sad reminder

Ten years ago or thereabouts Lois and Bob lost their child Kaitlin to suicide, and I’m holding those two and her brother Jesse in my thoughts today. Keith attended the memorial service for us all. Please reach out to your friends and family even if you think they’re doing okay. Young women right now especially are really feeling the news quite personally and may be feeling desperate or unheard. The most attentive family may miss signs; it’s part of the grief and self-doubt that follows this terrible event, that we’ll ask ourselves what we could do, what we could have done. Sometimes we don’t get that conversation.

I am really lucky that when I’ve been right on the ground with depression my family and friends have rallied around me. We’re all different and need different things. I want to believe that I’ll reach out to my friends and let them know how much I love and appreciate them. Kaitlin was a vibrant, lovely human being, and she has stepped into eternity, and we remember her.

I have not forgotten

I haven’t forgotten about Roe vs. Wade being struck down.

I don’t share Jeff’s optimism about and relish in anticipation of the downfall of Clarence Thomas.

I’m unmoved by the revelation that were it not for Trump’s secret service agents telling him that the situation at the Capitol would not allow him to be conveyed there, he would have stood in front of a very well armed crowd, a crowd for whom he had previously turned off the magnetometers for his speech at the Ellipse, and turned them loose on downtown Washington, probably starting a bloody insurrection that would have gone on for days while the world watched in horror. We all knew what he was capable of, from the fountain of bilious spite that seems to be the only motivating factor, besides a nearly impervious vanity, in his personal arsenal.

I will be moved when I learn what Putin had on him. I likely never will, but the body language doesn’t lie.

I haven’t forgotten about Putin, pressing the ‘you don’t know if this is the day I nuke London’ button over and over again through the mouthpieces of those still depraved, meretricious and sycophantic enough to sit upright and talk under tv lights. I haven’t forgotten about the dead in a shopping mall, the shore boats with small cannons that are coming from one country, the shoulder mounted rockets from another, the three D printed field tourniquets (they’ve already saved lives and the Russians are stealing them, theirs are shit) from private citizens; the pencils and markers and paper for schoolkids. The Ukrainian forces are exhausted. Wave after wave of Siberian kids who may not even have indoor plumbing at home are being thrown at what are now some of the fiercest house to house fighters, kilo for kilo, in the world, but they’re tired and sometimes the reservists who’ve been called up are fighting kids young enough to be their grandchildren. In fact before the war is over I’m expecting to find a grandson and a grandchild face to face in this conflict. The Russians too are sending 50 year old reservists into battle. It’s a shit war. He ran through his youngest tropps too fast, through his autocratic contempt for them in his scheme for glory. It is NOT ‘the brother’s war’ and to call it a civil war would be to stomp on Ukraine’s self-determination and to feed yourself lies about Russia’s territorial demands. But it is a war between people who know each other, the direct consequence of the longings for Empire restored in Putin’s policies, and the fucking oligarchs who either ran away when shit got hard or followed him hoping for a payday.

I haven’t forgotten that the convoyancers are restarting their national tour. Lich has been rearrested for as far as anyone feels comfortable reporting, breach of bail conditions. Stay off social media? LOL. Unless you’re impounding her phone and serving public notice to the telecom companies that she can’t have another one for the duration, bes’ uv Bri’ish luck wi’ ‘at. Senior members of parliament (the Conservative side of the house be scuffing their loafers and avoiding comment) have warned Canadians not to become complacent about abortion rights; stuff that happens in the US can happen here and we’re fools not to pay attention.

I haven’t forgotten about my grandsons, who thrive, or my children who appear to be doing satisfactorily. Nor about my wide skein of acquaintances, family members and friends who suffer from cancer, or loneliness, or depression, or lack of work, or excess of work, but mostly from the terrible grinding dailiness of the bad news, when they’re supposed to be holding down ‘all that’ a household, a family, a routine, two squares a day, gardening, maintaining family and social contacts, navigating the minefield of contemporary politics.

I haven’t forgotten about how all of the pleasures I enjoy are balanced on a knife edge. But the landlord just came for the next three months’ cheques, so I doubt we’ll be going anywhere until September, and that has settled my mind just a small tad. Thank you to the founders of that particular feast.

lovely day

Peggy, because she is a goddess among women, made PIE yesterday and I got to take some of it home to Jeff.

Paul came to the housefilk and had a wonderful time, sang a few tunes upon request including Willie’s Diamond Joe.

Cindy was in fine form and made me realize that I haven’t memorized ‘Lady of Komarr’ so that kinda STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE ah the joys of middle age.

Then after we had such a great time, getting fed lunch with chicken and taters (Peggy) and kale in bacon fat provided by Joe, and singing and playing and talking, I get home and Mike called and he came over for a big chunk of the evening and we ordered White Spot burgers and club sammies for dinner for delivery and all was as it should be.

