The Limitations of the Tiny Little Mother Mind™ and #SeezJahBoy

It's a big world.

That's what I tell myself when I read about or hear about things that are otherwise incomprehensible. It's a big world, I thought when I read about plushies in a Vanity Fair magazine in the last millennium. It's a big world, I thought when I actually ran into a plushy convention at a resort hotel in Orlando where I was attending a children's healthcare convention. It's a big world, I thought, when people started talking about reality shows and women being famous for being famous,  It's a big world, I thought when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, and it's a big world, I thought, when certain celebrities insured their famous asses, literally. It's a big world, I think, when people get all geared up for the season of bashing brains into dementia, otherwise known as football. It's a big world, I thought when people -- some of whom I actually know and love -- voted for and continued to support Donald Trump, even after he imitated and mocked a disabled man and bragged about his prowess grabbing women's pussies. That one was a stretch, to tell you the truth.

A lot of people are excited about last night's Miss America pageant -- how Miss Michigan, a blonde Barbie doll, made a comment about the bad water in her home state and appears "woke" in the newest sense of the word, and Miss New York, a black Barbie doll, won the prize. It's a big world, I'm thinking, wondering how in 2018 we still have beauty pageants (although I've read they're no longer "beauty" pageants, and there's no more bathing suit competition). What's that expression? Whatever floats your boat?

Anywho.*

My tiny little mother mind™ was seriously taxed today when I learned that Netflix released some movie called The After Party that's getting all the raves. Evidently, the main character has a seizure (after smoking marijuana) while rapping on stage, projectile vomits and falls to the ground writhing. The moment is captured on video, it goes viral, he's called "Seizure Boy," and soon everyone is doing the #SeezJahBoy dance.

This is comedy.

Sigh.

Where do we start? The young man who plays the character is an up and coming rapper and has a bazillion followers on Instagram. He sees himself, ironically, as a bullying advocate. People with epilepsy are commonly bullied. This is a fact. I know countless people whose children have been bullied, have been mocked and derided when they've had a seizure in school. The stigma of epilepsy is still so strong that adults with epilepsy often don't tell their employers that they have it. Teenagers with epilepsy are often at higher risk for anxiety and depression, and much of that can be attributed to our culture's ignorance of the disease.

So, yeah, back to #SeezJahBoy. Despite condemnation from different news sources and epilepsy and seizure awareness foundations, the hashtag is viral at this point. I have heard from good friends in the epilepsy community that when people go in to these conversations on Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to counter the ignorance, they are being called trolls or "racists" (because the movie is predominantly by black people). How many people did this show have to go through to get put on the air? Are we overly sensitive as parents of children with epilepsy or individuals with epilepsy? Do I think the show should be pulled? To tell you the truth, this sort of thing so taxes my tiny little mother mind that I think nothing at all. I don't have the energy to think about some stupid movie that makes a mockery of people with epilepsy. I don't give a fuck about the writers, the editors, the sound people, the young actors and wannabes that made this movie. There is no big world that holds such shit. The big world shrinks in to a dot, and that dot is a portal to my house where my epileptic daughter sits in her wheelchair, the little vein in her forearm penetrated by a needle that brings an infusion of antibodies to her brain, so many antibodies that they literally flood her brain and dilute out the bad antibodies that have been wreaking havoc, causing her to seize, near constantly, in her sleep and subsequently destroying her ability to walk and eat and move in the world.

Dance on, #SeezJahBoy people.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens, Gubbinal


















*New Readers should know that I hate this expression and only use it facetiously.

Dystopian Nightmare

Scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis

I had never watched Drumpf speak until tonight when I braved up and watched him accept the Republican party nomination. I'm only a bit embarrassed to tell you that it made me cry. I think it was around the second sentence when he began speaking about Law and Order and policemen being shot, when he sneered at political correctness and the entire crowd erupted in chants and cheers that I felt simultaneously chilled to the bone and filled with sorrow. I don't need to tell you that the latest shooting of a black caregiver to an autistic young man had already filled me with dread for the day in a sort of double whammy.

I will tell you that I have friends and family -- very close family -- that are actually supportive of Drumpf, and that this causes so much anguish that I feel paralyzed.

I'm not sure what to do?

I'm breathing in sorrow and breathing out love, but it's choking me.




kubeiko

n. a state of exhaustion inspired by an act of senseless violence, which forces you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface—before propping yourself up in the middle of it like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

via The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

How to Cope, Part 2,345,679

What sort of superpower would you have if you could?

I'd like to fly, I think. I'd like to soar. I love the word soar and how it conjures wings wide open, arms, too. Then again, I'd like the ability to go back in time.

