Every Drop Raises the Sea.

january 27th, 2017

Boy o boi is it difficult to keep on task. This week has been a wild flood of incursions on democracy and basic good governance. As of today, the United States doesn't have a State Department. There's a State Department building. There's a Secretary. That's about it. It's like that old chestnut about “what if they held a war and no one showed up?”

“What if they tried to install a fascist authoritarian state, and no one in government was at work?”

i'm keeping a master folder of screenshots and news articles as receipt and check on the assaults to basic norms of shared reality. The subfolders include:

i use file aliases to do some cross‑categorizing, as you might imagine. Do i have a folder about the current President titled pee? Yes i do. That was the gun introduced in chapter one, and i heed Chekhov, i anticipate we'll see the pee by chapter three.

my favorite folder is resistance. The banner that Greenpeace flew above the White House with the word RESIST. An anti‑swastika notice in the New York City subway. The Yale School of Architects writing in the window WE WON'T BUILD YOUR WALL. The rogue Twitter accounts from National Parks and White House staff.

And of course the Marches last Saturday. Glorious and heart‑making. i was honored to march with my wife‑husband Vlad and not one but two beautiful mommas: my mom Michele and my brother's soon‑to‑be mother‑in‑law Denise.

i was most moved by the response to the March's counter‑protestors. There were a handful with signs of aborted fetuses and JESUS SAVES.

The response to them was: nothing!

No one shoved them or booed them. They were outnumbered, they were denying themselves access to a glorious dance party. And then after the March seeing the red hat people peacefully co-existing with the pink hat people in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis … that was so glorious to me. There was no angry cross talk. There was nothing to say!

Yesterday i wrote fanmail to one of my favorite childhood authors. Today i'm leaving a video voicemail on Twitter for Dick Durbin because his voice mailbox in DC is full. i signed up for an acting class. i give money to every person on the street who asks, at least for now. i exercise four and five times per week and eat well, even though i really don't wanna, i want to be a puddle.

my co‑producer Tom says in his podcast episode about Cloud Atlas, “if all I am is a drop in a limitless ocean, then the only thing for me to do, the only possible choice in my life is to be the best fucking drop i can be.”

my friend Raph says, “I have mass, and therefore I have gravity, and my gravity pulls on every single mass in the universe. Just as every mass also pulls on me. And no one disputes this! Christians don't even dispute this! But it blows my mind.”

my friend Nikki says, “every drop raises the sea, Dreisbach.”

One hundred percent, yes. Even if all the good of my actions in self‑care and care in my community and supporting artists and making art and kindness and work … even if it's all just (emphatic hand‑waving motions) dust in outer space, that is the only way for me to possibly be.