March Newsletter

Here’s a sample of this month’s newsletter. To receive the whole thing (including freebies! This month’s had a link to a super-secret trailer chapter for my next novel), add yourself to the contact list HERE.

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Dear Beguiling and Savvy Readers,

The end of March is nigh. This month has been about four-and-a-half months long, yet I am still getting this out near the end of the month. Why? So you will know the month is nearly over and remember we used to have these things called months which meant something. You’re welcome for that bit of nostalgia.

Before I go any further, I hope this finds you physically and mentally well and weathering this storm as best you can. I’ve been sending you flowers every day (digitally, through Instagram and twitter and FB) to try to bring some added beauty into your life, and I hope you are in good spirits. I’m in one of the Stay Home, Save Lives states (as opposed to the Save the Economy by Killing Grandma which Will Damage the Economy A Whole Lot More states), so I’ve been gearing up to try to teach my high school students as best I can when some have no internet (we’ll make it work somehow). I did something really important for my mental health: I got a dog. Meet E.V. She’s a rescue who had a really rough life before a wonderful foster family saved her, trained her, and brought her to me. Now it’s my job to make sure she knows she’s safe and loved for the rest of her life, and this sequestration is offering a lot of time for bonding. She also takes me for walks, so she’s keeping me healthy in that way, too. Good dog, E.V.!

Updates about my writing and publishing

Heather S. Ransom’s Back to Green hit shelves this month, and it’s already crushing it. Kate Ristau’s sequel to Shadow Girl, titled Shadow Queene, is now available for pre-order and will arrive on doorsteps or in Kindles the day of its release, April 28th, if you order your copy now. Not a Pipe Publishing had a big sale this last week where a whole bunch of our titles (the stand-alones, the anthologies, and the firsts in each series) were free on Kindle for the week. It was a huge success in a couple ways. First, it got a lot of our talented authors' words in front of a lot of eyeballs. That’s the main goal of the company, far more important than making money. As an added bonus, the downloads count as sales, so ALL of Not a Pipe Publishing’s authors have now become Amazon Best Sellers. I know that doesn’t translate into royalties for them or profit for the company, but it sounds cool, and I keep believing that once people read these great novels, they’ll tell friends and the books will take off. Why? Because they should. Because they’re great books. I know that’s not really the way the world works, but I think it’s the way the world should work, and I’m going to keep trying to make it so.

My book tour has been canceled, of course. I’m not even going to spill ink complaining about that in the current global context. 

As for my own novel, I joked that I would make March my CoronaNoWriMo (NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, and it’s in November when school is on, so I can never participate). I half believed my own joke, too. Well, I spent the month working on other people’s books because I signed contracts with them and owe it to them to put their books first, so mine kinda took a back-burner, but I have made some progress lately, and it reminded me why I love these characters and their story, so I’m feeling increased impetus to get it done. Then my girlfriend, who is currently reading Don’t Read This Book, told me she wanted more of three of the characters in the sequel. Combined with a global pandemic, that has changed the direction of this sequel and the third installment in a good way. Just today I wrote a whole chapter. I normally wouldn’t share out a teaser like this, but I think this chapter can stand alone while also giving you a flavor of the second book. So, if you want to read Don’t Read This Book first and not have anything spoiled, get that here, but if a book with a title telling you NOT to read it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, consider reading this chapter that has some not-so-hidden commentary on the era we are all living through. (Just a first draft, of course, and subject to a lot of change in the future.) [This is just for folks who have signed up for the newsletter, so membership has its privileges. Add yourself to the contact list HERE.]  I think you’ll enjoy it. And if you’re fans of the McElroy Brothers who do the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me, you’ll like it even more!

