Hi. I'm Marco's sister. Those of you who don't know me can call me Pearl. When I was nineteen, I bit into a pearl in a fried oyster in some linoleum-floored crab shack on Cape Cod. Now I'm thirty-something and still drawn to all things along the shore. History nerd, dog mom, wife, hiker, world-traveller.
The Path to the Truth is a labor of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide! Not your mind. Meet, challenge, and ultimately prevail over your nafs with your heart. Knowing your ego will lead you to the knowledge of God.
All these aesthetics out there getting names, and I’m like, what do I even call mine? Influenced heavily by English and Dutch working-middling clothing from circa 1600-1640. Earlymoderncore? Mayflowercore? Tulipcore?
My grandparents live in Sun City, which is an old folks community, so deaths out there occur regularly. The community is on the edge of the desert, just across from the White tank mountains, so they get desert occupants from time to time, you know, normal things.
But I have noticed something disturbing.
At night, when the air has calmed and the crickets and night-birds stop their song, there comes over the air the sound of howling. Like the wild things from the desert had caught some prey, and were celebrating their meal before they devoured it with gnashing teeth.
Coyotes, you might say. And you’d probably be right. But something I’ve noticed about these late night or early morning calls: they always announce the death of an old person. Always.
Maybe the coyotes out here are like the devil dogs or hell hounds of European lore, or maybe something else altogether. But you can always hear them singing in the night, and just after dawn, the ambulance marks the death of the elderly person.
The House voted to condemn Trump’s racist “go back where you came from” Tweet. Good. But let’s look at how the Republicans responded.
They didn’t defend Trump. Instead they attacked Pelosi for using the word “racist.” In their view, the reasonably overt racism was less a problem than talking about racism. Three observations:
1) This is a prime example of moral cowardice. Nobody defends what Trump said—but they pretend to be flustered that anybody would talk plainly about what is actually happening.
2) When “decorum” has become your highest moral end, your moral ship is sinking.
3) Anybody who says “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” doesn’t understand racism. This is like basic Avenue Q stuff. You live in a society infused by racism. It infects everything. Hopefully you’ve built a strong enough immune system to keep things under control. If you say, “My body doesn’t contain a single pathogen.” you don’t understand how bodies work. Racism is more like that.
