Red Licorice, By the By

The news is full of people picking other people off while they’re just going about their business.

Meanwhile, I’m finishing off the rest of the red licorice. It needs to be gone.

I see the news reports, the video of the perpetrators, the weeping of the victims, the, oh so astute, expert opinions. I am not rapt.

A switch got flipped in November. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I don’t engage. It’s as if I dropped a beautiful but only half-done sweater I spent months knitting along with all the adorable balls of yarn in the wicker basket at my feet into the frozen crap at the bottom of a pit toilet full of used condoms and McDonald’s wrappers. I’m done knitting, she says to no one in particular.

It’s sad, losing the sweater and all, especially losing its incredible potential as the most beautiful sweater ever made, but it’s also freeing.

It’s not my job to knit the most beautiful sweater ever made. Or any sweater. Or wring my hands about why people ram trucks into crowds of people or teenagers take guns to school to shoot people. Or whether the Republicans can organize themselves enough to elect a Speaker of the House tomorrow. Or if Trump will make good on the dozens of nonsensical and damaging policies he blabbered about during the campaign.

The engagement and the knitting, if there is to be any, will be right here, say, a five-mile radius around my house. Can old people cross the street without getting run down by a speeding car? Are kids getting a decent public education? Do folks know how to vote? When there’s a public hearing, does anyone show up? Can we build more local muscle during the next four, godforsaken years? Time to cast on.

There were five pieces of red licorice left. I ate them all and now I am done with red licorice.

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Photo by Nik on Unsplash