Tweet from someone you should consider following

Lately my favorite person on twitter has been Mikel Jollett. He’s the lead singer of a band I like, The Airborne Toxic Event (they formed in 2006, so the name is just an unhappy coincidence), and the author of a memoire, Hollywood Park, and his critiques of this administration have been insightful, focused, and blistering. Follow him at @Mikel_Jollett

Monthly Poem

This poem came about thanks to a workshop put on by my friend Rebecca Smolen, who is also one of the most talented poets I’ve ever met. She hosts these workshops using a special critique method, and she keeps the workshops small, but if you can get into one, I highly recommend them. Anyway, a few years ago I painted my own version of Picasso’s Don Quixote, and it’s pretty decent but not at all creative. Most folks think it’s a print of his, and that’s flattering in its own way. It’s framed on my wall. One of the prompts Rebecca gave us was “my empty body,” and both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza have empty spaces in their bodies, but they carry themselves completely differently, emptiness and all. Hence, this:

Holding the Lance

Picasso’s version 

of Sancho Panza

is not the kind and lovable

Samwise Gamgee

we sometimes misremember

He’s a blobby snowman of darkness

pressed down by his social standing, sure

but maybe frowning and

certainly willing to participate

in the cruelty inflicted on his master

by a novel that takes dementia

and twists it to wring bitter laughs

dirty water

like the excretions of the old bath towels

my parents cut into rags, 

and tossed in the bucket in the garage

for us to use when

washing the car.

Picasso’s painting is all

clean black and white

but feels hot and sweaty and dirty

like the novel

seen through modern eyes.

And Rocinante is all terrible angles and bones

and the windmills are so far off in the distance

under that oppressive sun

But there’s something about

the way Don Quixote

holds his lance

not the pathetic weapon itself but

the stiff wrist and fist curled in around the handle

not letting go 

of his mad dream

to be something different than

an inky blob of a man

to be a sad, old empty body

and a fierce spirit

who holds on

and won’t let go

Book recommendation

I wasn’t sure what to recommend this month. (If you haven’t read any of my books, I should be recommending that you take this opportunity, but that feels too gross, so I just won’t.) Then I remembered a conversation I recently had with my girlfriend. Yeah, I have a girlfriend now. She’s a voracious reader, and we talk about books a lot! I was telling her about Dune by Frank Herbert. It’s a brilliant series of books. I could go on and on about it (and I did, and she didn’t even seem bored!), but if you get your hands on a copy and read even a few pages in, you’ll be hooked, and it will provide you with many hours of escape into a distant and wild future that will change the way you see our world just when you might like a different perspective. 

Announcements/reminders

Last month I encouraged you to sign up for our Writing Against the Darkness Team. On the longest day of the year, June 20th, we’re going to participate in The Alzheimer’s Associations annual The Longest Day fundraiser by writing from dawn to dusk. Well, we might not be getting together in person this year, but this is the perfect opportunity to do some good for the world from home, and doing good is a great way to maintain your own mental health, so please consider it. Find out more and sign up HERE.

February Newsletter

Dear Comely and Perceptive Readers,

The end of the month is sneakier in February! But I made it just before my self-imposed due date. It’s been an exciting and productive month! March begins with the Women’s March in Portland, so check out my twitter/FB/Instagram for pics from that on Sunday.

Updates about my writing and publishing

Shout: An Anthology of Resistance Poetry and Short Fiction hit the market on February 2nd. It has become an Amazon bestseller (thank you to all of you who got your copy! If you haven’t yet but you’re interested, you can find info HERE), and it’s getting some great feedback. Some of the authors in Seattle have set up a signing up there, and my co-editor Zack Dye set up four reading/signing events in the Bay Area, so I guess that qualifies as my first real book tour!  

I’ve been working with the authors and editors of the other books that will be coming out from Not a Pipe Publishing this year, Heather S. Ransom’s Back to Green (sequel to Going Green and Greener) Kate Ristau’s Shadow Queen (sequel to Shadow Girl), William Schreiber’s Someone to Watch Over, Claudine Griggs’ Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Jason Brick’s Fighting Upstream (sequel to Wrestling Demons). I am so lucky to get to work with these authors, and with editors Viveca Shearin, Sydney Culpepper, Madeleine Hannah, and Paula Hampton! This work would be impossible to complete without these editors, and the world is a better place for having these author’s voices in the world, so we all owe these editors our thanks. 

My own novel is coming along in fits and starts, and I waste too much time chiding myself for not making enough progress (a sentiment which, ironically, does not help me make any progress). Tonight I came across a comforting insight from two-time poet laureate Tracy K. Smith who pointed out that poetry is often a more social kind of writing. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been pulled in that direction so much, lately; I need my writing to be a bit more social than a novel affords, and maybe it’s okay to allow myself that. I have a book of my poetry in the hands of some great poets now, and if they tell me I wouldn’t be humiliating myself too badly, maybe I’ll put that out into the world this year for that very reason. And maybe it’s even acceptable to embarrass myself a little in order to get that human connection through my words. It’s okay to admit I need people. 

