The Other Side of Eighty

 

I am goodly. I am avoiding all the podcasts, all the streaming, all the substacks and all the newspapers.

Politics can be a total addiction and I see that clearly now. I wasn't addressing some real issues in my life like another long term friend with dementia and the resulting void in my life that now exists. She was one of my first friends in Newfoundland and was instrumental in getting me into her building (there was a huge waiting list - still is).

I decided to go back into therapy after my doc expressed some concern (again!) that talking to someone might help me.

She got me in to see one lickety split (the following day) and I am thrilled that there was an immediate click with him. In the past I've had a few really poor ones but was canny enough to dispense with them. I was also fortunate to have excellent wise ones.

I realized when talking with him, that things had really shifted for me emotionally last November when I nearly died and my brother died two days later. I also realized that in Newfoundland I have one close friend (now in dementia) but the rest of the friendships were more transactional. And that I hadn't shared this massive loss and its impact on me with anyone. A few times I tried but in one case the friend walked away.

So my conclusion also was that I used politics to fill that massive emotional void. And I could feel myself slipping away.

So onward into a better emotional outcome for me. 

I feel lighter already.

Does anyone else out there keep shaking their heads lately and wishing they could wake up to Kamala as president and an all is well feeling in the chest?

Me too. I find most don't even want to talk about all that is happening in this world right now and He still hasn't been sworn in. I see His idiot son grinning like a maniac as he lands in Greenland planting a virtual flag like Hillary on the peak of Everest. "This is ours now, Daddy, right?" And He grins in response and tells the press in a rambling incoherent mess of an "interview," "We'll no longer call it the Gulf of Mexico, it will now be the Gulf of America."

I only read Him now, I can't look at His great melon face or listen to that awful drawn out whiny voice. 

I threw my X account to the curb and restored my sanity on BlueSky and yes, I have cut my news intake by at least 50%. If you need any good soothing series to stream, just let me know and I will share my fixes. For now, BlueSky is a decent place with kindred spirits. I need to know I am not alone in my horror and grief for the world that is now gone. He promises to bomb the tar out of the Middle East as soon as He ascends the throne. Along with controlling Canada and Panama and sending the military into Mexico.

And his tech-bro buddies will now suspend fact-checking on all the platforms.

We are on our own now. 

But humour is saving a lot of us from despair. We need to laugh more.  And like someone said recently, empathy is the missing factor in all these monsters. We all need more empathy for the pain and suffering so many are suffering. 

Will goodness prevail in the long run?

.

I was at a Zoom meeting last night and a guy from Texas shared (almost humorously, almost defeatedly) that:

(a) his country was burning to the ground
(b) there's a massive pandemic killing his fellow citizens at a galloping rate
(c) police and blackshirted unidentifiable guys are shooting fellow citizens, focusing on blacks.
(d) there's an asteroid hurtling towards Boston, or maybe what's left of it by the time it gets there
and
(e) there's an absolute lunatic in charge of the biggest asylum in the world, his country
and
(f) any advice as to what he could do?

He was ex-military and one of his kids (military too) was flown back into Texas and armed up and put on mob detail.

There were two other Canadians at the meeting and honestly, our troubles just vanished away. I think most USians must be in a state of paralysis (to be quickly followed by PTSD) as nothing is making sense and the words "MAGA" bandied about so freely as something to return to rings extraordinarily hollow for most thinking USians.

But what a summary, succinctly put.

No advice of course, apart from just stay inside safe, hang in with us, hang in with those of like mind, wait for this nightmare to be over, because over it will be.

As the old wags had it: This too shall pass.

A photo of my beautiful city, St. John's, Newfoundland.

The skin of all this politicism and activism has peeled off me and I am as newly re-birthed.

I am no longer gripped by Facecloth and all its doings or Twister and its evil manifestations and counterpoints scored and activists removed without apology if they don't toe whatever is the party line of the day.

I honestly don't care.

One thing still lingers in that tomorrow the newspaper is publishing what I wrote in my fit of disdain on the weekend and tossed off in a blast of the last volcano ashes of the rage I was feeling. That should bring out the pitchforks for me. But a staff member did call me today and assured me that, contrary to all Twister and Facecloth feeds, the journalist in question had not been fired but as personal threats had been made on him and his family he chose to fade into the background of other responsibilities within the newspaper's framework. Par for the course here, I have been attacked for speaking my truth and I fully anticipate this will happen tomorrow when the paper hits the stands or the devices. Negative opinions are not tolerated here. Critical thinking is unheard of and everyone knows someone employed by government. The smallness of the place can be such a negative. The record breaking show "Come From Away" tells one side only. There is a darker side. As there is in all places.

Enough on that.

