Unwinding

06 Nov 2025 1 Comment

by Denise in Buddhism, Death, Death of a Child, Government, Politics, President, Spirituality, Trump Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

George Eliot: “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.” 

That’s the second time I’m mentioning this quote because it makes me uncomfortable. In 2015, Natalie and I took our 14-year-old Shih Tzu, Pippin, to the vet to be put down. In other words, we had him killed. I am fond of saying words matter which is maybe why I balk at using “put down” for “kill.” It amounts to the same thing. Pippin was old, blind, barely eating, had to be carried up and down the stairs and when he was put outside on the grass he lay there, refusing to walk or relieve himself. It was the kindest thing I could do. Our vet agreed. Does the euphemism make me feel better about taking responsibility for Pippin’s death? I did not want that responsibility but when it comes to my animals I will take it, if that’s what they need. Life was not the better option for him so I had him killed.

When I write about death, when my ego gets the best of me,  I think I’m some kind of expert. I am not. Philip has died and I’ve spent nearly 14 years living and breathing it and 13 years writing about it. I’m still trying to get it right. I won’t, ever. There’s no “right” to it. It’s an unwinding with its twists and turns, like anything worth exploring is.

I’d grown irritated with Pippin as he aged. He didn’t do what I wanted him to do. In the months before he died, while he was still able to walk outside, I’d carry him up and down the stairs. No problem. But when he didn’t want to walk, I’d drag him in annoyance as he tried to brace himself backwards. You have to walk, I’d be thinking, you have to. Period.

That came back to haunt me shortly after he died. I am going to remember this when I least want to, I thought. There will be a reckoning. It was shameful and I am embarrassed. And maybe coming to this is a by-product of Philip dying, but he was already dead when I was dragging Pippin. 

 Zoe, my other, Shih Tzu, also lived to 14. She’d suffered vestibular syndrome, which I can only liken to a stroke. She was losing weight, as well as her sight and her balance and her ability to wait for her walks to pee. I bought wee-wee pads for her and placed them all over the apartment. Once, when I saw her peeing on the rug, next to the wee-wee pad instead of on it, I jumped up in a frenzy and yelled, picked her up and placed her on the pad. Natalie was a witness. She didn’t say a word, but when, months later, I told her how ashamed I was, she tried to soothe me.

I’m among the millions who find animals easier than people. They are innocents. To me, that gives us a moral duty to them. To others, a dominion which includes cruelty, abuse and murder.

The incidents with Pippin and Zoe are visceral. They haunt me when I judge others’ cruelty. It might seem trivial to be writing about a couple of indiscretions with dogs when there are many humans I’ve either lived with or crossed paths with and have shown that same cruel streak. It’s not trivial. The point is cruelty’s existence, not where it flares up. If it’s there, it will flare. And as A Course In Miracles points out, “A slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.” The degree doesn’t matter. If it’s there, it’s deep, and it is what keeps love away.

Nearly two years ago I adopted an 11-year-old, one-eyed Shih Tzu named Susie. Can I wipe out my Karma with her? Is that how it works? I don’t think so. We create Karma with our actions. Susie is easy to love and difficult to be angry with. There is lots of good Karma going on now. Will it continue when she doesn’t do what I want her to do? I think it will. The difference is I have a patience now that I didn’t have then. It’s from the time and death I mentioned in my last post. I haven’t the energy it takes to rage.

I cannot condemn the cruelty I see without taking a look at my own. It is easier to see it in relation to my animals because there is no excuse. I cannot say they were cruel first. Because that is one of the ways we justify our own inexcusable behavior. We didn’t start the thing, what were we supposed to do?

I’m thinking of cruelty and its underlying rage because of the abject cruelty of this abomination of a regime that is currently in power. Trump has made cruelty and viciousness the norm and it isn’t something to get used to. 

I mentioned that I started posting on Facebook and amidst the two or three “likes” I’d get was a, um, “friend” who went nuts because she supports Trump. I was called all sorts of names and accused of all kinds of things which resulted in me blocking her  and re-thinking what the heck I was doing on Facebook. Wanting to be heard, was my answer. But she was the one mostly listening.

