As I read 1984, I am reminded that my dad thought this was how things would be if democrats ran things. The use of "comrade" and "socialist" was his reasoning that we'd be vulnerable to fascism through the backdoor of weak leadership. We'd lose everything if we didn't have strong leaders. The ideas in the book have been used to justify being anti-PC. That any censorship of bigoted thoughts would lead to that sort of extreme fascism. And yet, never did any democrat ever come close to this kind of world. But there are people who really think we live in such a world. People think being upset about bigotry and forbidding people calling others "gay" as an insult are seen as being just as bad as the kind of life described in 1984. Yet, here, we've been prosperous, we moved freely, we spoke to each other without fear, and we assembled without fear.
As Trump puts into place a very terrifying regime, with ideas that better match what happens in 1984, I wonder if these kind of people who are like my dad would even be able to see it. After all, 2+2=5 is already the reality they desire to live in.
Can they see the removal of science, banning of funding to science, the political submission of science writing to the dear leader? Can they see the Muslim registry? Can they see the plan to publish lists of names of "aliens" who have committed crimes? Can they see the threat of sending in the military to cities to patrol? Can they see the useless monument of a wall on the southern border? Can they see the forbidding of entry to refugees from a weird selection of countries? Can they see the disappearance of civil rights? Can they see the disappearance of the newly minted LGBT rights? Can they see the lies being thrown about? Can they hear the press secretary? Do they really believe Alex Jones is anything but a charlatan?
I just don't understand how people can hear about these things and still assert this isn't the birth of fascism. I've seen them deny it. I just don't understand how. And I certainly don't know how to make them open their eyes.
And there are still people on the left that want to rub the noses of progressives in the shit and yell that it's their fault.
We're doomed. End.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Ranting.
It appears that my sense of humor took another vacation. This time, I'm going to indulge in the things that keep my heavy mood going. Perhaps because the temptation to flee into numbness is growing stronger. I went down my list of songs and pulled out anything that touched the theme of "the end of the world" to me. I came up with 110 songs in a few minutes. I'm sure I missed some, too. Plus, I need to rebuild my collection, since my collection didn't transition the way I thought it did. That means ripping my CDs again.
The dreams I've had over the last year have been pretty terrible. A lot of them have started to happen. Luckily, the two most terrible ones haven't happened yet. Everything that this administration is doing and planning to do is being hand-waved away. And of course, the executive order business that I heard people call "power grabs" are now perfectly acceptable. Interesting how cognitive bias works on everyone of us. It's not even a week in, and the plans being put into place ensure that we will be in a worse position after 4 years than we were in 2004. If we let them get away with all of this, we may not have much of a life at all, let alone a voice in government.
The authoritarians are pleased, right now. In time, it'll even harm them. I've so far stuck to my promise not to laugh at them or make fun of them. It'll be hard, at times. The executive orders have tested me with not making fun of people.
Anyway, I'll still say I told you so. Not with malice or gloating. Simple statement of fact. You know, objective facts. Not alternative facts. Whatever that imaginary Constitution y'all say you love so much says, I know it has no room for someone like me in it. I don't want to submit to your vision of America. I'm stuck here, but I'll fight for the one old Conservatives like my dad used to talk about. I'll fight for the one that comes with the promise of liberty and justice for all. It's not just for the 1%.
The new aristocracy and royalty is just as putrid and corrupt as the old one we were supposed to have left behind. Funny how many people need "strong leaders" to rule over them in such fierce domination. Funny peculiar, not funny haha. That great experiment of a republic was just too much liberty for too many people. However, in the end, none of us will have any liberty. It'll be the few at the top, again. All these people clamoring for an authoritarian regime will be under the boot, as well.
All the people who think the hot air words Trump gives to Jesus and God means that your particular brand of Christianity will be the one at the top of the food chain are wrong. The religious promises are empty. The old saying that religion is useful for leaders to control people might just prove correct. That wall of separation was protecting your beliefs as well as my non-beliefs. Take it away, and it most likely won't be your vision of Christianity that you have to submit to. Humans have to learn these things the hard way, repeatedly, though.
You've all crowned your king. Congratulations. Executive orders all around. Enjoy the glow while you can, it'll fade soon.
The dreams I've had over the last year have been pretty terrible. A lot of them have started to happen. Luckily, the two most terrible ones haven't happened yet. Everything that this administration is doing and planning to do is being hand-waved away. And of course, the executive order business that I heard people call "power grabs" are now perfectly acceptable. Interesting how cognitive bias works on everyone of us. It's not even a week in, and the plans being put into place ensure that we will be in a worse position after 4 years than we were in 2004. If we let them get away with all of this, we may not have much of a life at all, let alone a voice in government.
The authoritarians are pleased, right now. In time, it'll even harm them. I've so far stuck to my promise not to laugh at them or make fun of them. It'll be hard, at times. The executive orders have tested me with not making fun of people.
Anyway, I'll still say I told you so. Not with malice or gloating. Simple statement of fact. You know, objective facts. Not alternative facts. Whatever that imaginary Constitution y'all say you love so much says, I know it has no room for someone like me in it. I don't want to submit to your vision of America. I'm stuck here, but I'll fight for the one old Conservatives like my dad used to talk about. I'll fight for the one that comes with the promise of liberty and justice for all. It's not just for the 1%.
The new aristocracy and royalty is just as putrid and corrupt as the old one we were supposed to have left behind. Funny how many people need "strong leaders" to rule over them in such fierce domination. Funny peculiar, not funny haha. That great experiment of a republic was just too much liberty for too many people. However, in the end, none of us will have any liberty. It'll be the few at the top, again. All these people clamoring for an authoritarian regime will be under the boot, as well.