Go back in time to fix things you messed up or change the outcome of your life?

Oh, not at all. I have few regrets and none that I'd fix if it made today a different one, at least in my life. I would like to go back to the moment when I learned to read. I'd like to hold onto that feeling and then maybe go back to what it felt like sitting up in the cherry tree in my front yard in New Jersey where I read The Hobbit and the Henry Huggins books, Lois Lenski, A Little Princess, Jane Eyre. I'd like to feel that feeling again -- being immersed literally in a book of fiction.


What are you reading?

God. So many things at once. Dostoevsky Reminiscences by Anna Dostoevsky. Don't roll your eyes. It's good. How could I call his novels my favorites and not have known that he married his stenographer after she transcribed The Gambler as a twenty-year old? Being the perfect wife to one of the great (male) writers was, sadly, something I was rather obsessed with as a young woman. I won't give you more details because like I noted above, I wouldn't change a thing. Also, the very funny Harrison Scott Key's The World's Largest Man. I follow Key on Twitter where he makes me laugh every single day, and so far I'm laughing through his memoir. Oh, and I just downloaded The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone a new book by Olivia Laing, described as "an expertly crafted work of reportage, memoir and biography on the subject of loneliness...." Weird. Lots of non-fiction, which is unusual for me. I'm still reading Lucia Berlin's short stories, though, and every time I start thinking about Drumpf and any of the goings-on in The New White Supremacist Republican Party of Spineless Humans, I pick up Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? and am lulled into a nineteenth century daze. Since the novel is probably tens of thousands of pages (I've downloaded it on my Kindle and am around 13% done), I'm reading it in a sort of bookworm's drinking game to deal with TNWSRPSH (see above to translate acronym). I also love Trollope so it's a win-win for me.











I'm trying to develop a sense of place in my writing.

The windows of lovers.

A broken window looking out onto a Georgian column, a sloped grassy hill only visible if you peel back the pizza box shoved in place of the glass. The smell of piss, the sound of a broom sweeping. Four panes broken by a cross, un-curtained with a view of a pond and scraggly field, over my shoulder if I lie flat on the bed, naked and laughing. A yellowed pull shade, darkened by cigarette smoke, the stark branches of a tree, black in a gray sky, if I lie flat on the black couch, the material slippery against my skin. Bars, a rusted fire escape, visible from the door where I stand, clothed. Blinds, slanted light, the sound they make, the rustle, when a breeze hits them, then me, peace.


What's happening, Reader? How are you coping?

Sunday Evening West Coast Re-Post

I don't know about you, but I am probably the most dissociated I've ever been from political goings-on. It's not that I don't care, but it honestly feels like a switch in my brain went off the moment it looked like Drumpf was being taken seriously by people I know. We've got a primary to vote in this week in California, and it all feels surreal. What the hell and heck and shitfire is going on?

In lieu of something new, I thought I'd post something from nearly three years ago. It seems apt today, too, a reinforcement of that old adage that brings me comfort: there is nothing new under the sun. 

Monday, October 7, 2013

The Stuff of Tragedy

When I drove by, I noticed a chorus of gods and goddesses outside of the Launderland Coin Laundry this morning, a couple of Renaissance men and a monk or two. They had come marching south, down Vermont Avenue, disgruntled by the dry air, the crackling wind, the voices discontent. Rich people lack empathy, a wise man noted. Not to mention their difficulty getting through the eye of a needle. David flexed his muscles, held on to his stone. Venus took her hand off her mons and flicked back her hair. Donuts were passed hand to hand. The cars rushed by, their inhabitants intent on misery.


Heroes. Victims. Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes, every one of them
Convinced he's in the right, all of them glad
To repeat themselves and their every last mistake
No matter what.

People so deep into
Their own self-pity, self-pity buoys them up.
People so staunch and true, they're fixated,
Shining with self-regard like polished stones
And their whole life spent admiring themselves
For their own long-suffering.
Licking their wounds
And flashing them around like decorations.
I hate it, I always hated it, and I am
A part of it myself

-- the Chorus, from Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes

Limitless

It intrigues me of course just how many people in the United States will cheer for a man who is a worthless shit.

Stephen Kuusisto, via Planet of the Blind

I think a lot of us are trying to figure out what's going on. Unlike years past when you didn't like a presidential candidate, you could make jokes about moving from the country but know deep down that you'd never do it. You had faith that the four-year cycle would be over quickly, that things would be righted, that you could grit your teeth and bear it, maybe even work in your local community to address issues that were important to you. 

This time it really seems different, and when I put my chin on my hand and stare blankly into the limitless blue sky of southern California, I think I know why. For me, it's different this time because it's the people themselves who are allowing this man to win primaries, who are cheering for him, waving signs and seemingly agreeing with his vile pronouncements and insults. It's the people themselves.