Link to an article

I’m a big fan of Michael Harriot, a writer for The Root. Besides his own insightful pieces, he maintains a blog of his responses to reader’s email questions, the Clapback Mailbag. This month he had a post where he responded to the hate mail received by his colleagues, and it was glorious:

https://www.theroot.com/the-root-s-clapback-mailbag-the-state-of-the-clapback-1841503378

Tweet from someone you should consider following

One person I love following on twitter is author Christopher Moore at @TheAuthorGuy His tweets will just make your life better. Like his novels. And waffles. 

Poem

This one has a fun origin story. A poet who is a twitter friend posted something about how she was frustrated that she’d thought of a poem but it had vanished before she could write it down. I suggested we write poems about where those poems go when they disappear. Here was mine:

Leaked

Not flowing like mercury

instead inching slowly

oily, viscous, sludgy paced but

still sinking between and dripping into

that room where 

fairies collect the residue

on the ends of wands and drizzle it

across the tops of pastries fed to nymphs

who are never prey for satyrs because

they own their bodies and are 

made so strong by

the magic

of the poems that slipped away.

Book recommendation

I recently read Omar El Akkad’s American War, and I highly recommend it. The novel tells the story of a second American civil war, and I went into that with some trepidation because it’s a subject I started writing a novel about many years ago and haven’t finished, and I worried about being influenced by Mr. El Akkad’s work. His book is very different than the one I was working on, so I shouldn’t have been worried about that. Instead, I should have been worried about being intimidated because of the quality of his prose. This is an excellent novel written before the Trump presidency, and I’ve heard Mr. El Akkad speak about how he designed it to help Americans understand how people living in war torn lands he visited as a war correspondent are not some inferior tribal people hell-bent on their own self destruction, but people exactly like you and me trapped in the power of cultural, economic, and religious forces beyond their own control. I think it was Ta-Nehesi Coates who said that when we look back at history, instead of asking how we would have done things differently, we should be asking why we would have done things in the same way, and American War will make you ask why, if you’d grown up in Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria, you’d be making the very same decisions about how to live or die or kill that the people there are making every day. 

Also, Heather S. Ransom’s Back to Green, the third book in her Going Green trilogy, will be available on March 10th. You can pre-order it now, and if you’re a fast reader, you can probably devour Going Green and Greener before your copy of Back to Green arrives. The end of this trilogy is excellent. Each book in the series broadens the scope of the protagonist’s life as she takes on a larger role in her world (and I love the way the covers get more crowded with characters to reflect that). It’s a great allegory for the process of growing up to be a more engaged citizen, but it never loses the sense that our place in our world is most deeply felt when it comes to our closest relationships, no matter how much the world’s challenges try to bend and break those bonds. Definitely worth checking out!

Announcements/reminders

It may seem like it’s a ways off, but I encourage you to sign up for our Writing Against the Darkness Team now. On the longest day of the year, June 20th, we’re going to participate in The Alzheimer’s Associations annual The Longest Day fundraiser by writing from dawn to dusk. You can participate wherever you are or join us at the Oregon Coast. Find out more and sign up HERE.

Sponsored section

No sponsors yet, so tell a friend who wants to get their message to a few hundred of the very best people to contact me!

(If you want this newsletter in your email inbox, sign up HERE.)

Put out the fires you can, and dance while you're doing it.

-Benjamin Gorman

January Newsletter

Twitter: @teachergorman     Instagram: @teachergorman  
Facebook: Benjamin Gorman - Author   Website: www.TeacherGorman.com

Dear Perspicacious and Iridescent Readers,

So I'm going to try producing a newsletter. My goals:

• Make sure it comes out monthly

• Make it useful

• Make it fun

• Keep it short  

My challenges:

• Life happens. I'm going to work on developing habits which will help me produce this over the course of each month rather than writing it at the last minute and missing the deadline because something came up. 

• Sometimes the things that are the most useful are unpleasant.

• Sometimes the things that are the most enjoyable aren't useful.

