On the Other Side of And -- Zagreb, Croatia

I'm starting this post from the elevated bed with Spongebob Squarepants sheets that I've been sleeping on for the past week. According to my original plan, I was supposed to be in Banja Luka by now, but life happened to my host and he had to cancel the first three days of my stay.

Which is just what happens when you book with people and not with hostels.

Kaya is in the bed on the other side of the room, playing some game on her phone wherein she drops bombs on things. The cleaning woman bustles about the flat, washing windows and vacuuming floors. Choksa huddles underneath my bed, terrified of the evil thunderous vacuum cleaner.

I want to hide under a bed. Hide under a bed, pull a blanket over my head and drink enough mulled wine to pass out for the next four years. Or ten years. Or twenty years. Or however long it takes for Trump's poisonous ripples to begin to dissipate. But I'm not going to. Not only because hiding under a bed/crying in the shower doesn't actually do anyone any good...I just don't think there's anywhere to hide. I think that his ripples will turn into a tsunami that wipes out everything.

I've been scared for a long time. Traveling the world shows me the extraordinary goodness of people, the spectacular beauty of nature, the liberating excitement of feeling like a beginner all the time...

... but traveling the world also shows me the carelessness of people everywhere. It shows me how people abuse and take advantage of each other and abuse and take advantage of this planet.

The carelessness I've witnessed planted a seed of worry that has slowly grown into a consuming, insidious fear.

Taking a train from Marrakesh to Essaouira and seeing mountain ranges of waste on either side of the tracks. Watching goats frolic in the dumpsters when they used to frolic in the boughs of Argan trees.
 
The encompassing, pea soup smog of Istanbul. 

Trudging through the outskirts of Shkoder with Tessa, smelling the putrid odor of the rubbish Albanians had left to slowly decay in the sludge near their lake.

Living on Lake Atitlan for a month. Living in fear of the water, because I knew that a drop of it was toxic enough to gift me with a horrific case of giardia. Because half of Panajachel's sewage went straight into the lake.

There's nowhere I can go where I don't feel like a fatal parasite. Nowhere I can go and feel like my presence is actually doing good for the world, instead of leaving a toxic footprint everywhere I step. 

And now Trump has become president of the United States -- a country that produces 5.4 billion metric tons of CO2 every year. He's chosen Myron Ebell, a climate change skeptic, to lead his EPA transition team. Trump plans to cancel the billions of dollars the US has pledged to the UN for climate change problems. Instead, he wants to redirect that money for infrastructure projects in the US. And he plans to lift bans on fracking. 

My fear has now transformed into the heavy, suffocating feeling of impending doom. Not just for me or my friends or my state or the US. For the whole fucking planet.   

I live with fear that I try to not get lost inside. 

Because losing myself to fear helps no one. 


I live with my fear of what will happen to our coastal cities when all the ice finally melts.

My fear of what will happen to our farms and orchards and vineyards (what will Boy do without wine?) when the bees finally die. 

My fear of an ocean black with oil, full of plastic and void of life.

My fear of a world carpeted in concrete and decorated with trash. The millions of forms of human waste.

We're so damn creative about how we pollute this planet. Why can't we have as much creativity when it comes to cleaning it? 

Because there's no money there.... I think this is what scares me most of all. That we live in a world where a few people are willing to sacrifice the happiness, health and lives of countless others just to make another million or fifty. And that they CAN.

How is this possible? How does this world still exist?

I always laugh/curse at drivers who recklessly rush through traffic, only to be stopped by a red light. 

I feel like these rapacious few are careening towards a cliff, bulldozing any opposition and leaving absolute destruction in their wake before they plummet off the cliff. 

Gosh, I'm depressed. 

As a woman who's experienced domestic violence in the US and harassment all over, I fear for myself and all the other women and girls who must live through Trump's presidency and its ripples. I fear my body will be more objectified than ever and I fear it will be groped and grabbed my strangers who are just, you know, "Making America Great Again."