All the people who think the hot air words Trump gives to Jesus and God means that your particular brand of Christianity will be the one at the top of the food chain are wrong. The religious promises are empty. The old saying that religion is useful for leaders to control people might just prove correct. That wall of separation was protecting your beliefs as well as my non-beliefs. Take it away, and it most likely won't be your vision of Christianity that you have to submit to. Humans have to learn these things the hard way, repeatedly, though.
You've all crowned your king. Congratulations. Executive orders all around. Enjoy the glow while you can, it'll fade soon.
Monday, January 23, 2017
More Platitude Annoyance
I'm probably not in a place where I should be writing. My head is cloudy, my sinuses are swollen shut, though not congested. I just took Flonase which puts me to sleep, but I need to get back into the routine of using it. The weather is odd, warm, and wet. So much mold. So much swollen head. So much slogging.
I'm never going to be in a position to understand why people need things to be loud and chaotic. In their minds, they are convinced that this equals action and getting things done. Meanwhile, in the calm of the morning, in the quiet, things were okay. The way I'd like to see them, all the time. This is not how things are done, though. Which is why I stepped down. My way is not chaos and loudness. I don't do threats and punishment to people who are already giving everything they have. I may get annoyed when I'm doing all I can, and others are not. I don't rant and rave. Instead, I get things done, through alternate avenues. Apparently, shouting and throwing is preferred. Which intensifies my anxiety and depression.
This is my life. On one hand, I need to maintain a level of income to survive, and in our society, that requires giving up a portion of your mental well-being, just to barely make it. On the other, I'm not getting those hours back. I won't get out of life alive, anyway. There's no afterlife to sit back and relax in. If I don't do it now, I never will. How do you balance those two competing needs?
I suppose "Get a different job" or "just be nice to people and they'll give you money and gifts" works for some people. I've moved from job to job enough to know they all suck. Even if you do something you thought you liked, when you have to make money from it, it becomes a burden and less desirable. So, I make an effort to leave my work at the door as much as I am asked to leave my life at the work door. I fill my outside time with things that have meaning to me and then things that bring me peace. Some days I need more meaning, some days I need more peace, but those hours are mine.
When I see platitudes posted about living every minute of life to its fullest, I am reminded that I am not doing so. Then I remember why that is. I need a stable home, stable transportation, stable way to get food and warmth, and all the rest. The platitudes are for people that no longer need to think about sources of income. They irritate me. Obviously, one or two in particular, today, irritated me a lot.
I'm never going to be in a position to understand why people need things to be loud and chaotic. In their minds, they are convinced that this equals action and getting things done. Meanwhile, in the calm of the morning, in the quiet, things were okay. The way I'd like to see them, all the time. This is not how things are done, though. Which is why I stepped down. My way is not chaos and loudness. I don't do threats and punishment to people who are already giving everything they have. I may get annoyed when I'm doing all I can, and others are not. I don't rant and rave. Instead, I get things done, through alternate avenues. Apparently, shouting and throwing is preferred. Which intensifies my anxiety and depression.
This is my life. On one hand, I need to maintain a level of income to survive, and in our society, that requires giving up a portion of your mental well-being, just to barely make it. On the other, I'm not getting those hours back. I won't get out of life alive, anyway. There's no afterlife to sit back and relax in. If I don't do it now, I never will. How do you balance those two competing needs?
I suppose "Get a different job" or "just be nice to people and they'll give you money and gifts" works for some people. I've moved from job to job enough to know they all suck. Even if you do something you thought you liked, when you have to make money from it, it becomes a burden and less desirable. So, I make an effort to leave my work at the door as much as I am asked to leave my life at the work door. I fill my outside time with things that have meaning to me and then things that bring me peace. Some days I need more meaning, some days I need more peace, but those hours are mine.
When I see platitudes posted about living every minute of life to its fullest, I am reminded that I am not doing so. Then I remember why that is. I need a stable home, stable transportation, stable way to get food and warmth, and all the rest. The platitudes are for people that no longer need to think about sources of income. They irritate me. Obviously, one or two in particular, today, irritated me a lot.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Step Back Again
The part of me that never feels like it's enough has taken to feeling the abrasive scratch on my psyche when people assert that the people who showed up to march yesterday never did enough. I realize it's a collective critique, but since I find my brain misbehaving, I am seeing in this one more thing to feel like a failure about. Perhaps my struggling to survive in poverty, as a single mom with two young kids, doesn't impress a certain segment of the population. So be it.
I know my life, and what I did before things were difficult. I know I did what I could. It was the best that someone like me could do. However, no one can see it. Yet, I know the way I am. I will step out and do what I can possibly do in my situation. To some people, this will never be enough. But just as I do not accept the criticism that comes from the right about how my use of government assistance did not bring about the sorrows and ills in their lives, also my inability to personally change the world to the way I wish it were isn't bringing about all the sorrow and ills in other people's lives.
I remained witness several times. Sometimes to traffic stops and inquiries on the street, or as I stood among people after Timothy Thomas, only to later face a group of teens with baseball bats (I unadvisedly turned and yelled at them that I was part of them, and I lived there, too. They sheepishly walked away from me), I know I've done the only things one mom in poverty can do.
As my brain tells me that I should have somehow saved everyone, everywhere, of everything, by now, it isn't doing any good to listen to criticisms, right now. So I have to step away, while my brain works out its ills.
Have a good night.