It was so wonderful to see him. He was in a reasonably good mood. This was amazing, given that his oppression by all things mechanical and electrical continues. He has in the recent past detailed how everything that can break, arc, spark etc. is likely to just fall apart in his hand, but I got to see it last night and he’s definitely under a curse right now. I wish I could help him break it.

Paul and I had another painful discussion about his condition and I told him it doesn’t really matter how many legitimate grievances he has if his roommates are so done with him that he doesn’t have a place to live. He needs help and I’m going to try to get him some now that the denial has stopped.

much foreshore

Foreshore Restaurant for breakfast w/ Jeff, Foreshore for walkies with Paul, then off to the weed store in New West for YES THEY HAD TRAINWRECK I’M SO HAPPY and also gummies, because I’m out. All in all a very nice day. Woods were full of birdsong and the weather is so splendid (and the sky so beautiful, filled with ripples of clouds) it’s just … lovely.

I complained about Beyoncé’s new video (to my friends on Social Media) having migraine/epilepsy triggering flashies. A technology journalist asked me to comment and I told her that it was my preference that affected Black people comment, I’ve said what I needed to say and don’t need to further grab the mic. Got my own platform (pat pat) right here.

feet

Second last time I spoke to Katie on the phone she said could I please do something about Paul’s feet, so I took him out on the deck (it was GORGEOUS here yesterday, just a hint of the heat that will fell us on Friday) and trimmed his nails. We none of us bend all that well. I can still do my feet but it’s hard and I sort of have to wedge myself into the bathroom in a particular way so that if I have a fainting spell I won’t kill myself falling over.

Beforehand we went for a walk in Hilda “It Says I’m an Avenue but Actually I’m a Street” Park. We listened to the crows and talked to a nice lady and her easily perturbed pooch. And we actually talked about Paul’s medical condition like adults for the first time ever. This probably has something to do with how the kids lowered the boom this week. I told him that for his own longevity, comfort and safety, he should get a diagnosis. He’s unconvinced anything can help him. So I tried to be encouraging.

After the walk, he sat on the deck and I brought him sugar free home made iced tea (using the carton of Splenda I got from Mike) and a nourishing, light lunch. (Smoked salmon, red onion, capers and garlic cream cheese on sourdough muffin with a side of the last of the cole slaw.) THEN I did the feet. Anyway, I try to help look after him as best I can, and it will be easier when he stops pretending everything is fine.

Katie and Alex are going camping Canada Day weekend. Ryker will be with his dad. Ryker’s no longer eating at mom’s (it’s not a problem; there never was a child more interested in solids in the history of getting fed).

There’s other family news too but it’s not for public consumption. Age is reflective and brutal, should we live so long and have the brains to think with.

Got my bloodwork and my meds, thank you Jeff for the boost of energy required to do it. Jeff got us fish and chips for early supper and SO GOOD. I’m going to turn the leftover chips into Really Bad Poutine Imitation. Since I have neither gravy nor cheese curds.

a couple of changes

I made minor changes to Extracurricular Incoherence.

Blood work today, probably picking up scrips.

Got the corned beef sandwich from Big Star yesterday. It was fantastic. The woman who delivered it wanted to buy this house. I get asked once a week if I own the house or it’s for sale.

Lovely phone call with Dave yesterday. This was followed by an equally lovely letter from Lois. That woman is a family treasure.

24029. I’m letting the steam build up, more progress is coming.

 

Extracurricular Incoherence (new poem)

Perhaps this is the ‘now’ I have attended. Dreams mean nothing when the machine that can record them has settled into rust only imagination and the sun and X-rays can reassemble. I can’t remember my dreams because I am a brkn mchn. Sliver of mercurial glass! slide into my foot! assert yourself, the cold remains of another broken miracle. As a species we taught water and glass and steel to lie flat, hold still and do our will. When mirrors break it always feels like a failure.   The mirror is inseparable from the eye.   Parasite or epiphyte, the half-mirrored child appeared at a whim, then hardened into quotidian slots AND LONGER, hard seats in the ER smoking outside in the snow as far away as you can so’s not to bother the person you got a smoke from, standing someplace you won’t make shittier by weeping. There was nothing ambiguous about that moment, when I started to loathe flowers. Pretty flowers, death shorn and hacked is what you are – I see you in your unobjectionable patterned paper. What discipline will bring us flowers in the future; where will barley grow for beer? Everything good and decent is far apart and kept that way as fear and boot heels force their alarms into the collective breath. Carbon dioxide ratchets up, with it anxiety; it wasn’t in the syllabus; we’re conspiring in the dragon’s exhalation now – this is a vapour fit to kill.

New Beyoncé dropped

Yeah, so this is me right now. I have a crown made of pain and iron wrapped around my head and I think I’m going to have a very low key day. Also, expect the aforementioned song to be errywhere this summer, because it will be.

I am annoyed for other reasons this morning but there’s no point memorializing them for a censorious future, plus it could be argued that none of the fucking monkeys currently loose in my brain belong to MY circus. I will say that it has nothing to do with any family members.