The Reckoning

Meditation on All Things Wild

The Reckoning

by Robert Service

It’s fine to have a blow-out in a fancy restaurant,

With terrapin and canvas-back and all the wine you want;

To enjoy the flowers and music, watch the pretty women pass,

Smoke a choice cigar, and sip the wealthy water in your glass.

It’s bully in a high-toned joint to eat and drink your fill,

But it’s quite another matter when you

Pay the bill.

It’s great to go out every night on fun or pleasure bent;

To wear your glad rags always and to never save a cent;

To drift along regardless, have a good time every trip;

To hit the high spots sometimes, and to let your chances slip;

To know you’re acting foolish, yet to go on fooling still,

Till Nature calls a show-down, and you

Pay the bill.

Time has got a little bill — get wise while yet you may,

For the debit side’s increasing in a most alarming way;

The things you had no right to do, the things you should have done,

They’re all put down; it’s up to you to pay for every one.

So eat, drink and be merry, have a good time if you will,

But God help you when the time comes, and you

Foot the bill.

No matter what, hold onto the hope of Pasque Flowers in spring.

Hello Lovelies—

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Waning Gibbous Moon, Huhti Kuu, Clearing Moon, Spring

Lilacs bloom along the Front Range and crab apples explode pink and sweet. The scene at the university where I teach two days a week is a beach party, with loud music and bikinis and bare chests populating every available patch of grass. In the classroom, I ask my tanned and spring-distracted students to do a check in, something I do a many times a semester to give my first-years a chance to build community with their peers by sharing one good thing and one challenging thing in their lives. This day, I add, “And how a you feeling about the state of the world?”

I want to give them a chance to voice their fears or confusion or what I think might be anger, but when we go around the room, most either ignore or avoid the question unless prodded.

“I try not to think about it,” one says.

“Overwhelmed, ” another says without saying more.

“There is nothing I can do,” offers a third.

I have been thinking about this response a lot lately. I know. some of my students might feel powerless while others think they are immune. Many of them are white and from wealthy families, so they may not be wrong (for now).

When I mention this semester may be the last time I am allowed to teach the class, a film course with the word gender in the title—I am met with silence.

It’s the same silence of my colleagues and my supervisors as we go about our jobs pretending that Department of Education has not been gutted or that there is now an “End DEI” portal on the D of E website where anyone can report someone for teaching issues related to folx who are non-white, -cisgender, -heterosexual, or that the regime is now targeting large universities with funding freezes.

It is only a matter of time, I think—without really believing it because I can’t make my mind go there—before what I am allowed to teach is affected or as a non-tenured faculty, my job is eliminated.

Still I sit in on departmental meetings where the head of one program I teach for chirps “no matter what happens, we’re golden,” because the program is in the black (subtext: it’s okay others are being sent to the slaughter).

In another meeting, when I suggest low enrollment numbers in a summer writing workshop might be a possible reflection of peoples’ uncertainty about committing to something for a year (at no small cost—and this, before the stock market took a dive and lots of folx watched their retirement portfolios tank), my assertion is met with silence. Instead, the conversation meanders around what is happening—at the time it was the firing of governmental workers; the gutting of heath, consumer protections, environmental departments'; ICE invasions of workplaces; and the first student deported for being “pro-Palestinian."

I know this kind of silence. I grew up with it, albeit on a small, very personal scale.

It is the silence that happened when my violent, narcissist father exploded. When he hit and harangued. When he bullied and beat. And no one said a thing. No one rose to my defense. No one said, Stop. It’s the silence when he said inappropriate things—like “Fuck you, daughter,” in a cloying, sweet tone in front of a room full of his friends, before adding, “but that would be incest,” as they all laughed.

This week that memory circled as a room full of loyalist laughed in the Oval Office as the man who would be King joked on camera and on mic about needing five more gulags in El Salvador to jail “homegrowns.”

He’s not talking about the folks who stormed the capitol. He’s talking about us. Anyone who dares stand up.

It’s the shock of these moments that paralyzes us. Our brains are kept busy trying to comprehend that this is happening now. And meanwhile the perpetrator has gone on to some other atrocity.

My father got away with every single heinous thing he did to his wife, to me, to my brothers because of this silence. Because people looked the other way. Will the fascist in the White House?

Perhaps you object to this comparison, but hear me out: Ask any woman. We speak about these things privately. The prerogative that white men flex every single day, the arrogance, the certainty the world revolves around them, the idea they can do whatever they want, or the knowledge that whatever goes down won’t really affect them. One male student on the first day of class when I asked how they thought the executive order designating only two genders would change their educational experience, said those very words, “It doesn’t really affect me.”

Right now we’re seeing this played out on a national scale as the man-child who would be king (and his cadre of minions with even darker agendas of their own) treats us all like toys he delights in breaking. For my own father, we were a collections of bodies he ordered around, used for his pleasure and discarded when done. He wanted our adoration, our praise, our absolute obedience. We were puppets in his shadow play, stick figures meant to mirror his greatness.