The next day she sent me a text, bringing up how she’d cried when Philip died and “politics shouldn’t Trump friendship.” (Yes, capital T). The short version of what I told her: You don’t get to act one way online, and another when you actually see the person you’ve degraded. Friendship is a privilege, one she no longer had. 

That whole exchange was a symptom of what is happening, led by people that were elected to powerful positions. They degrade and demean, equate wealth with wisdom, have no impulse control and no consequences. They are loud and crass and they bully. Their true-believers think they get to do the same. Sometimes I find myself aghast and speechless. Sometimes I think I must say something. Sometimes I think there must be a right way to deal with this. But it is as I said earlier in this post: There’s no “right” to it. It’s an unwinding with its twists and turns. And figuring out how to hold onto our humanity in the face of so many who’ve lost it is the work of the moment.

When I am wanting to find a way, I turn to Buddhism. I do not pray – if any of you think praying to god helps, bless you and keep at it. Something’s got help. Practicing Buddhism allows me to feel the force of good that is within and often untapped. I have too much communication with Philip to think that there isn’t something else. I just don’t think that something else is a being outside of me that either grants my whims and wishes or doesn’t. I think the power of our love and goodness is to be found within. It requires work, harder for some, easier for others. I believe myself the former.

The Buddha gave ten actions for wholesome Karma. Four of them have to do with speech. We are to abstain from false, malicious,  harsh/vulgar and frivolous speech. Think about that. All day we are speaking but how often are we considering what we’re actually saying or our motivation for saying it?  To the people we come across daily, our speech can be fairly benign. But “frivolous speech” includes gossiping, something seemingly as banal as giggling with one coworker about another coworker’s fashion choices.

That seems like nothing in the face of what people say to each other on the internet. Of what our leaders say and write publicly. The Young Republicans who praise Hitler, think it okay to rape women, disparage Jews and use the term “watermelon people?” Vance’s response was, ““I really don’t want to us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives.” These were not kids. They were 18-to-40-year-olds. Yet he was quite willing to deprive Jimmy Kimmel of his livelihood for joking that Trump and his allies were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

Of course, to anyone who was paying attention, Kimmel’s real crime was following his remark with a clip of Trump being asked how he felt about “his friend” Kirk’s death and responding by talking about the ballroom he was having built.

I am baffled as to how to respond to this regime with wholesome speech. Yet if I do what they do, am I not just as bad? This is a moral dilemma of the ages. J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote Lord Of the Rings, said, “You can’t fight the enemy with his own ring without turning into an enemy.” How much evil can one inflict without becoming evil?

The “ring” he’s referring to is Sauron’s ring of power. Sauron is the antagonist of the book, the ultimate evil. He created a ring that would give him dominion over everyone and everything. He lost the ring during battle and for many years, its power lay dormant. But power wants to be used and the ring is found by Sméagol and his friend Deagol. Sméagol wants it and kills Deagol for it. Sméagol did not yet know its power, but he was drawn to it. The ring means mastery. It is a symbol of intellectual and moral corruption. It brings out the worst in whoever bears it. The more it’s used, the more addictive it is and the more dehumanized is the one who’s wearing it. And so Smeagol’s coveting of the ring turns him from a hobbit into Gollum, a gaunt, slimy creature who lives in dark and damp caves and cares for nothing but the ring, which he calls his “precious.”

The story becomes one of the clash between Sauron and his armies and the rest of Middle Earth to possess the ring. Except there are those who understand that the ring will corrupt whoever has it and so want it destroyed. This is inconceivable to Sauron, who covets power above all.

There are critics of the book who call it a simple good-and-evil story. I don’t see it that way. It’s a story of loss. I think the ending rather bleak, which is, in part, why I’ve read it so many times. It has a realism to it because when one walks through fire to get the thing done and comes out the other side, things are changed and not necessarily for the better. Yes, the ring is destroyed. But Frodo, the hobbit who had a hand (literally a finger) in destroying it, is no victor. He has seen too much and something is lost. His journey home is a heavy one. He arrives to a vastly changed and degraded landscape, one he is no longer part of. So he joins the last of the elves who are leaving the world of men to sail to Valinor, the Undying Lands, where they will live in peace.

