The beginning of November

We stopped by Staples and picked up some Crayola Model Magic (kids’ modeling clay) for Ant. She’s upset that the police “ruined” (they slightly flattened) her model of my ear, so I picked something that would work better than the kneaded eraser she was using, and a black desk globe for her to play with… And more furniture for the apartment… Yumeka ordered some pendulums and he’s hung them around the place. They actually spruce up the space. Every now and then, I catch her pawing at the green aventurine and “orgonite” (epoxy resin with gold chips) pendulum hanging from the leafy twine ball like a cat. She really likes the way it “jiggles” off-balance. Good. I’d rather she play with rocks than obsess over that one cop who was nice to her… She imprints too easily… Like Giovanni. Nova told her that if she keeps going like that, she’ll end up dead like him. That’s a little too harsh. But maybe it’s true…

The new model she made of my ear is even better than the last one.

A three-tiered end table. A teacup wall rack. A kitchen bookshelf full of cookbooks, a vase of man-made flowers on the table—Tolly’s arrangement—is this the stuff that life is made of? A bunch of rocks that look nice, and Opoona on the Wii for the kids to play. Ant’s ear… Yumeka’s velvet pumpkin pillow… A brass bell, a green mirror, a pair of lily-of-the-valley in tin cans that Bedi picked out. anNina playing in the background. Everpresent through all this is a man who isn’t alive. Heh. The police who disrupted our lives will never know him… If we ever end up dying, in a hospital bed, the nurses around will never know him. The people in the grocery store don’t know him. Though Tolly sees him all the time, in the mirror… Iseul said I acted uncharacteristically like him—Giovanni—when I went to the crystal store yesterday. “You were loud, like him. And you kind of laughed—…”

I should write about the elections. Well, what’s there to write that hasn’t already been said better by someone else? “Settling for Joe Biden is settling for the party of drone assassinations and the torture of Chelsea Manning. Settling for the Democrats is settling for toddler refugees representing themselves in deportation hearings and for six dozen police agencies and the National Guard to brutalise protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline.” Whoever wins the election, I know life will worsen for us at a steady march. I want to do something, but I’m surrounded by people who wouldn’t hesitate to throw us in front of a speeding police van the moment things get “riotous” in this “town”. All the teachers here…

You know there’s a reason none of us would ever send our kids to a public school in this area. One, none of them really see children as human beings worthy of respect, and two, none of them are actually really qualified to educate children… No, I’m not talking about certification, I mean do any of these fuckers actually know how to instill a love of literature in anyone you speak to? Do these people even read anything that isn’t the Bible? I wouldn’t trust these idiots with my kids in times of economic prosperity, so why the hell would I turn to them now, at a time when the only way out of this social, cultural, and economic wreck are initiative, independence, critical thinking skills, a rational perspective guided by science, and the moral strength and spirit to carry out a fight for what’s right? They’re going to tell me my kid’s going to hell for being an atheist, the other one for being trans, and my other partner for being a pagan, never mind the fact that he’s genderqueer. And then the other one is a queer transgender atheist Communist…

Tolly’s really stifled here in these “provinces”. There’s no financially viable way for us to get out, so I’m settling with furnishing the apartment as best as I can to make him comfortable.

And I know that’s not enough.

But at least I’m putting my money where my mouth is… Tolly’s mouth. He has his tongue on the future. If only he weren’t gagged…!