• I have never been particularly good at being brief. If something can be said with fewer words, I have a tendency to opt for more. I sometimes annoy friends by making the same point over and over. Also, I can be redundant. And repetitive. 

I intend to give brief updates about my writing and publishing. For example, I have a short story coming out in an anthology I co-edited with one of my lifelong friends (we met in 2nd grade) Zack Dye. If you are concerned about the rising tide of fascism in the United States and want to read some excellent writers standing up for a more just world, check out Shout: An Anthology of Resistance Poetry and Short Fiction, available on Feb. 2nd (but you can pre-order now!) I made a video about it: https://youtu.be/3htcqDrTvKM

I'll include a link to an article about something I wish were getting more attention, like this one:

Miller Dismisses DACA in Emails, Mirroring Anti-Immigrant Extremists' Views

I'll also include a tweet from someone you should consider following, (in addition to following me at @teachergorman, of course!) like:

https://twitter.com/simone__kern/status/1216844179025866753?s=20  


I'll try to include a poem of mine each month, like:

Dance on the Ashes

The world is on fire.

                   Stipulated.

But those of us

       trying to stamp it out

          can enjoy

       dancing on the ashes

                       and maybe

           stop drop and

   roll together

And a book recommendation or two (or three), like: 

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy

I binged this trilogy over the holiday break (English teachers, ironically, rarely have time to read for fun during the school year), and I loved it. The protagonist is an ancillary, a reanimated corpse who is a part of one of the many identical bodies who make up the crew and hive-mind of a spaceship. But when she rebels against an unjust order and her ship and all the other ancillaries are killed, she's just one person trapped in one body with one purpose: Revenge. The trilogy is richly conceived, the view of our possible future (especially in regards to gender identities) is really cool, the characters are memorable, and the ending is satisfying. 

There will be some announcements/reminders, too. For example, if you're interested in joining my Writing Against the Darkness team to help raise money to fight Alzheimer's Disease, we'll be taking on their annual The Longest Day fundraiser by writing from dawn until dusk. Some folks will get together to do this face to face (location TBD. Beach house on the Oregon coast? My house?) and many participate online. If you want to learn more about it and sign up for an incredible day of writing that also helps a good cause, check it out here: http://bit.ly/AgainstDark2020

Oh, and maybe there will be a sponsored section down here if one of you wants to tell the rest of you about something cool, too! Email me HERE about that if you want your thing announced. 

I hope this sounds good to you. If so, I'll see you back here each month. (If you want this in your email inbox, sign up HERE.)

Put out the fires you can, and dance while you're doing it.

-Benjamin Gorman

 

Copyright © 2020 Benjamin Gorman, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
Benjamin Gorman
P.O. Box 184
Independence, OR 97351

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The novels Don't Read This Book, Corporate High School, The Sum of Our Gods, and The Digital Storm are available now! 
 

Taking Comfort in Our Stupidity

You’ll see, MFers!

Today I came across a person on twitter making the argument that we shouldn’t get vaccines because she hadn’t. “Never been vaccinated and have never been sick.” (A clever commenter, @1980Dorothy, replied, “I’ve never been skiing and I’ve never chewed tobacco.” I do love the smart people on twitter.) My immediate reaction to this anti-vaxxer’s “logic,” as usual, a kind of shocked fury. Advocating risking her own life, the life of her children, and the lives of others based on this kind of ignorance is just … I can’t.

It reminded me of another time I came across something similarly dumb but far less dangerous. When my son was an infant, my ex- was advised not to eat Thai food because it would prevent my son from nursing. There are more than 69 million people in Thailand. Lots of them are moms. Lots of them are perfect healthy, nursing babies. My son has turned out just fine. (Quite a bit better than just fine, frankly. He’s the best of us!)

And then I remembered something a bit further back. It was, oh, I’d say somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago. The world was ruled by cynobacteria. They could not communicate with one another via twitter. They didn’t have any voices among them warning them that changing the atmosphere might be a bad idea, because they didn’t have voices. So they changed the whole global atmosphere with their emissions and … wait for it … killed off most of the world’s cynobacteria. And most of the world’s everything else. The cynobacteria that remain have to hide out in weird caves or at the bottom of the ocean next to the mouths of volcanoes because they made the rest of the planet unlivable to themselves. This was a very stupid thing to do. Cynobacteria are not smart.