I am happy with the Democratic election victories. They are a good thing. But we have not passed through the fire that is Trump and his regime. So much has been destroyed in its wake. It can be rebuilt and made better. That is not a given. No, it’s not over, and no one knows where we’re headed. There isn’t an end to this, just a continued unwinding.

Valinor, anyone?

© 2025 Denise Smyth

How Then?

18 Oct 2025 2 Comments

by Denise in Democrat, Politics, President, Racism, Republican, Trump Tags: , , , , , , ,

I have had a hard heart. Time and death have tempered it. Still, it grieves me when I feel its sharp edges. Why aren’t I less reactive, where’s my compassion? I’m not the first to gaze down the long road from head to heart.

I believe that hard heart explains why, at some point in my late twenties/early thirties, I became a Republican. Not in any social sense, but for fiscal reasons. I had an attitude back then, and my choice of political party had not much to do with reality but with this attitude. With what I am calling my hard heart. The story went something like this: Government should be small since it has to be paid for. I work and my husband works and we support ourselves and so should everyone else. Handouts should be kept to a minimum and only for those who really need them. And if able-bodied people needed help, it should be limited and the government should be training those people to help them get jobs.

I was independent, I needed no help. I was good at at taking care of myself. I believed this was the spirit of the Republican Party. What I couldn’t see then was I’d developed disdain for neediness out of the shame I had for my own. This had nothing to do with politics, but that’s where I projected it. In this, I am not alone.

As far as social, issues, well, they were mostly settled, weren’t they?. Of course woman could choose to have an abortion. Of course gay people could marry. Of course blacks and women and every other minority should have equal rights. It was ridiculous that that even had to be said. We were all human beings. Why should skin color or sex determine what your rights were?  I just assumed we’d continue to progress along those lines. And didn’t the election of Barack Obama prove we’d come a long way?

I find my naïveté shocking.  

As I write this, my Waking Up app just sent the following quote from George Eliot: “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.” 

I grew up in New York City. I never discussed politics with my parents. We were mostly silent at dinner, the roots of which I’ve sometimes discussed in this blog and am not going to get into now. I assumed my parents and extended family were Democrats, like the majority of the city. That’s how out of touch I was. I was surprised and pleased to find that they were, in fact, Republicans. At last, I could fit in with them!

A few years later, my friend Ed shook his head. “You’re a liberal,” he said. “You just don’t know it.”

Then Philip died and nothing else mattered. Particularly politics since it was all a never-ending argument about who was right. What did I care about that? My hard heart was shattered, maybe all the more for its brittle severity. 

In 2016, the Republicans nominated Donald Trump as their candidate. I was stunned. What were they thinking? They weren’t thinking, actually, or such a thing couldn’t have happened. That day I sent a letter to the RNC notifying them I was resigning from the party and registering as a Democrat because of their unfathomable choice. I had no idea just how lethal to our democracy that choice would become.

I grew up in Brooklyn in a white neighborhood. When I was 11, a black family moved into an apartment building nearby. Their windows were broken. My parents did not disapprove. I did. I didn’t understand. There were plenty of black kids in my school. I didn’t think about where they lived. I figured it was somewhere in the neighborhood. I also didn’t think about the fact that none lived on my block, which is where I mostly played after school.

As an adult, I have heard family members call black people names I will not repeat. When my husband and I bought a house in Montclair, I was asked by a family member if I knew there was a black family across the street when we bought it. Out shopping on Church Street, she said, with disdain, “There are a lot of black people around here.” I was angry but, as usual, I remained silent.

I find what I don’t know stunning:

I did not know that race is a construct. There is no such thing as “white.” Of course there are different skin tones, but white is not a race. Human beings are about 99.9% genetically similar. This matters because of the way we group people, assign them traits and then treat them according to those social constructs. What we do to each other in this regard is not new. That we continue to do it is a disgrace. We look at skin color, we listen to unfamiliar accents, we decide what those things make a person and treat them accordingly. We thought it okay to bind and chain black people, to own them, to enslave them, to beat them because of their skin color.

