Eleven Metaphors for (Dis)Unity: A Co-Meditation

Text by David Oates Artwork by Alex Hirsch 1. “A more perfect union.” The Founders expressed a breezy confidence, didn’t they? As if such a thing were possible – the distant states cohered into a nation; the various occupants working it all out. Loyal. Collaborative. Taking part in the common welfare. While remaining, of course, individual and…
Normalmancing the Aftermath

by David Oates We are entering the aftermath. Two of the most epic and wrenching struggles in American history are finally playing out to their conclusions. At last we see a conclusive democratic rejection of a presidency built on systematic lying and racism. At the same time we look just weeks or months ahead for…
A Communicable Emptiness
The Plague That Saved the World: A short course in how things (might) happen

by David Oates We live in The Year Of Overlapping Catastrophes. Oh 2020, we know ye all too well. The pandemic, our very own plague. Economic depression. A quasi-fascistic con man at the head of government. The discovery that perhaps forty percent of our fellow Americans are truth-hating dupes and low-information racists. (Brits too. Decline…
Cowardice and Joy in Portland, Part 2: Navigating by Thoreau

by David Oates In my preceding post, I reflected on the poetry of the eighth-century Chinese master Tu Fu, which has nourished me for decades (in translation, of course). Tu Fu found a way to place himself both inside and outside the whirling political disorder of his times. I drew strength from the quiet inwardness…
Cowardice and Joy in Portland, Part 1: Navigating by Tu Fu

by David Oates My decision not to go into downtown Portland for the protest demonstration has held up for four weeks now. The Federal provocateurs have finally begun to leave, and the threat of violence has been reduced to comparative insignificance. . . so it seems that if I were to show up now, it…
Plague and Variations: On living vividly within narrow forms

by David Oates Some time before the beginning of the quarantine, walking in a pleasantly not-fancy Portland neighborhood near my own, I was stopped dead in my tracks: Bach on the piano. And close by! Suddenly all my thoughts were of music. The day’s work dropped away; the tangles and labors of writing; the distant…