Like our PRESIDENT. 

I live with the fear of the anger I feel. The anger, the incredulity, the panic rising up within me when I think about strangers, friends, family who voted the sexist, racist, bigoted, ignorant, violent narcissist into the most powerful seat in the nation.

I look at them and I think, "You support rape culture. If I told you about the people who've assaulted me, you would be the person to ask what I was wearing. You would be the person to ask how much I had to drink. You would be the person who'd let Brock Turner off with a three month sentence because you didn't want to ruin his life. You would be the person who would tell me I'm overreacting or you just wouldn't believe me."

I think, "You are the people who want to take away healthcare for the homeless youth I worked with. You are the people who want to take it away from me, for fucksake. You, the majority of whom identify as Christians, would rather pay for greed driven oil wars in the Middle East than abide by what John has to say in 3:17  -- But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

"You are the people who would prefer me to pull myself up by my own damn bootstraps, even though I just broke my fucking leg.

"You are the people who would like to deny rights to the LGBTQ community. The people who elected a vice president who argues for public funding for conversion therapy and who signed a bill that would JAIL gay couples for APPLYING for a marriage license.

"You are the people who support the KKK. Who want to break up Latin American families. Who think that increasing the amount of frisking is all we need as far as gun control goes."

It's hard to not revert to anger. To not identify people with the politician they voted for. Especially when the politician has stances that can ruin so many lives of people I love. Especially when I read articles like this: WHY I'M SCARED

I don't know what to do.These are times I wish I'd studied environmental science instead of theatre. Times I wish I'd dedicated my life to politics instead of traveling, writing, yoga and massage.

How am I going to change any of this in a yoga studio? Or when I'm on the other side of the world? I feel useless.

Two (of the many things) making me angry:

#1 -- Christians saying, "Don't worry, God is in control."

This is a way to wash your hands clean of any responsibility. Even if it were true, it's lazy and counterproductive.

As my insightful brother so clearly put it, "It's like we've been hijacked by a bunch of people who can't fly a plane, but that doesn't matter, because their imaginary friend is the 'best pilot ever.'"

#2 --  Hippies and other saying, "it'll be okay. Just keep loving each other and it'll all be okay." 

This is all well and good. But I feel like "just love" breeds apathy and doesn't address problems. "Just love" is super when it comes to yoga OM circles and perhaps children learning how to share toys. But I think this is a debilitating mindset when it comes to addressing real problems. Big problems.

And the sentence "it'll be okay" has always rankled me, if left by itself. 

I don't want to hear that it'll be okay unless I also hear what you're doing to make it okay. What I can do to make it okay. And "just love" isn't enough to make everything okay.   

I don't want people to tell me I'm overreacting. I don't think that's possible, given the circumstances. 

I want people to help me stop being reactive and start being proactive. 

As I've written before (about two hundred posts ago...), I think people are like wells. Wells with an infinite amount of characteristics deep within us. These various characteristics are revealed to us and the world when we allow others to lower their buckets (why does that sound so weird?) and bring a piece of who we are to the surface. 

I'm afraid of what Donald Trump will bring to the surface. 

Fear, anxiety, anger, panic in me. 

Hatred, rage, self-importance, violence in others. 

What do I want to come to the surface? What do I want this situation to draw out of me? 

I don't know yet. But it's an important question. A question that I'll keep asking myself every day until I find the answer. 

And it won't be, "just love." 

It might be "love AND --" 

But I need to find the word on the other side of "and". 

In other news, Zagreb is still awesome.

One of Matea's friends, making something she calls "ripped underwear"

Like Ljubljana, Zagreb has had a smattering of glorious days punctuated by miserable rainy ones.

Today is a miserable rainy one.

But yesterday was spectacular.

Everything feels so bittersweet. Probably because I find myself adding the words, "for now" to just about everything. 

"The world hasn't imploded." 

For now. 

Super.