DL Davidson

writer, photographer

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My country is exploding

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”  Martin Luther King, Jr.

Walter Scott

Eric Harris

Trayvon Martin

Laquan McDonald

Tamir Rice

Eric Garner

Sandra Bland

Botham John

Freddie Gray

Michael Brown

Philando Castile

Breonna Taylor

Ahmaud Arbery

George Floyd 

I am watching from the safety of my home as fires and violence rage through the cities of my country. So much anger, so much hostility. I watch human beings strike out to hurt other human beings and hope drains from my soul. I feel that my country is exploding into ragged shards. And Trump talks about thugs, and shootings. He keeps pouring accelerant on the flames of dissent, as he has always done in public, even long before he took over the White House, even as he does now.

I spoke last night via Facetime, as I do every week, to my friends in New Zealand. They love the United States and Americans and I look at their furrowed brows and their anxious voices as they ask “What is happening to Americans? What happened to the United States? Why, why, why?”

I don’t know. I can’t answer their questions. But I do know this type of hatred, this type of anger? It is a vicious cycle. It is a self-feeding, continually accelerating cycle, pitting human beings against each other. It speaks to our culture that human beings are willing and able to brutalize each other. It speaks to our culture that individuals in uniforms stood by and silently witnessed one of their own stifle the breath of another human being until he was dead. What was in their minds, as they watched? Did they not speak up because they didn’t want to speak against one of their own? Did they not speak up because of fear of reprisal, a ‘blue wall of silence,’ or because of feelings of helplessness? Did they not speak because they were complicit?  How can one know what was in their hearts and minds? But without a doubt, the failure to speak served as a complicit act. It speaks to our culture that these brutal events have been repeated, over and over, and then tamped down—by silence, by feelings of helplessness, by witnesses who choose to not speak up. It speaks to our culture that Trump advocated for law enforcement to ‘not be so nice’ to individuals arrested, that it would be okay to slam their heads on the roof of the police vehicle, and the silent majority remained silent while Trump’s audience laughed uproariously at these statements. It doesn’t help even now that Trump is tweeting out comments about vicious dogs, and ominous weapons, repeating comments that harken to our country’s history of racism, and threatening harsh retribution with military escalation.

I am left wondering what to do. I swing between outrage and numbness. That is also a cycle, a pendulum, that Trump has manipulated to his advantage. Every week brings some fresh assault on humanity by Trump and his administration. Children separated from parents, endorsement of a foreign leader murdering and dismembering a dissident, the constant rebuttal of the rule of law, the dismantling of government institutions, the assaults on science, truth, honesty, integrity. And I have no faith in the credibility of the leaders of my country. Trump and Barr have lied to me so many times that I do not believe anything they tell me. Most of the news services spin the facts in order to support their own political leanings or use provocative rhetoric to increase viewership—“if it bleeds, it leads.” If I’m constantly being lied to or manipulated, how can I know the truth? If I don’t know the truth, how can I take any effective action? What do I do?

I have always benefited from my position of white privilege, from growing up in a sphere of safety, protection, respect, financial security. What must it be like for a human being that has not had my privilege, my sense of safety, my sense of protection and justice? What must it be like to always feel threatened and afraid? What must it be like to know that you might never receive equity from your government, your health care system, the social culture of your country? 

But I do know this—words matter. The words emanating from the White House matter. The words I speak and the words that my friends speak matter. And the absence of words, the silence that cloaks brutality, also matters. The absence of words allowed individuals, armed with the uniforms of authority and law enforcement, to silently witness the life breath being choked out of another human being.

Martin Luther King, Jr said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” It is the silence of my friends that cause me the most anguish because silence is complicit. Just like the silence of the police officers that witnessed this man’s brutal death was complicit, regardless of what was in their hearts and minds.

“Colours are the wounds of light”

The etymology of the word photography was created from the Greek roots of light and drawing, together meaning drawing with light. As a photographer, I am drawn to light in all its forms and when I see beautiful colored light pouring from a window, Blakes’ poetic description comes to mind, “Colours are the wounds of light.”