I know my life, and what I did before things were difficult. I know I did what I could. It was the best that someone like me could do. However, no one can see it. Yet, I know the way I am. I will step out and do what I can possibly do in my situation. To some people, this will never be enough. But just as I do not accept the criticism that comes from the right about how my use of government assistance did not bring about the sorrows and ills in their lives, also my inability to personally change the world to the way I wish it were isn't bringing about all the sorrow and ills in other people's lives.
I remained witness several times. Sometimes to traffic stops and inquiries on the street, or as I stood among people after Timothy Thomas, only to later face a group of teens with baseball bats (I unadvisedly turned and yelled at them that I was part of them, and I lived there, too. They sheepishly walked away from me), I know I've done the only things one mom in poverty can do.
As my brain tells me that I should have somehow saved everyone, everywhere, of everything, by now, it isn't doing any good to listen to criticisms, right now. So I have to step away, while my brain works out its ills.
Have a good night.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Not Giving Up Now
For the most part, it has been okay to watch things online. I was with my younger son, today. He didn't want to be out in crowds. I understand this and respect it. We stayed in. I watched the live streams of the Washington march. It made me feel better.
There are still little gnats flying around the online world, leaving ridiculous comments. I was going to just respond with laughing at them, but then felt I should say something of substance, even though I don't feel like spending time educating them about anything. Of course, the same comment I heard when I sat during the Pledge, in the midst of the first Gulf war, was left on my page. "If you hate him so much, why don't you move?" Seriously, after 25 years, this is still their best argument?
Why didn't he move while Obama was in office? I mean, didn't Hannity or O'Reilly, Nugent, and Limbaugh all say they'd move away, claiming they'd be jailed or dead soon after Obama took office? Of course, we're not going to move. We're all staying, and some of us see this as work ahead to ensure our lives get progressively better. All our lives. Not just the ones that look and sound like me.
Money is a huge factor. Also being accepted in another country is a factor. Maybe I'd bail if I had a place to go or a reason to leave. Right now, this is not an option. So I say I'll fight off the dismal outlook and try to keep our world steady until we can get back to fixing the rest. If I have to stay, I'm not going to be silent and submissive. That's never really been my thing.
How else does one survive the environments I grew up in, after all?
There are still little gnats flying around the online world, leaving ridiculous comments. I was going to just respond with laughing at them, but then felt I should say something of substance, even though I don't feel like spending time educating them about anything. Of course, the same comment I heard when I sat during the Pledge, in the midst of the first Gulf war, was left on my page. "If you hate him so much, why don't you move?" Seriously, after 25 years, this is still their best argument?
Why didn't he move while Obama was in office? I mean, didn't Hannity or O'Reilly, Nugent, and Limbaugh all say they'd move away, claiming they'd be jailed or dead soon after Obama took office? Of course, we're not going to move. We're all staying, and some of us see this as work ahead to ensure our lives get progressively better. All our lives. Not just the ones that look and sound like me.
Money is a huge factor. Also being accepted in another country is a factor. Maybe I'd bail if I had a place to go or a reason to leave. Right now, this is not an option. So I say I'll fight off the dismal outlook and try to keep our world steady until we can get back to fixing the rest. If I have to stay, I'm not going to be silent and submissive. That's never really been my thing.
How else does one survive the environments I grew up in, after all?
Friday, January 20, 2017
Calm Resolve
Maybe it has been too many months of reading what this elected official has warned us he was going to do. I don't feel any different than I did yesterday. As important things were erased from the White House website, and untrue tidbits were added to incite fear, it was not a surprise. As his speech echoed Bane in the Batman movie, it was a dull thud on my ears. I'm no longer shocked by this man. I'm no longer shocked that he's our president.
I've resigned myself to going through what I went through when my mom raised me, and when Bush Jr. ruined the economy, this last recession. It will be difficult, but this is just more of the same, for me. I mourned the loss of my hopes of moving up in my life. That's probably going to now be nearly insurmountable. My focus will be to maintain some semblance of the life I have built up to this point. As things take a nosedive, the skills I have to survive in times of the barren wasteland will come back to me. I already find myself writing out a budget that would make others cringe. If you've never had to feed yourself and two kids on $40 a week, you don't know what this means. If you have, you know why I'm so upset.
What I can prepare for, I will. There will be plenty I cannot fathom and plan for. I must have a routine and a cushion of some sort to fall on when times get hard. The only thing that I know is that I won't back down. I've had plenty of experience. In the last riot I found myself in, I didn't back down when I probably should have. Baseball bats didn't faze me. This may not be the healthiest way of being. It is how I respond. There is no flight in me, when there should be. It's all fight. That's how life trained me. I didn't want to be this way. It just happened.
Not everything can happen all at once. I never meant to imply that. So, in the meantime, I will dust up on my physical fitness, my inner sanctum, and my finances. This time, it will be worse than the collapse of the last recession. Whatever is in me only wants to keep going. I don't know why. All thoughts of leaving are gone. In this alternate universe I've found myself, I just want to sustain. Perhaps someone wiser than I knows what has shifted in me. I just know I must not back down.
I'll search out the truth, even as it becomes harder to find under the propaganda. Whatever it takes, it must be done. Rout out the evil before it spreads as a virus. The shadow of this world lays heavy on me, today. I will try to keep the fire of this fight in my eyes. Forward, despite the looming oppression. In spite of all of it.
I've resigned myself to going through what I went through when my mom raised me, and when Bush Jr. ruined the economy, this last recession. It will be difficult, but this is just more of the same, for me. I mourned the loss of my hopes of moving up in my life. That's probably going to now be nearly insurmountable. My focus will be to maintain some semblance of the life I have built up to this point. As things take a nosedive, the skills I have to survive in times of the barren wasteland will come back to me. I already find myself writing out a budget that would make others cringe. If you've never had to feed yourself and two kids on $40 a week, you don't know what this means. If you have, you know why I'm so upset.
