Ironic

 So last year I saw Alanis Morsette at a local eatery and I was star-stuck and giddy...it took days for the smirk to fade from my face. It was like getting a postcard from me of the past. Music that made me feel good, powerful and emotionally strong. As I was talking to The Barren about it, he said " I didn't know this about you, I love hearing how much you really connected with her music"

Now, we are choosing to not revisit that eatery as it is one of many places in town that support the current administration. We have chosen to make purposeful choices with our money and patronage. One of the small but important acts we can take in our little life right now.

A lot of the time it feels like the moment the gang from Scooby Doo reveal the villain.

Or when I realized the lilypads were fake at Disney and were really water filters.

I have the Goods app on my phone and although it makes my shopping take a bit longer, I feel less weighed down by my final choices and have switched things up in our life.>I went to Jury Duty last week and while sitting in a room of people I wondered how many voted for this shit-show of a government. I didn't have a long stay, turns out there were no cases that day and we all got dismissed and so I left for home a couple hours after arriving....then proceeded to get more obvious signs of a brewing head cold or side effects from my most recent infusion. I know I have been running on adrenaline, depression, stress and ADHD, so it doesn't come a total surprise that there was a tear in the fabric of my well being and a bug got in. The idea of serving on a jury occupied a lot of my mind and I was quite conflicted how I felt about the act. The US is running on fear and lawlessness, chop and burn techniques and frankly the SAVE act, that wants to remove more rights had me wondering why should I uphold/believe in a system that is set to tear down and remove more persons rights?

I know my stress is high because I am over processing and over planning all the parts of an upcoming fumigation for the community I live in. I have read pages and pages about the fumigant, I have researched it and after effects and what I can and can't control.

Can't: my front door plants will probably die

Can: order bins for dry goods and take them to a friends for a few days, arrange cat boarding because no hotels allow cats, and my reaction to the variables.

Last night I made a choice to go to a local city council meeting to support some friends that were speaking before the board. The room was packed! Standing room only it was a hot topic, asking the city council if they would protect its citizens from federal overreach; protect residents from deportation, protect our trans residents and protect doctors and residents healthcare and abortion rights. 

The city council listened to 132 speakers, including teens who were wanting safe care, wanted to stop hiding from ICE officers for fear of being deported, parents asking for protection for their trans kids and themselves...each had 1 minute to talk. Many were in support of the measure, which would add additional protections beyond the state and federal constitution and then there were the racists, and "right to lifers" screaming about how it would kill babies complete with their billboards and yelling over people, bullying speakers. When everyone said their piece, 4 hours later, I sat there and listened to the board saying they wanted to do something BUT....they feared lawsuits and federal funding being with drawn, they felt it would only be words and nothing more...in the end they ended up pushing it another 6 weeks out.

I awoke this morning, still battling whatever is in my sinuses and head...weary and dull.

Last night it felt like I was witnessing history again, apathy and fear proving stronger than community and strength and comfort.

To look for the good; I stood beside people I socialize with who were there to fight for more protections for people they don't know, maybe know, and love. I took heart in that. I watched women plead with the council to protect them and their children from unwarranted racial profiling and deportations.

My heart hurts...

it hurts so badly.

  

I wondered where the super hero is, who is going to make this all go away fix all the cracks and swoop up the bigots and racists? and then I remembered it had to be me and the wary army fighting a goliath of a cause...the snowball that has grown big and needs to smash into a shed.

Call Me

 

Shit is real

I have found myself on more than one occasion staring off into space.

Trying to figure out where the ground is, as everything seems to be floating in zero gravity.

I decided the days after the election, that I would spend time everyday calling my representatives and so far it has stuck.

I have an app on my phone that gives me scripts and direct lines to their Washington DC offices. Only one of my three actually have people answering phones, so the other two get multiple emails from me personally and then multiple emails via resistbot and robo emails.

Then I try and find things to do that distracts me from reality....I am also going to be attending some training on other facets, to see if it is something I am best suited for.

I am sickened in new ways everyday about HATE, RACISIM and MISOGYNY

I do not refer to the humanoids that have taken power as anything other than 

rumpled foreskin and the frat bois. 

I am truly at a loss for reason to be any kind of sympathetic to anyone who has chosen this.

I have drawn my line.

We are currently getting rain and it is the perfect scapegoat for me to stay home and doing other distracting tasks like organizing, rearranging and thinking of new art to make. Mostly what I have done is cook soup, move piles of tax paperwork and feel overwhelmed.

I visited my parents yesterday. My fathers psychology notes mentioned that he was considering leaving treatment, so I went to chat with him and ask why. He mostly was defensive and didn't want to bother anymore. I used reverse psychology and his love of self to remind him how much he loves the personal one on one time to talk about himself and that he is always saying that he wants to be a better person. These were opportunities for him to learn how to communicate better for himself and explain with words what was bothering him instead of just shutting down. My mother is supposed to start mental health treatment too, finally.