But I am also reminded of John O’Donohue’s words about light as a metaphor for the intellect and the divine in humanity—

“Light is the secret presence of the divine. It keeps life awake. Light is nurturing presence, which calls forth warmth and color in nature. The soul awakens and lives in light. It helps us to glimpse the sacred depths within us. Once human beings began to search for a meaning to life, light became one of the most powerful metaphors to express the eternity and depth of life. In the Western tradition, and indeed in the Celtic tradition, thought has often been compared to light. In its luminosity, the intellect was deemed to be the place of the divine within us.”

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue

John O’Donohue was a Gaelic poet, theologian, and philosopher, born 1956 and dying unexpectedly in 2007. Anam Cara was published in 1997 and became an international bestseller, propelling John onto the world stage. He became a strong voice for social justice and offered insights into the Self as an unfolding journey of consciousness, memory and spirit.

John’s legacy directs our search for intimacy to crucial thresholds: tradition and modernity, past and future, life and death, the visible and the invisible world. At the heart of John’s awakened beliefs was the premise that ancient wisdom could offer desperately needed nourishment for the spiritual hunger experienced in our modern world. John is fondly remembered by an international readership as one who could blend critical analytic thought with imaginative evocation, enabling people to release themselves from the false shelter of the familiar and repetitive to become agents of transformation and change.

Engineers in an Age of Pandemic

Saturn 5

Engineers in an Age of Pandemic

I was talking to an engineer friend of mine recently. Like many of the engineers I know, he was accumulating data regarding Covid-19 and graphically representing it to aid in understanding our current crisis. We discussed the fact that our home city seems to be doing extremely well, relative both to our state and our country’s experience. I have been critical of this administration’s response to our crisis and feel that the lack of leadership has contributed to the mortality of this pandemic. But in talking with my friend, I also became aware of another issue. You know how you can have one of those lightbulb moments? That’s the beauty of talking with another sentient, intelligent human being, I think. The dialogue contributes to a-ha! moments for myself. And what was that a-ha moment? That as much as I have faulted this administration, I cannot ignore the fact that ultimately human beings are responsible for themselves. There is a limit to what government can and should do.

Watching news coverage of this Memorial Day weekend, as the death toll continues to rise, and seeing individuals flaunting all the medical guidelines for what to do to save their and other’s lives was alarming. Densely packed beaches and swimming pools. People, strangers to each other, walking shoulder to shoulder on packed boardwalks, many not wearing masks and certainly not maintaining adequate social distancing. What. Are. People. Thinking? I guess they are not.

And I suppose that is why my home city has fared (at least thus far) so well in this age of pandemic. Because it is a city with a majority population of engineers—highly educated, scientific based, intelligent individuals who take a data driven approach to any problem in order to come up with a solution. In a crisis where outcome is ultimately dependent on individual response, I am fortunate to live in proximity to people who are such data-driven, analytical, intelligent individuals. Their responses not only save their lives but contribute to saving my own life. Kudos to all the engineers in my life!

But I am also reminded of discussions that I have had in the past with medical colleagues at national conferences. I have described to them what it was like to be a medical practitioner in a pediatric intensive care unit in my city by asking them “Have you ever made rounds and had a parent of one of your patients approach you with a graphical representation of their child’s fever curve or a bar chart of their child’s vital signs over time? That is what it is like to practice medicine in my city. Educated parents who participate in the care of their child in the best way they know how—by applying their analytical skills in the problem-solving way that is almost a spinal cord reflex for them. It was always one aspect of my medical practice in my home city that I found so unique and so beneficial.

And now that same attribute of the people around me are helping keep me safe. Thank you to all the engineers in my life. I applaud you.

Diana Davidson

Higher Love

light flowers

HIGHER LOVE

At the emergency animal clinic, I’m standing

in the bathroom thinking the crying room—

big and softly lit, a plant in a corner, the walls

airbrushed in grays and browns. The only place

in the building you can be alone. I remember

meeting a woman one night in this clinic waiting

for her Collie, injury treated, disaster over,

big bill paid. She told me she’d lost count

of how many times she’d been there over the years.

This is the first one I’ve brought home alive.