He stood then for every privileged (cis-, het-) white man with a penchant for power. He stood for the power of patriarchy (which I believe is in its desperate and violent death throws so long as we rise to the occasion and speak out).

It’s the same with the “president.” Make no mistake. he wants your praise, your obedience, your absolute compliance or he will break you. Perhaps you aren’t the first he comes for, and you feel a sense of relief as others fall (get deported, sent to a gulag, lose a job, lose their retirement, their home, are threatened or silenced) in the same way my family watched as I was hit and violated (the relief that I, alone, was the target of my father’s considerable rage).

But in the end, a bully won’t stop.

So we must meet this moment. This is our reckoning. It is overwhelming. But do not let this fact silence you. We are all in this together. We have enjoyed the benefits of democracy and now we must defend it—vocally, peacefully, and in non-violent ways.

So cultivate community. Gather, instead of isolate.

Do what you can to resist. Click here to read Chris La Tray’s response to cuts to Montana Humanities.

Vote with your dollars. Greg and I have stopped using Amazon and we no longer go to Target (Bonus, we are spending less money because it is no longer convenient to do so). We’re opting out of FireTV and looking for alternatives to Echo. We buy from stores who support DEI (Costco, Kroger and Trader Joes).

We are not buying products produce in El Salvador:

Find Joy, by reading Pam Houston’s Dog as Joy Machine.

I am committed to the belief that finding joy is not a distraction from the fight that is before us; but necessary preparation. It is sustenance. A daily and essential reminder of all we are fighting for. —Pam Houston

Check out practical tips for staying connected to the earth and to each other in Susan Tweit’s Practicing Terraphilia post, “More Practices for Hard Times.” Or look at this list I just found, Stay Human: 80 Tiny Moves for Everyday Resistance in the Authoritarian Harm Complex by Paul Shadduck.

Touch the Earth. Remember, the world is worth believing in, and hope is a warrior emotion.

Let us meet this reckoning by raising our voices, by gathering beauty in the face of destruction and hate, together.

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Hold onto beauty, friends, and to each other. Carry hope. And practice being human, practice loving the earth and each other, each day. Thank you for reading.

Big love,

Karen

Please click the heart if you appreciate this post and of course, feel free to restack or share with friends. If you can afford it, please consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber.

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Upcoming Workshops

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I know the world is a lot right now. We all feel it. And though it may not seem like it, this is exactly to the time to tell your story. We must continue to speak up and out, to create art, to tell the story—our story—because the stories we are telling are stronger than the story of destruction. So, I invite you to join me for this Fishtrap yearlong project to write your novel, to sit with your memoir. Now is the time. We are waiting to hear your voice.

A Walk in the Woods: Mapping New Territory and Exploring the Terrain of Your Book-Length Story

“A journey of a thousand miles is begins with a single step” —Laozi

Just as a walk in the forest reveals hidden paths and surprising discoveries, this Yearlong workshop invites you to uncover the path of your own story by learning to trust your intuition and the act of putting one foot in front of the other.

Fishtrap is a one of a kind experience. Payment plans are available. Click this link for more information.

The yearlong workshop includes two in-residence workshops at Fishtrap (summer of 2025 and 2026), monthly zooms, comments on monthly submissions, personalized book recommendations, writing exchanges with your cohort and a optional winter retreat.

Remember, art is a necessity, not a luxury.

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Join Me at Lighthouse Lit Fest

2-Hour Craft Workshops via ZOOM

Friday June 6th - 4:00-6:00PM MT - The Importance of Gaps

Monday, June 9th - 4:00-6PM MT - Writing the Self: Considerations of Character, Perspective and Scene

Tuesday June 10th - 4:00 - 6:00PM MT - Place-Based Writing

Thursday, June 12th - 4:00 - 6:00PM MT - Writing Cinematically: Using Moving Pictures to Tell Your Story

Friday, June 13th - 1:30-3:30PM MT - Taking it Off the Nose: Using Dialogue to Show Conflict and Develop Character

$75 for members/$85 for nonmembers

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For those who live nearby:

Writing Wild Workshops in Rollinsville, CO

Workshops exploring the landscapes of the body and the earth.

Writing Wild Workshops are season-based generative workshops exploring our wild, physical selves in all the landscapes we inhabit. Participants drop into their senses and write to and from this place in a series of exercises meant to inspire and get their creative juices going. Open to beginners and seasoned writers as well as the writing curious. Plan for camaraderie, craft talk, nature walking, discussion, and plenty of writing. Space limited. #writingwildworkshops

Half Day Workshop - $75

May 18th - Writing Wild: Initiation: Stalking the Story- 12-3pm

Full Day Workshops - $150

July 20th - Writing Wild: Wilding Your World - 10-3:30pm

Sept 14th - Writing Wild: Ritual - 10-3:30pm

Or $125each, for early registration or if you register with a friend. Click on Early or Friend link.

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