When I phoned today to see if he could recall our conversation from yesterday or even my visit, it took some prompts but maybe my words worked. I think he feels like this is his idea and that might make things continue to move forward.

I saw a friend yesterday, and they were taking photos. When they showed me a couple they had taken of me they said "you are always looking tired these days"

The Barren and I are trying to tie up some loose ends with legal documents so that we can get them off our plate and mind. Things here in the US are unfolding in unpredictable ways and we are trying to make decisions while watching people chase laser pointers and claim they are real space lasers.

So to recap, I make phone calls...loads of calls

many of which feel like I am screaming, politely, into a void.

I am calling my ancestors, asking for guidance; asking for a path though, as my generational trauma bubbles to the surface of my dreams and thoughts...

I feel at times like life is eating me up...and I am constantly pulling myself out of its mouth and reclaiming a moment of quiet or space or peace.

I do hope that something is brighter and beautiful where you are

Super Callus Fragile Mystic Existential Doses

 I am thankful to say we have faired well through this latest round of fires...

I had completely lost my shit multiple times in absolute fear, triggered by my past evacuation experience. There have been multiple fires since the Palisades and Eaton fires that created a complete hell-scape for so so so many people. Erasing their homes, security and sense of identity.

I have never been a real organized person; I thrive in chaotic environments it seems. I like to have a lot to look at, be surrounded by and feel enrobed in. This makes for a cozy environment, a creative looking home and wild artmaking. Many times needing to protect the finished works from myself because I have created a huge mess making it. Storing it out of the way while I clear the clutter that created it.

I have been the final stop for the families photographs, a century of them! I hold the responsibility of caring for them and that responsibility has recently created a heavy burden. With each evacuation, I have grabbed them and have often forgotten my own wedding photo, or some other precious item. To help me work through the constant onslaught of sadness, fear and grief  from the fires and the election I started scanning all the images. I can share them with my cousins and niblings. That way I would not be the only one to hold them and there will be other locations to view them/save them. 

These photographs are some of my most precious memories with my grandmother and great Aunt, as they were the ones who made most the albums. Using the photos, or snaps as they called them, as a sort of trophy of times spent. They would have gotten on the social media bandwagon had it been around when they were younger. My grandmother printed everything, wrote the name of the people in them and until the prints were dated by the photo developers, she dated many of them and glued them into albums. Spending days scanning them is like spending times with my grandmother again, It turned into an emotional, sacred and bittersweet experience, as I was scanning the 100's of photos I started wondering if I was the only one who these images really mattered to. Does anyone else really care about them? Will these memories die with me?

Last week I went to a dinner with fellow women artists, hosted in a home of a ceramic artist. One of the attending artists lives in Los Angeles and spoke about her experience during the first days of the fires...recounting how on the second morning she went outside to assess the smoke and the sky turned dark and it began to rain pages from books! She said they were recipes, songs, hand written pages falling from the sky...these pages had traveled 10+ miles and were falling in her front yard. 

I had read an article that more artworks had been lost in these two fires than ever before. The loss of artwork is monumental and has left many artists without homes, studios and their life's works both in process and finished gone forever.

 I can only imagine it from what I had experienced but I can not imagine the profound sadness, fear and emptiness that the fleeing created in each unique experience. The loss of generational wealth, memories, personal space, HOME...I can empathize, but I am reminded it will last for generations.

Animal support

Help a Seed Library

Artist Aid

We sat with each other, talking about our fears, concerns, shock and how to move forward from this point. All of us shared ways we disassociate when things get to be too much. At one point, I suggested we take a group photo with my instant camera. All agreed and after balancing the camera on many different surfaces and makeshift tripods, I was able to get a group photo. I mentioned the silliness was like being in a slumber party and that made all the ladies giggle with memories of time gone by. A photo was captured of me, bending in half to try and see through the viewfinder for one of the photos.

It was called the "human tripod"

Between the fires, staying off social media for a week to regain some sense of calm to focus, I came up for air just in time for the ICE raids today in my town! I know the next 100 days will just be shock after shock in an effort to make us all apathetic and so burnt out we don't respond anymore...but it is not going to happen. I know others that feel the same and it is in those people who I set my light to.

Although I am super callused and done with a lot of things

I am still fragile but also believe in magic

even amongst all the back to back existential crises

Shifting mindscape

 The new year has arrived and with it all the stress and terror about what these next few years will unfold and release. So many unknowns and fears and realities. 

It is like one thing after another, so surreal and so hard to really wrap my brain around...

