The Threat

Lyrical Expanse (The Hawthorne Bridge,Triptych) , resin and mixed media on wood, 2021 by Julianna Paradisi

As the final days of the 2024 election come to an end tension rises, nearly unbearable. It manifests in the streets as an escalating lack of spacial awareness. Obliviously distracted adults who should know better step off curbs into oncoming traffic. Drivers run red lights long after they were yellow seemingly without regard for human life.

Then there’s the forgetting of what was just said, within moments. A sensation of worms wriggling and cramping within your belly. Staring at the bedroom ceiling late at night, awakened by remnants of a bad dream you can’t quite recall.

I knew it would be like this.

A pugilistic election campaign, held almost immediately on the not yet cooled heels of The Pandemic, a once in a one hundred years event, simultaneously occurring civil rights protests of a magnitude not seen since the LA Riots in 1992, and historic wildfires wiping out trees and homes without mercy.

These wounds are exquisitely tender, and our community has not recovered. The wounds are not yet scarred over enough for us to move forward.

It doesn’t surprise me that this post pandemic period is nicknamed “The New Normal”- a phrase commonly used to describe life after cancer treatment. Admittedly, it is similar to recovering from surgery and chemotherapy treatment. On the outside, everything appears the way it used to be. Your hair grows back, the cancer is gone, at least for now, and everyone asks, “When you’ll be ‘you’ again?” What is invisible to others is a profound change followed by the emotional work of confronting everything you experienced, but didn’t have time or energy to process while going through it. The healing begins afterwards and it takes time.

Political opinions, controversial in the best of times, grow progressively more violent, abrading our  dysregulated societal nervous systems, preventing our healing.

I knew it would be like this. 

 My feelings were validated the other morning while talking with an acquaintance.  We expect protests in our city following the election results, regardless who wins. We discussed the safety precautions we are taking.

After our discussion I walked home, taking extra care to watch for cars and trucks running red lights. I was stopped by a family looking for the Immigration office. Neither the young father or mother spoke English. They communicated with me through Google Translate via the wife’s cell phone. She managed this while holding a brown-skinned baby girl with thick, curly black hair, and tiny rhinestone studs glittering in each earlobe. The baby looked up at me with piercing brown eyes, and smiled. Her parents were clean, wearing clean clothes. They were not a threat.

With minimal difficulty, we located the nearby office. “Muchas gracias,” the young father said to me, while holding the door open for his wife and daughter. “De Nada,” and a smile was all I could muster forth from my three years of ancient high school Spanish. He smiled back, and then passed through the door into the Immigration office.

A few blocks later, I noticed a man in sunglasses watching me. He was Caucasian, also clean and wearing clean clothes. He leaned against a building. It appeared he was texting.

I was conscious of him continue watching me. When I was close, he smiled and asked, 

 “Harris or Trump?”

Although the man himself did not seem dangerous, his question felt like a threat. It disturbed me.

“It’s none of you business,” I replied, and kept walking.

The next evening, at an art event, I met a poet visiting from New York. I told him the story about the man and his question. I told him it had felt like a threat.

“It was,” the poet agreed.

I knew it would be like this.