All week, I have struggled to formulate a post. I’ve covered a lot of topics, and written a lot of words, but nothing came together in a way that felt shareable. I wrote a little about protests, and a little more about Catholicism, and I put together 1200 words on the subject of how deeply angry I am at the loved ones in my life who voted for this nightmare we’re living in (or refused to vote against it), only to realize that a) that’s what everyone else I know is already writing about and b) I was barely scratching the surface and would likely need several thousand more words to get anywhere near the heart of it. Also, those of you who know me have heard it all before. Not to say that it wasn’t worth the effort; in the course of the writing I happened upon a beautiful scene from the life of spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson, whose work I (like a lot of people) discovered last summer, after their untimely death from cancer. In the documentary about Gibson, an ex-girlfriend of theirs recalls sharing all the complicated, painful emotions that were coming up for her around her father’s imminent death, and how they made it difficult for her to be with him. Everything that you’re feeling right now, Andrea told her, name it love.

I’ve thought a lot about those words over the last few days: that’s what all of it is, after all. My anger at my family members is love—for this country, as it’s being destroyed; for the parents who are being snatched away from their children; for the children being sent to prison camps; for the people who want to be left to make decisions about their own bodies and futures in peace; for the sick and the suffering who could be helped by science and medicine that won’t be funded now. And it’s the failure of love, too: the abiding sadness that is the natural result of seeing people you love choose a two-thousand-year-old book of mythology over the flesh-and-blood human beings in front of them for as long as you can remember. That any of them could actually say to me—have said—that they don’t understand letting politics come between people who love each other, when they have themselves been putting religion between us since I was a seven-year-old child; have put religion between themselves and their own children…that is the sadness, and the outrage, of love denied. All over the country, what manifests as anger and alienation is, at its essence, love that has been thwarted, or disappointed, or stirred to outrage. It’s helpful, I suppose, to remember that. I believe in periodic reminders of what unites us—even those of us who seem most distantly polarized, to use the favored buzzword of our time—and I’m reassured to think that, somewhere deep inside, even the people who would happily see me slumped over my steering wheel for being snarky to a cosplay cop are motivated by their own kind of love. It’s a twisted, miseducated version of love, but it’s born of the longings we all share. We all want to be safe. We want our children to have a chance at their dreams. We want to be free to make the choices we believe will bring us happiness.

We also want other people to stop telling us what the fuck we ought to want and that we’re going to hell if we don’t do what they say.

And maybe we want those people to try taking their own advice and start listening to their own holy man, who, in fairness, actually had a lot of good ideas.

Anyway, in the end I decided I was overthinking things, as is my wont, and ought to just break the logjam of frustration by posting something even if it didn’t feel particularly revelatory. I’ve worked on other things as well this week: revisions of the poem I shared recently—I may show them to you, I can’t decide whether I’ve improved it or made it worse—as well as the novel I periodically remember I’m supposed to be writing. And I’ve been reading; one month into 2026 I’ve got three books under my belt and a fourth nearly finished; the weather has helped me in that regard. One of the books I just finished is called The Light Eaters, and it’s about the question of plant intelligence. I’ll admit it has not exactly gripped me, but I’ve learned a few things, and in the final chapter, the author caught my attention by questioning the idea of “invasive species.” Many of you who know me know my hatred of these varieties, which, if you are even a little bit literate in the world of botany, you quickly realize are absolutely everywhere. But this author notes that any plant, no matter its species, is simply doing what all living things do—trying to survive, trying to make a better future for its offspring, and trying to adjust to whatever difficult circumstances (such as being transplanted against its will far from the home that produced it) are thrust upon it. Given the choice, plants, like people, would probably prefer not to be forced into unfamiliar environments not suited to their needs. The only reason we have invasive species at all is…us. It’s people who move them from one continent to another, plant them in their yards because they’re pretty or bear them unwittingly on the soles of their shoes, and then wage war on them for growing where they don’t belong. But like us, they do their best to figure out what the new situation requires, and adapt to it. Life, I thought as I listened to this book, is hard for everyone. Maybe we all just try to help one another do the best they can, wherever they are.