Yeah, and!

Been a while. need to make sure I kickstart myself into a better gear. Man, times have changed. life is really rolling along surprisingly well. Go me!

Sprung

free and easy, laid back
and breezy
wanting to stand but leaning
when the hurt ended
it left me hollow

alder buds are drooping
swaying off-green jewels
no leaves yet but soon
the velvet buds unfurling
in that timeless, pious enduring:
the faith of the trees

birdsong in the middle time
flashes of red and black from the hedge
the rain soft, insisting
drumming me back to sleep

from my cage I can see
the crooked limb of the sky
and the pebbled beach of forever

it is lonely
but good

the Dawn

Opinionated Bitch : issue 0, volume 0

Getting on with it

I tried, I really did. After a fucked up life that really can’t compare to anyone else’s, I even went as straight as I could, got the 40 a week job, was responsible, and fell in love and all that. It just doesn’t work for me. Never, to be 100% accurate, ever really did. Scarred childhood, scared adolescence, it comes down to this, to quote Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible: the status is NOT quo. I broke, and couldn’t keep going, couldn’t keep pretending that I fit this weirdly twisted world. Call it ego, but I feel the movement of something actually great inside me, and I grow daily more certain my choices are between giving this thing free rein, and laying down and dying.

So, here I am, at 11:31 pm on December 8, 2009, sitting at my keys and for the first time in a very long time, actually writing. My headset is blaring the Tea Party in my ears (for now) and I am letting the words come out.

Here’s the plan: write. Lots. Every damned day. Let things go where they will, but stop trying to force myself into a “normal” pattern: I have always been most creative at night: so let the words flow like a dark river when they will. Just don’t ever dam the flow again. All will be well again, as Julian of Norwich said. I owe a debt of thanks for those words, for Hope.

Dark Tide

 

 

 

I read myself into exhaustion, or sleep won’t come. The books are almost too true to help, (Chung Kuo by David Wingrove. Veracious.) Hope is sorely lacking and the darkness holds too much sway over me right now.

Only in the deeper dreams does everything I don’t need slip away,leaving the joy of him, the wonderful feelings that still root the world. I just can’t get there when I’m awake.

When the Dark rises, all pleasure is too fleeting and leaves me dying for more, like a castaway on a desert island, dying of thirst, surrounded by salt water.

Dance Me Outside

Actually went out on Sunday, to watch SOngbird and Kimkio dance in the park,. The sun was out it was a glorious early fall day and it was so good to just be out without any expectations or list of places to go. I need to do more of that.

The upgrade of the meds is helping: I’m still a bit scared of the Methotrex, but the increase in the Tramadol is making a tonne of difference to my function levels. I even slept last night, from 11 pm to 7 am. Huge.

Have a bunch of writing to do: will be posting more soon.

Breathe.

Journal

I’m not coping well.

Scott is so far away, and time seems to be telescoping out so that every achey moment is an aeon.

The meds aren’t working: don’t even have a real diagnosis, and I’m paying about $200 a month for treatments that aren’t really affecting me for the better. I had more function on the codeine, even if I had to keep upping the dosages.

The biggest issue I feel is that no one really cares. The level of inconsideration I am feeling is huge. I get lipservice, from just about everyone, roomies and sister on down to the doctors, and I can’t really talk to anyone about the pain and the fear and the anger and the helplessness, because it’s all whining.

Mostly, I am feeling a huge loss a gaping chasm of hopelessness. My youth is long gone, and my old age is already here, and I have nothing to show for it. A life mostly wasted. I’m so close to the edge of just saying I’ll survive till my kids don’t need me anymore, and then I’m kissing off.

I am dreamless, sleepwalking through my days and submerged in my nights.

Drift Would

Just floating along, caught in a bit of an undertow and trying hard not to sink before my time.

Managed to do the dishes (almost all of them) before the body said no more, rest now. Did not attempt dinner in that frame of body/mind. Went back to my room and rested, then got slammed with a brutal headache like a brick between the eyes. Possible caffeine deprivation, possible eye-overwork, possible hormonal shift, possible med shift, or some delightful combination of all these factors. If I was a horse, I’d have shot me by now.