The thing is that I don't want to live in a country with people like this -- with so many people like this, with enough people like this that can propel this man toward receiving a nomination. I suppose I will have to, though, if it comes down to it. I don't know. If you're thinking about voting for this man, if you have any inclination to vote for or support this man, don't tell me. Don't tell me because I honestly don't want to talk to you ever again. Maybe you don't want to talk to me ever again, either, and that's fine. 

I refuse to be even the tiniest bit complicit in raising this man to any more powerful level than he already commands. 

You thought we would never change

I didn't know what kind of photo would be a good lead-in to a post that includes my selection of country to live in should That Businessman Who Won the New Hampshire Primary go on and win the presidency, but yesterday as Oliver and I drove around the big shitty, we looked up and noticed this example of graffiti at its finest. Do ya'll have these McDonald's billboards everywhere in your little or big shitties that declare some big change that's coming? Evidently, McDonald's is about to change, and we sure don't know in what way. Are they going to be paying their workers as much as their executives? Are they going to use only organic, grass-fed beef? Are they going vegan? Are they swearing off sugar sodas? Are they going to stop exploiting third world countries? Are they going to work in earnest to reverse the travesty that is the American diet and food/agriculture system?

In any case, the graffiti artist known as Thrasher (according to one of my dear friends, this person unfortunately defaced her property several months ago) has answered the question quite well.

J.K.
LOL.



As I type this, I realize just how perfect that photo is -- you know -- the McDonald's, The Donald, etc.  for this post. Sweet Jesus, I wish we could just all text each other laughing emojis and text JKs and LOLs after yesterday's primary in New Hampshire.*

Remember back in the good old days of Romney/Obama when folks of a certain political persuasion kept whining how they wanted their country back?

Yikes. I know how they feel.

Mary Moon at Bless Our Hearts suggested we all start thinking about what country we might want to live in should That Businessman win, emphasizing that Mexico would work because of that wall that The Businessman would erect that would not only keep the Mexicans out but would also serve to keep those Americans that voted for The Businessman away from us as well. Hmmmm. Mexico? I'm still hankering for a trip to Bora Bora, to tell you the truth.  I imagine I could still work My New Job from such a remote location, and Sophie would love living in a little hut over the ocean. I do love this country, but I can't say that I love the people in it that would vote in a primary for such a hateful, ugly fool. There. I said it.

JK
LOL


Now I'm going to do a little research and see if McDonald's has conquered Bora Bora, yet. If not, you'll know where to find me.








*I'm talking about the results of the Republican primary, of course. If you're a new reader, you should be aware that this is a COMMUNIST site. As for the Democratic primary, I'm not ready to commit but am leaning toward the one whose name rhymes with Flanders.

Waiting for the Dishwasher to Drain

I'm waiting in my bedroom. There's a man from Armenia in my kitchen, crouched down by my dishwasher. He's waiting for the Quick cycle to complete so that he can determine why it's not draining.  I only mention that he's Armenian because he looked at me strangely when I asked whether he was checking out the Dodgers schedule, a large magnet attached to the refrigerator door and at his eye level. In my country, we don't watch baseball, he said, I love soccer. I asked him what country although I had already guessed by his accent, but unlike The Donald, I veer toward the politically correct and didn't want to profile him in any way. Capische? my father would say. That's you, I'm asking, not the dishwasher repairman. I'm fascinated these days by the collision of language and culture, a collision that seems inevitable for all but those who've taken vows of silence. It seems like there's always someone or something to offend, whether you're being completely rude and calling someone a fucker, let's say, or mincing your words while wearing the yoke of politically correct intentions.  There's rape culture and microaggression and ableism and racism and sexism and what means yes and what means no, good intentions and bad ones, consciousness and unconsciousness and subconsciousness. And then there's the law and the interpretation of the law and the protection of the law and the rebuffing of the law.  It's a weird sort of tyranny, I think, but I haven't thought deeply enough about it to make sense here. Did you participate in the Armenian 100 year celebration? I asked him, looking for something to share. Oliver and I had walked to the end of our street during the parade and watched the tens of thousands of Armenians walking toward the Turkish embassy. The dishwasher repairman said, Yes, but my grandfather had waited all of his life for it and was waiting to go back and visit his home that he'd fled. He died right before. I told him that I was sorry to hear that, to hear that his wait had been for nought, and the dishwasher repairman shook his head and replied that at least they could acknowledge this waiting, this crime. Then we both looked at the dishwasher, like it was waiting for us. I came back here, to my bedroom, to wait. Capische?