What I can prepare for, I will. There will be plenty I cannot fathom and plan for. I must have a routine and a cushion of some sort to fall on when times get hard. The only thing that I know is that I won't back down. I've had plenty of experience. In the last riot I found myself in, I didn't back down when I probably should have. Baseball bats didn't faze me. This may not be the healthiest way of being. It is how I respond. There is no flight in me, when there should be. It's all fight. That's how life trained me. I didn't want to be this way. It just happened.
Not everything can happen all at once. I never meant to imply that. So, in the meantime, I will dust up on my physical fitness, my inner sanctum, and my finances. This time, it will be worse than the collapse of the last recession. Whatever is in me only wants to keep going. I don't know why. All thoughts of leaving are gone. In this alternate universe I've found myself, I just want to sustain. Perhaps someone wiser than I knows what has shifted in me. I just know I must not back down.
I'll search out the truth, even as it becomes harder to find under the propaganda. Whatever it takes, it must be done. Rout out the evil before it spreads as a virus. The shadow of this world lays heavy on me, today. I will try to keep the fire of this fight in my eyes. Forward, despite the looming oppression. In spite of all of it.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Stand Your Ground
There are those who are choosing to remain blind. They ignore all the warnings posted along the way. They might see one or two minor things, and point out that isolated event doesn't mean anything. They're not looking or listening or reading. They're in a bubble of what they want to be true. For a few weeks, I thought maybe Trump would end up being too incompetent to do real damage. The main focus I had was on how he seemed to be using his new position to line his pockets. Now, though, it has become obvious that all those things I dread most are starting to happen.
When this country collapses, and a new order is established (we all know that's a Hitler reference, right?) there will be no place for someone like me. I'll stick around. The sand in the oyster. Maybe a pearl will grow. Maybe I'll be forced out. Who knows, at this point? We're going into chaos and destruction of everything I was taught to believe made us exceptional. Yes, yes, you can chastise me for ever believing in American exceptionalism later. Right now, I just want to make it clear that every hope I had of getting close to a vision of real freedom for everyone has been crushed into dust.
If you haven't been paying attention so far, my words will mean nothing to you now. His symbolic gesture of inviting more fascists to his inauguration just cements how much people are willing to overlook. Shut your eyes, it'll be a bumpy ride.
If you are fairly well-off financially, with a job that is unassailable even in fascism, with white skin, comfortable with the gender role you've been assigned to dutifully follow, and in love with the gender that's supposedly opposite your own, you'll probably be okay. That is, if you mind your business and let the military and police come in and "cleanse" your ethnic neighbors. So, yeah, I guess you can just shut your eyes and pretend this Dear Leader is everything you ever craved in your authoritarian heart.
The rest of us will fight. See you on the other side of this nightmare. I'll stay as long as I can, just to piss you off.
"Stand your ground
this is what we are fighting for
for our spirit and laws and ways..."
*"Honour" VNV Nation
When this country collapses, and a new order is established (we all know that's a Hitler reference, right?) there will be no place for someone like me. I'll stick around. The sand in the oyster. Maybe a pearl will grow. Maybe I'll be forced out. Who knows, at this point? We're going into chaos and destruction of everything I was taught to believe made us exceptional. Yes, yes, you can chastise me for ever believing in American exceptionalism later. Right now, I just want to make it clear that every hope I had of getting close to a vision of real freedom for everyone has been crushed into dust.
If you haven't been paying attention so far, my words will mean nothing to you now. His symbolic gesture of inviting more fascists to his inauguration just cements how much people are willing to overlook. Shut your eyes, it'll be a bumpy ride.
If you are fairly well-off financially, with a job that is unassailable even in fascism, with white skin, comfortable with the gender role you've been assigned to dutifully follow, and in love with the gender that's supposedly opposite your own, you'll probably be okay. That is, if you mind your business and let the military and police come in and "cleanse" your ethnic neighbors. So, yeah, I guess you can just shut your eyes and pretend this Dear Leader is everything you ever craved in your authoritarian heart.
The rest of us will fight. See you on the other side of this nightmare. I'll stay as long as I can, just to piss you off.
"Stand your ground
this is what we are fighting for
for our spirit and laws and ways..."
*"Honour" VNV Nation
Monday, January 16, 2017
Yeah, Blue
Well, look at this. PMDD on the newly-dubbed Blue Monday. It's been overcast for days. At least there is no snow or ice. The world is falling into the hands of the most selfish, irredeemable sort of people. The loneliness is made more obvious by the fact that I have the daybed frame now needing to be assembled in my living room. A task I once might have relished, right now seems to reflect my entire life at me.
My head hurts, and my neighbor's smoke is sneaking in, stinking up my living quarters.
Life looks pretty bleak.
I know it's just my own perception, but that doesn't make this go away.
The only help for it is that it will pass in the blink of an eye. Every day passes faster and faster, anyway.
My typing just fell to abysmal levels. I will stop now.
My head hurts, and my neighbor's smoke is sneaking in, stinking up my living quarters.
Life looks pretty bleak.
I know it's just my own perception, but that doesn't make this go away.
The only help for it is that it will pass in the blink of an eye. Every day passes faster and faster, anyway.
My typing just fell to abysmal levels. I will stop now.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Day Napping
Today was one of my sleepy days. These don't happen very often. Most of the time, sleep is something that eludes me. I drifted in and out of naps, all day. My eleven year old son was here. It was difficult to sleep, even though I couldn't keep my eyes open. My neck was in pain. My muscles still ache. I would startle awake every now and then and ask how he was doing.