Now, fast forward 2.5-3.5 billion years, and this other species comes along who study the world and learn about what happened to the cynobacteria. We can communicate. We invent language. we invent this amazing technology to tell the story off the cynobacteria to other members of our species all around the world. And then we use that same technology to say, “Fake news!” and we go right back to doing the same thing the cynobacteria did to themselves. If the cynobacteria were dumb, we are dumber. This is stupidity on a global scale, and we are currently winning the prize for the stupidest species this planet has ever produced.

Oddly, I take comfort in this. This anti-vaxxer? People who think the world is flat or 6000 years old? People who think they are better than other people because of the country they live in or their religion or their race or sex or gender? They are very stupid, sure. But they are humans. I don’t share those particular beliefs, but I am just self-aware enough to know that, as a human, I have other stupid beliefs, but I’m too stupid to figure out what they are. So I’ll die right along with the rest of us.

That’s not the comforting part. Holding hands and singing Kumbaya with the great mass of the dumbest species ever isn’t that comforting. I feel terrible about all the suffering we will cause, not just to one another, but to all the other species who we will wipe out in the great mass extinction event we are causing. We deserve exactly the outcome we produce; they don’t. I take comfort in the theory that something else will come along after we’re gone. Probably some form of sentient cockroaches.

via Gfycat

And one day one of them will be tapping away at their version of twitter (feeler? antennae? TM), and will want attention, so he’ll write, “Hey, everybody, what if we just made the planet into a place where cockroaches can’t survive? How does that sound?”

And the other cockroaches will respond: “Remember the cardinal rules, you stupid human-hole!”

(They won’t call them “cardinal rules,” though. Their religion will be organized in a much smarter way. And they won’t have the birds because we will have killed them all.)

The stupid cockroach will say, “Oh, yeah. Rule #1: ‘Never be as stupid as cynobacteria or humans.’”

The others will prod him. “And?”

“And Rule #2,” he’ll intone. “‘Vaccinate yourself and all 400 of the offspring in your ootheca.”

But maybe he won’t give in that easily. Every species has it’s outliers, their fragile double-downers. Maybe he’ll write, “Fake News! We can destroy the planet. It will be fine. And no one should get vaccinated. I haven’t, and I’ve never been sick.”

And then do you know what the others will do? First, they will kick him off social media.

And then they will eat him.

Because cockroaches are willing to turn to cannibalism if it will protect the survival of the species. They are smarter than we are. I just whine online about our inevitable destruction at our own hands. So take heart; the next dominant species will almost certainly be smarter. We’ve set the bar this low.

So, um, Technically, Legally, it's "Lord Benjamin Gorman" Now

I bought part of a castle in Scotland. A small part. Specifically, a square foot of it. But that’s enough.

The real certificate is in the mail, but they send you a PDF right away. You know, a PDF? The extension most often used by official government agencies? More evidence that this is 100% legal.

On my birthday, I decided to get a new tattoo, but I am still playing phone tag to schedule that appointment with a new artist. Tattoos do not appear immediately when one decides they ought to. “That’s a good thing, because I have had some really bad tattoo ideas before which luckily did not make it onto my skin.) I wanted to receive a gift for my birthday, even if it meant giving it to myself, and a Groupon offer came through my email which provided a means to contribute to the restoration of a Scottish castle in exchange for the title of “Lord.” It seems this is something a castle owner is entitled to, so the folks behind the restoration are giving these titles out (along with fancy certificates and rights to visit the … I mean MY property whenever I want) in exchange for funds for the restoration. So I got myself one.

Now, I can guess what you might be thinking. “You can’t just buy a title of nobility.” Yes, you can. That’s the second most common way to get a title. The most common way is for your parents to give it to you. Which mine did! I used the birthday money they sent me to buy the piece of the castle, so I can even say I inherited the title!

Now, your next concern might be: “Is Benjamin Gorman the kind of pretentious douche who is going to make us call him ‘Lord Benjamin Gorman’ all the time now?” No. Lord Benjamin Gorman is not that pretentious. Lord Benjamin Gorman will not be updating Lord Benjamin Gorman’s bios to include the title or adding his very legal and real title of nobility to the front cover of his books. Lord Benjamin Gorman isn’t like that.

