Normative af – New poem

Smart enough to be scared
But not of the right things
That is the choke point on
My sensorium
so everything‘s on blast
Until something in par
……………………………………..Ti
…………………………………………Cu lar
Wrenches my attention from
Its customary perch

Chasms got causes
Causes got chasms
Chisel at the word in your brain
…………………………………………………….Fling yourself
At that perfect marble word
And create some content god damn you
Bitter git on it

On this hand I have love, love, love, but not the love of romance, the bordering-on-unpleasant revelation that love with lies isn’t love, it’s just a convenient set of tropes that allows you to behave one way and profit from it whether or not you believe. It’s like religion but you don’t get sucked up to heaven or spat out into a new instantiation, stuck with having to learn and suffer and die again again
Again
Nope, you just hoe this row, this row. Normative as fuck, don’t look at the undersides of things.
Mock the people who know better because their teeth are crooked and their English is no good.
I can’t go back and re-hear those things, the things I heard with my racist ears. I didn’t know I was a replicator of death machines; born to give birth to workers and soldiers, and another breeding body. I didn’t know. I still don’t know.
The language I abhor grips me and dashes me at the world until the inside of my head is bleeding, although it’s probably the grease in my blood that makes it so.

The fridge has arrived

Sent the first half of Chapter 8 off to mOm.

Caspell Junction has a functioning fridge again, they’ll come get the frozen food tomorrow when their freezer’s down at the correct temp.

I am watching the Ukrainian offensive with grim satisfaction, and the fact that there are now over 50 Russian municipal officers calling for Putin’s resignation with solidarity and not a little trepidation.

 

Omnibus of suck Part the nth

Pierre Poilievre is the leader of the conservatives in Canada. Proud supporter and handshaker of Nazis, when asked what he’d do about COVID-19 he said he’d lower taxes. He’s sucked on the teat of the taxpayer since he was 24 years old and worshipped Stephen Harper.

I hope he experiences all the electoral success he deserves.

Article from Ed Yong about ‘brain fog’. Interestingly it mentions the Montreal test. Please read this – and remember that all three of my immediate family have had COVID already. I don’t have any proof I got it in March 2020 but I’ve had to deal with what felt like brain fog, and cognitive crashing, for years now. My apparent intelligence does not match my functional intelligence. And the fall of my writing output is no surprise. I do what I can on a daily basis, but even the small array of techniques I had for managing my output doesn’t seem to work any more.

I am starting to read for pleasure again but I have to not do it for more than about 15 minutes at a time. I am also rereading books, not reading them for the first time.

I am starting to understand why the internet suits my cognitive deficits right now. I feel like the mom, Hazel Bergeron, in Harrison Bergeron, that story by Kurt Vonnegut.

The amount I sleep has abruptly gone up by 1.5 – 2 hours a day, and I’m doing my best not to nap any more during the day. So really I’m sleeping the same amount but doing it all at night.

Jeff and I looked at each other around 6 pm last night and realized that the worst of the ground smoke had lifted, and it was such a relief. We didn’t even run the a/c yesterday so the house is kind of sticky this morning. It didn’t help that there was a recycling centre on fire in Vancouver for most of the weekend. On the way back from Bowen we crested one of the many hills coming into the city from Horseshoe Bay and at one point we could smell burning plastic all the way down to our navels, it was just a horrible sensation. AS IN we should be driving away, not toward.

Buster trained HARD but briefly this morning. He did the headbutt on my left leg thing repeatedly to indicate that he was HERE TO TRAIN. He doesn’t normally do pawclaps ‘backwards’ ie with his back to me, but he did it twice this morning, then did some run and chase, and then VWIP out the door (Jeff left the back door open for the cool morning air.)

3979 words. I think I’ll have some to send mOm in the next couple of days.

on Bowen Island

We are having the most lovely time.