This reminds me of the five years I worked at night. I would nap like this on and off in the day. I'd get up and go to work through the night. I'd nap like that through every day. As I sit here, aching, eyes stinging, not rested, and wanting to cry, I am reminded that night shift was terrible to me and my body. I keep asking myself how I managed to survive those five years.
Add in all the people in my life who felt I had all the time in the world, because I didn't work in the day. People would honestly be upset with me for wanting to fucking sleep at some point or other. What? You think I go to work and sleep? No. Come on, now. So yes, I was not at my best. I didn't do the ultimate best I could. Sleep and I aren't great friends, but I need at least a few hours every day. There are only so many days a person can go on an hour here and an hour there.
I really don't know how I survived. I know why I stopped writing, now. I get it all. I can feel it in my muscles and my screaming brain to just stop now. Luckily, I get to sleep overnight. I wake very early, yes, but it actually works for me. I am not a morning person, though. I'm a late night person. I still find myself faltering at about 10 or 11 a.m. The years of napping at that time of day hasn't fully left me. However, the sleep I get now is downright magical.
My brain is beginning to recover. This has been such a necessary step in the right direction. I hope I can continue to heal as the days go on.
This reminds me of the five years I worked at night. I would nap like this on and off in the day. I'd get up and go to work through the night. I'd nap like that through every day. As I sit here, aching, eyes stinging, not rested, and wanting to cry, I am reminded that night shift was terrible to me and my body. I keep asking myself how I managed to survive those five years.
Add in all the people in my life who felt I had all the time in the world, because I didn't work in the day. People would honestly be upset with me for wanting to fucking sleep at some point or other. What? You think I go to work and sleep? No. Come on, now. So yes, I was not at my best. I didn't do the ultimate best I could. Sleep and I aren't great friends, but I need at least a few hours every day. There are only so many days a person can go on an hour here and an hour there.
I really don't know how I survived. I know why I stopped writing, now. I get it all. I can feel it in my muscles and my screaming brain to just stop now. Luckily, I get to sleep overnight. I wake very early, yes, but it actually works for me. I am not a morning person, though. I'm a late night person. I still find myself faltering at about 10 or 11 a.m. The years of napping at that time of day hasn't fully left me. However, the sleep I get now is downright magical.
My brain is beginning to recover. This has been such a necessary step in the right direction. I hope I can continue to heal as the days go on.
Friday, January 13, 2017
The Art Is Going to Be Amazing
People speak of how oppression brings out the art in artists. How in the bleakest of times, humans create harder and more often. But the artists flame out fast. Imagine how much more art could exist if we supported creativity. How much gets doused out before it can find itself blazing? We'll never know how much has been lost to us. Oppression may give the privileged a reason to flourish, but it stifles everyone else.
I've reached a point where I have some free time, less stress about where I'm going to live, what I'm going to eat, how I'm going to cover the costs of medicine if my kids get sick. In this time period, I have begun to flourish. My story isn't yet flowing from me in more than snapshots of stream of consciousness, but it's starting, again. While I lived in fear of my next meal and my children's fate, there was no art left in me. I didn't write more than the bleakest of journal entries. I was living in the oppression of poverty.
Any oppression causes sadness and anger. The only people who get to release it are people who are not currently under the pressure of surviving it. If people want to show support of art and artists, I suggest we do more than glorify oppression. We need to give them environments to thrive.
The cynical, "Well, at least the art is going to be amazing" is just a way to absolve ourselves of the responsibility of truly supporting the arts.
What about school art and music programs? What about teaching computer aided draft and web design in elementary school? Why not writing workshops? Why do we, instead, allow our schools to be pared down to 'Riting, Reading, 'Rithmetic? No, this presidency will not give us great art. Great art will be stifled and stamped out before it can even begin.
Save me your cynical rhetoric.
I've reached a point where I have some free time, less stress about where I'm going to live, what I'm going to eat, how I'm going to cover the costs of medicine if my kids get sick. In this time period, I have begun to flourish. My story isn't yet flowing from me in more than snapshots of stream of consciousness, but it's starting, again. While I lived in fear of my next meal and my children's fate, there was no art left in me. I didn't write more than the bleakest of journal entries. I was living in the oppression of poverty.
Any oppression causes sadness and anger. The only people who get to release it are people who are not currently under the pressure of surviving it. If people want to show support of art and artists, I suggest we do more than glorify oppression. We need to give them environments to thrive.
The cynical, "Well, at least the art is going to be amazing" is just a way to absolve ourselves of the responsibility of truly supporting the arts.
What about school art and music programs? What about teaching computer aided draft and web design in elementary school? Why not writing workshops? Why do we, instead, allow our schools to be pared down to 'Riting, Reading, 'Rithmetic? No, this presidency will not give us great art. Great art will be stifled and stamped out before it can even begin.
Save me your cynical rhetoric.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Spity-spity-spity
I've faltered a bit today. My head is in a dark place. I feel a little better than I did, after some cheap wine, coloring, and indulging in one of my favorite musical obsessions at the same time. However, I'm still in a place where I am staying alive just to piss off everyone who has bets placed on when I'll die.
Everyone can bite me. Except if you have ever been decent to me. Obviously, I'm not addressing you. I'm addressing the others out there who have done everything to make me feel as small as I do. Just piss off, already.
Everyone can bite me. Except if you have ever been decent to me. Obviously, I'm not addressing you. I'm addressing the others out there who have done everything to make me feel as small as I do. Just piss off, already.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Let Me Be Wrong
There is no sober in me right now. The drink is cheap and sweet. It's taking the ache away from my heart.
