Something Wicked this Way Comes
Using Historical Prompts to Write About the Present
I was planning to begin this post with the disclaimer, “I don’t usually get political here…” But that’s not totally accurate. Those of you who follow me know that I write a lot about queer identity, and social justice, and caring for the environment: and I do that while offering us ways to write our way through all of our pain and confusion (and suffering) around all of it.
This week, as we are poised to make history in our US presidential election, I found it beautifully ironic that I stumbled across a piece I wrote before the last presidential election, in 2019. Back then we were waiting for someone to rise up and represent decency and sanity. You can disagree with me about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, but I can’t imagine how you can make an argument for that other guy. It just feels surreal to even be in this place in this moment of time— and a little bit insane.
This week’s prompt is a nod to the insanity of the past, however, and also to the recent Halloween holiday. When I wrote in response to this prompt with my workshop participants, it produced some very interesting writing among them about the current hysteria we are living through, and the way “witch hunt” is thrown around by you know who. It made me think about the bizarre political rhetoric we have had to endure.
Hopefully, this prompt will offer you a chance to process some of what we’re living though as we grapple with this precipice we find ourselves on. Remember, a precipice implies that we might fall off the edge and plunge downward; it could also mean that we sprout wings (or brooms?), and fly.
Read the prompt below, write for fifteen minutes in response. What it wrote is below, followed by the poem, “Tonight we Ride.”
The Prompt:
One of New England’s “Witch Tests” involved baking a cake
As mass paranoia swept Europe and the American colonies, tests were devised to reveal who was really a “witch.” These tests were markedly unfair, and most were unpassable, resulting in the death or conviction of many innocent people (mostly women and girls): rarely was anyone cleared by these tests.
One of the most peculiar tests was the “witch cake,” which involved baking a cake with rye meal, ashes, and the urine of the accused witch’s “victim.” The cake was then fed to a dog (at the time, dogs were associated with the devil, and like cats, were often seen as witches' familiars); if the dog displayed the same symptoms as the “victim,” the accused was confirmed to be a witch. The dog would allegedly even point to the guilty “witch.”
Inspired by a similar English practice for revealing witches, the test was created by Salem resident Mary Sibley. Though Sibley had hoped to help her neighbors and their bewitched children, the test only fueled the panic. Eventually, baking the cake was considered by some to be an act of witchcraft itself.
Adapted from history.com/ news/7-bizarre-witch-trial-tests
What I wrote in response:
"Who would have thought that a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?" That's what the Wicked Witch of the West said in the famous film The Wizard of Oz, right after Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her. The Wicked Witch of the West is a great villain. Terrifying. Fascinating. And yet, destroyed by a girl and a bucket of water.
Author L. Frank Baum swore he hadn't consciously written the book that inspired The Wizard of Oz as political allegory, but I can't help but think about our current villain in the White House—the Orange Menace—and how we might dissolve his power with something we can throw at him. An affidavit, perhaps?
What might the metaphor mean if we unpack it? Not a gun or a knife, but water. Something prolific, life-giving, like faith and love and critical thought. Dorothy threw the water on the witch by accident: she was trying to save her friend, the Scarecrow, whose arm was on fire. She wanted him to survive. She was protecting someone vulnerable. We have to protect what's vulnerable. Like democracy. Like the Rule of Law. Sometimes I think we're heading toward complete anarchy in this country, another civil war, even. That we're destined to live in Gilead, like those in Margaret Atwood's, The Handmaid's Tale. I worry I'll have to escape to Hawaii or Canada, but then I think: No. Justice will prevail. But who among us will fight for justice, for human rights?
We need more leaders. The ridiculous amount of Democratic Presidential candidates in 2019 is proof enough of that. Yet, who is brave and kind, clever and likable, who can fight this wave of conservative, xenophobic rancor that seems to be taking over our government now? Is there someone heroic who can take Trump and his cronies head on? What's Trump's Achilles heel, his "pie in the face" moment?
I can't help but think of Trump's supporters as the Witch's flying monkeys; something to be feared until the wicked old witch is dead. And I still believe that the majority of people in this country believe in our political system, and will continue to fight and resist. Watching the film even now, in middle age, the hair still stands up on my arms when the witch cackles, but I always know that Dorothy will ultimately destroy her. I always believe in that happy ending. Can I do that now?
What I remember most about reading The Wizard of Oz as a child was that moment of realization that Dorothy was only six years old, yet she was fearless and determined. Smart. Strong. Can I still say the same about the US? As a kid, I couldn't get enough of Dorothy's story: a child who was unafraid of green witches and flying primates. In the film, Judy Garland was whiny and fearful, but in the book, little Dorothy kicks some serious butt.
I want Dorothy's story to inspire us in these dark times. Let us imagine millions of Dorothies, ready to fight this emboldened constituency of survivalists and wanna-be-anarchists, who stockpile ammunition and teach their children to hate. Let us throw a tidal wave of resistance on them and melt their neuvo-power. Let us intimidate them to crawl back into their dark net underground caves and bomb shelters. Let us defeat them.
Tonight We Ride a crack in the hospital room door widens the snake's eye of a nurse's flashlight blinks on and darts back into the night's cactus I turn in the hospital sheets they mask me in their morphine white my body creaks in its hinges gone, I hear her flick the light off and on for every room down the hall the hourly watch the asylum eye orthopedic shoes on deaf rugs wall to wall hospital odor the night has come, a stranger to me I see a ladder in the dark and the shapes of clothes hanging grow childhood monsters bats circle the room collide against my head everyone must be sleeping the walls are a thicket of trees I walk to the witch's house knock three times and the midnight nurse answers through a crack I'm glad you brought that she smiles, lowering her flashlight I look down at the broom in my hand I hear her say Tonight we ride (Author Unknown: I discovered this poem in the early 1980's, when it was part of performance piece in the Little Theater at San Francisco State University. I was a kid then, and didn't write down the author's name nor the name of the play, and have never been able to find the author since. If you know who wrote this poem, please let me know.)