Surviving the 4th of July

Amidst the aches and pains, the horrors and the delights

me and my sad little ghost, NY 2023

It’s USA’s Independence Day, and if you’re like me, you might not be feeling very celebratory.

I’ve been a July 4th hater since the Iraq war, and each new American low feels like a gut punch. I’m angry at the government, and angry at my community for celebrating the hell out of this holiday, just like they do every year. The parade is still on, the fireworks are still blasting late into the night.

And on top of. . . everything? I’ve been sick and getting sicker for almost a week. My symptoms finally peaked yesterday with a full cornucopia of maladies.

I woke up with aches and chills, a pounding head, and lymph nodes the size of golf balls. My “oh it’s probably just a cold” evolved into a whole-body cough that shook me so hard it felt like I might expel an organ.

Since it was only getting worse, I decided to drag myself to the Instacare to get it checked out. I’m not usually a hospital-visiter, so this means that I felt the illness was serious and painful and not likely to improve without some kind of intervention.

The PA who examined me was… not helpful.

He made a joke

which was not funny.

Then he refused to test me for strep or influenza (because he’s anti-antibiotics, and of course influenza doesn’t have a cure anyway, so why bother?) and he didn’t look inside my throat or take my temperature, despite me complaining about it.

I was very grumpy.

He did give me some very unhelpful advice when I asked if there was anything specific I could do:

He also tried making small talk about the holiday weekend before I left.

It felt like one of those very American experiences—familiar, frustrating, demoralizing, bewildering, and expensive. I couldn’t wait to leave, couldn’t wait to complain about the whole thing to Jon, or my dad on the phone.

And yet, I know that being stuck in an exam room with a clueless PA is not that awful, really. It’s a small, cheap thing, compared to all the other costly horrors.

I’m addicted to cheap little things like that. They staunch the wound.

Maybe one day I’ll be totally zen and full of grace and acceptance, even for the horrors. Then, when the president builds Alligator Alcatraz or Congress strips away healthcare from millions of people, or when I deal with a clueless PA at the Instacare, maybe then… when I’m placid and deep as a lake, I’ll know just how to be. I’ll be bubbling with wisdom and endless patience, and I’ll know exactly the right thought and action and inaction.

But right now, I ache when I see the horrors and I long for a way out.

I long for justice.

I long for peace.

I long for lands without borders or violence.

I long for comfort and ease and hot sandwiches on a Tuesday. I long for no fireworks or noisy motorcycles or hay fever or summers swept by wildfires. I long for wide open gardens and car-less streets and sunlit chapels with seats enough for everyone. I long for watermelons that taste like watermelon, and to never know what it’s like to put someone I love deep in the earth, or to miss them terribly forever and ever afterwards.

But when those things are scarce, I long for a little idiocy, a little snit of drama to take my mind off the ache.

I honestly don’t know if I’m strong enough for this moment. I want to be. I try to be, but I keep thinking of W.B. Yeats “The Second Coming:”

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

There is so much passionate intensity, and so much uncertainty in this country. I’m trying to see it anew: not as doubt or fear, but as a mystery, unexplored. “Leave the door open for the unknown,” wrote Rebecca Solnit, “the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”

As Americans, aren’t we headed for the unknown?

Aren’t we slinking towards that unfathomable darkness?

In that darkness, I have to imagine something terribly good slouching towards us on its haunches, ready to overtake us at any moment. Imminent eucatastrophe, as Tolkein said.

I know it’s painful to feel the weight of so much dread and powerlessness as we find our way in the dark. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “What your eyes have seen they have seen. Once you see the injustice, you can never again in good faith deny the oppression and defend the oppressor. What was loyalty is now betrayal. From now on, if you don’t resist, you collude.”

“But there is a middle ground between defense and attack,” she wrote, “a ground of flexible resistance, a space opened for change. It is not an easy place to find or live in.”

Is there any better description of where we live now?

Not fighting, not retreating,

but reaching into the dark.

I’m reaching.

Now I really should admit something.

I am drinking the tea.

And it is helping.

Happy 4th of July, nobody.

You deserve so much better than this,

🗽Becca Lee, Haunted Librarian🗽

PS - the mug is a design by Alison Fretheim, and it’s one of my favorites.