I'm downtrodden by events that are about to take place. Even if most of the woo has been purged from me, I feel like this "premonition" game my brain is playing is just my mind figuring out how to connect the dots before I've fully made a rational assessment. Things that are coming are going to be hard. They're going to be bad. That goes for the people that think they're safe, right now. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell will have to learn the hard way.
I won't laugh. I will say I told you so, though. That's my mantra, now.
We tried to play with civility and the Renaissance rationality. We tried to bend the arc toward justice. We played by the rules. Meanwhile, people with few scruples and a lot of greed bent the rules and built up a future of injustice. We let them get away with this. We let them have all of our futures.
People who don't understand death will kill our future. None of them will live, either. In the end, we will all look like the same pile of bones to any future generation that survives us. There's no salvation. There are no angels. There is no Year Zero Godly hand dropping from the sky to end the misery. People pile misery upon misery on top of each other. We were our only hope to save ourselves. There's no divine force that will lift the chosen people from the battlefields. It's just us, these animals with some weird predisposition toward self-destruction.
I've already started having war and invasion dreams again. They will increase. I know my brain. I sound so damned pessimistic. It's because where I live, people can't see what they've done. Until they feel the pain, themselves, they won't even care. All their hot air about Jesus and Christian compassion will evaporate in the nuclear winter.
I hope people who aren't surrounded by the truly blind-to-truth can make a difference. I feel overwhelmed. In ten days, life is going to change for us, in our protective bubble. I won't back down. My history brought me to a mindset where "I would not submit / could never bring myself to heel." I won't back down. One thing I know about me is that I don't back down. Even when I should. I'll do everything I can to stop this.
I hope the people who have the "keys" to our destruction are smarter than the shitpile we just let take over our government. If we ever needed smarter people than the ones the populace elected, it is now.
And again, I say, "I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO BE WRONG MORE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE THAN I DO ABOUT THIS NEXT YEAR TO TWO YEARS."
I'm downtrodden by events that are about to take place. Even if most of the woo has been purged from me, I feel like this "premonition" game my brain is playing is just my mind figuring out how to connect the dots before I've fully made a rational assessment. Things that are coming are going to be hard. They're going to be bad. That goes for the people that think they're safe, right now. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell will have to learn the hard way.
I won't laugh. I will say I told you so, though. That's my mantra, now.
We tried to play with civility and the Renaissance rationality. We tried to bend the arc toward justice. We played by the rules. Meanwhile, people with few scruples and a lot of greed bent the rules and built up a future of injustice. We let them get away with this. We let them have all of our futures.
People who don't understand death will kill our future. None of them will live, either. In the end, we will all look like the same pile of bones to any future generation that survives us. There's no salvation. There are no angels. There is no Year Zero Godly hand dropping from the sky to end the misery. People pile misery upon misery on top of each other. We were our only hope to save ourselves. There's no divine force that will lift the chosen people from the battlefields. It's just us, these animals with some weird predisposition toward self-destruction.
I've already started having war and invasion dreams again. They will increase. I know my brain. I sound so damned pessimistic. It's because where I live, people can't see what they've done. Until they feel the pain, themselves, they won't even care. All their hot air about Jesus and Christian compassion will evaporate in the nuclear winter.
I hope people who aren't surrounded by the truly blind-to-truth can make a difference. I feel overwhelmed. In ten days, life is going to change for us, in our protective bubble. I won't back down. My history brought me to a mindset where "I would not submit / could never bring myself to heel." I won't back down. One thing I know about me is that I don't back down. Even when I should. I'll do everything I can to stop this.
I hope the people who have the "keys" to our destruction are smarter than the shitpile we just let take over our government. If we ever needed smarter people than the ones the populace elected, it is now.
And again, I say, "I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO BE WRONG MORE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE THAN I DO ABOUT THIS NEXT YEAR TO TWO YEARS."
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Peacefulness
Inside, the calm and quiet are welcome. The respite of my mind's never-ending maelstrom of thoughts and feelings has been a long time coming. I need this relief. It's been far too long since the inner world was this peaceful. The place inside me that looks like an early autumn forest on the edge of a beach has returned.
There is still a little desire to reach out and create new, stronger bonds with people. Yet, I have moved into such a beautiful sense of solitude. It's free of any kind of drama or melodrama that comes from other people. The need for strife, unhappiness, tensions, guilt, manipulation, control, and negative attention is alien to me. It's not something that will fully settle in my mind. No amount of talking to people will ever let me understand them.
As always, you guys look like the strangers. As you look at me with wide eyes, as though I sprouted a third head, all I can think is that you seem to be the oddities. Why do you like to cause discord and go into every conversation with defenses drawn, on purpose? Why would you not just walk away, and stop answering the phone? What thrill do you get from arguing and dividing each other?
I don't think I'll ever understand or empathize with this need. I don't want to, either.
I'll stay here, hang up on anyone or walk away from anyone that tries to pull me into that maze of terror. I'm not living my life for this hell. I was born with this one body, one brain, and I've come to this portion of my life in the understanding that this is it. All the wasted time on unhappiness and stress has been enough for me. I'm done with it.
On a different note, each day I wake up, look at the reports going around, and wonder how I ended up in this timeline. I keep begging Donna to turn left. Goddamn it, turn left, and get us out of this mess!
There is still a little desire to reach out and create new, stronger bonds with people. Yet, I have moved into such a beautiful sense of solitude. It's free of any kind of drama or melodrama that comes from other people. The need for strife, unhappiness, tensions, guilt, manipulation, control, and negative attention is alien to me. It's not something that will fully settle in my mind. No amount of talking to people will ever let me understand them.
