I've had a ferocious case of writer's block lately, but Molly Ivins died today, which has bummed me out unexpectedly hard. Molly was one of the writers I gravitated to during the Bush/Gore debacle, and even before was someone I read when I was out in Ohio, cut off from my daily Post fix and not so much on the Internet yet. She had fought inflammatory breast cancer since 1999, which she was saying almost five years ago "is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison
you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."
There is nothing I like better than a person who uses humor reflexively in response to both joy and pain, and I know firsthand how necessary it is for those of us who dwell in this odd strata to do this. But I also know how it can catch up with you, until it's just you and a mirror or an unexpected psychotic break in the car during the commute, (or more helpfully, in the shower, where drivers in taller cars than yours can't look down and see you, all runny nose and busted up makeup) and all the pain comes welling up from nowhere and you have to let it out.
Or maybe you just let it out by writing things like this, which she did, four days before she died.
"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single
one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying
to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and
demanding, “Stop it, now!”
The Texas Observer has many more columns linked here, but God almighty, if that's the last published piece she wrote before she died, I give more than my usual thanks for the First Amendment, and just say "how appropriate." And also, "Brava, Molly." It's good news that sometimes a legacy does fit the grace and contribution made during a notable lifetime. And I'll selfishly take this as a message today - an imperative, perhaps, to keep doing what I do, which is to say and write what I'm thinking, because I can, on a much less public and much less important stage than she commanded from the pulpits of Texas and national politics and media. Lately I've been feeling a bit more like a bull in a china shop than usual, which is to say a lot. I seem to be excessively willing to state my feelings about matters of principle, again, because I can, but also because it seems so important and so irresponsible not to. I'm surrounded so often by "perhaps" and "maybe" and "let me get back to you" and "maybe we just need to TWEAK it a little" and "Oh, that's not in the plan" in my daily life, and it's slowly driving me crazy. I find myself apologizing for being outspoken and opinionated, which I couldn't help any more at this point than the color of my eyes or my lefthandedness. I don't know how, and yet when I get those looks that tell me I'm being difficult, or I should just "let it alone," I buy it more often than I should, even when I know I'm selling out at the same time.
Molly Ivins, all 6 feet plus of her, did not do this, when she called Bush "Shrub" or worked barefoot and swore at the New York Times until they sent her back to Texas. And Maureen Dowd, who calls him lots of other things, is quite fresh in my mind because I just got through another couple chapters of her book in the bathtub. The book is called "Are Men Necessary", and goes at this central question from many an interesting angle, not all as inflammatory as one might expect. I told a male friend of mine this weekend that I was reading it, and he managed to say, "Uh, I think we are." So here are these women going for it, putting their words OUT THERE, and I'm worried about writer's block because I'm not sure I have anything of value to say, and feel guilty for telling the guy in the cafeteria that the veggie soup has so much salt in it I can feel my blood pressure skyrocketing just holding the container.
Most of Molly's obits through Google News are calling her a "liberal columnist", a title she didn't reject:
"Even I felt
sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about
being born liberal — fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed."
One of the things Maureen Dowd quotes in her book is that the root of "liberal" is the Latin "liber", meaning "free", asking, "Isn't that what we're supposed to be about anyway?" In the context of country and government, that's what I understand, and as a woman getting older in the United States, with all the good stuff and the challenges that represents, I'd say it's what I'm learning to be about on a personal level more every year, damn the consequences. If it weren't for my access to voices like Molly Ivins, I wouldn't have learned to expect it, or to aspire to it, or, at this point, to call myself out when I'm sabotaging it. So for that I'm really grateful, because the expectations and aspirations more or less keep me - and a lot of you, I'd imagine, too - going.
Reading this, I wish I'd gone to her house for dinner, and am reminded that it's important to hang out with people, even at a distance, who can teach you a thing or seven and inspire you at the same time. When her editor's son was born, she gave him three books. He writes,
"In her inimitable way, she captured the spirit of each in
one-sentence inscriptions. In "Alice in Wonderland," she offered,
"Here's to six impossible things before breakfast." For "The Wind in
the Willows," it was, "May you have Toad's zest for life." And in "The
Little Prince," she wrote, "May your heart always see clearly."
Like the Little Prince, Molly Ivins has left us for a journey of her
own. But while she was here, her heart never failed to see clear and
true -- and for that, we can all be grateful."
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