Even as a kid I found this appalling but it was a distant past, no?  Back then I thought that if black and white people kept marrying, eventually everyone would look the same and our troubles, at least as far as racism, would be solved. I thought racism was only about black people.

I wish not to speak like this. Black people, white people, brown people. But this is the language I have to use.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “race is the child of racism, not the father.” I had to sit a while with this to understand what he was saying. Racism, which involves the exploitation and hierarchy of people, came first. Race was invented to justify it. Skin color and hair decide where human beings fit into the hierarchy. And in this country, exacerbated by this president, we know what that looks like.    

 In his book, Between the World and Me, Coates talks of racism as visceral. It involves his body. And all bodies subjected to racism. It’s not only what was done to blacks when they were enslaved. It’s the beatings, lynchings, shootings and all manner of brutality that people whose skin is darker than mine deal with to this day. I can’t imagine having to tell my children how they should behave because the color of their skin is a liability. I can’t imagine then sending those children out into a world where there’s no god to protect them from people who think their “white” skin gives them license to make violence upon anyone who looks in a way they deem inferior. And a system that will often agree.

All of this has gotten worse under Trump as he rambles out of both sides of his mouth. I’m not racist, he will declare. The evidence to show otherwise is easy enough to find. He’s used words like “animal” and “rabid” to describe black prosecutors. He uses DEI whenever he can to assign blame to a situation before investigation. At the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville he said, “There are very fine people on both sides.” In debating Joe Biden, he refused to denounce the Proud Boys. He called African countries “shit holes.” He wants to overhaul the U.S. Refugee system to give preference to whites. And right now the Supreme Court is deciding whether to further gut the Voting Rights Act.

You don’t need me to go on about this. It’s all out there.

Ed sent me a link to a conversation between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehesi Coates, which I would urge you to listen to. At one point, Klein quotes the Buddha:

I am of the nature to grow sick
I am of the nature to grow old
I am of the nature to lose the people I love
I am of the nature to die
How then shall I live?

That is what it comes down to – how, then, shall I live? This has been an uncomfortable post to write. Turning the lens from the page to my-self, I am unsettled at what I see. I’m afraid I wrote it wrong, I’m unsure of what I sound like. What else am I going to find that “I didn’t know?” I can’t answer that any more than I can answer the question of how I shall live. It’s to be asked every day because the frame of reference changes. How will I live now that I know race is a construct, that things suffered by others are so much more visceral and complicated than I understood? How will I live now that I’ve discovered my country is not what I thought it was? 

I don’t know, but it will be different than it was yesterday.

© 2025 Denise Smyth

“Chaos is a Ladder”

14 Oct 2025 3 Comments

by Denise in Facebook, Government, Politics, President, suffering, Trump, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

I’m not much active on social media. Other than my blog, I’ve thought it best to steer clear. I’m not even particularly active on this blog any more. I’m focused on writing a book and that takes about all the energy I have. And for a long time I refused to write anything political here. This was about living with the Philip’s death, not the never-ending, un-winnable political arguments about being right. I chose peace instead

I started a Facebook page in 2009 – rather, Natalie started it for me. I never posted anything on it. It allowed some people from my past to “find” me and in each case it was a win. But when Philip died and I started this blog, I linked it to Facebook so people would be notified when I posted. Then Facebook  changed that. I’m not sure what they did, exactly, except that my blog, Forever 21, now has its own Facebook page. I doubt it ever gets read.

Of course, social media has its uses but damn if it isn’t a swamp out there. Yes, I watch Youtube videos of Lee Asher and the wonderful ways he rescues animals. I sometimes watch monologues from Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers. I don’t have cable so that’s the only way I can see them. But what is going on in this country is a call to action and what I know how to do is write. So I took half of my last post – the Trump half – and posted it on Facebook. A few friends commented, I got a few thumbs up. I didn’t expect much since I don’t have many “friends” nor am I active. But damn it felt good to add my voice to those who are protesting the degradation and radicalization of this country.

