The F-Bombs

cursing, running, or facing our fears - the choice is yours

this picture is not of my garden.

Hello loved ones, supporters, subscribers. This post is quite unlike me in that I am writing an actual timely article tied to a news peg. But also, I really wanted to say again I’m grateful for all of you being here, reading and sharing my work. To those of you who are paid subscribers, please know you are literally helping me pay the grocery bills, especially since the garden we planted in some over-priced bad soil means the plants we thought might help feed us this season are Not Thriving.

That not thriving in our own soil is a lot like America right now, isn’t it? Looks good and rich and costs a lot to be a part of, but the dirty truth is, the home-ground lacks too much substance or nutrients for the greater good.

Like most of you who are part of this community, I feel the heat and pressure of our bombs dropping in faraway lands. My nervous systems is quite aware how other bombs can land on our home soil at any moment, too. Then today I woke up to a video headline in my unpaid NYT news app; Donald Trump “lashes out” by using a curse word—specifically an f-bomb, as it’s colloquially known. That video shows Trump as he really is: the mask of performative leadership ripped off, the reality of his frustrated old white man-self visible. He was talking about the supposed cease-fire he’d brokered between Israel and Iran, “two countries,” he said, “that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing; do you understand that?” (The “you” he was talking to, ostensibly the reporter asking questions.)

This realness clip shows Trump as he is, annoyed to be in charge in a country that also has been fighting so long and so hard, it doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing, especially since his administration fired over half the people in the government who might have known the tiniest something about what they fuck they were doing. Some of you might even say Trump doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, and I get that analysis. But his anti-everythingness is not simply hate and bigotry (although, yes, that mindset must be foundational for him and his administration to be banning books and DEIA, disintegrating medical care for transgender folks and poor people, defunding public education, taking SNAP benefits from children, deporting and detaining immigrants, and funding a genocide.)

But his anti-everythingness is because he’s ultra-capitalistic, and fear above all else, even sex, sells, sells, sells. Trump’s motivation is cold, hard cash and he can and will ignore people, even your ultra-conservative Proud Boy neighbor, to get to his goal. He is so warded off from empathy, care, and basic human needs he cannot possibly see or hear anyone but himself, a party of one in his own echo-chamber. Him dropping the F-bomb may galvanize his base who thinks he “says it like it is,” who believes in militarization for the sake of control, who may even be willing to go fight or have their children fight another fabricated weapons of mass destruction war. His base somehow thinks his f-bomb will make their lives better when some off us off-base know we are are all disposable for the sake of his immediate interests.

In recovery we say the word “fear” can be an acronym for two things. The first is: Fuck Everything And Run. Plenty of people with nervous systems like mine are doing just that, their fear of WWIII and scarcity and climate (bad soil!) collapse is too much to take, so they are moving abroad, bunkering down in their own homes, or living in a daily unadulterated social-media-dictated-distracted swivet while also sort-of pretending everything is fine. I understand all those options and I fend off the swivet pretty much every day, too.

But the other acronym when dealing with fear is: Face Everything And Recover. You do not have to face everything, everywhere, all at once or, especially, alone. But methodically, in community, and with kind tending to yourself, like weeding a garden, you can face everything and recover bit by bit. Like I’ve said before here on The Nano, I’m not recovering solely from unhealthy alcohol use, but from what my coffee mug given to me by my apocalypse buddy says: “I’ve got 99 problems and cis-white-hetero-normative patriarchy is basically all of them.” There’s a lot to face, and I am here for the recovering.

I recommend doing this inner and outer work with people who understand, like Dean Spade, who wrote Mutual Aid says, how we want to “meet basic human needs through systems that are based on principles of collective self-determination rather than coercion.” (Speaking of f-bombs, I’m on a big Dean Spade kick right now, so I also recommend his new podcast based on his new book of the same name, Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together.) I also recommend my friend Tia Ma, a resilience coach who can help you regulate your soma while living in these very jittery, unstable systems. Best of all, find a mutual aid group near you or, if you legitimately cannot find one, start one by mapping your own neighborhood and area.

A very wise friend, whose poetry is in itself soothing (and hilarious), once said, “the real insanity is to say ‘fuck it.’” What he meant was it’s insanity to give up on life before the miracle of life gives back to you. We have people in power who are so living in their “fuck everything and run” / F-bomb era. That is super sad, so please go ahead and grieve.

But we also have miracles, like growing a food garden, even a poor job of it, as an act of radical hope in the dark. This kind of work is one more meager yet meaningful effort toward building mutual aid for neighbors and friends who maybe will get a tomato start from me because I’m also learning how to prune the tomato plants (which are actually doing okay in this poor soil) and then root the suckers. Now there’s a metaphor for you! Root and replant the suckers! You cannot do everything in the face of fear, but you can do something. And if everyone does a little bit of something, we all face everything, reaching down into the earth, knowing all along, we are meant to recover, grow, and thrive, together.

Hang on little tomato, the photo and the song by Pink Martini