I read somewhere during quarantine that the human brain wasn't designed/built to handle this many stressful events. I try and say that to myself when I am faced with a 4foot thick wall of stress and anxiousness and fear. 

"I am not going to be able to manage all this into a neat orderly situation that I can fix"

I have found my time out in public is feeling more feral. I don't reach out to talk to people unprompted anymore. I purposely don't make eye contact with people, especially men; and when engaged I stare strait into their eyes with a "don't fuck with me, I don't trust you" energy.

I am feeling so many feelings and not quite sure how to process them anymore.

I fear I am not preparing "right" for all these new unknowable's, and unimaginable scenarios. I have stocked up on a few women's healthcare supplies, just in case. Our little bit of savings are being managed by professionals, I have asked my doctor about my medicines and if the medical system changed...he assured me that the medicine I am taking or would change to is currently manufactured and readily available. (not totally convinced but I can't manage everything) I think my glasses are next on the list to upgrade before too late here. I am trying to secure me, as being a woman in the US now has some potential real changes. It is hard to imagine this...like beyond unreal.

And right on cue, Mother Nature shows us all that nothing is okay and has started some of the largest and most horrible fires that my state has seen in a while. Soooo sooo much loss.

My fire app is sending notices every hour it seems, new fires are everywhere.

I sit here and wonder, stare and dissociate.

*****

In an effort to flip my mind in a new way and not cement those neuropathways...

I made an impulsive decision last week to buy tickets to a small circus that was visiting our town. I drove by the tent for a couple weeks on my way to predawn yoga, the lights of the tent glowed in such a magical way. I had The Barren make a detour one night so I could try and take a couple pinhole photos. Then Friday last week while I sat in the car at 5:45 in the morning, I bought tickets to see the show. I splurged and got the VIP tickets so we could sit as close as possible. Thankfully DH knew I was trying to self soothe and went along with me with zero hesitation. As I stepped out of the car it was like I let go of all my sadness, and forced myself to just embrace my childhood glee. I cheered loudly at the preshow performances and just about burst into tears with joy as I walked past the ring leader standing on a box playing the song from Amelie on the accordion, at the entrance into the tent.

It was an old style Italian circus; there were dropped juggling pins, kids freaking out, a horse that stood its ground and a single clown who ended up sitting on my lap! Simply put, it was charming and well worth the time.

My face hurt from smiling and my muscles behind my ears clenched from so must laughing. The jokes were corny and predictable but I didn't care. I had taken off my airs when I left the car and thought, this is what a moment of joy feels like, embrace it.

It was magic and I was thankful I had that little voice tell me to do it.

My world has shifted for sure, it has radically changed me and the way I see the once amazing world that surrounded me. I am grateful that I wake up each day, and I continue to choose to fight the urge to go with the flow. I work everyday with maintaining my calm and processing unaccounted for things and situations. It is sometimes a real struggle.

I am thankful I have a home, a loving partner and a couple friends.

I am thankful that my body continues to show up for me and my family both chosen and blood related is relatively healthy.

I don't know how I could have raised a kind little person through these times...I fear I might not have been able to show up for them in the best way.

I guess I need to just start small again, and just keep showing up for myself

I hope that all of you can keep doing that too.

Winter

The month is rolling by quickly...and I am thankful that I have survived the thanksgiving holiday event.

The Barren and I went on a road-trip for a week to visit family. We started what we knew was going to be a challenging week with an over night at my besties. They fortified us with laughter and smiles to carry in our pocket before heading into the eye of the storm. That was a highlight for me. 

The motivation for me was to focus and make sure The Barren got time with his father, even though the reason we were gathering was for my BIL who has stage four cancer and is currently on drug trials and under medical care.

The setting was not ideal, you see, he, his wife and their teenagers (nephews) are also some of the many people who voted for the orange IDIOT and is proud about it. He had stated in the past that he was never offended by the confederate flag, or the nazi symbols. Feels women are here to serve men, and that his god is the only god.

So as you can image I was quite conflicted about my feelings; wanting to be compassionate as they are living in a cancer world but also red hot rage at what they believe and live in. I was fearful and upset about being asked to sit at a table with him and his wife and teenage son. I used to have actual nightmares as a teen about nazis breaking down my door and the idea of sitting at a table with them was A LOT to try and digest. So in my typical lemons to lemonade thinking...I turned love towards my hubby as I knew he wanted to see his father and Aunt, as he fears that this might be one of the last times to visit with them. We made a point to try and spend as much time as possible with them. Hubby was able to play music with him and simply take in all that his father is. 

