Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
You can trust me to write a cynical song about domestic violence.
CW: Woman on man domestic violence, treating a partner like property
please note I’m including the verse about cops for historical accuracy; I’m no longer of the opinion that the police should be called for domestic violence and welcome anyone changing the lyrics in any fashion anyway
the song doesn’t suffer much if you omit that second last verse, so
A domestic scene:
I’m in the bathroom. I leave the door open a crack so Buster can get in, because he doesn’t like being locked out, because he wants to be brushed. He lifts his front paws to shove the door open; I shove it back to just barely being ajar to spare my brother (whom I have just greeted, as I do when I rise in the morning if he is awake) a view of my ample fundament, just in case he wanders by in search of tea.
I take out the metal tined brush and brush his back a couple of times, and he goes straight back to the door, mews, lets himself out.
“Do you want the other brush?” I call softly through the door.
He pushes the door open again and doesn’t come closer until he sees the brush he wants, which makes him purr as I brush hard under his chin (what he wanted in the first place.) I brush him, conclude my business and he jumps up on the toilet. (In this household, toilet lids are kept closed when toilets are not in use.) I brush him some more and when I’ve collected a fair bit of fur, I stop and wash my hands.
I say to him, “You know the brushing is all done when I wash my hands. If you want a treat, jump down.”
He looks at me and mews. I point at the floor. He jumps down and I follow him into the kitchen and start an abbreviated training session, since he isn’t much into it.
Buster has very definitely learned what ‘brush’ and ‘treat’ are, is iffy about ‘jump’, ‘up’ and ‘down’ and ‘all done’ out of the context of training (but getting it from time to time), has started to respond to hand directions without a treat, and the only thing that remains is to figure out how to get him out of my chair downstairs….
Training is all about ‘things the cat would have done anyway’, you’re merely encouraging the animal to do it both faster and in a specific order. That, as they say, is all, until five minutes later, when he’s decided he hasn’t played ‘catch the treat’ enough and initiates another training session, (bangs my left shin with his forehead is the signal) which is adorable, because he wants more treats and knows he has to jump around and make a total fool of himself to get them, and he’s okay with that.
He asked for another training session a half hour after THAT. What a cat.
It’s an old, old, tale I tell
the love that loves not me
So fair, so fine, with a heart so kind
a beautiful soul, and a brilliant mind
I can hear them mock me
as I walk these halls
with my face so sallow and grim
To save all that’s left of her in this life
I must always be looking at him.
People I love are suffering and it’s a pointy feeling in my chest.
You know Cousin Gerald sent it. IS MOOSEY NOT MAJESTIC!?
RIP all the entertainers who killed themselves with drugs.
She (Anna Nicole Smith) came to grief in a hotel room like famous people do
and the way the media carried on you’d think she died for me and you
they say speak gently of the dead don’t bandy with her name
but her life was sure instructive on the vagaries of fame
slimfast and methadone girl I’m in your debt
I got a great line for a chorus
and the story isn’t over yet
Leave ’em while you’re looking good, advice she took to heart
she was born to play the bimbo and she really nailed the part
she married her attorney but I don’t think things turned out
the paternity and the autopsy and the estate all left in doubt
slimfast and methadone girl I’m in your debt
I got a great line for a chorus
and the story isn’t over yet
Humans love their beauty it’s a curse upon our race
the powerful are using it to hide what’s taking place
zombies stalk the headlines while the peace talks stall
if celebrities don’t quit dying we’ll never get anything done at all
otherwise known as the story of my fucking life
I initiated contact with a loved one, I got what I deserved. I am a sadder and wiser person. I have cried more tears, but that’s okay. You have to be alive to cry.
I reached out to other loved ones. Both responded more or less instantly, helps that it’s midday Sunday, I guess. They got a hand under me apiece with their soft words and kindness and then I told, hopefully briefly enough, the source of my woes to Jeff. I tried to watch March Madness with him but I’m too fidgety.
Please be nice to the people you love by asking them what constitutes nice for them. And then… behaving that way. You can’t be nice to a person who interprets your every breath as hostile.
I have a headache from crying and I need to stop looking at a screen but between that word and this I’ve put in 812 words on my novel. Watching history repeat itself is so hard, but being history is worse.
Wrote a letter to Lois.
I’m going to have the last of Mike’s congee, watch an Elementary with Jeff and CRASH.
From @PasturesPolitic ‘s account this am:
if you ever want to know how you’d react in a scene out of a horror movie, move a storage box you forgot had music boxes in it and you’ll see when the slow creepy music starts and dies away out of nowhere
The universe
is a sieve
that passes through us
and laughs as it
rushes through.
Pew pew pew
say the particles;
we’re on our way
to connect your kidneys
to a star
an ecosystem
an ice volcano.
It’s one long string
connected
folded tight
blown up
and travelling light.
I personally have been struggling with developing and maintaining good habits my entire adult life (thank you, ADD), so this one’s dear to me.
What advice do you have for young people trying to develop good habits? What good habits would you wish to see a young person you loved take up?
More Indigenous erasure, reporting by the incomparable Niigaan Sinclair.
Steve Brust wrote the lyrics, so I’m not providing them but will email them if you care, because there’s a little bit of a difference in the lyrics from what he wrote.
Also John Scalzi’s not the prez of sfwa any moah.
pOp, Dave D, grandbaby and Tom L. They’re ready to go in the postbox but now I’m feeling lazy and I’ll drop ’em off when Jeff and I go out to run errands later this aft. Hopefully Paul and I will be able to go for a walk. The walk around Deer Lake the other day nearly killed me. I think – and this disgusts me – that I need to spend another 350 bucks on orthotics. WHYYYYYYY
Lyrics are copyright, from page 147 of the Dunnetts’ The Scottish Highlands. I’d really like to work up harmonies for this but I can’t get Audacity to behave and unfortunately the forums say my Mac is too elderly to cope with what I want to do. Fuck computers anyway, let’s vamoose and go walking in Albyn. (A Gaelic word for Scotland.)
IT’S so WEIRD posting this and knowing that my calm, orderly, productive state of mind as it is currently on a Monday morning in February will be completely different when I next see this. And given that I’m 62 and multiply blessed with Complete Failure to Exercise and Complete Failure to Stop Eating Junk, who knows whether I’ll even make it that long.
I did make it that long.
herewith, a picture of my face when Jeff announced he was getting pizza yesterday (and wings)