It’s the 4th of July weekend and hell’s broken loose

out there, the stories I heard in the lobby—bitten

by another dog, hit by a car, ate a box of candy,

foaming at the mouth from some new med.

My own cat 16 years old and stricken down

so suddenly that all he could do was lie

like a fallen tree and watch me though the vents

in the carrier all during the half-hour drive.

The stay is two days, the bill two pages long,

and now I’m standing here in the bathroom thinking

of people crying, though they say I can bring him

home tomorrow, just one more night of fluids

under the futuristic hoses and wires and dark-faced

monitors, his orange body blanketed in a warm balloon

of air while the vet tech types numbers on a pad,

a distant dog shrieking, a sound I can still hear,

that carries through God knows how many walls.

I wash my hands and push through the door

into the lobby and hold it open because a woman

is running toward me, her face swollen as a bee sting,

wet, her shoulders convulsing, a sound drowning

in her mouth. She rushes past, and I don’t dare

look, but I can see everyone—the lobby full, couples

and singles and families, some waiting with a dog

or a cat, some sitting alone with their phones and Cokes

from the machine, maybe fifteen people, every one

looking at her, and—reader, you have to see this—

every one with a face full of love and complete

recognition. No judgment, irony, glad-it’s-not-me,

a whole room of understanding while she pulls

the door shut and latches it to cry for the baby

that I now see—I remember this man from earlier,

how she sat with him in the waiting room when I did—

and in his arms he carries a small body, terrier-size,

wrapped tight in a blue blanket head to foot,

motionless as he bears it through the front door

into the parking lot. I follow him out,

but I can’t see any more—how gently he lays it

on the back seat, I’m guessing—because I’m

getting in my own car, eyes down, letting him

have his peace alone. To intrude, to help—

it just isn’t done, or I don’t know how, and neither

did anyone back there, though we all know exactly

how high that love goes, most of us with no kids

or ones that are grown, most of us lying in bed at night

with a dog or cat snoring softly in the half-light,

the not quite deep-death night but the still-living kind

that makes us want to stay awake an hour longer,

the air outside alive with tires on the road and those crickets

that only started up a week ago and now sound like

they’ll keep singing that aria forever, even when

we all know sooner or later it will have to end.

Amy Miller in Rattle: Poetry, 5/18/20

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Sometimes as an antidote

to fear of Death,

I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,

I suck them from the quenching dark,

pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself

into a universe still young,

still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,

the light of all the not yet stars

drifting like a bright mist

and all of us, and everything

already there

but unconstrained by form.

And sometimes it’s enough

to lie down here on earth

beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields,

of our discarded skulls.

Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,

thinking: whatever left these husks

flew off on bright wings.

Rebecca Elson

January 2, 1969 – May 19, 1999

Rebecca Elson, astronomer and poet, died 21 years ago today, at 39 years of age.

Rebecca was a Canadian-American with a PhD in Astronomy from Cambridge, fully engaged in scientific research while at the same time, teaching creative writing at Radcliffe College.

Her poetry juxtaposes vast concepts of physics and astronomy with the human experience, coupling the sublime beauty of the infinite with the finite life. Rebecca Elson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of 29 and this intimate contact with death infused her poetic voice with both the profound joy of life and poignant observations of human death.

In her short life, Rebecca Elson bequeathed 56 scientific papers to humanity and a stunning book of poetry, A Responsibility to Awe.

Privilege in the time of Pandemic

Privilege in the time of Pandemic

Those of us who are fortunate enough to have enough, to know that we will always be sheltered, that we will always have enough food, that we walk in privilege and among luxuries—is it not our responsibility to take the lead in solving the problems of the world with intelligence and empathy and understanding? I don’t think we can solve our problems by limiting our vision with stereotypes, by limiting our actions out of fear or paranoia or social phobias. I don’t think we can solve our problems by pretending that they don’t exist or, even worse, unaware of the problems that exist because we are blinded in our bubble of privilege. I don’t think we can solve our problems by separating ourselves based on our privilege. It is our privilege that burdens us with the responsibility—to do what we can, when we can, however we can—to solve the problems of our society.

-Diana Davidson