As always, you guys look like the strangers. As you look at me with wide eyes, as though I sprouted a third head, all I can think is that you seem to be the oddities. Why do you like to cause discord and go into every conversation with defenses drawn, on purpose? Why would you not just walk away, and stop answering the phone? What thrill do you get from arguing and dividing each other?
I don't think I'll ever understand or empathize with this need. I don't want to, either.
I'll stay here, hang up on anyone or walk away from anyone that tries to pull me into that maze of terror. I'm not living my life for this hell. I was born with this one body, one brain, and I've come to this portion of my life in the understanding that this is it. All the wasted time on unhappiness and stress has been enough for me. I'm done with it.
On a different note, each day I wake up, look at the reports going around, and wonder how I ended up in this timeline. I keep begging Donna to turn left. Goddamn it, turn left, and get us out of this mess!
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Unimportant Feelings
I need a mental health day. Or two. I don't get those. Or sick days. Just my vacation and two personal days that must be scheduled in advance, for the most part. One of my major goals in the last decade has been to stick with my job until I find something else, and then give some kind of notice. I've done this. However, this week, it's been particularly hard to figure out exactly why I do it. Oh, yeah, paycheck, sure... but that's just not enough. I don't want to start over somewhere else, because all jobs are crappy. "Work is a four letter word" the saying goes. Sure, sure.
It feels so unimportant. Worse, it sometimes feels malignant. Not only am I not helping anyone, the whole thing just seems to be making the world a worse place? Is it really, though? I don't think so. I think my perception is just skewed, today. The day started out below average, and just never really rose above. After I left, it got worse, because of the communication issues that plague this place. I just feel like "Why bother?"
When we're all sitting in barely-functioning buildings, in the coming nuclear winter, will any of this mean anything, anyway? No. I won't even remember why this seemed at all important. It will be lost to a fantasy of life that will be long gone.
My day starts at 3 a.m. again tomorrow. I'll be going to sleep soon. My dreams continue to be intensely interesting. I hope tonight is the same. I need an escape. Any escape. Dreams will do.
It feels so unimportant. Worse, it sometimes feels malignant. Not only am I not helping anyone, the whole thing just seems to be making the world a worse place? Is it really, though? I don't think so. I think my perception is just skewed, today. The day started out below average, and just never really rose above. After I left, it got worse, because of the communication issues that plague this place. I just feel like "Why bother?"
When we're all sitting in barely-functioning buildings, in the coming nuclear winter, will any of this mean anything, anyway? No. I won't even remember why this seemed at all important. It will be lost to a fantasy of life that will be long gone.
My day starts at 3 a.m. again tomorrow. I'll be going to sleep soon. My dreams continue to be intensely interesting. I hope tonight is the same. I need an escape. Any escape. Dreams will do.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Health
Every now and then, deja vu interrupts my day. I feel like I've been in the exact situation before, or that I've dreamed the exact situation. Sometimes I'll read a passage and think I've read or heard someone tell me the exact same story a few days ago. It'll feel like I'm remembering telling someone about a dream I had that made no sense, because I didn't have context.
I was listening to someone explain the new system we are about to use at work. I felt that I'd described this job to my ex, after dreaming about it. I feel like I was struggling to describe it, because this particular feature of my job, and department weren't possible when I described it. But now I'm in the department, and suddenly, it all makes sense. Except I doubt I ever had a dream, nor explained such a dream to my ex.
I read an anecdote on one of those listicle articles. None of the other stories sounded familiar, but the last one sounded like something I think someone described to me, in detail yesterday or the day before that, while I was at work. However, I just can't think of anyone actually telling me that story or who was responsible for the terrible things that were laid out in the anecdote.
I spent several minutes trying to pry what was real and what was false memory. It was a lot of wasted time, to be honest. It simply doesn't matter. But like a twitching eyelid, I cannot seem to ignore it.
I've read up on epilepsy, but I've never had a seizure. Yet, I have this phenomenon hit me, a lot. I've been tracking it for a while to find a pattern that I can point to and dismiss it. I can't seem to find any pattern. This bothers me enough to write about it, frequently. It is a mystery I'd like to solve.
These are not premonitions. They are not the traditional deja vu of recognizing a place I've never been to. I think I read that they are called deja vecu or something. It feels like my brain is trying very hard to tell me something important. Not whatever is going on in the moment of deja vu. More that it's a symptom I need to address about my brain's health or illness.
Like the popping in my elbow and sudden bouts of pain telling me I probably have carpal tunnel syndrome that I'm currently trying to ignore, I feel like this is a symptom of something I should be paying attention to. Maybe it isn't. Maybe nothing is really related. I can't quite shake the nagging intuition that it's important. It's just... every time I've tried to talk about it, no one else thinks it is.
Unless I'm actively dying, though, it feels like doctors blow me off, every time. First time pregnancy scares, my issues with the phlegm that never goes away, the hard lump in my chin that nurses and the first doc wouldn't even fucking look at, my inability to achieve orgasm though desperately horny while on Citalopram, etc, etc, etc. all blown off. I'd like someone to take something seriously without me having to have half my fucking face freeze in place or everything from my throat, up to my upper sinuses and ears, being swollen and infected nearly shut.
I betcha if they suspected I had money, someone might investigate more. Right now, though, no one seems to be listening to me.
On into the new year, I go, though, still patching up everything with the barest of concern.
Aside of that, my day was actually pretty nice. Everyone should have such good days, all the time.
I was listening to someone explain the new system we are about to use at work. I felt that I'd described this job to my ex, after dreaming about it. I feel like I was struggling to describe it, because this particular feature of my job, and department weren't possible when I described it. But now I'm in the department, and suddenly, it all makes sense. Except I doubt I ever had a dream, nor explained such a dream to my ex.
