all of the things you want to do, but only if you do them all at once. (This also manifests as wanderlust.)

There aren’t English words for these feelings. “Nostalgia” and “ambition” don’t describe their urgency. I don’t know if other languages cover this territory.

Last weekend James and I took the Grey for a walk in precisely that kind of autumn sunlight. It was made even more poignant by the fact that we have had so much rain lately, and the sunlight itself seemed very mortal. We pushed the Grey in his stroller out our door, down the road, and along one of the small trails that connect pedestrians in Homer to important landmarks like the Grog Shop. We were on our way to visit a friend.

Walking down the middle of a side street, I heard sandhill cranes, lots of them. They flew in a huge V above us, a V that was more like several Vs within Vs because there were so many cranes, a hundred at least. They were very high, but their calls carried in the clear air. Their formation moved deliberately, traveling north-east and climbing. Taking the AlCan, I guess. At a certain point they began to circle. Their Vs dissolved and they became a single, flowing entity, stretching and shifting but never separating. It was so mysterious, the way they moved. They circled and circled for minutes while we watched, until they were engulfed in a cloud.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a city. I wish I lived in a city where it is not winter six months out of the year and I could eat takeout from every country in the world and there are more people than I could ever meet in my lifetime. I would walk and take public transportation and not need a car. I could go to a new place for coffee every day, but I wouldn’t. Instead I would go to one place and get to know it and feel comfortable there, and they would remember me and say hello, and it would be my place. My city.

Watching the cranes, though, I felt so much love for this place where I have grown up and made a family. Here I have had so many opportunities to do the things that make me happy. I have made true, lifelong friends and found my wonderful boyfriend/partner/fellow parent/love-person. It’s so beautiful, and the beauty is right in front of me every day, no searching required.

Here. There. In the autumn sunlight I want both just as badly.