It’s not you, it’s me. Okay, that’s a lie…it’s you. I can’t take all of your caffeine anymore! I’m not that same badass bitch who bragged about slamming two pots before dinner. Now, I know you’re thinking about that stupid fling with the Celestial Seasons back in the 80s and how I came crawling back. The truth is that Lemon Zinger, Sleepytime and Tummymint never really did it for me. No, not even Emperor’s Choice, all of that was really just to prove that I could give you up, but I knew I’d be back the whole time, they were, to me at least, literally–weak tea.
You see, I have a new doctor now, and she doesn’t just medicate. It’s also about what I eat and drink, and apparently not enough vitamins D and B2, but that’s beside the point, I was having way too much of you. No more than 16 oz a day, she said, so where does that leave us? And no, I’m not interested in your bastard offspring decaf. That’s a foul beverage trick and I want no parts of it. I know people say they’re fine with it, but I’m not one of them, I’d wind up right back at your doorstep, and then what? Yeah.
What will I do now, you ask? Smug bastard, ain’t ya? Perhaps you haven’t noticed that fancy new gizmo sitting next your shiny glass pot the past few days. Know what that is? It’s a loose leaf tea steeper, bud, and not for any weak-ass chamomile either. Oh, I see I have your interest now, huh?
I’ve found a brew to replace you, coffee, and it’s Rooibos. They call it red tea, but it kind of looks more like needles than leaves, I don’t care, really, it tastes great. It brews up to a beautiful color, it tastes good plain, chai or with vanilla and I can drink it after supper. You heard that right. I can drink it right before bed if I feel like it, so there.
I don’t think I’ll be back this time, coffee. We had a good run. I gotta go now, the tea kettle is whistling~
How’s it going, Partiers? Tonight’s tunes are all about feelings, moods, emotions, you know what I mean. So, we’ll take it where ever that leads and I’ll kick it off with a few~
Hey there, Partiers! Tonight we’re doing tunes about time, any time at all. That means time on the clock, days of the week, months, seasons, dates or even terms dealing with time. Sunset? Sure, that’s a time. Forever? I guess that would fall within my roolz. Just…no Manic Monday, mmmkay?
A lot of us are trying to make our way in this world struggling with what they call “invisable illnesses.” Now, what that means is–we may look perfectly fine, but we’re not. When we hang our disability placard and head into the store we feel that look, would it make you feel better if I limped for you, lady? I’m not going to! I have intractable migraine and fibromyalgia, so while I may look marvelous, I might just feel like shit and I am not alone.
Hey, Partiers! This week at the Party we’re going untamed, and we’re featuring tunes, groups, artists, or lyrics with animals in them. I’m going to get us started with a twofer~
Several years back, when Mom was first diagnosed with senile dementia, we knew that things would change here at chez triv, but it was a gradual thing, at first it was mostly a case of CRS (can’t remember shit)–a lot of repeating herself and just asking the same question over and over again. Monday, Mom, it’s Monday. She liked to tell the same stories over too, like the time when she was young and my Uncle Frankie spun her but good on the dance floor and she twirled right into catastrophe and needed stitches, but was so drunk she wanted to go back to the dance…ah good times~
Over the next couple of years we struggled to find ways to keep her connected as she lost her ability to enjoy reading, Mom was always a big reader, and to play games, it never mattered what game we were playing, Mom was in, or to even sit around and have a good bull session, Mom always knew who had skeletons in their closet and if they weren’t in that closet, she knew where they were buried, and now all of these things were gone. So, more and more, Mom took to her room, watching The Golden Girls and simple things she could follow, no more police procedurals for her, where once she knew whodunit before the second act was half-way through, she couldn’t even follow them now.
hello cruel world. take that. and that. and that. leftists look injustice in the eye then look for a stick to poke it with, find lonely leaves of grass, and injustice blinks or maybe winks.
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
by the end of 1877’s Virgin Soil, Turgenev’s sixth, final, and longest novel, Nejdanov has taken his own life, unwilling to go to prison in Siberia for a cause that has taken everything from him and will not, in his own mind, accept his desire for the beautiful, culminating, like Whitman, in a desire to write poems. ironically, by dying, his most stalwart comrade, the hopelessly in love Mashurina, is deprived of the one thing, Nejdanov, to which she is devoted other than the revolution. desperate for any remembrance of Nejdanov, Mashurina spends a few moments at the end with the blowhard but equally lonely socialist hanger-on Paklin. Paklin, desperate for conversation and relevance, tosses out stupid questions. Mashurina slams the door:
Paklin pulled himself up.
“Why, of course … do have some more tea.”
But Mashurina fixed her dark eyes upon him and said pensively:
“You don’t happen to have any letter of Nejdanov’s … or his photograph?”
