Since the election…if it can be called that…I live with a generalized sense of paranoia and dread. The country has an authentically fascist contingent. And the new cabinet features some deeply authoritarian types. So where does that leave me? Well, it leaves me realizing that I have asked the wrong question. Where it leaves us it is a much more worthy question. It’s also a more productive one. As a disabled person, I do feel a particular vulnerability…in general terms.
Whatever. Where does it leave us?

Doing what we always do. On this December morning, that means riding BART, the regional subway, to breakfast with a friend in a suburb. And the breakfast is, more than usual, an enjoyable thing. My friend Burt seems more daunted by his recent flu then the recent politics. He points out the business forces at work in the land, interests that tend to achieve a kind of balance. Wall Street wants cheap petrol so that people can drive to the mall and shop. Exxon wants the opposite. And in the ensuing tug of war, the only people destined to get screwed are, of course, the poor.

Rattling south on BART, the train screeches and rattles like a banshee. What is a banshee? Before I look it up, I really want the screeching to end. Because in my current mental state, the harsh metallic reality of our metro system reminds me of what could happen here or anywhere. Inform staff of unattended packages, announcements warn. ’Tis the season. No need for gloom to hang over this season, I say. Don’t hit the deck – deck the halls. Honestly, I am trying to look on the bright side.

Which I find most reliably in my garden. It is the source of much photosynthetic healing, a garden. The original solar energy collector. Let me assure you that the fava beans, AKA, broad beans, are bursting with botanical health. This in a season that seems to be somewhere between dead and dormant.

I have a way of rising from my wheelchair, just as the sun is doing the same, clasping the wooden hand rail on my terrace and going for a morning cardiovascular schlep. It does get the blood flowing and doubtless is of great musculoskeletal benefit. But on a recent morning, I launched vertically, grasped the rail…and grasped something else, that conditions were not favorable. My feet were slipping. It took me a while to accept that the white stuff on the redwood boards was actually frost. Icy footing and quadriplegia do mix poorly, so I called the whole thing off.

But not the plants. As I say, the beans are undaunted. Frost, schmost. The lettuce has sort of collapsed, but rather gracefully, like the corps de ballet in Swan Lake, doing a very genteel and elegant contraction. I expect most of the leaves to revive. And the nation? Oh, it may revive too. The trick is to stay warm. And get through the winter.