We played spotify rounds last night and thus it was I found out I love Junior Brown and Paul Anka’s 2005 album ‘ROCK SWINGS’ where he frank sinatrafies modern hits. like black hole sun and wonderwall. IT’S FANTASTIC. Jeff and I laughed until we cried. “Und dis is ven I learnt that I AM AN OLDT FARDT!!!”

Our hosts are empty nesters. A human and dog friend came over and we watched Bear hump Maple until she got bored with it. Bear and Nelson are good friends with Maple.

The wifi connected instantly, I slept 9 hours last night – I literally faded at the stroke of 8 and woke up at 5.

Barbecue and summer squash from their garden for dins. SOOOO GOOOD

We’ll be grabbing a ferry home soon.

Brief visit

Fridge is still busted at Katie’s place – landlord swears he’ll buy and have delivered a new one (old one taken away I expect) since Paul and Keith refuse to move a fridge and it’s the landlord’s job to replace it. Paul is mildly pissed since he spent half a day lining up a good used fridge.

Keith dropped by to return a container which was now full of YUMMY YUMMY lentil stew. Absolutely superlative. That man can cook now.

Enjoying this season of Archer.

3895 words I wanted to see how many bombshells I could deal with in 800 words and Brad has managed to talk Omar into two impossible things before their tea is cold.

The pink dawn faced off the yellow moon and sent it away.

We’re getting smoke from fires in town today – Bowen will be worse if the maps are anything to go by.

It was 20 years ago today
when Buzz Aldrin punched him in the face
And I really really want to say
that he had to be put in his place
So let us all assert for you
Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and said it was a BEAUTIFUL VIEEEEEEEW

intersectionality is a cognitive aid, a tool, glasses so you can see what is happening

it’s not meant to be gamified by white guys who think that because they live at the corner of Lonesome and Hardup they get an option to score points without flak from the racialised commentariat

Suzanne hits a dinger

Aw jeez I’m dying here; Suzanne saw Janice on the sofa the other day at Caspell Junction and said (because her filter doesn’t always work) ‘WHO’S THAT???’ Janice did not acknowledge Suzanne’s existence. Suzanne was here today for the Enshinening and I laughed immoderately.

D.Y.I.N.G.

Anyway Paul drove her to the train station so she’s left town. I’m assuming Paul told her his medical news, but who knows.

Bowen this weekend.

Queen’s dead

I note it, but I’m turning the rest of my thoughts on the subject private, and will release them when the furore dies down. I’m suggesting white people in Canada stay still and listen for the other voices – to whom her existence was the worthy face, the nice conformity of colonialism, inescapable, unthinkably pervasive, destructive, violent and everywhere, dirty. Hold still, be still, be absorbent, and don’t be defensive. When you see what happens – the global party in colonial lands – you will realize in tiny portion what colonialism has done.

plenty of nothing

Queen Elizabeth is fixing to die at Balmoral Castle. Her dying in Scotland during one of the biggest blooms of separatism in ‘Alba’ would be quite a punctuation mark to her reign. No English monarch has died in Scotland since the 16th C.

She cooed over me in my crib at Pion-Era in Saskatoon in 1959.

Her dying is going to cast me down for a long time; I’ll try not to trouble anyone really anticolonial with my feelings, but it’s hard to have two English grandfathers and not have those feelings.

Each time I think I’m being too lazy I remember my foremothers busted ass on housework and clothing construction/maintenance every gd day of their lives, so if I read novels and eat nuked cakes in a cup (my own recipe) they are smiling down on me. They wish I’d accept Christ though, and that’s a tough one.

3005 words.

Buster killt him a rat day before yesterday. Jeff has already dealt with the corpse.

Keith bopped by with two coolers full of frozen food a couple of days ago since the fridge over there died, and I took stuff out of out freezer to put theirs in. SADLY the ice cream horns touted as treats ARE TOO GROSS which is awful because Jeff and I both enjoy them, so we’ll have to throw them out. Anyway, it was good to be of service to the family.

https://martinkendell.ca/my-platform – I guess I’m voting for him. He just cleaned a hunnert pounds of trash offa Boundary Road.