I read an anecdote on one of those listicle articles. None of the other stories sounded familiar, but the last one sounded like something I think someone described to me, in detail yesterday or the day before that, while I was at work. However, I just can't think of anyone actually telling me that story or who was responsible for the terrible things that were laid out in the anecdote.
I spent several minutes trying to pry what was real and what was false memory. It was a lot of wasted time, to be honest. It simply doesn't matter. But like a twitching eyelid, I cannot seem to ignore it.
I've read up on epilepsy, but I've never had a seizure. Yet, I have this phenomenon hit me, a lot. I've been tracking it for a while to find a pattern that I can point to and dismiss it. I can't seem to find any pattern. This bothers me enough to write about it, frequently. It is a mystery I'd like to solve.
These are not premonitions. They are not the traditional deja vu of recognizing a place I've never been to. I think I read that they are called deja vecu or something. It feels like my brain is trying very hard to tell me something important. Not whatever is going on in the moment of deja vu. More that it's a symptom I need to address about my brain's health or illness.
Like the popping in my elbow and sudden bouts of pain telling me I probably have carpal tunnel syndrome that I'm currently trying to ignore, I feel like this is a symptom of something I should be paying attention to. Maybe it isn't. Maybe nothing is really related. I can't quite shake the nagging intuition that it's important. It's just... every time I've tried to talk about it, no one else thinks it is.
Unless I'm actively dying, though, it feels like doctors blow me off, every time. First time pregnancy scares, my issues with the phlegm that never goes away, the hard lump in my chin that nurses and the first doc wouldn't even fucking look at, my inability to achieve orgasm though desperately horny while on Citalopram, etc, etc, etc. all blown off. I'd like someone to take something seriously without me having to have half my fucking face freeze in place or everything from my throat, up to my upper sinuses and ears, being swollen and infected nearly shut.
I betcha if they suspected I had money, someone might investigate more. Right now, though, no one seems to be listening to me.
On into the new year, I go, though, still patching up everything with the barest of concern.
Aside of that, my day was actually pretty nice. Everyone should have such good days, all the time.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Hope in the New Year
While there is no reason to believe today offers anything but itself, the day was stress-free, after worry that it would be a terrible day. This has made me wonder if this means the rest of the year will prove all my fears unfounded. Of course, it could also just mean to begin to expect the unexpected. Honestly, that latter one is exactly what I should focus on.
One thing I intend to keep from the end of June is my reclaimed sense that none of this really, truly matters. Not a bit of it means anything at all. I'll still be me, here, doing what I wish and what makes my life livable, long after the people that are around me now have left my life. I look back ten and twenty years to people that I thought mattered then, and see how none of them have any impact on me. They didn't then, either, but I didn't know it. It took losing everything to find out how little they mattered.
While I still give a lot of my precious "time to people who don't care if I live or die" I still get to go home and leave them all behind, at the end of my shift. No one comes home with me. As we are instructed to leave our personal matters at the door, before we enter work, (which never really happens all the way - most people just barely scrape by when they're having difficulties outside of work, even if they're old and think they're "over it") I leave work at that same door. Once I'm in my car, and my music is blasting, it acts like a shower, cleansing me of it all.
I will keep that perspective in the coming days and weeks. The "flatulent pain in the ass" I feel sabotaged me has returned. But now? I don't care. As I was driving through the mountains in the storm, I realized that person meant nothing to me. The only people I care about are people who want to see me flourish. People who want to watch me flounder are worth exactly as much as the trash gathering in the dumpster outside. And like that trash, I'll let my brain cart them away from me.
Either you uphold your hollow words of support or you don't. I know that in the end, those who don't will be lost to the dustbin of dead neurons with a little time. There are people long gone, and though I know they were there, for the life of me, I can't think of any face or name to accompany the bad feeling they gave me. That's where those in the here and now will also end up.
I take that moment of freedom, and I will burn it like a torch before me throughout this coming year. That much I can promise.
One thing I intend to keep from the end of June is my reclaimed sense that none of this really, truly matters. Not a bit of it means anything at all. I'll still be me, here, doing what I wish and what makes my life livable, long after the people that are around me now have left my life. I look back ten and twenty years to people that I thought mattered then, and see how none of them have any impact on me. They didn't then, either, but I didn't know it. It took losing everything to find out how little they mattered.
While I still give a lot of my precious "time to people who don't care if I live or die" I still get to go home and leave them all behind, at the end of my shift. No one comes home with me. As we are instructed to leave our personal matters at the door, before we enter work, (which never really happens all the way - most people just barely scrape by when they're having difficulties outside of work, even if they're old and think they're "over it") I leave work at that same door. Once I'm in my car, and my music is blasting, it acts like a shower, cleansing me of it all.
I will keep that perspective in the coming days and weeks. The "flatulent pain in the ass" I feel sabotaged me has returned. But now? I don't care. As I was driving through the mountains in the storm, I realized that person meant nothing to me. The only people I care about are people who want to see me flourish. People who want to watch me flounder are worth exactly as much as the trash gathering in the dumpster outside. And like that trash, I'll let my brain cart them away from me.
Either you uphold your hollow words of support or you don't. I know that in the end, those who don't will be lost to the dustbin of dead neurons with a little time. There are people long gone, and though I know they were there, for the life of me, I can't think of any face or name to accompany the bad feeling they gave me. That's where those in the here and now will also end up.
I take that moment of freedom, and I will burn it like a torch before me throughout this coming year. That much I can promise.
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