And, just so we’re all clear, I am not your lord. Unless you live around Dunans Castle and are still my vassal. If that’s the case, I officially set you free. Or, at least, I grant you whatever tiny fraction of your freedom I can, since you probably have thousands of lords and ladies who might want to keep you in bondage to the land. What does my tiny fraction of freedom entitle you to? I don’t know. Maybe a smoke break or something. Get in touch and I’ll see what I can do about convincing the other lords and ladies to set you free.

Also, I am not The Lord. Please do not pray to me. That would make me very uncomfortable. I do not have any wish-granting powers. In fact, it might be best for all concerned if you don’t believe in me. Be an atheist regarding the existence of Lord Benjamin Gorman. Think of me as imaginary. You can still read my books and presume they are pseudonymous, and you can politely respect other people’s right to believe in my existence while scoffing occasionally at their poor judgement, and since I don’t exist, I will never disappoint you by failing to grant your prayers. It’s really better for everyone that way.

I’m going to go get some new business cards made.

Drink (a poem?)

Drink

I don't drink often.

A friend gave me a very nice bottle of Scotch.

I thought I'd save it for a special occasion. 

A rain forest caught fire 

  and that president sided with the arsonists.

A continent caught fire 

  and that prime minister sided with the arsonists.

An impeached president is trying to start a war

  to distract people

  from more evidence of his crimes

  and too many are excited to send too many

  to kill and be killed

  for lies.

             Again.

He would set the world on fire

  and the people would side with the arsonist.

If this isn't a special occasion

  just the new normal

  all the more reason

  to drink the bottle today.

Is this even a poem?

I don't understand anything anymore.

Introduction to the Shout anthology

I am honored to be in the company of the writers in the new book Shout: An Anthology of Resistance Poetry and Short Fiction from Not a Pipe Publishing. My co-editor Zack Dye and I wrote the introduction, and I thought I would share it here and encourage you all to share it as much as possible. I often feel a bit ashamed of plugging things online, but in this case I am willing to be as tacky and desperate as necessary because Not a Pipe Publishing will make a donation to the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, and Raices: Texas for every copy sold, so I want this to get into as many hands as possible. Also, I’m hopeful it will inspire some of the readers to stand up and be counted in the same way the brave authors in the collection are standing up by sharing their writing. So check it out, share it, and please consider getting a copy.

The No-Rest Stop

I do not have good luck at rest stops. They always seem to invite drama for me. Tonight I pulled into a rest stop on the way home from a show in Portland, and a guy came up to me. He seemed to be slightly drunk, an unsettling thing to note about a fellow driver. I asked him how he was doing. He said he was feeling glad to be alive. I didn't probe why. We made some pleasant conversation, and then he said, "You're Irish, right?" 

I immediately got nervous. I said, "I'm Irish and Portuguese and Scottish bunch of other things." I really should have said that I'm Jewish, also. But maybe this worked out for the best.

He said, "I'm German." (Now I realize that there is nothing German about this man. His ancestors were German. The only German words he knows are "Heil" and "Hitler.")

Then he leaned uncomfortably close to me and whispered, "We're going to take our country back." This is how racism is expressed in Oregon. In whispers.

I said, "What do you mean by that?"

He said, "You know. From them." And he looked across the parking lot at a couple of other guys of indeterminate race.

Now, I could have just changed the subject. I could have shaken my head and said, "How about that Niners-Ravens game, eh?" He probably wouldn't have pressed. But I didn't. 

"I disagree," I said.

He looked surprised. In fact, I could see him sobering up, becoming more attentive almost instantly. He said, "What do you mean?" 

I said, "What do you mean we are taking our country back? This country was taken in the first place." 

"What do you mean?" he said again. 

I said, "Our white ancestors stole this land from Native Americans who were already here, and they only did it because they could profit from the land with stolen labor."

He didn't even addressed the slavery issue. He just said, "Well, the Native Americans had been fighting with each other for thousands of years."

And I said, "So had our European ancestors. They'd just figured out how to do their conquering and slaughtering on a much bigger scale. That doesn't make them better. It makes them more evil."

He said, "So what do you think it means to be an American, then?"

I said, "Being an American should be about an idea. About welcoming people to a place where they can be free just like our ancestors came to a place where they could he free. It's on the Statue of Liberty. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry yearning to be free."