The novel I am working on has come to life marvelously well. There is so much time to reflect on it and sit and be still and play music and think and reflect some more. I no longer have distractions so I can place myself in sixties Toronto and breathe in the aroma of that narrow wood paneled coffee nook with the huge spitting urns and the fresh pastries stationed in the lobby of the building I worked in and say good morning to Brenda the elevator woman (called "girl" in those days) who wore white gloves and never smiled but nodded politely at all of us as she pushed her lever and only asked for visitors' floors as she knew us all and our landings. All day, she sat like a queen on her green leather stool.

Every morning at eleven, one of the servers in that standing room only coffee corner would wheel up a trolley in that very same elevator and bring coffee and tea around to all of us with real mugs and small plates, along with more pastries, and pick our detritus up an hour later. A silent, cheerless grey haired woman ("tea girl"). None of that British lovie-have-a-cuppa stuff in her. I did wonder if she was related to Brenda.

So there you have it.

As one of our wise ones commented "Enough".

I have taken it to heart.

I had one of those moments last night as I was responding to a long commentary on a journalist who resigned was fired after writing a column on public sector workers being paid full salaries during the pandemic and many private sector workers facing financial hardship. The views on this article were more than 10 times the views on a previous column in which he wrote about lifting all to a guaranteed income, even if it was just to the poverty line (my pet soap box advocacy as you all know).

The pitchforks came out for him and I defended him and his right to his opinion. Suffice to say, as I engaged once more with Facecloth and Twister and the privileged defending their rights to substantial pay-cheques, pensions and benefits while the peasants pay them through their income taxes, I thought: what the almighty hell are you doing wasting time on all of this?

Ever have one of those moments? It was around 10.00 pm as I read the latest attack on my miscomprehension of their rights. Did I not know that these same public sector workers did not complain when the oil sector workers were making more than they were? cos, you know, we are all in this together! This from a dude making both public sector and private sector income in his spare time from his public sector job. His income? Pushing close to $200,000. Nearly 10 times the poverty level. The air is thin up there when you can only count your own privileges against those making even more and think "bootstraps" for the rest of us if you have time to throw a thought our way at all.

So my moment came and I thought: stop it now. Make your life count for more than these ridiculous meaningless verbal sword-fights and just do exactly what you want to do. Stop the fighting. Remove yourself from social media. Cancel the subscription to the paper in protest of their pandering to the elite.

I had a dream last night of being swept away in this kind of tidal wave. I wasn't frightened. I landed on a huge rock and just calmly trudged on. I had a purpose and I was committed to it. The rock was washed clean by the wave every minute. It held a lot of meaning for me.

Write. Read. Knit. Disengage from politics and social media and meaningless debates. Make every day of what's left count. Read my blog buds for sustenance.

So here I am.

"You learn that as you grow older, we live in a perpetual state of fear. All the horrible things we do to each other, all our misunderstandings, are because of fear."

The Old Jest. Jennifer Johnston, Page 98. Read in 2016.

Some new fears as I age. They would be unrecognizable to a younger me, then I would have classified them as "silly".

(1)Fear of becoming a crashing bore because of my health issues. So I avoid talking about them. Then, when questioned on my health status, I'm aware of looking shifty from such avoidance and quickly switch conversation to something else.

(2)Fear of the specialist I saw on Wednesday, my nephrologist, who has no time for my avoidance of 3 times daily blood pressure readings, no time for my water shortage ingestion in spite of his instructions. No time for my whiny "I can't live in the bathroom all the time" ("Oh, "sez he, in a bored monotone, "Then dialysis would be preferable?" He is excellent at what he does, but boy, bedside manner is not part of his genetic makeup. He handed me a list of what I need to do before seeing him in a month. Yes, I will comply. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

(3)Fear of getting lost. Due to my mobility issues, this is much more serious than for a healthier younger me, the running me, the adventurous me. Now when I am pounding down a sidewalk with my cane searching for something, store, medical office, etc., if it's not where I thought it was supposed to be I panic as my energy has evaporated, I need to sit down and there's nothing to sit on. So I lean, and breathe and want to cry in frustration. I was rescued by a kind stranger on Wednesday who gently guided me outside the building and led me to the correct clinic, taking time to allow for breaks. People are so very kind and caring.

(4)Fear of brain-fail. It takes me longer to learn new skills, like a knitting pattern. I have to repeat and repeat to lodge it in whatever remaining brain cell is still up for rental. Short term memory, unless I really, really concentrate, vanishes like a puff of smoke. I am mindful of working the brain via knitting, daily Scrabble, reading books outside my comfort zone. Challenging it.



