“I AM THE WALRUS”
“I am he as you are he as you are me.”
Sweet refreshment, John Lennon’s embrace of nonsense in “I Am the Walrus.” How about sitting, like the egg man, on a cornflake? Or gardening, sunburned, in the rain? “Goo goo g’joob.” C’mon, take occasional skinny dips in nonsense – making up names and places, elbowing laughter, baseball without bases, hide minus seek. The “real” world awaits, but playtime keeps it waiting a bit longer. You, who is me, we be a corn-flakey walrus. G’joob.
A different kind of national nonsense deserves just enough attention to defeat it. Awareness of right wing(nuttiest) extremism is necessary to protect ourselves, each other, and democracy. Mouths disconnected from brains. Take names—though shrilly petrifying, their numbers are few. Bodies missing hearts. Speak up. Move on. Disregarding dangerous nonsense shortens its reach. Silence speaks volumes. ….
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A taste of inspiring yes-sense—its aim high and true.
Meet Grace Linn, speaker against book banning at a Martin County school board meeting in Florida. “Fear seeks control.” Widowed when her husband died while fighting in World War II, Linn champions our First Amendment Right to free speech. “One of the freedoms the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books they banned. They stopped the free press, banned and burned books.” Her handmade “Targeted and Banned Quilt” serves as a worthy reading list, and individuals and groups succeed in putting these and more books in young hands throughout Florida. “Guerrilla giveaways and pop-up libraries,” today’s weapons in the fight against Nazism.
Root for Autumn Peltier, water commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation, since age 8 a committed clean water activist for Canada’s indigenous communities. Speaking to prime minister Justin Trudeau, Peltier honors a long line of female ancestors: “I am very unhappy with the choices you’ve made. The pipelines.” Now a first-year college student, she stays on Trudeau: “Water justice means no more broken promises from government. Indigenous people have a long, long history of broken promises.” What continually motivates her? “My superpower comes from being an indigenous person.”
Hail the Tennessee Three—today this mighty trio meets President Biden at the White House. Such dogged speakers of truth, both inside and outside Tennessee’s State House of Representatives. Despite the world watching their crashing gavels, scared members of the fascist majority first ousted and then repeatedly silenced these three duly-elected state officials. Quite a vivid reminder to post a coast-to-coast, vigilant lookout on state legislatures.
How welcome, the threesome’s wise, courageous demand to lay down guns, put the past to final rest, and take hold of downtrodden hands. Nashville’s Justin Jones: “We called for you all to ban assault weapons and you responded with an assault on democracy.” Justin Pearson, representing Memphis: “We will not stop. We will not give up! We will continue working to build a nation that includes, not excludes, or unjustly expels.” Knoxville’s Gloria Johnson, special education teacher, recalling a 2008 shooting death at Knoxville Central High School…“the terror on the kids’ faces as they were running down that hill into my classroom.” Two Justins and one Gloria affirm faith in a democratic future. They inspire others, regardless of age or background, to run for political office, campaign, volunteer… to protest, register to vote, vote despite obstacles.
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Oh, you battery-charging, delight-splashing pansies! Hello, time of year, “when faces called flowers float out of the ground.” Birds, fish, mountains dance. We’re breathing, having, giving because “-it’s april (yes,april;my darling) it’s spring!” Poetic grammarian e e cummings flirts with gamboling boldness: “alive;we’re alive,dear:it’s (kiss me now) spring.”
Why does poet Billy Collins fling open the windows? “If ever there were a spring day so perfect / so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze,” then what? Perhaps a stroll under the sky’s blue and white canopy. When? “Today.”
Capping off today, Brad Mehldau makes elegantly simple piano-sense of “I Am the Walrus.” Here’s to playing the keys of life as melodically.
Pansies. Us. Melodies-in-the-making.
spring fever budding
walruses “jooba jooba”
we “umpa umpa”
Told with McCarty’s characteristic wisdom, marvel, exuberance, and good will, Leaving 1203 is about navigating that way through. The author draws on all available resources—friends and strangers, food and laughter, life lessons learned in the very house she now empties, and, not least, her newly-inherited West Highland terrier, Billy. McCarty simultaneously learns and deftly teaches the fine arts of remembering, letting go, and holding on to what matters most. She not only finds the way through, she shows the way.
the greatest gift an author could give a reader… lessons of a universally philosophical and existential kind… a touching journey… a welcome, upbeat ride
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