Congenial-speak #40

Antiquated writing

I'd never written a memoir before. I didn't think I was old enough. For a writer, it's a misconception to think memoirs need to be restricted to the old, the over 60 demographic whose lives are complete enough to catalog. Ten Years and Change portrays a time in my life. It was also a span of time during the Vietnam War marked by proliferation. In 1965 the war took a turn from which it could never come back. As the bombs rained on North Vietnam, civil protest in America grew. It (as I) never stopped growing. I grew with the war, around those who vehemently opposed it. I grew up because of it, abundantly aware of the disdain towards it we, as a family, nurtured It is a “Liberal Boyhood” for obvious reasons. The ideology fit, but it is much more than that. It is liberal as opposed to a censored boyhood, a coming-of-age. As soon as I could cognate what politics was offering, what the “dissident Democrats” goals were, I grasped it in my hand (literally when I dropped literature myself) and never let go.

There was a solvent story to tell. I was 48 when I set out to create what I hoped would be seen as a tribute to an effort made by many 45 years earlier. How that time, growing up in the wake of its abrogation, welling in the men and women of “constant sorrow,” anger, frustration, affected me I thought was worth noting. The memories were remarkable. They were tangible to me as I reached into the pasts bag of mnemonic devices. I thought I could present a bit of the war while also telling our—and my own—story as they related to it. Along the way I tripped over treasure troves of incidents in my heritage. They came out, finally, and will now likely go back in their respective troves. They had their say, their telling. They had their way of breaking the complacent mold I'd cultivated all theses years, the rampant “half-fro” that has long since had its scurrilous curls. There were stories I found that yearned to be told, that were integral as they entwined themselves in a significantly cataclysmic period in America. They became codependent. Their remembrance and remunerations existed because of the historical context in which they had occurred. There was a cathartic urgency to Ten Years and Change.

Segue

When I began writing my book, America's future as a democracy was arguably the brightest it's ever been. The first black president was in the middle of his second term. I have never felt so confident, never so filled with a feeling that 'we the people' shall overcome, that the amends to the disparity in this country, the ancient disproportion (which felt its first concerted lift with Johnson's 'Great Society') will survive to the finish line. The book, at least, almost made it. It almost collected itself to roll through a print machine. In early 2016 I watched the caucuses on TV. I went to my local caucus to cast my vote for Bernie, another hopeful for a reversal of America's unmitigated division of fortune. I had more confidence in him than I even had in Obama in terms of forever setting America on the road to permanent equivocation, for promoting and cementing health care as a right and not a privilege, for ending his predesessors' wars judiciously. The other gal won. Hillary espoused all the political ideals I uphold, but she wasn't Bernie. She lacked that willingness to cut clean from PACS or Kochs. She lacked the tenacity to snatch the baton from the runner who has held the 98% back for decades. She did not profusely refuse to have no business with Wall Street. She was not as adamant in her intent to break up the banks, to dismantle Wall Street, which I see as a key to the great economic disparity in this country.

My book is published in early 2017. America now can not be further from the inspiration I felt when I first sat down at my keyboard. Trump, all through the previous summer, had talked smack about this country, in some way insulted every minority group in it, and generally displayed his utter lack of anything remotely resembling a president. He gave a glib nod to Bernie, a facetious condolence for his loss of the nomination, saying he had been the victim of a rigged electoral system. Thus began the exercise in futility, the simulated pretense of “making America......” well, you know. It is ironic that my book came out as America began its descent, when democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War. In Ten Years and Change: A Liberal Boyhood in Minnesota I recall a ten year slice in time when democracy was tested by a war, the epic and unprecedented opposition to it, assassinations, and demand for social change. So for me now, when a biographer of Trump will say his tenure will be short-lived and then activist film maker Michael Moore advises us to hunker down for as long as seven more years, the times I write about mean more to me. I grew up in the backdrop of a convulsing democracy. However, unlike today, it was never in grave danger. I mean really, think about it. You could kiss the small-worted America goodbye. If Trump succeeds in winning another term, the America I knew could be gone. But every bright side somewhere has a dark side. My generation saw men walk on the moon. We saw 'a small step for mankind.' Man, and eventually women, were still in the game. Yesterday, this younger generation wore dark glasses to watch the moon eclipse the sun. Glean from nature, from human nature, do what thou wilts.