So, crashed, listed to the roomies make food (LOUDLY) for themselves: no one even tapped on my door to check on me: yup, it’s a pity party. No one gives an honest damn about me, but me, and when I can’t care, why the fuck should anyone else? Poor Scott, he gets to pick up the pieces and putty them back into a semblance of the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

There’s poetry in me, but it’s all dark and that disgusting new word “emo”, but not as funny as the real thing.

I need a break from my life, but lack the courage to actually make one. That’s probably a good thing, right?

D-9

So. Saw District 9 with FoF Arkay. There are a number of problems trying to write about an artwork of this nature, and I’m not talking about spoilers. If you are worried about being , go see the movie, then read this. Or just go see the movie. It’s worth the funds.

Do you remember when you saw the Matrix for the first time? Do you remember what it did to your head?

If like me, you walked out of the dark theatre into the strangely bright night and the world didn’t just look different, it felt different, as if you would never again see things the way you did before. The metamorphosis of gnosis has happened: we have had another nibble of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and for a while, our perceptions are opened, in the ways only true, good Art can affect us.

District 9 is good Art, in the most accessible and unpretentious format possible: a summer release action movie, complete with gratuitous gore spatters across the lenses and crustaceous CGI aliens. Which isn’t saying that it isn’t brilliant, ballsy, gutsy, gritty, innovative and ingenious, because it’s all those superlatives as well. What it isn’t is easy, pretty, simple, or perfect. What it is is very possibly the best film I have ever seen in my life.

Good Art leaves you stunned into silence, absorbing what you have just experienced, seeking to internalise and analyse the whole and to some extent play witness as it chemically rebalances your brain. Art doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing, it doesn’t have to be clearly allegorical, and it doesn’t have to “make sense”, what real Art needs is a message, a core ethos that hits home, below the belt and above the hairline, and this film does that.

Two moments stand out in my mind, the moment when the protagonist becomes the hero (his humanising moment, really, and the point at which the audience finally slips over to being on his side). He is being tortured by the people he used to work for, whom he trusted and liked, and suddenly he is forced to commit what he has come to realise is murder. His refusal is the moment at which he becomes the hero.

The second is when the “bad guy”, the representative of all humanity’s response to the aliens, who has admitted he enjoys killing them, shoots down the dropship. It’s a tiny, necessary moment in the film, and it’s one of those ones that reminds me that it’s often the tiny things that matter. What could be seen as a heroic deed, (and may indeed be seen in future interpretations as one man’s last ditch attempt to prevent the aliens for their eventual domination of the planet, depending on where the creators choose to take their sequel), is in reality a bitter posturing by a cruel sadist, and in the end all it earns him is his own death.

So much of the  I’ve read upon seeing the film highlight the Apartheid allegory, and the setting of the piece in Johannesburg is like a backhand to the face, but whenever you are hit with a backhand, you need to look for what that hand is holding, and in this case it’s a much bigger question: what does humanity actually mean?

I think the films creators do an excellent job of asking that question directly to the heads and hearts of those viewers who allow themselves to really feel while they see the film. They don’t answer it: we do.

Not everyone will have that sense on seeing District 9, but… enough have and did that it will sink in to the cultural consciousness, penetrate and as I said to Arkay on heading to the restaurant: I can’t wait to see the films that are made in 10 years as a result of this one.

Movement

So two weeks ago I set aside a chunk of time and mental energy to write an email or two. one to my ex for allegedly worrying him when I didn’t reply to his asking about the Saint’s next visit, and taking full accountability for that whole situation. (He did not acknowledge a single word of that mail, as it happens… but it needed to be said, so I said it. He’d prefer to leave unadressed my contention that our 14 year old is old enough to bus here by himself, considering he let the kid do so back in October, but has since changed his mind, thus adding to the burden the second email was meant to address.)

The second was to everyone who has transported my kids to and from the ferry to try and get better co-ordinated so that no one person was swamped with the duties. The results: I have commitments from two drivers and a contingency plan in place. Hurray organisation, and double hurray communiation. My stress levels have diminished significantly as a result.

