Tell me what’s bad, Don Lemon
Don Lemon has seen me through many hard times.
He has traveled with me throughout the state
when I stayed in hotels in Scottsdale
— medical refugee, even then —
so I could get the kind of treatment
that simply wasn’t available to me
in Flagstaff.
So tonight as I sat down with my evening cup of tea
(I’m that kind of recovering alcoholic), I turned on the news
and said, “Okay, Don Lemon. Tell me what’s bad.”
I don’t want to go into detail about my thoughts
on the following matters, but two takeaways
from my news media consumption today.
- Derek Chauvin is a murderer. This is not difficult.*
*There is no verdict but “guilty.” And not guilty on some bullshit “whoops, I didn’t realize I was doing that” charge. But guilty, guilty. Because Chauvin murdered a human being. Brutally. - Woody Allen is a child abuser of the most vile (and perhaps common) variety. *
*My students and I, over the years, have had many discussions about “cancel culture” (to which I am fervently opposed),
and we once decided, as a class, on a kind of “rubric”
— “Does the artist make you participate in/accept as morally correct their depravity? If the answer is ‘yes,’ get that shit out of your life.”
Woody Allen is cancelled for me.
Especially after watching Allen v. Farrow,
a series that only reified what we all really,
if we’re being perfectly honest,
knew about Woody Allen.
You can keep watching his films.
I just feel I have a moral responsibility as a woman, as a former child, as one who works with children,
to never celebrate Allen’s work
because Woody Allen is fucking Monster Man. Garden variety, but no less a monster for it.
Those are, as I understand, what’s referred to in the popular culture as “hot takes” — or is “hot take” already belly up in the American English linguistic swamp?
What’s good:
My classes were wonderful today.
My senior class includes
a good deal of students who I first met
when they enrolled at FALA as 7th graders.
That was my first year at FALA
and I hadn’t seen a 7th grader
since I was
a seventh grader.
I first wrote about this group of students,
Class of 2021, for a piece that was first published here: https://www.foliateoak.com/allison-gruber.html
A slightly updated version will appear
in my forthcoming essay collection, Transference,
with Tolsun Books (Nov. 2021).
Like a lunatic, I’m already hard at work
on my third book.
This is fun lunacy.
And I’m still sober.
I mean from booze.
If evening/weekend cannabis use counts
against my sobriety, then I guess I’m just
“California Sober” (seriously, this was a term
I learned when I was new to AA).
Life without alcohol feels so good.
Much more energy.
Clearer in my judgment/perceptions.
Less anxiety.
My sleep routines are getting a little more normal
with each passing week.
I signed and sent back a contract today
for a teaching position with a new school.
I’m excited about this. I can’t wait to meet new (to me)
young humans in a new (to me)
school setting.
I’m beginning the heavy lifting
of migrating my cancer care to Mayo Clinic
in Phoenix. “The system up the hill” and I
will both be relieved to be done with one another.
I do hope that place cleans up its act, though.
No patient deserves the kind of shit I’ve endured.
We all deserve better.
I hate that I have to be a part of the “how shitty healthcare in America is” conversation. I was talking about this with someone recently:
I am so utterly, thoroughly bored by medicine.
I don’t want to talk about it, think about it, invent it — that’s what I want scientists and doctors to do. I am also bored by money.
This is why some human beings go into Accounting or Medicine or Science or Medical Science and others go into English and Creative Writing.
Are your poetry levels depleted? See me.
Do you need to have an essay edited? See me.
Are you having heart palpitations? See an Actual Doctor.
Do you have cancer? Go to an Actual Doctor.
I did find a few good Actual Doctors “up on the hill.”
Not many, but a few.
Wasn’t that what Fred Rogers said?
“Look for the helpers”?
There were plenty of helpers, in my life,
in Flagstaff — doctors and otherwise.
Now that I’m sober, I see I am surrounded
by helpers.
I always have been,
I just didn’t know.
I asked my students today
— seniors —
if I should shave my head
or if my hair looked “okay as is.”
They were surprisingly thoughtful
in their responses. One young man offered,
“Honestly, Gruber, it looks really good today.”
And a young woman countered “But Gruber,
the patriarchy wants you to care about your hair.
Shave it!”
I told my student that her argument
was a very strong one. One that I almost
couldn’t refute. I let my wife
make the final call: she chose “keep growing it out.”
So I’ll keep growing it, though, “Fuck the patriarchy”
is always a good reason
for doing most things.
Maybe I’ll start saying “Fuck the patriarchy”
when I take my Ibrance in the morning.
Actually, that might help.
My tea is almost gone.
Cypress Hill is on my headphones.
90s flashbacks. Do you remember smoking bongs?
Do people still do this?
That must have been so bad for our lungs.
A friend of mine and I, in college, had what we called
“the world’s biggest steamroller.”
I think it really was Guinness Book worthy
(took three women to operate the fucker).
There is a bit of bitterness to my memories
of marijuana usage in the 90s — I mean,
knowing what I know now about how many
Black lives were destroyed in this country
over a little bit of weed.
I never worried about being arrested.
I never worried that marijuana would ruin my life.
I knew then what I know now: when used responsibly,
there’s absolutely nothing wrong with cannabis.
In fact, without turning this into an English 101 research paper
on the “merits” of marijuana (after having my fill
of “Why Weed is Good’ research papers while employed
on the “Comp Circuit,” which is like a Vaudeville Circuit,
but without fun, I told a student cohort:
“If you’re going to write about weed,
please don’t simply provide me a litany
of medicinal uses for weed. Start with a question:
Why do people love marijuana?
That would make for a much more
interesting paper.”
All this to say I’m starting to feel like,
I should probably start getting involved with organizations
that help people out of prison or help people get their records cleaned up
after being punished for cannabis in America.
Meanwhile, the Woody Allens of the world
lurk and sulk about as free white men.
My AA sponsor talks about my “hula hoop”
— this physical sphere of influence:
imagine a hula hoop.
What is inside a hula hoop
that is around your waist?
Not much, I admitted when she first posed the question.
I was still in the early, shame soaked first days of real recovery.
That’s all you have real control over, though. Only that which is in your hula hoop.
I’d just gone to my first “in-person” meeting. We were
eating sandwiches outdoors and the whole AA thing felt
very strange to me. AA saved my life. I believe this.
All I really have control over, in any given moment, is that
which lies within the boundaries of my hula hoop. Right now:
a cup of tea, our cat Pill Bug, a can of strawberry Bubly (how would
I have ever stopped drinking during this crazy fucking year if not
for the cornucopia of non-booze seltzer water in grocery stores
all across America?), my cell phone, the computer, my body.
This is all I really have control over right now.
A terrifying thought and also
such a gigantic
relief.