He said, "But that's not in the Constitution." 

I had a suspicion this man was not a Constitutional scholar, so I didn't try to explain that the Constitution is a racist document codifying that some people are three-fifths human. Instead, I said, "This country literally had open borders until the early nineteen hundreds. That's why you and are standing here having this discussion. Trying to kick people out or keep people out or keep people down: That's un-American. Or at least I think it should be. And the people who want to tell you we need to take this country back? They are depending on your fear. I refuse to be scared of my neighbors."  

"I'm not afraid," he whispered, but then he went really quiet because just then one of the guys that he had referred to as "them" came over and asked if either of us had a tire iron. I went over to help him change a tire, and that rescued the racist who was getting a lot more than he bargained for.

I'm sharing this not because I want to toot my own horn, but because there's a lesson here. This is something I hope to teach to my son and to my students. Conversations like this are not comfortable. In fact, they can be downright scary. The guy wasn't particularly big or menacing, but he was my size and kept his hands in his coat pockets, and there were moments when I wondered what he might be holding in there. It's not always easy. There will be times when we miss these opportunities. I have. And the opportunities may be very rare. This guy would not have approached a person of color to commiserate about the dangers of "them." And for many people, talking to a stranger in this way would not have been safe. But for some of us these opportunities will be more common, and they won't be as dangerous. This is the third time I've had conversations with total strangers who thought they were talking to a fellow racist just this year. They have been emboldened by the Criminal-In-Chief. He knows how to activate them, maybe because he shares their racist views and maybe because he sees them as a means to power so he can raid the public coffers and feed his ego. But he speaks to them intentionally, and I know this because they parrot his language. They talk about making the country great again and taking the country back for people like "us," and, of course, building a wall. And they want to know if some of us are on their side. So when we have a chance, we need to try and grab those opportunities. One of the lessons that's been drilled into me painfully and repeatedly over the last few very difficult years of my life is that the people who want you to be silent, who want to avoid confrontation, who want us to dodge the most difficult conversations are doing so because they value their own comfort more than the well-being of others. This is how silence becomes complicity in evil. 

This conversation was not a pleasant experience. But my discomfort is nothing compared to the real suffering people like the guy at the rest stop would inflict on people who don't have all the privileges that I have. If I don't leap at the opportunity to speak out, I am taking advantage of the suffering of others to protect myself.  I am ashamed of the opportunities I've missed in the past, and I am grateful that tonight I got to be uncomfortable, and I'm glad I walked away unscathed so I could share this story and encourage others to do the same. 

When they whisper, speak up.

Driving Home

As I was driving out of that giant apartment complex, with its enormous speed bumps that make you slow down and contemplate all those little dwellings, I hurt so badly, and I thought about all the people there who faced some kind of explosion in their lives, a divorce, a death, debt, people who are far more accustomed to the kind of pain I'm just getting to know, and they carry this around inside their stomachs every day, and I just wanted to start knocking on doors and hugging people and crying on their shoulders until they let some of it out with me and knew that someone got it. That someone else who was stumbling through their lives, oblivious to all their suffering, finally understood. And then I drove past the trailer park. And then my little suburban neighborhood with the little-houses-made-of-ticky-tacky-and-they-all-look-just-the-same, and I knew most of them contain people who are hiding their pain inside those houses. And I just can't hug enough people. And I just can't cry enough for them.

Tomorrow I will put on a smile and push through another day, greeting all the other people who are also trying to push through, flashing our plastered-on smiles at one another, our eyes vacant, unfocused, looking inside at that place we don't want to see. I can't pretend I'll be more observant or more sensitive or the saint you deserve. I'll just be with you. But I'll be more with you. I won't tell you that you aren't alone. But we'll be a little more together in our loneliness, and I hope that's some timid little knock at your door.

"Shipwrecked" in the Willawaw Journal

One of my poems was published in the Willawaw Journal. I came across it today and was relieved to find I still think it’s pretty good! Let me know what you think.

http://willawawjournal.com/benjamin-gorman/?fbclid=IwAR3ASVtUbx1JUr4SRQSbdPi1jjtbdmZc7rbd1BBDhiKdIxoKEeBFaPxucZg