The basics . . . the loss of food, shelter, and joy during the Trump Reign

Dear you:

March Madness now refers to politics in America.

Every week, huge shocks to the system, compliments of President Donald, put us on the cliche emotional roller coaster.  Last night, the Don's pressure to take down critics (enemies of the people he would say) worked again.  McCabe, an FBI veteran, is fired two days before his retirement date.  Pension lost.  Paradise gained for the Insane Clown in the Oval Office.

I do not understand what motivates those who adore this dude in chief.  Rationalizations take the forms of "I don't care about his past, his lies, or his racism.  He's getting things done.  The economy is doing great.  More jobs!"

Well, yes, he is getting many destructive things done.  And whether we want to assign the racist designation to Don or not, massive evidence shows he is supported by "them". (I don't need to provide the noun for that pronoun, do I?)  He is indeed their white president.  This is not news. Spend five minutes on Twitter.  But what hit me today, amid the firings of talented people and the storm of Stormy Daniels (more on that later), I encountered this story:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/here-are-the-nearly-100-winn-dixie-stores-that-are-closing/ar-BBKizM9

Many of these stores are in southern neighborhoods in Alabama, Georgia and Florida.  Many of these stores are also part of the pedestrian scene; locals can walk there.  Where will they go now?  The appearance of Dollar General stores down here can't cover the loss.  DG doesn't sell "fresh" anything.  And the stores themselves are depressing, staffed by workers who are just passing through.  (I can't blame them for that.)  Winn Dixie often is staffed by full-timers or part-timers who have worked there for years and give a damn.  I sometimes shop at the one near me, located at the end of Front Beach Road just to the east.  The young manager knows the brand of cigarettes I smoke.  Ellen, the cool cashier, talks to me about caring for neighborhood cats.  (We are both suckers for the partially socialized felines who need food and love.) The old dude who bags my groceries knows I do not need help to my car and get pissed off when asked if I need assistance.  When I cash-out with my sunglasses on, they all know I am not in a chatty mood.  These people are surviving the closures; this site is staying open.  But I know they hurt, feeling slightly complicit like Titanic survivors.

Businesses fail.  I get it.  But something creepy is happening.  Access to food, affordable housing and employment:  Bye now.  And yet I hear Donald and his fans repeat over and over that things are now great again in America.  That is some bullshit, my friends.

But on the horizon, I see somebody who just might be able to dethrone Trump.  Stormy Daniels wants to talk and she is suing him about a bogus agreement requiring her silence (in return for some Trump-chump-change).  She's got a hot lawyer.  And Trump is reacting.  He actually is scared to name her in the latest Tweets.  It is possible that out of all the citizens who have tried to restrain Trump and stop the carnage, an adult film star may be the one to get it done.  Perfect.  Show biz. Good luck sister!

Happy St. Patrick's Day.  We need the intervention of saints now, for real.
Stay strong.  Endure.  The Clown Regime can't last forever . . .

XO
Joyce

2 + 2 = 4

Dear you:



Months passed.  New Year arrives. 2018.  The number looks beautiful.  Every year since the calculated new century hit the calendars looks beautiful.  The curve of the "2" instead of the blunt "1".  Then there is the lovely feeling of "2".  Songs say it:  "It Takes Two", "Tea for Two", etc.  And then there is the Orwellian theme of power erasing empirical truths featuring that number.  We remember that moment, at least from the latest film version, where power tells people 2 + 2 = 5; however, the last shot shows the hero carving 2 + 2 = 4 into a cafe tabletop.  Someone will encounter that good math message and realize they are not alone.  The truth still stands.

Good news everybody!  In spite of continual attempts by "power" in the "real" world, good math still stands.

2 + 2 = 4

Student survivors from the latest slaughter in a school do the good math:  AK15s (?) are weapons of war.  Ban them.

Texas wind farm owners do the good math:  This clean energy industry creates more jobs than our President's beloved "clean" coal and . . . well, collecting wind doesn't annihilate the land.

Math.  And then poetry.

The Prez still loves to quote song lyrics (he calls it a "poem") made famous by Al Wilson.  "The Snake" is being twisted to serve an anti-immigrant movement.  More bad math. (I am really mixing metaphors here, but you get it.)

This Business Insider article responds to Donald's bad math and bad spin:
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-the-snake-poem-2016-9

Well, at least he is messing with a pop song and not a classic piece of actual poetry.  Donald needs to think about Shelley's poem.  I wonder if this could help him do "good math"?


I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
2018
Beautiful . . . in spite of bad math.

XO

Summer ends . . . transience

Dear You:

Sharing the work of Andrew Ross, something from his portfolio, Transience -


I am/you are the person at mid-crossing.  This literal intersection is the site of movement, beginning here and ending there.  And notice the shadows.  They are fleeting, as the sun moves.  Those images last only in artistic records, like Mr. Ross's.

This summer's story, like a film montage, contained classic transient events/experiences:
1.  Mom died, after a tough winter and spring.  Just like that, she is gone, like Dad. Goodbye.
2.  At the same time, both of the boy cats disappeared. Vanished. Goodbye.
3.  The beach home I live in will no longer be home this time next year.  Goodbye.
4.  My favorite wild pine tree, perhaps tainted by thoughtless neighbor's "weed spray", is turning brown and fading away. Goodbye.
5.  Hurricane Harvey continues to batter residents on the west Gulf Coast and Texas and Louisiana with rain rain rain.  Floods erasing places.  Goodbye.

However, today IS.  I am still alive.  Another mysterious and sweet cat (I named her VEVO, Spanish for "lively") has appeared to keep me company.  I will throw myself into the Gulf and enjoy a dolphin-like swim this afternoon and other afternoons this year.  I cannot save the pine tree now or stop the record-breaking rains.  And those facts would be easy to accept if I could just learn that life is transience.  That is the normal state of things, like "flux" or "flex" or whatever I blogged about months ago.  Apparently, my problem with transience is my only non-transient . . . situation.

So, summer ends again.  Happy voyage to Mom and boy cats and pine tree and all of our temporary homes.  The remedy for now is to simply be.  Get plenty of sleep . . . and don't get too deep.

And, on a lighter note, find a way to get the hell out of my stupid JCPenney retail "job"!! 💃
Oh the places we end up, wondering "how did I get here?"

XO
Joyce

Cart-carnage . . .

Dear you:

The first world tour for POTUS is over.  But not really.  This golf cart incident bothers me only a little bit; however, this bit is part of a continuing BIG LEAGUE state of bafflement.

Sir, can you not walk?  Get on the ground like other leaders.  Try it.  

I don't have an agenda against golf carts.  Why would I?  But this people-mover just keeps popping up in my life.  Right here in Inlet Beach, FL, the cartage carnage was on as every visitor and/or resident seemed unable to use his/her legs to travel the hundred or so feet to the beach.  Everywhere, these little carts enabling the out-of-body viewing experience.  It seems riders want to "see" and not "feel".  Disembodied eyes and mouths.  

Yet another moment of car-culture existence, extended into leisure.  

Dear neighbors and visitors:  Please hit the ground.  Move.  Feel it.  Once you feel it, I think you (we) might be viscerally connected to where you (we) are and why you (we) need to care.

Post-Memorial Day, I memorialize mobility in the flesh.

Move.

Love,

Joyce  

May . . . maybe . . . maybe not . . .

Dear you , . .

May 19, 2017!

Another missing chunk of blog entries, but I return on this notable day.

I was doing my weekly visit to Twitter and saw the hashtag for Endangered Species Day.   This adjusted my head, got me off the latest from Trump and the rapid-fire change of political realities.  (Yes, I said realities.  Those exist.)

Politics/people matter.  Duh.  But what about the gorgeous and even the not so gorgeous critters who live on our planet?  Little spinning blue marble, just keeps going around.  We come; we go.  But I suppose the movement to halt extinctions is more than an act of transference (sad we all die) or sentimentality.  It is a desire to be conscious and get inside those other skins.

Yes, some will say the panda is useless and we tend to fight for the cute species.  But we have to start somewhere, right?  Show me a panda (or a drowning polar bear) and I pull out my checkbook.  (Well, checkbooks are approaching extinction, but its a metaphor, sort of.)  Get inside those other skins.  

I want a world with these creatures, in the flesh.

Are we approaching the days when a giraffe will become a myth?  Imagine a not-so-brave new world, 2070; history and science are revised and the giraffe will be explained away. "No, little Mary, there were no giraffes.  Those creatures only existed in Disney movies and the fantasies of godless environmental liberals."

Are we approaching the days when WE will become myths?  "No, little Android Andy, there were no humans.  Those creatures only existed in the digital dreams of your cyborg ancestors."  

Something flesh and blood and true feels at risk every day . . . 

I perform my little human comedies on the daily  (tutoring, talking, moving merchandise around, working out, dealing with oldie-dental issues 😡, etc.) and feel the transience of that flesh and blood.

So, "happy" endangered species day to them and to us.

Get out your damn checkbooks:

Kisses - 

Joyce

Being the baby . . .

Dear You:

The past few weeks have been all about Mom.  She is 95 and fading.  Luckily, she has the financial resources to reside in a kind, professional assisted living home.  Good women working there, lifting her up as she sails on to wherever.

After visiting Mom a few days ago, it dawned on me I am still the baby.  Granted, I am an OLD baby, but her exit is more troubling than I thought it would.  Steely, realistic me, sad to lose my Mom.

Remembering everything and grateful for so much, hear these classic momisms:

- If you could stay out last night, you can get up this morning.  - When you have your own house then you can make the rules!  - You won't be happy until you break that, will you? - Cupcakes are NOT a breakfast food!  - Go play outside! It's a beautiful day! - Always wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident. - When I was a little girl...

- I'm going to give you until the count of three... - When did your last slave die?  Time for breakfast-cupcakes, time to follow my own rules, time to not wear any underwear at all, time to break something, and definitely time to go outside and play. In my own way, Mom, I've been listening. XO The Baby

A message to the building crew sublime!

Dear you:


Since last November, you have been working so hard.  One more "cottage" (actually a 4 story code-breaking behemoth) is coming together here in Inlet Beach.  This one is right on top of me . . . directly across the street.   Yes, it has been noisy.  Yes, it has freaked out the oldies and the felines.  But no, I am not angry.

Because . . .
1. The crew is Mexican.  Perhaps new citizens, perhaps not.  Their presence is a concrete argument against some policies being debated now.


2. The workers are consistent and thoughtful.  They arrive early at expected hours and wrap it up at dusk.  During work, as vehicles and delivery trucks come and go, they protect my yard and utility nodes/whatever watchfully.

3. The human soundtrack (the lilt of Spanish conversations, the laughter) wraps around the slams and bangs of construction, making the noise . . . interesting . . . and bearable.

And this is all terrific until . . . they start BLASTING music while I am home trying to work online or just think/"be" without feeling like I have PTSD.  When I asked a worker or two to tune it down - a lot - I got no response.  And this made me furious.  So, I had to appeal to the local neighborhood association folks to reach the builder and shut that noise down.

So.  I'm a rat.  Yeesh.  There are limits, my building friends. Music bass beats can rev us up and I don't need that.  Which leads me to my thought for the day:

How can we live with each other freely, happily, and not step on each other?

The Golden Rule.  I need to consider that myself too.  As Trump would say, "Big League".


XO
Joyce