Did the world just get a little darker today?

Indira Ganesan, Bleak, 2016

A student turned around as we were both on our way to respective classes and asked me, “Is it just me, but did the world just become a darker place?” We were strangers, and no context was needed. The unbelievable has happened, and we have the wrong candidate in the victor’s seat.

I was grateful to this student. Twice previously when I tried to open up conversation while waiting for the bus, my opening gambits of got me baffling responses about the sunny weather. Only a transit cop riding his bike (!) through the hallways at South Station bus terminal asked me, “So how about that election?” I could only mime despair and disbelief, and gratitude on being asked.

We need to talk. We will survive. A New Yorker article that says pointedly and correctly we are not the decent nation we thought we were, because racial hate and misogyny won the votes. A part of me wants to what one commentator called ” normalize,” assuaging our fears, thinking the worst is over. It isn’t. But we will and we must stand up and fight the fight against injustice. I know for myself I must do better.

Last night I heard the coyotes cry.

Days before, I celebrated another year past by taking part in a retreat sponsored by TruroYoga and the Cape Cod Modern House Trust. Walking on the beach and land, we did not know what was to come. I learned Provincetown was only 6,000 years old, a blink in the eye of time, said a fellow retreater. I learned several tables full of diners can sing Happy Birthday loudly and on key. The photographs I took this last weekend reflected, briefly, a different world than the one we up in today.