the happening

Another day of feeling like we're all riding this train headed straight at the edge of a cliff. The speed is too fast, the trajectory too angled. None of us has control of anything.

After November 8 I think many of us have been trying not to feel desperate and lost. 

I'm in DC with my mother right now. Her best friend Irene invited us down a few days ago, asking if we wanted to come to the Women's March. I said yes. She said erm, sure? I think the two of them don't quite grasp the implications of the march and why they are participating - much like my mom didn't quite understand why it was so imperative to vote for Hillary, but did anyway, because I told her it mattered. It's funny that she would go out of her way to fly halfway around the world to vote (on the very obviously losing side) in an election for the Taiwanese president, whose election makes nearly no ripples on the international arena, but was so hesitant to vote in an election for the American one.

And bah, humbug, to the outcome of that.

But it's not a feeling of bah humbug that got me here, and that has made me want to participate in marches and activism though my parents just want me to sit at home and watch from a safe distance instead. It's because I've done precisely that for years. It's people like me, ones who can see something is not right but who do not speak up, that are the root cause of this mess in the first place. Obeying the rules simply because we are told to obey them does not work when the man in charge of validating or overturning the rules disregards them himself with flamboyant disdain. We have traded a leader who had a sage's patience and foresight for a man whose mind is filled with golden idols and hellfire. We cannot go gently into that good night. We need to mobilize. We need to take action. We need to be loud, because the opposition has voices of foghorns and fists full of iron, and we - at least some of us - believe there is goodness and righteousness to be found in openness and peace. 

I cannot wait for tomorrow, to walk with my fellow Americans, the ones who believe in goodness. I will not stand on the sidelines and wilt from fear. I am not afraid. I am proud to be Asian, to be queer, to be a woman, to be a climate scientist, to be an outsider. And I am proud to be an American - and I state it here not as a footnote of a list of things, but as the glue that created me. America is still the home of the brave, and the land of the free.

Today I traveled the subway (avoiding the major crowds) and later watched the inauguration on TV with two baby boomers. There is much to write about and think about here - but first, tonight, I am going to sleep and tomorrow I will march and have more to write about. I will consider it on my drive home.

Goodnight (moon).