Morning Thoughts 1/23/24
Pepper is still in bed. Frankie is on the carpet. Bean is chewing on plastic.
No pets with me this morning. Unusual. Normally they pile up on me so much that it’s hard to read on the computer let alone write. Their morning was disrupted because my husband had to get up extremely early to do an airport run. Patterns are everything with our pets, with us.
I haven’t been posting much here, but I have been writing. Mostly I capture the seeds of the dreams I had the night before, write about what I hope happens in the day, I suppose that’s a kind of prayer, yes? I reflect and process before the light fills the sky, in the safety of the dark. Today felt like a good day to post the entry for some reason. Maybe it’s because the pets aren’t covering me up like blankets, or maybe I’m just extra-thinky today. A few things that I wrote:
One
Last night, I dreamed that I witnessed an accident-a person (in the dream a neighbor-type but someone familiar to me) fell out of a tree. I instantly ran over to assist. Because I got involved, I was stuck with this person who wouldn't go to the hospital, nor were his family members effective in helping him or in taking him off my hands. The dream meandered, as dreams do, into territory ranging from fist fights over a car to me weeping as I lost my own time while caretaking this near person with no help and no support and no interest for the help from the him at all.
During the dream, he was mean to his kids, and to the wife, and to me, while also needing help. Later the wife told me the man didn't have any empathy at all and she was just used to it, but she’d buy me some new furniture to make up for what I’d lost in dealing with him. I was struck by how different people could be but also how having too much empathy was also a problem, which I clearly did and then was stuck in a pattern with this person.
Two
Get your mammograms (or other age-related cancer screenings). I found a lump in November and after quickly seeing a doctor, it took this damn long to get a diagnostic screen and ultrasound to rule anything out.
I am fine, all is clear, save my breasts which have cysts in them just being mischievous and sneaky. Ole Lumpy-Tits McGee here. Menopause, what can I say. It’s the gift that keeps giving.
Given my own history, and then this past year Chris has had (and he also had a follow up screening yesterday), it's no wonder I spent 6 weeks wondering what could be. And I did spend time thinking about how my spring and summer could be royally messed up if I had to go through the gauntlet again. At varying points in the day I’d realize that my hand had crept into my bra and I was probing the funny little dime sized lump wondering if it were friend or foe. Should I start this class? Should I plan ahead for disaster? Am I being reactive?
Thing is, with something like Schroedinger's Cancer, you can't just wait around for some test to tell you if you have time to do the things you want to do. You just do the things you want to do (within reason of course). So tonight I'm starting up with another long-form genre improv class.
The tests themselves are often the most stressful part. Squishing and squeezing and the technicians with their absolutely neutral faces as to not give away the surprise. I could peek and watch the ultrasound screen, but honestly I have no idea what it means. Anyway, all was fine, and that worry was for naught. Though, maybe there is a case to be made for grappling with the unknown.
Three
I'm worried about the world. About this election year. About how abjectly cruel people are being, though I wonder what their lives are like when they are not online or on tv talking about not having any empathy for the stranger. Though given my dream and the battering I took trying to help someone who could care less if I was helping, perhaps I’m seeing something I don’t want to see. No wonder my dreams are so strange. It’s not just “the nazis” you know, this whole Substack thing. I know I know, you all probably are over that and bored of it, but that’s part of the problem.
It’s that there is a sweeping culture change going on. I can jump onto nearly any platform and see callous disregard for the following: science, geology, climate, racism, sexism, reproductive rights, gender and sexuality in the beautiful myriad forms, those in poverty, worker’s rights, children’s rights, rule of law, accountability, and due process. Not to mention human lives in general (from Covid response to our border).
I don’t get it. It’s not that I want all those people banned. It’s that I don’t know why they are posting it at all. It’s that I don’t understand how the attitudes shifted and proliferated so much so fast and are aiming to shift laws, processes, and practices to change the whole country even when polls indicate that a majority people don’t want that change. I mean, I suppose I do know why? And it is vastly more complex than a platform, though tech and communications channels allow for the spread. The platforms and websites are just the canaries, and it’s on those platforms where the culture change is carried out. The CEOs of those platforms are financially aligned, not morally aligned, right? The morality is money. The prophet is profit.
The ideas are in a fucking marketplace.
So I worry. And given the lessons above, I should just keep doing what I’m doing. The country needs a mammogram and an ultrasound, but would it accept the help even if the screening came back showing where the cancers are? That I don’t know. We won’t even agree about masks and air filtration. We seem caught in a fever that has yet to peak, perhaps. Certainly it is not breaking yet. We need a comprehensive vision and set of actions to break that fever and right the body. In the case of my dream, it can’t just be one person, especially if the others are resistant to the help. Stay and help or walk away or tell a new story? I don’t have the answers.
As always friends, thank you for reading, sharing and subscribing. And I hope your morning is a good one.
xo, Julie