(5)Political scene: femicides. A woman is murdered in Canada every 3 days by a man who purportedly loves her. The stats in many countries are similar. I've been present when men "jokingly" threaten wives that they would kill them if they caught them being unfaithful. Since I first became aware of how second class women are, way, way back in the fifties, I see regression in women's rights everywhere. Men who haven't a clue - as an example see that Gillette ad up there? - the outrage amongst some of my male friends was breathtaking. They take the line of "not all men" - neglecting, of course, to take a stand against the proliferation of porn, sex trafficking, prostitution, etc. which is so embedded in our culture as to be taken for granted. Women's (and many girl children's) bodies are commodities, products to be sold, trafficked at a whim. Trillion dollar rape industries. Imagine, I say to men I know, being anally raped twenty to a hundred times a day or giving blow jobs to hundreds of strangers. And they shudder.

A Teacher's Association Convention in Alberta booked a convicted murderer/rapist as their keynote speaker. You read that right. Only when the public outcry became a deluge did they cancel him. Read about it here.. The fact that they would even arrange all of this shows how deeply embedded rape culture is in our society: how female victims can be so thoroughly erased. And to make the story even more sordid - the reason he killed her was because he couldn't get an erection.

I fear for my own anger in these political situations. My rage is frightening to me at times and it doesn't abate as I age. It worsens. How on earth do I keep a lid on myself? How do I numb out and shrug and pretend all of this doesn't matter?

(6)Oddly enough, in such an anti-aging climate, I haven't a fear of wrinkles or age-spots, or "Looking my age" or greying. I tell people openly I am an old woman, or an elder or a crone and most react with:"You don't look it" with a little frisson. What's that about? What does "looking it" mean? Why the fear of growing old? Isn't the alternative so much worse? I have lost far too many dear ones not to celebrate my bonus years.

Anyway getting my thoughts of the day out there on paper.

As I struggle with a short memoir I am writing.

I make idiotic stuff important. Like ranting and raving about the political structures both here and abroad, that seem to hurt us rather than benefit us. From the small to the large. And I engage in pointless battles on FB about ideologies and which reporter/newspaper/magazine doesn't have a slant. Ad finitum. Fascist or non-fascist, you decide. And how can we, we all might ask?

I don't think I've ever read of a kind act Herr Drumpf has performed - that's an aside. Shouldn't our leaders be kind?

And should I care? Is it my business?

Perhaps when he starts registering Muslims/homosexuals/blacks/Mexicans/Irish/aborting women it will become more my business?

Meanwhile, I feel like pulling away from it all. The flurries from the Guardian, the old writings of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and various talking heads weighing in. And why do we praise men writing letters to their daughters? (another aside, he calls his wife a "girl") Shouldn't men speak up for all women and not just their "own"? And pardon me? - model respect for women for their sons? Spare me the daughter drivel.

And the callout from the cast of Hamilton last night to the Veep Elect and the Prez Elect tweeting hysterically about it this morning.

I mean it's all too surreal for this elder-head to handle. My internal logical centre fails me. Completely.

I weep once more for my dog, when we'd play hide and seek around the house. And she'd always find me, no matter how outrageously I'd hide, standing at the top of a step ladder under a blanket in the craft room upstairs with the door nearly shut? - in 2 minutes flat.

But it's not the dog I lament, I know that.

It's everything about this strange new world, blathering its inane way to another teetering Babel of infinite voracious consumption in a tiny finite planet.

As the arctic rolls over and dies.

Despair is my new neighbour.

Well, that was quite a volcano on my last post. I love the debates, the differences, even the justification for Trump voting. I don't have to agree but I certainly can listen. Nothing cranks the handle more than politics and religion.

I remember being told that they were absolutely taboo topics at the dinner table and no polite family would ever broach them if they wanted to keep their guests' stomachs in operating condition.

Civil discourse is the hall mark of a well bred mind. So I was told.

We had debating teams at school. Taking opposing sides to positions. It forced us to study up on topics. I remember being on the Jewish side of a Christianity-Judaism debate - and this in a private Catholic convent school - so I had to research in the City Library and learned so much I wanted to convert on the spot. Then again I was one of those irritating teens who'd read about communism and wanted to strut down the main street with a placard demanding union rights for workers.

Nothing has changed in me anyway. I'm an enthusiast. If something fires me up I want to know all about it.

You'd never know by the sedate tone of this post that my water heater has bust, would you? I'd love to have given a long whine here but know that my handyman is taking care of it all tomorrow. Daughter popped in today unexpectedly, she was out on a drive and wanted to go for an aimless spin with me ("giving mother an airing", she calls it).

We love these aimless spins. Dropping in here and there as the mood takes. I left the millions of wet bath towels all over the kitchen and the utility room, bragged briefly how I'd managed to shut off the water to the tank all by myself, and we headed out.