What I truly didn’t expect was the unhinged rant I received in a comment by someone I know, followed by several angry text messages. She attacked and accused me of not wanting to “listen to the other side.” Said person is a Trump supporter. We are generally friendly, don’t see each other much  and when we do, we don’t discuss politics. She posts about her support for Trump on Facebook. I don’t read what she writes and wouldn’t comment on it if I did. What for? There’s a difference between a thoughtful conversation and a rant and I’ve no interest in the latter.

Still, this struck a chord. The left has been accused of TDS, but it’s the right that needs to be treated for it. 

I live a pretty quiet life. I’ve written a lot in this blog about my struggles. I had a difficult childhood, I’ve dealt with alcohol, drugs, anorexia and bulimia. I found marriage difficult, I find maintaining friendships difficult. I’m estranged from most of my family. My son has died and no matter how ineffable the grief I continue to try to put words on it. I write to connect because I think at its core, it’s all relatable. We might not be suffering every moment, but we are no strangers to it.

I’ve stayed away from social media as it’s full of bile and rage. People get to say what they want without actually looking into the eyes of the person/people they most want to say it to. They think it brave, I think it cowardly. I well know how much easier it is to write what I want to say to someone instead of actually saying it. People have been hurt by things I wrote, which was never my intent. I write about life as I experience it and I’ve no control over how anyone hears it. “We see the world not as it is, but as we are,” wrote Anais Nin.

But there’s a shift in the world and I’m off balance because it’s leaning right while I’m straining toward the left. I’m not so sure any more about assuming someone’s going to fix this while I concentrate on Buddhism and meditating and figuring out how to be kind when I don’t always feel that way. Or how to love when I’m so often angry. And those things do matter. I’m also not sure if my silence is because I find the world too hurtful and hateful to be part of or if it’s because I can’t figure out how to be an effective part of change. Or because I don’t want people to be mean to me which makes even me want to give myself a thorough shaking and say, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I have done a spectacular job of protecting myself. In a word: withdraw. But I am restless now. Trump and his sycophantic administration’s bullying was meant to scare people into submission. What he’s done, instead, has woken us up. “Chaos is a ladder,” said Little Finger in Game of Thrones. What he meant was the person who created it would climb it to power. But I don’t think Trump is going to get there first. I think the ladder’s going to be climbed by the millions he’s taunted and betrayed. It’s part of the struggle that’s as old as the human race. And as John Steinbeck wrote, “It’s not that evil wins—it won’t—it’s that it won’t die”

© 2025 Denise Smyth

It Matters

28 Sep 2025 4 Comments

by Denise in Authoritarian, Death of a Child, Government, Politics, President, Trump, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. And a people that can no longer believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
Hannah Arendt

Writing keeps me company. It’s the one way my thoughts and I actually work together. Without writing, my undisciplined mind goes on the attack in spite of the daily mediating I do or the wise words I read from those who know better or even the practice of noticing what my mind is doing and saying, “Oh, yeah, that again.” 

Philip, too, keeps me company. He’s there when I turn to him and after nearly 14 years I still hear him, I still take dictation from him. This, I think, is no special skill. I think anyone who has lost someone can pick up a pen and a piece of paper and listen for them. Much as I’ve been doing it for all these years – some years less so than others – I do understand  how hard it is. I still wonder every time I open my journal if he’ll be there, if I’m kidding myself, is this going to be the time there is…nothing? It never turns out that way. He’s always there and the things he says are often things I’ve never thought. I’d think there a thousand ways anyone reading this could explain it away. It doesn’t matter. I listen, he speaks, that is enough for me.

Back in February, my friend John suggested I go back to writing the book I started about Philip and that I should ask Philip to help me. I’d started a memoir and really can’t say why I put it down. Not writing begets not writing and for a long time I did nothing. But not writing also begets an illness of sorts, one that corrodes my mind, my soul, my psyche and is so potent that I look fine and mostly act fine, but that unseen corrosion is hell bent on driving me toward that final, that terrible, that very last crash.

So I took myself to Greece in June for a writing retreat and then to upstate New York in August for another at a Buddhist Center. I’ve reduced my hours at work and am finally writing every day. I am closer to Philip than ever as he helps me navigate this, closer to Natalie because she is the one I share his death – and my life – with the most. 

