where do I put all of my rage
There is a road that leads out of my village and into another one. It is not paved, crossing over hills and weaving through valleys. The land on either side is ranch lands and widely empty save the cows. There are three houses on the six-mile stretch, but rarely do you see someone outside.
On one side it’s rocky and covered with low brush, on the other it’s smooth, cattle grazing territory that rises into a ridgeline forest before dipping low again and rising high again into the mountains. There are ditches and waterways, creeks, and a small spring that leads to a beautiful cascade that if heading south and craning your neck at exactly the right moment, you can see.
It’s largely open, the experience of driving this road, and vast. There are only so many words left to describe the scale of this place I live, though the feelings it bestows are infinite. Towering mountains and rolling prairies and an endless sky — but the very last bit of the road (if heading north) closes in slightly as it nears the river. Cottonwoods become dense and the road narrows before crossing the bridge and being dumped, unceremoniously, back onto asphalt.
How tight can you make a place and still find something new? I have been wondering, as someone always in thirst in a world closing in.
The other day I took a curve and startled a bird eating a hare in the middle of the road. The hawk grabbed the prey in its talons and spread its wings wide but dropped the rabbit in the moment of panic. Blood streaked the site and the bird circled in anger at my disturbance.
Moments later I was struck by the carcass of a deer, covered in blood and guts and pieces of flesh. Someone had been there recently but had not been able to finish. The ribcage was enormous and on its side, jutting high into the sky as if a work of art.
The river babbles through the zippering ice and I wonder at the lions who come to drink there. In the summer bears cross in front of my vehicle, and in the fall my son shouts out “Coyote!” as we watch one traverse the valley. The herd of wild elk that congregates here is great in number, and their calls to one another ripple through me.
Yesterday the images of Biden, Harris, Blinken and others being applauded, lauded for their “incredible work” leave me enraged. Only after entirely enabling, funding, and encouraging the genocide of a people. Only after more than 100,000 deaths, only after an entire land was razed to the ground. Only when 467 days had passed.
I wonder how long it will be before Biden says “We didn’t realize at the time that it was genocide.” Weeks or months? Years or in a posthumous biography? When will Harris say “I spoke up but no one heard me,” or some other egregious posturing?
I take this road several times a week: Sometimes to get somewhere, sometimes with the ask that it reveal itself to me. I wonder, if I had to drive this road only for the rest of my life, could I be satisfied? The skies break open for a light beam to come through.
Where do I put my rage? Where do I hold it in me? How do I strike a balance, for myself and for my son? What will all of these politics dictate? How much will the advent of artificial intelligence control? What is our planet capable of holding? What livable spaces will remain? How tight can we make a place and still find something new?
I drive down the road and around the bend, pull over, get out, and look back just in time to see the hawk swoop low for another pass at her nourishment.
CJP x