When it feels like the world is going off the deep end, how do you find your center? I was a cable news junkie until the election, following all the ups and downs each and every day like a loyal dog. When the worst happened, I was so distraught, I turned off MSNBC and CNN, and I had some extra time on my hands. I decided to focus on artistic endeavors, writing and making things, rather than witnessing the rehashing of each upsetting detail that proves that our current presidential imposter needs to have his head examined. According to psychiatrists at Johns Hopkins he is a “malignant Narcissist.” These kinds of Narcissists are:

‘Determined to gratify their wishes and furious if thwarted. Their desire can be so consuming that there is little comprehension of, respect for or ability to empathize with the other. They lack guilt or remorse and tend to feel or pronounce that it is they who have been mistreated. They can be of any gender, race or social class.’

I stay informed. I scan the newspaper in the mornings and I look online so I know what new debacle is going on, but watching the talking heads repeating the ins and outs of insanity ad nauseum gives me a physical stomach ache. I opt instead to make beauty out of misery, to create and keep my current goals and values strong. I need to make my voice heard, but the addiction to watching each and every comment from the politicos is crazy-making, especially for those of who feel so much to start with. I take comfort in knowing that everything changes, no matter how good or bad it is. So let’s join together, be alchemists, and create wonderful things out of the raw material that is already here. We can do it, we can overcome the pain and sorrow and find new and better ways to communicate and make changes in our ever- shifting world.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. – – – Toni Morrison