What We Do Now

It’s Sunday and we are inside at home recovering from our usual a lot of work but we

still like it Thanksgiving. In upstate New York, we’ve hosted a dinner for almost 40

years. Some friends said we should not have Thanksgiving this year. After all

it’s a politically incorrect holiday glorifying expropriation. Still, I like any holiday

where friends come together to talk and to eat. And because we are not religious,

there’s something about giving thanks. This year, more than ever before, there is so

much to say. And so much to do. Our life has now become an exchange of

information: political actions, doctors, living strategies.

We are just beginning, each of us, to figure out how and what.

We exchange Coping information all the time: what movies and series and TV shows

to watch. What good books to read. Writers we admire who are addressing all these

problems. Writers of good stories, and good poems.

I collect crazy emails that people send to me, like this one today from a poet who

didn’t like a new book about poets and Taylor Swift.

“I am just sad that none of my Post-Mormon/ Post 19th Century Agrarian Landscape

Meditations convinced any of the editors I was a worthy inclusion. ”

I have always wanted to write a series of small chapbooks entitled Don’t Miss This,

where I make my own wildly subjective lists of all that I love, an ongoing record of all

that is good. In way that is interactive. Maybe an App that we can all add too: All That

We Love. That’s the only advice I know how to give now. Fight the way you know how

to fight. And do what you love.

My two favorite TV shows are Somebody Somewhere, Bridgett Everett’s memoir show

about Manhattan, Kansas, and Shrinking, a funny therapy show. I watch what people

tell me is wonderful. The great Roz Chast wrote her own list this week in the New

Yorker, and I closely adhered to her list, including Eggland about aging (for us!!!) and

the show she said she really really loves, I Think You Should Leave.

Friends send suggestions. I always want them.

Judith said she’s obsessed with the singer/performer Cristina Vane. Now I am too.

Around this time of year, I collect other people’s favorite poems. To give them as gifts

when people come to visit. For Thanksgiving, I collected poems. Two of my favorites

are here for you.

An Occasional Speech at the Interfaith Thanksgiving Gathering

Anyone who gets to be

eighty years old says thank you

to the One in charge then im-

mediately begins to complain why

were these years such a historical

mess why was my happiness

and willing gratitude interfered with

every single decade no sooner

were the normal spats with parents

lovers children ended than the

interfering greed of total strangers

probably eighty years old as well

and full of their own bloated thank-

fulness at unbelievable success in

the expropriation of what belonged

to other people and peoples not

to mention the economic degradation

leading to thanks engendering

profits in our own country and

in the innocent or colluding parts

of the world

I am sadly reminded

of the first couple of our American

thanksgivings thank you thank you

our first Americans together with

the Absolutely First Americans within a gener-

ation or half of one the first Americans

proceeded to drive the Absolutely First

Americans from their villages rivers

fields over mountains and across the con-

tinent out out they cried almost at

the same time shouting thank you thanks

thank you

—Grace Paley

Thanks

W.S. Merwin

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

taking our feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is.

What about you? Tell us what you’re doing now.

Love, Esther

PS: We’re having an ALTE exhibit and party in Teaneck at the PUFFIN Gallery on December 14 4 PM at 20 Puffin Way. JOIN US.

Christina Vane How You Doin’