None of this is what I meant to write about. It’s easier, though, than trying to write about what I see happening in this country because that is so big and so awful and seems to require an intellect far greater than mine with a grasp of history and politics that I do not have. So I sat with Philip before I wrote this and he reminded me there are all kinds of readers for all kinds of writers and my job is to find my heart. It’s nothing more than what I work toward no matter what I’m writing about. What else can I do – it is rotten out there, the stench of this administration is overpowering and putting the covers over my head to keep out the rankness isn’t working. It is exactly what Trump et al are going for. Manufacture crises to divert attention from the real problems, lie, lie and then lie some more, make “the other” the enemy which means anyone who disagrees with Trump, degrade institutions, ignore courts and precedents, surround yourself with sycophants who fawn over you, turn the economically disadvantaged into losers – and illegal losers at that! – who are taking advantage of YOUR hard earned money so let’s take away their health care and their SNAP benefits and that will show them.

And that’s just in our country. If the administration sees no moral imperative to take care of their own, they’re certainly not going to help anyone else. So USAID is withdrawn and people all over the world are suffering, dying. Yet Trump came up with $20 billion to prop up a right wing government in Argentina. Where’s the outrage? He’s spending over $1 billion to outfit an illegal gift of a plane for Air Force One from Qatar. And he’s building a ballroom while the cost of groceries and daily essentials rises.

What is happening? How is this happening? How does any sane person listen to Trump’s unhinged ranting and proudly think, “That is the president of my country, the greatest country in the world!” How can anyone watch a cabinet meeting where everyone at the table, one by one, fawns over Trump, stopping short of kneeling and kissing his ring? It’s like watching a terribly acted play except it isn’t fiction. It is actually happening. There are no adults in the room with Trump. The one child missing is the one who would know enough to cry out, “The emperor has no clothes.”

Maybe once we were the greatest country in the world, maybe one day we will be again. But a country that could elect a Trump has lost its moral authority. Under his rule we are living in an authoritarian state. If an election doesn’t go the way of the ruling power, it is challenged (check). Civil servants have to profess loyalty to dear leader (check). Supposedly independent government officers – prosecutors, inspectors general, federal commissioners – have to do dear leader’s bidding or they are replaced with inexperienced loyalists (check). Private institutions have to do as dear leader says or they are punished (check). Independent journalism is attacked and threatened if it reports what dear leader doesn’t want to hear (check). Even our comedians – COMEDIANS! – are under attack as the thin skin of dear leader is so easily wounded. What kinds of countries take their comedians off the air? And which party are the “snowflakes” now, which party is the party of cancel culture?

I could go on and on, but to what end? There’s plenty of information about what Trump is doing if you want to know, and if you don’t, nothing I say matters. But this is what does matter. Words matter. Trump has made a mockery of this and his administration follows suit. He is cruel. This matters. He is heartless and soulless. He thrives on divisiveness and has not a clue nor a care about how to bring the country together. He is not a serious man except in his will to destroy and his rigid hold on power. Our national landscape is littered with the corpses of justice, equality and freedom. Decency – there is no decency. And if these concepts don’t matter to you, perhaps the cost of groceries or the loss of healthcare or the freedoms of the wealthy that are denied to the rest of us, do. Something of his gross unfitness to be president must matter to you. It simply must.

 I’ve never felt particularly compelled to “do” anything politically. I vote, of course. But this is different, this is urgent. I can’t say I know exactly what to do, but I made a start by writing this post. I’ve joined a political group called Third Act for people over sixty who want to make the world a better place. I read and listen to Heather Cox Richardson – she is a brilliant historian and a voice of sanity and reason. And the one thing I know not to do is to give in to exhaustion and like so many, I am plenty tired. That’s part of Trump’s playbook. We are whacked daily, we are whacked multiple times daily, with his degradations. This not only creates exhaustion, it creates a storm of chaos that blinds us to what this is administration is doing to us, to our institutions, to our way of life. And I’d like to end with some grand conclusion, or at least a witty last sentence. I haven’t any. I would just ask that we pay attention, that we all wake the fuck up.

© 2025 Denise Smyth