How Lovely is the Silence of Growing Things: On The Road Part II

Winter for me is a time of grayness. Stillness, the very landscape holding its breath for the exhale of spring. White powder everywhere, wind that bites int your very core. Down south, it's a bit different. The sun still shines down on your head, and snow is a foreign invader marked in years or decades, not days or weeks. Winter, despite our best efforts with millions and millions of polluting metal contraptions heating the only rock we've ever known to be capable of supporting life, still demands its due even in the South. A pause in the growing cycle, even if the air never gets below 40 at night. The grip of winter has started to relent down here, if the leaves and shoots of new growth are anything to mark. The only piece of nature I saw out in the urban wilds of Baton Rouge was filled with the reminders of wind storms past and the soon to be over pause in the growing season. Brackish water hugging the roots of trees some unknown decades old, dead plants alien to me hung over every conceivable surface, and venerable monarchs toppled over and still growing leaves from their toppled branches.

New life rising amidst the old

Despite everything, it's still a tree

Life will scratch and claw and bite to stay alive, to deny the Reaper their due. A stubbornness I find deeply admirable in a time of rising fascism and evil. Break me down, topple me into the dirt, but still I will find a way to thrive. Metaphors are everywhere for eyes to see, I suppose, but hope in the year 2025 is where we make it. No one will save you but you.

Too often, the way politics works in this country is we use this innate deep desire to find a way forward as a way to kick the ladder away from other marginalized people. We survived despite our knuckles battered and bloodied, teeth scattered on the ground, stomach empty, hunted, so should you. The lie this country tells you is that suffering like this is innately good and admirable (See Orphan Crushing tweet for more info). A whole goddamn country built out of the survivor's fallacy. I love the determination of the tree, but I remember that it shouldn't have to grow its leaves in the dirt.

I spent most of today recovering from my long, long drive down to Louisiana. The downside to long road trips is well, the long road trip. Eight hours in the car is tolerable. Thirteen is downright torture. Even on a night of full rest, driving that long is enough to knock you out. I never expected to see much of Baton Rouge, frankly, but what little I've seen has been pleasant. Managed to find a fantastic Cajun restaurant, but was thwarted of my dreams of a nightcap at one of the local gay bars when I discovered that it had closed early. For the Oscars. I am about as far from a normie as you can get, but being queer and utterly uninterested in the Oscars means no gay bars for this bozo. All I had was one of the best meals in my life. For shame!

Tomorrow, New Orleans and its many, many sights during Mardi Gras await. I cannot believe I managed to forget about the entire existence of a city's biggest party, but that's just how I roll, I guess. I feel excited, yet also a little trepidation. Mostly because I know one thing is certain: New Orleans will be swarming with cops over the next two days. I haven't been to New Orleans since 2011, and the city has only been battered by more hurricanes since the big one in 05. I don't even know what my conception of the city is, but I do remember my parents telling me I might see people shoot up in the streets. Thanks for the white suburbanite fear, mom and dad! The people who left after Katrina never came back, and the weather will only get worse. The one constant in America is that it will always get worse, and I shudder to think about future hurricanes in the area with a Gulf that just won't cool down. Will we abandon the shore to the oceans, stay and dig in to sand, or finally change our way of living? I know what the American people and the government composed of crooks, liars, and frauds will chose, but hope springs eternal. No city deserves to be left to the waves of a merciless ocean.