It was punctuated with some bittersweet reminders, as our MIL is quite a handful of needs and is almost completely overtaken with Autism, ADHD and mental health struggles. She is chronically late and was towing two dogs with her. One of which could barely use its back legs and was often left for hours and hours alone. Making for accidents in the rental house...and heartbreak to witness. It took her three hours to pick a wine from Trader Joes while the rest of us sat waiting for her to arrive to a pre-thanksgiving evening. Finally canceling dinner together.

When we all gathered for the meal, my MIL was already multiple hours late, I was so anxious, I found myself masking like a champ! My current food situations made this food centric "holiday" even more challenging for me. Everyone was asking questions and I wanted to evaporate. At one point I walked up to my SIL and whispered in her ear to "please stop asking about what I can or can't eat, the constant questions make me very anxious about food" She stopped and I was left alone by her for the most part.

I manifested a bit of Shosanna from Inglourious Basterds and hid behind my camera and took photos and did not make eye contact with my BIL. When asked questions directly, I avoided eye contact. 

I was a swirl of emotions and feelings and by the end of the night, I got in the car with my hubby and shut down completely. We left before dawn the next morning, spending the first few hours in silence. Not completely sure how we felt about anything. When I got home I cried and told The Barren that I wasn't brave enough. I should have stood on the table and condemned their racist, sexist actions. I was a fool to my ancestors and was just really disappointed in myself.

I haven't spoken to my SIL or BIL since thanksgiving night and don't expect to hear anything from them unless they want something. Which is how they normally are. 

I have been out of sorts since, but have been actively working on getting back into my stream.

Do you ever feel a whole body shift? Like you need to purge everything you have been doing to start anew? Maybe that is what I am feeling...

Maybe I am about to wrap myself up and become something else.

I got a space at a community garden, I am spending time there, sticking my fingers into the dirt and feeling the wetness on my skin. I am overwhelmed by the number of shifts that have taken place this year. My parents, my health, The Barrens stress, the responsibilities of home and animal companions, trying to make time for time with other people and myself....

I think I need a nap, maybe I am a bear and need to hibernate and awake in the spring hungry and hopeful again.

...deep fear

 I didn't sleep much last night.

When I closed my eyes I had visions of dodging cannon balls and trying to stay afloat in a disney park ride. I tried to self soothe overnight, saying things will look different in the morning...this is all going to be better...my techniques did not work.

I awoke to a literal nightmare...55% of Women and 40% of men nationwide voted for the MOST QUALIFIED candidate historically. My county is far more republican, racist, sexist and stupid than I knew and although everyone I know voted for Kamala, it didn't do anything except break millions of hearts.

I was in tears for hours and then decided to get dressed and leave the house for a few moments and do an adult task in a nearby town. As I was driving home I got an emergency alert on my phone: 

EVACUATION ORDER: YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER AN EVACUATION ORDER DUE TO A FAST MOVING BRUSH FIRE. PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY

I was only two miles from home and raced the rest of the way, grabbed a few things, corralled the cats into a bathroom and texted my neighbor asking if she got the same text...she lives 50feet from us and she did not, nor had any other neighbor a few blocks from me, 

I was convinced it was a cruel action on the part of the universe. Hubby came home after hearing my voice rattled and filled with fear, breaking under the constant pressure and stress. He came home and said in a calm voice, take this and lets pack a few things. I took the offered half xanax and have been packing things into my car calmly and the cats are hiding in the same room as me as I write this.

The last evacuation I was awoken from sleep and told to leave now, and we only had the clothes on our backs, our cats and laptops. It was a mess and now the sky has fire colors and thick smoke and the fire bombers are due to arrive in the morning…until then I am getting live updates about its movement as the night passes. I finally ate something only because I knew it was needed for brain activity. I am beyond heartbroken, broken and so so mad. I am not looking forward to the trip to visit family, as the person we are traveling for is a Christian fundamentalist who is celebrating today. And I am struggling to find any empathy/ sympathy or a crumb of kindness towards the family who all feel this was a golden move. The Barren told me to try and think of them as brainwashed…he is not looking forward to it either but I guess in a way to honor Kamala, when they go low we go high, right?!? Well, it isn’t working yet…and I am nowhere near close to okay about anything.

I vote 2024 as the most painful, horrible no good year. 

The Quiet

 It is quieter than normal today...

it is election day, the polls are open, the postcards have been sent, the calls have been made, the hopes are running at an all time high.

I, along with EVERYONE I know are waiting. Our stomachs are filled with acid, our nerves are burned, we are all exhausted, there is so much anxiety you can feel it in the air. 

My bestie and I exchanged texts this morning recounting what we are doing to pass time and not look at the news or think or hope. 

I woke up this morning, and before much thought, found myself doing 108 sun salutations trying to honor the energy I wanted to focus towards the day. Saying over and over President Harris.

I feel too many feels, thinking too many thoughts...

we wait