What the staircase says....
I’m staying at my daughter’s house, which is really lovely.
It’s a happy house, full of love, and I always feel safe and happy here.
But the trouble with it is that it’s got this staircase.
And once upon a time, that staircase was no problem to me at all, but now it’s a real obstacle.
I have to crawl up it on all fours, and I don’t really want people to see that.
It’s not very dignified.
But it occurs to me that this is not just my problem:
This problem of getting old and having to come to terms with kind of decrepitude and the approach of Sister Death.
It’s our problem as individual human beings but also a problem for our capitalist world, which no longer has the answer to the crises that are confronting us.
And so this is something we’re all looking at because change is happening so fast and nothing is really working anymore.
Things are falling apart.
It’s frightening and unpleasant.
The temptation is to get very angry, blame it on other people, trans women, immigrants, people that are racially different from us.
Blame it on them. It’s their fault.
But that really doesn’t help.
Or else we want to try to pretend it’s not happening,
And if there’s a problem it’ll be over soon
And everything’ will soon get back to normal.
That doesn’t help either.
Somehow, we have to learn to look at what is happening,
And look at things falling apart with our eyes wide open.
And look at our fear as well, because here it is.
But remind ourselves that life is also very beautiful
and has all kinds of possibilities to it that we never knew before,
and that a new way of being in the world is just waiting for us.