On the roll of getting ducks in a row (so they may more easily be made into duck soup) I saw my doctor, got x-rays of elbows and wrists done, and filed for social assistance as a resident cripple (actually that last started on Wednesday last week when I called them and went through the phone interview: Friday was just putting in paperwork and signing things and proving things). End results: I have some funds coming in, I have a new medication to try (at a cost of $160 a month because it supposedly isn’t covered, even by my new status as a gov’t reco’nised cripple),I have an appointment at a physiotherapist (at a cost of $15 a visit, because assistance pays at 1996 rates…) I have a rheumatologist to see soon, (no idea if that will be completely covered, either) and there’s some light on the horiszon physically.

At least once the moneys start coming in, I will be able to be less of a burden on my sister, although it seems I’ll be more of a burden on the driver to all these various appointments, at least I’ll be able to buy lunch, and contrbute gas funds in exchange.

So movement, yes, and with movement, as always, pain. My doctor was very careful to note that I need exercise, and where most people she would say stop when it hurts, with fibro, she has to say keep going, but it appears my fibro is complicated by other things as well (RA, at the least), so movement is one of those creaky, achey things, physically, and emotionally.

I am looking forward to being able to chip in around here, and to buy the few things I’m in need of, for both myself and for the kids. It’d be nice to be able to buy a birthday present or two… and a grad gift for my eldest. (!)

Until I see the extent of the damages from physio, rheum, and meds, I can’t even really budget how much I’ll be giving to my sister, so I can’t even write myself a lil wishlist… but it doesn’t stop my brain from going there.

Horses in the News

Two major stories, and they need to be heard and compared.

I’m sure anyone with the vaguest inclination to follow newsfeeds has heard about the polo pony deaths in Florida: 21 valuable athletic animals were given shots prior to participating in a quarterfinals match of an international polo tournament and began dying before they were even off loaded at the field. After less than a week of speculation the cause has been discovered and publicized: their shot, given to supposedly alleviate wear and tear from the hard ride and fast pace of high goal polo, which was administered before leaving they left their home stable was misformulated by the Florida compounding pharmacy. The shot contains selenium and phosphorous, both of which can be fatal to horses in a high enough dose. Every horse given a dose died.

And the media is all over it. Wealthy owners, valuable animals, and sudden death in a very public locale and connected to a prestigious sporting event = news.

Here’s the story to do with horses you prolly didn’t know about. Over 200 head of mustangs, in varying states of malnutrition from neglect were rescued this weekend off a Nebraska ranch, run by a man who purported to be a trainer specifically gifted for working with feral horses, but who has a previous history of neglecting horses to death. Over 60 head died in his care on the Three Strikes Ranch, located in Alliance: their bodies could be seen from the air, dumped into two sand pits on the 1900 acre ranch, which has been turned into a dustbowl by the overgrazing of the feral bands he purchased or adopted from the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM, following up on tips from neighbours came to the ranch early last week to reclaim the five horses they still had title to, four of which, as it happened, were already dead. The one remaining was the cause of the single cruelty charge that led to the arrest of Jason Meduna.

After his release on bail and the intervention of two renowned rescues and the US Humane Society, just over 200 head of emaciated horses were removed from Meduna’s ranch and taken to a holding area at the nearby rodeo grounds, to be fed, vetted, sorted, identified and eventually shipped to various rescues and rehab farms. Volunteers came from as far away as Texas and Washington state to do whatever they could to help: donations for feed, hay, water tubs, and food for the volunteers poured in from several internet sources.

It was an immense and successful operation, and the dedication of the volunteers, vets and law enforcement personnel is to be applauded at the highest levels. But…

You won’t hear about it on the news, or read about it on any feed, unless you happen to follwo specific forums dedicated to horses and rescue. Because it took place on a remote locale in the midwest, no news cameras were on hand to catch footage of the starving horses or the massive efforts to save them, and because many of these animals were sold to Meduna for $10-50 a head, there’s no interest in the animals as valued assets of a wealthy owner.

Thousands were spent and donated, and thousands more will be to find these animals good homes, but it’s not news, is it?

There’s a whole story here, for anyone wanting to be educated. Someone with the drive and talent could make a brilliant book or film.