Dear Reader,
I am writing to you on a rainy Wednesday evening. I had tuna casserole for dinner (affectionately known in my family as “tuna noodle glop”) and shared some tuna with my cat, who is small and kindly and very dumb, who I love very much. I am now drinking a modest glass of the limited-run Lemonade rosé from Day Wines—the backstory being that these grapes had been intended for a classic pinot noir, and then a devastating wildfire season meant a change of plans. Turns out smoke and ash are not a great mix with vineyards. The name refers to that ol’ saw, “When life gives you lemons…”
Getting juice off the grape skins quickly can dramatically minimize smoke effect in wine, so instead of making a red Pinot noir from these sites, we very gently pressed the fruit, settled it many times, and fermented it in the fashion of a white wine off of the skins. Like the rest of 2020, we made the best of a difficult situation and thankfully, the results are delicious.
I am sipping this wine and thinking about the fact that in 2022 so far, my country has experienced 214 mass shootings, resulting in 243 deaths and nearly a thousand people injured, and an untold thousands of people terrorized and traumatized. That’s so far this year. It is May.
How do you process this? Here’s one thing I did:
It turns out, if you carefully count out 243 beads, out loud, letting each number stand in for a name you don’t know, it takes about eleven minutes. I spent probably close to two hours stringing them, in a strand that measures 64 inches long, which is just a few inches shorter than my own height. Each color grouping represents deaths from a single incident, as recorded by the Gun Violence Archive.
I’m thinking about what else I can do, actually do. Stories and dramas train us to think in terms of grand sweeping gestures or to think that there must be some clear narrative arc we can adhere to, but that’s not how life actually works. What actually happens is that we all muddle around as best we can, and sometimes we try things that prove totally useless, and sometimes we try things that seem like complete crap only for whatever quirk of time and place, the crap attempt actually turns into something real and meaningful.
For instance, on a personal level, I have sort of muddled my way into being a key organizer of Diversity & Inclusion programming within my organization. I co-lead a mentoring program. I have done some really cool stuff with our Pride chapter, and it all started with “hey, I think it would be neat if…” Like, in a couple weeks, I’ll be working on a “make your own custom pride ribbon” event because I thought it would be fun to do crafts with coworkers—and also inspired a bit by the fact that it still warms my damn heart when I walk around the building and see the rainbow ribbons we handed out pre-pandemic still tacked up on cube walls and in offices.
What I mean is, I’ve worked on little things that I thought were worth doing, and it turns out that those little things have added up to more meaningful things over time. So I’m not going to think about what’s insurmountable. I’m just going to think about what I can do.
I graduated from high school the same year as the Columbine school shooting. My entire adult life has been watching this country stay stuck in the mire of tolerating gun violence to appease a small minority of wackadoos. There’s no making lemonade out of this unrelenting grief. I am all out of optimism, but by god, it turns out where I can’t be optimistic, I can still be obstinate. I’m looking at this damn mountain and all I’ve got is this little shovel, but I’m going to look for the best place to get started nevertheless.
On the book front, and speaking of obstinate bisexuals, I’ve been rereading the Will Darling Adventures trilogy by KJ Charles, for the eleventy-third time. This is probably one of my very all-time favorite reads, in any genre. Will Darling was a trench raider in the Great War who, through a few twists of fate, finds himself proprietor of a used bookshop inherited from an uncle he barely knew. When it turns out that his uncle apparently had come into possession of some very dangerous information, Will doesn’t know who he can trust. Kim Secretan presents himself as an ally whose curiosity is piqued by the mystery, but who the hell is this Secretan fellow anyway?
There are so many great twists here. The plot of each book stands alone, with no cliffhangers between books, but you’ll definitely want to read them in order to avoid spoilers. And the relationship between these characters is just brilliantly drawn. The perspective is third-person but close in to Will, no switching point of view, which means that you get walloped by events just as he does, and you steadily see Kim’s character develop as Will comes to better understand him in all his complexity. There are also some key supporting characters who appear in each book, in particular Will’s best friend Maisie Jones, and also the Honorable Phoebe Stephens-Prince, who are a delight in themselves.
Kind of a shorter letter today. Hope you’re safe and well.
Love,
Beas