I'd gone out for a solo airing yesterday and dropped in on a friend and we stuffed ourselves with scones and cream and had 4 kinds of homemade jam and drank tealeaf tea for 3-1/2 solid hours. And talked Trump and local politics and religion and feminism and books, lovely books.

Even with a squelchy house I don't lose the run of meself.

Adulting feels good.

I haven't written about the dark days of near-financial collapse in Newfoundland. Mainly because I vent on Facebook and to friends. So here is an encapsulated version.

It's a long story of blundering governmental and political incompetence in a drunker sailor scenario of spending when offshore oil generated unbelievable wealth here. Instead of creating a heritage fund, Dems Wot Rulez initiated a hydro electric project - Muskrat Falls - which is proving to be voracious in its appetite for more and more funds as the project is elayed due to structural collapses and disputes arising with Italian contractors. I won't bore you all with it here. Suffice to say taxpayers here are like taxpayers everywhere, bailing out wealthy banks, except we're bailing out this disastrous project which is already over budget by 100% - 6 billion dollars projected costs at the outset now tipping close to 12 billion dollars. We are a province of just over 1/2 million people to give you some idea of the monetary per capita overload incurred for generations yet to come.

To add insult to injury, the poorest and most illiterate amongst us are being penalized financially for this absolute boondoggle of an enterprise. Half of the public libraries are being shut down, taxes are added to insurance (my car insurance increased by 50% even though I am 47 years accident free)glucose strips distribution at pharmacies is being reduced and co-pays for home care for seniors are being increased. It is the most mean spirited budget ever. And we are all appalled and significantly less solvent as a result.

There was no hope offered in this budget. Our politicians are the highest paid in Canada and don't, truly, have an operating brain cell amongst the lot of them.

They bleat austerity whilst living lavish life styles completely out of touch with the rest of us struggling masses. For instance our finance minister owns 8 MacDonald's franchises in the province and refuses to even discuss a fast food tax. H'm. Along with believing herself to be an entrepreneur. Mull that one when every decision at a Micky Doo's is dictated by Head Office.

Protests were launched, one a massive poster demanding the premier resign affixed to every pole for miles around the provincial legislature. These were removed in the dead of night at tax payer expense.

Free speech, guaranteed by our constitution, denied to the peasants by their betters.

Our local MHA (MP)announced publicly that we just didn't understand the complexity of political decisions. This is her first crack at politics.

Fun times out on the Edge of the Atlantic, folks.

And I've just given you the bare bones.

I am sick and tired of this depraved and senseless world we live in. I look at the statistical map of mass killings in the US and think: no one does anything, those who are elected to serve and protect only protect the gun lobbies, the NRA. 'We the people' is a fallacy, truly. A sop to the masses.

I look at the murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada well over 1,000 and counting just about daily and think: no one gives a shyte. Our man Harper focuses on Niqabs and the wearing of them at citizen oath-taking ceremonies and the troops rally around that particular flag and sends him skyrocketing in the polls,(our election looms shortly)which says a whole pile about our electorate and their hidden prejudices and women hatred. Forgetting, of course, that not too long ago Xtian nuns were so garbed and in some cases hidden behind screens even from their parents, looking at you Carmelites.


I predicted, way back months ago, that Trump and Harper would be the kings of North America. Two first class manipulators, millionaires, man-beasts. Both held in thrall to the worst of capitalism and fundamentalism, slurping at the troughs of oil, the standards of industrial militarism held high, death to the brownies, the blackies, the other than Xtian belief systems. Not forgetting, in Harper's case, overt references to the "Old Stock" Canadians - i.e. the founding-rampaging-death-to-all-aboriginals "fathers". In Harperland your legitimate citizenship can be revoked if you don't behave. Even if you were born here. Stasi-land, Harper style. And I haven't gone into the spying network he has set in place to monitor the "New Stock" citizenry like yours truly and presumably those pesky First Nations people with their protests and marches against clear cutting and unbridled oil-derrick hoistings.

I backed away, consciously, several years ago from political commentary, it was frying up my brain. But it seems that lately the corruption, callousness and trampling of rights is breathtaking in its audacity and horror. I am compelled to vent.

Terrorism as 'out there' no longer exists, if it ever did.

Terrorism, in many forms, is right at our own front doors.

Like I've said before: if you want the news, turn off the news.

This is never more evident than in the illustration below, which shows our media concentrated in the hands of the very few.

Government and media by the corporations for the corporations.

And morons are still wondering why the Occupy Movement?

Wake up!



{click to enbiggen}

UPDATE
Thanks to my blogger friend Twilight here is a link to George Monbiot and his takedown of distorted and irresponsible journalism.