If you could spin a cocoon for yourself against the malevolence and the hatefulness, to emerge in your renewed life in a transformed world, that would be well. Easy enough for me, after a fashion. I am not called on to do anything about it and no longer live in that country, can even be profoundly glad I’m not living there, that I live in a sane and safe and well-organised one where most (though by no means all) of the issues that Americans still rage over are complete non-issues. And even shutting out the news media wilfully is still possible in this media-saturated age; one logs out of this or unsubscribes from that, meaningfully leaves unfurled the newspaper on the doorstep. Better to do so; to tear one-self up from afar, counsels Wise Cristina (and for a world I don’t live in, no longer have personal stakes in, and cannot directly participate in useful action for), is indulgent and futile and jeopardises besides those things in the world I do live in that need focussing on. And for finding peace for myself too — at a time where in my personal life I have had great need for healing and change.But a part of me needs to be back in the US — where many others who share my grief and anger are physically congregated in the places I think of as my once-homes or would-be-homes: Cambridge and Charlottesville and Boston and Ithaca and DC and Syracuse — all of them blue and no accident. Where I would have access to private events and public movements and be able to participate in the collective grieving for a country I called home for much of my adult life. Here in Singapore, although the American elections are talked about and reported on, and there are those of us who care — both Americans (those in Singapore largely voted Democrat) and non-Americans who have lived in the US — our anger and grieving and anxiety is largely individual, subdued and very much isolated, I feel incredibly alone in my grieving, and that is enormously difficult too.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird