Bad hair days and independence . . .

Independence week, 2020!

Dear you,

Independence:  freedom, liberty, autonomy, self-determination

O.K.  Each of those defining words overlap in denotation.  Check your Oxford dictionary.  I must be free in order to be self-determined.  I must be at liberty in order to act autonomously.  Today I am free to make this ridiculous, non-critical choice:

Get a haircut or don’t get a haircut.

Our local hair salons have reopened with varying levels of precaution.  All are requiring masks for workers and customers.  Some are taking reservations by phone in advance without providing a waiting area inside.  Some are taking walk-ins and providing a “distanced” waiting area.  Either way, the risk of contact is with the hair artist.  She/he may be masked and swathed in antibacterial lotion, but a haircut is obviously touchy-close.  She/he has the same concerns about me. The odds are in my favor since our Walton County numbers are rising but not anywhere near those in south Florida; however, the risk is still there.

Get a haircut, Joyce, or don’t?

I wear my massive, thick hair up in a ball-bun and if left unchecked, that ball-bun becomes ginormous.  (That word is not in your Oxford dictionary.  I checked.) This will happen soon if I don’t get a trim:

What should I do?  Since I am free, at liberty, autonomous, and self-determined, what action should I take?

Ah!  Nothing is ever an either-or situation.  There are options!  I could buy some good scissors and do it myself.  But this might happen:

Should I risk that?  If I cut my own hair and end up looking like a maniac on meth (welcome to Florida, I know the look), does that make me independent or just stupid?

Decisions, decisions.  Ridiculous, non-critical choices.

Whatever I decide, this is what I know:  I am lucky to be healthy and alive . . . and somewhat free.

Somewhat.

Love,

Joyce

The expendable state!

Dear you,

Welcome to Florida, the official kill zone, host to this dude:

Ah, he needs a vacation (insert pouty face emoji).  He is here to spend money (insert patronizing tipper emoji).  Bless his heart.  But we have hearts here too.

How about Walmart Carol?  I met her yesterday as I shopped for essentials.  She appeared to be about 80 years old and clearly sweltering behind her mask.  Delusional and exhausted after handling a surge of  tourists demanding the Size XXX  "GIVE ME ALCOHOL OR GIVE ME DEATH" t-shirt, Carol did not know what a lint roller was. "I don't know what that is . . . I don't know where they are . . . I am confused." I left Carol alone and suggested she take a break.  Bless HER heart.

How about waitress Kary?  Employed at a local "upscale" 30A restaurant, she has been working doubles for days.  Suffocating behind her mask, she developed a lung infection.  I know this young woman.  I asked her if she was taking time off to heal.  Her answer:  "I can't.  We're understaffed and slammed."  I suggested she tell the manager and owners to tie on aprons and get their hands dirty instead of pressuring exhausted (and ill) waitrons like Kary to suck it up.  Bless HER heart.

How about the workers and locals in Jacksonville and Miami?! North Carolina says no to the Republican convention crowd scene?  Come on down to Jacksonville!

Michigan (the University) won't host a presidential debate due to Covid concerns?  Come on down to Miami! Those hotel workers, valets, servers, condo cleaners, etc. are expendable, apparently.  Bless THEIR hearts. 

This is so fucked up.

And it is only June 23.

Hang on Floridians, INCOMING!

Love,

Joyce

Is it Sunday yet?

Dear you,

Juneteenth, 6/19, 2020.

I honor this day, but I also wish it was already Sunday, 6/21.  I want to fast-forward over what tomorrow may bring in Tulsa.  Our orange president is gathering his fan(atics) and threatening citizen protestors.  The city is setting a curfew, meant to silence voices in Tulsa who criticize the Donald.  What will that little MAGA party be like?  What jaw-droppingly hideous things will be said and cheered?  I can guess; I hope I am wrong:

Donald will rail against the recent SCOTUS rulings protecting LGBT citizens and Dreamers.  MAGAs will echo his rage because they do not want equal protection under the law for “others”.

Donald will snark about Sleepy Joe and claim all our problems were caused by the Obama administration.  Case in point: the coronavirus came from KENYA!  And yes, Obama brought it to our shores! MAGAs in a frenzy of hate-pleasure will scream “Lock him up!” and then high five each other, spreading that corona shit like crazy.

Donald will pretend to care about the murders of African Americans by law enforcement but mostly emphasize his support for “law and order”, you know, because there are always a few “bad apples”.  MAGAs will chant “law and order” and Trump will turn around and shake hands with a planted supporter who has dark skin.

Donald will make up more shit about the media, the media that is not far-right that is.  MAGAs will throw contaminated water bottles at the press locked in their pens.

Donald will drift off into a tangent about dental floss and laxatives.  MAGAs will listen with reverence.

And finally, Donald will repeat the astonishing non-fact about how HE has made Juneteenth famous.  MAGAs will not know what to really do since they see Juneteenth as an attack on their white power and even whiter version of history.  So, they might just mildly applaud.

 Or, I might be wrong!  This might happen:

Donald will begin his tirade and one by one, MAGAs will experience an epiphany and drop their signs and caps to the floor.  One by one, they will exit the arena. They will gather outside and come to this conclusion, voiced by a wise elder: “My God, that guy is an asshole. What were we thinking?”

I can dream, right?

Good luck everyone.  See you after Tulsa.

Love,

Joyce

Looking back . . .

Dear you,


History.  Things are changing.  Americans are questioning the machine and those who run it.  The veil is lifted.  We are seeing.  We are also seeing the need to take down monuments that keep twisted philosophical policies alive; those confederate statues are falling.  Bad history is being acknowledged and rejected.  We are looking back without the veil.


As for looking back, other than learning from history and reflecting on choices, I tend to not want to do that.  My goal for self has always been a Bob Dylan lyric:

“She’s got everything she needs/She’s an artist, she don’t look back.”

But I am looking back during these hot summer days amid the rush of new history, and I thought about my high school days.  And this:

Homecoming court, the autumn of my senior year.  That’s me on the stairs, the fifth gal from the bottom in this tiny photo.  To the right, you will see the queen and runners up.  Yes, the queen was (is) an African American woman.  The first ever for our school and our section of Birmingham.  Wonderful!  Being a part of that little but huge shift in history.

I also recall something else not so wonderful about that event.  A herd of racist students wanted to organize a unified vote for the head cheerleader to make sure the “black girl” didn’t win.  Hell no.  Most of us on those stairs wanted no part of that ugly bullshit.  And I was not about to throw my votes to Pasty Priscilla (not her real name) for a lot of reasons.  (But you know I did defeat her in the Miss Ensley pageant the previous spring, but that’s another story .) In fact, “Priscilla” opposed that nonsense too.  She did not want to be a “pawn” in their stupid game.  Well, I am not sure the pawn reference applies since I am pretty sure none of us knew how to play chess.  But that’s another story too.  Anyway, in the end, the best woman won.  And we were better for it.

I like remembering that shift in history.

Looking back is not so bad after all.

Love,

Joyce

Pandemic days . . .

Dear you,


#StayHome Looking back . . .

Selected points from my April-May journals, notes during the pandemic mixed with quotations from Gore Vidal’s Creation, the book I was re-reading during those days. Pardon the blur . . .


4/4 – Above but not immune . . .

4/7 - @ 12,000 souls lost to Covid-19 . . . owners of condos here bitching about lost income . . .


“I have made it a policy never to show distress when insulted by barbarians.  Fortunately, I am spared their worse insults.  These they save for one another.” (Vidal 8)


4/8 – Prepping for my one and only outing, to Publix for food and cerveza, creating scarf as face-covering . . . This is just a void of not knowing what to do . . . As if we ever really know anyway.

4/9 – Death toll rising with Covid and I fear a relaxing of vigilance; no, no to fear – a thingy-verb-state that philosophically is on my workout list of abolition.  What is the opposite of fear, besides a stupid, uninformed confidence?  Is it hope, stoic joy, or not giving a fuck?


“ I soon realized that the secret of power – or in this case magic – resides not in its exercise but in its aura.” (Vidal 51)


4/10 – Pine trees lovely in the viral silence/soft cloud cover/clean air/Good Friday Passover in a fluid unknowable world . . .

4/12 – Easter night . . . this time, this hour, no one’s nonsense stands between me and the music of the Gulf roaring and the wind blowing . . . no human noise . . .

4/14 – Donald declares his power is absolute and Bill O’Reilly says older victims of the coronavirus were on their last legs anyway . . . dystopia . . . when I mask, I feel disoriented . . . Figure it out . . . This is a time for invention . . .


“Wise men take whatever they can find, even in the most unlikely places.” (Vidal 71)


4/16 – Over 30,000 US dead now . . . I eat coffee ice cream and listen to The Real Housewives of NYC argue . . . empires fall . . .


“Why should kingdoms differ from human being?  They are born.  They grow.  They die.” (Vidal 248)


4/17 – How effective is prayer . . . feeling Covid frozen when internet connection was briefly out . . . what do we do when digital lifelines blow . . . Googling sources to answer that question . . . manifesting dreamed outcomes is best accomplished by a declarative list, for example, I am Teflon . . .

4/18 - Texting with friends in NYC and Massachusetts about Florida morons . . . reasons why I don’t want to buy a house here . . . Thank god I laughed today, prompted by video of Governor DeSantis putting his facemask on wrong, just stupid . . .


“No man ever knows when he is happy; he can only know when he was happy.” (Vidal 309)


4/20 – 4:20!  The day of cannabis . . . I haven’t smoked a joint since St. Pete, 2005, Mafia Joe . . . also anniversary of Boston Marathon attacks and Gulf Oil Spill, sorrow, human created . . .


“Cathay’s beautiful, seemingly empty landscape is a hazardous place for the traveler.  But then, wherever one goes on this earth, all things are spoiled by men.” (Vidal 414)


4/23 - Thunderstorms like a ten-minute hurricane . . . everything is off, but animals are roaming happy and undisturbed in new places, temporarily . . . This is an era, opening and closing.  I am in it.  Unease is rational like storm anxiety and Vivo hiding under the bed . . . Covid deaths in the US at around 50,000 . . .

4/26 - The weirdest thing is being in a place where no one DOES anything except sit and yell . . .

4/27 – Palabras on a cool April night/the knowledge/of this truth/the incredible or unbearable lightness of being/in response, la gata rolls on her back/powerful hind paws toward the sky/Earth still turns on her axis . . .

4/29 – April closing and I found zero good houses on Zillow, something I don’t want anyway . . . contradiction – feels like friction – on a partially rainy day – Covid continues – and the relentless sun returns manana . . . I am comforted by imagining what living here would be like for someone like Woody Allen; exile comedy . . .


5/1 – May Day!  May Day!  The local beaches reopen . . . I cannot even go there . . . Time to prepare for vacay renter invasions . . . lacking that skill, how to deal . . . perhaps just not deal at all . . . whatever . . . a Buddhist way . . .


“When you try too hard, you become tense.  When you are tense, you are not at your best . . . cease to be self-conscious in what you do.  Be natural.”


5/4 – Here?  Ghastly out of staters (some, not all) and unmasked teenagers claiming freedom . . . near 70,000 US Covid deaths . . . so much for a time for elegance and grace . . . I need to get the hell out of Florida . . .


“Sometimes it is wise to confront rather than evade what you fear”. (Vidal 448)


5/7 – Today around 2,000 more deaths from Covid-19; total nearing 76,000 . . . a local asshole set the forest on fire . . . DOJ drops case against Michael Flynn . . . townies and tourists cannot wait to go back to eat at Stinky’s.  OMG.  Stinky’s . . . bees happy in the holly tree . . . mockingbirds diving . . .

5/10 – I will stay healthy . . . I will outlast them . . . and I will see Trump ousted in November 2020 . . . #esperanza . . .

5/11 – Covid deaths at 80,000 and the West Witch next door is projecting movies on the side of her house . . . Pitbull follows me on Twitter . . . finding a quiet yet alive place . . . devoid of Covid carriers and assholes in pickup trucks . . .

5/13 – Blue sanity and red rage . . . the Trumpers are coming after Dr. Fauci, his truth/facts/science . .



“I think it is better to study real things in a real world”. (Vidal 466)


5/14 – Sigh, inhale, exhale and weight the risks of getting a hair cut . . . bought a tie-dyed pink mask at a boutique on 30A . . . enroll in Medicare, on my list tomorrow . . . oh hell no, Medicare . . .

5/15 – Trump takes news time to spin a tale of “warp speed to vaccine” . . . babbling . . . near 90,000 Covid US deaths, and oh, he wants to lock up Obama . . . . got a novel from the coastal library via curbside pickup, a book wrapped in safe, brown paper . . . strange days . . .  

5/17 – My feet look young and strong . . .

5/18 – Renewing my car registration at the DMV, now open, officer put some kind of gun-thing on my forehead for temperature test . . . apparently I am fine . . . Covid-19 USA deaths up to 91,172 . . Walton County releases bizarre cleaning guidelines for rentals that will not be enforced . . . Zeus, Artemis, Hermes, Apollo et al., help us . . .


“If one is going to eliminate the creator of all things, then it is a good idea to replace the creator with a very clear idea of what constitutes goodness in human scale.” (Vidal 483)


5/19 – Speaker Pelosi calls Trump “morbidly obese” 😊

5/20 – Ease/elegance/grace/Covid-19 US deaths at 93,000/three qualities enumerated/this time/it takes a warrior/to be those three . . .

5/21 – Condo pool around 5 PM featured four screaming teenage girls taking selfies and doing what appeared to be cheerleader moves, no irony intended on their parts . . . Googled “quiet lake town” . . . found zip . . . Brazil is in trouble and Trump flags here fly high . . .

5/22 – I reject despair and that is why I reject living in Niceville, FL . . .

5/25 – Memorial Day . . . cloud cover and night rain . . . POTUS golfs . . . deaths near 100,000 . . .I want life in 4D, 3D is missing something . . .

5/27 – For the first time in many, many months, I walked in the surf here on the tiny, sad, Seagrove Beach . . . jammed with locals and visitors . . . Gulf, however, massive and gorgeous . . . we must live bigger . . . George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota by a cop . . . #persist/resist/above this bullshit . . .

5/29 – A shattered wine glass on the tile floor = the real world beyond the condo/Seagrove Beach . . . protests in cities re: Floyd murder and more . . . crisis national . . . pushing Covid off the news . . . hating people now . . . vacationers/fat/clueless/Ozark Lakes party video/what the fuck . . .

5/30 – Hot . . . Covid US deaths at 100,200 . . . Chicago, Nike store looted . . . why not . . . the staged simulacra of something called an economy . . . perhaps it is time for thing (things) to all go down . . . except my bank . . . life is happening . . .

5/31 – Protests continue . . . Donald is in his bunker . . . and all is “right” with the world . . . absurd . . . empires fall . . . anxieties rise . . . I shall remain solid, even if jangly . . . June comes as it always does . . .


“I like to think that in heaven men get credit for how they live and what they’ve aspired to be.  If this is true, I am content.” (Vidal 500)

The Raised Fist . . .

George Floyd.

I live in a country where citizens are murdered by those meant to protect us.


Attention shifts from random virus impacts to willed execution and protests.  Major cities in turmoil and our President takes to his bunker in the White House last night. Some people have bunkers.  How about that?  And some people don’t and protest . . . fists in the air signifying resistance, the assertion of presence, the refusal to take abuse:

There is that kind of fist in the air.  Then there is another kind, the kind I saw yesterday driving along 30A in Seagrove Beach.  In front of the huge “sleeps 50” rental atrocity decorated with a three-story Trump banner and balcony flags (“Trump 2020”), the traffic stopped for pedestrians crossing to the beach. On the south side of the crossing, a monster truck had stopped.  The driver side window was down, and an arm emerged, fist in the air.  This was accompanied by a cheer for Donald, no doubt prompted by the banner.  His fist signified something too, anger, displacement, fear, or perhaps just tribal support.  Nevertheless, the action looked and sounded both fearful and aggressive.  Fine.  His right.  However, his fist in the air was clearly in stark contrast to the ones seen in the photo above. 


The either-or choice is a fallacy.  It is not a matter of choosing which of these two signifiers we agree with.  There are shades of gray and subtlety.  However, my instinctual response to the fists in the photo was appreciation.  My instinctual response to the other from monster truck man was scorn; I laughed and blew him a kiss.  (He may have missed the sarcasm intended and took me for a “Women for Trump” chick.)


 In either case, the gesture reminds me of something Yeats wrote about a terrible beauty being born.  Turmoil and disruption, now, are necessary . . . because:


(The last stanzas from Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again”)

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

                                                                                                *******

Love,

Joyce