“I have a photograph and quite a good one too. I believe it’s in the table drawer. I’ll get it in a minute.”
He began rummaging about in the drawer, while Snandulia went up to Mashurina and with a long, intent look full of sympathy, clasped her hand like a comrade.
“Here it is!” Paklin exclaimed and handed her the photograph.
Mashurina thrust it into her pocket quickly, scarcely glancing at it, and without a word of thanks, flushing bright red, she put on her hat and made for the door.
“Are you going?” Paklin asked. “Where do you live? You might tell me that at any rate.”
“Wherever I happen to be.”
“I understand. You don’t want me to know. Tell me at least, are you still working under Vassily Nikolaevitch?”
“What does it matter to you?” “Or someone else, perhaps Sidor Sidoritch?” Mashurina did not reply.
“Or is your director some anonymous person?” Mashurina had already stepped across the threshold. “Perhaps it is someone anonymous!”
She slammed the door.
Paklin stood for a long time motionless before this closed door.
“Anonymous Russia!” he said at last.
in some ways, we all have had the door slammed in our face and are left anonymous. more sadly than Mashurina, who at least was on the clearly ascending side of history, we are more like the pathetic Paklin, trying to piece together our own relevance. the oppressors are desperate too, to make us feel that we are on the descending side of history, and oh how it feels that they are right when that door slams yet again.
perhaps tiny is the measure of your impact after so much dedication and sacrifice. perhaps it is a lost job. perhaps it is a beating by yet another dirtbag you feel forced to tolerate because you have no place else to go (you can leave, we will try to help). perhaps it is deep loneliness at the loss of someone good that you loved so much and will never see again. perhaps self-medication has become part of your problem, and those who love you couldn’t take it anymore.
maybe you pull yourself up, and try to reach out:
perhaps it is “just” a diary that few read. perhaps it is a diary that many read but which is soon lost in the vapors before discouraging objective conditions. perhaps it is … you know, and maybe no one else does, your personal objective conditions and how you feel standing before a lifetime of closed doors of one kind or another.
“O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless-of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light-of the objects mean-of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all-of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest-with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?”
sometimes all you can do is get up in the morning.
“My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
but please do get up in the morning. please. we love and need you tender comrade.
we are penniless. we are broken. we are shattered. children shot. bombs are bursting on our homes. but we shall not be defeated.
Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families-re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is already plow’d and manured; others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches-and shall master all attachment.
Hey there Partiers! You know those tunes you sing along to whenever you hear them? Sure you do. So, tonight we’re going for videos with lyrics to help everybody else sing along too. Hopefully, by the end of the evening we’ll all have had our fill of the intoxicant of our choice and be full out, head thrown back, singing along at the top of our lungs right at our screens~
As some of you may know, I’ve been writing for several years off and on about coping with a debilitating chronic illness, dealing with a special needs child, and becoming a full time caretaker to my mom, who is suffering with rapidly progressing dementia. I’ve written about difficulties with doctors, feeling guilt over not being an active enough parent, feeling the grief of losing a parent who is still sitting there right in front of you, and the strategies I’ve used to cope with these things. Half in the hope that what I wrote would help somebody else, and half because it helped me, just to be able to talk about it.
I did that for the series “Chronic Tonic”–which I was proud to be a part of, and try to carry on, but now I feel like it’s time to move forward, you know, broaden my scope. Because coping is not just about being ill, or dealing with a school system and your kid’s IEP, or even your mom losing herself. It’s about life. And it’s about family, and I have a big one.
I have the family I was born into, and that one is pretty big, my mom is one of nine, my dad is one of seven, and all of them procreated like crazy. But I also have another family, the family I chose, and who chose me, some of whom I’ve never met, but they’re family just the same. The illustrious internets have made it possible for us to go through hell and high water together, and that’s pretty much what we’ve done.
I’ve found that experience to be life sustaining for me. As the world in general seems to growing colder and more selfish, I find myself with a need for being kinder and more open. I know there are things I wouldn’t have gotten through without being able to talk about and have people who actually listen. Life throws all of us curveballs, and we could all use support when that shit happens.
So, I’ve decided to start something new. I’ll be posting a little something every week here from Hellpeckersville, whatever the week may bring, and from there we can talk about whatever we need to. What a mess this country is, the way we live today, the employment situation, depression, everything, and all the things we do to get by. The little islands of happiness we try to find along the way. Do you find that in art, music, food, inappropriate humor? Bring it.
Hey there, Partiers, welcome! You know, sometimes life hands you lemons and there just isn’t any sugar around to make lemonade out of those sour things. Whether it’s your job, family troubles, or heartbreak, there’s a tune for that, and tonight that’s what we’ll be featuring.
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