The Struggle Feels Real

#shakespeare#snl#roseanneroseannadanna#mom#pogo#Jesus#intuition#highermind#planestrainsandautomobiles#costco#citizenapp#normancousins#anatomyofanillness#beatles#montypython#gunsafety

Life seems to be a series of struggles, or maybe just one constant, uninterrupted struggle. As humans, we seem to be forever up against what Shakespeare called, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” 

Or as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It just goes to show ya. It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” 

My mother used to tell us, “If it isn’t one thing, it’s 12 others.” That seems more realistic. She was not a Saturday Night Live fan. In fact, I’m pretty sure her words preceded SNL’s existence. 

She would also remind us to not take ourselves too seriously.  She felt it would save us angst by not being too dramatic about things, I guess. She was the stoic type. She had a great sense of humor and I only saw her cry twice in my life, when a very close, dear friend and a relative died.

I later thought of it as my mother saying, as Jesus did, be in the world, but not of it. As in not buying into your self-important ego? Or as Pogo said,“Don’t take life too serious; it ain’t nohow permanent.” 

Mom was not a Pogo fan, nor did she quote Jesus or attend church often. So, I guess just navigating her own life made her a philosopher. Or maybe it was her Capricorn sensibilities. No drama. Just practicality.

We encounter forked roads daily. So, we learn to choose which way to turn.  But, how do we know which is the path of least resistance for us? How often do we confidently feel that we are choosing the right way? 

Is the old children’s rhyme of selecting things, “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” as good as any other method of making choices?  Could that be considered using our intuition? 

As in the 1987 Steve Martin/John Candy movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, where they are going the wrong way on the highway, and are nearly smashed between two semi-trucks after ignoring another driver’s screaming, are we ever sure that we did not take the wrong turn? 

In our day to day slogging through life, we feel cut off from our higher minds most of the time. So, we don’t trust our feelings or don’t listen to them at all. I think our intuition tries to warn and guide us with subtle signs. Too subtle? How often do we just dismiss signs? 

If I had been listening to my bad feelings about an appointment with a new doctor earlier this week, I would have saved myself a lot of time, anxiety, and gas money. I even threw Tarot cards on the visit. 

The cards were not fond of the doctor meeting, either.  If you know the cards, you will understand. I got The Tower, the card with ten swords in back.  But, I had to go. I’d postponed twice and it took me weeks to get that appointment.

So, I went, figuring I had just developed agoraphobia from too much pandemic alone time, and was probably projecting that onto the cards. I shoulda trusted my instincts and the negative cards.

I left that office, and canceled every future visit they had set, and the procedures they had scheduled. It felt like an assembly line there, and as though they were bilking insurance companies with unnecessary and unrequested procedures. I even had prescriptions to pick up, my pharmacy texted me, which I not requested and the doctor’s office had neglected to mention.

Unfortunately for the doctor’s office they had requested a Yelp review from me even before I was out of the building. I am pretty sure they are now rethinking that automatic text that goes out to new patients about being sure to leave a review. 

I wonder if Alec Baldwin had a premonition that he should not make his western movie, Rust, or if he had felt some anxiety he ignored. If so, we know he wishes he had listened to his misgivings.  

I thought I was either being my usual procrastinating self, or avoiding shopping this weekend with the crowds, when, despite my list for Costco, I decided to wait until a week day. 

Later in the day, I read on Citizen App that a couple had gone into my Costco with guns and robbed the warehouse of nine vacuums.  Nine vacuums. And their getaway car was a red Mercedes. 

First, I am glad I decided not to shop yesterday. Second, nine vacuums?  Third, a red getaway car? Isn’t that waving a red flag to cops?

I woke this morning to news about that horrific mass shooting in Monterey Park last night. People were celebrating the Chinese Water Rabbit New Year at a dance studio.  Ten dead. Twenty shot. The worst mass shooting since Uvalde, TX.  And in CA, where we have the strictest gun laws. How many of those victims had actually had second thoughts about going there or had warning signs to stay away that they ignored? 

In this world of gun toting crazies, should we all just stay home and not even worry about intuitive warnings? Maybe the news today is the warning. Beware at all times of who is around you and where you are going.  Don’t catch the eye of a stranger.  Don’t look like a victim.  Act tough.  And carry pepper spray and/or wear Kevlar. 

Maybe we all need to slow ourselves down, trust our instincts, and trust ourselves enough to avoid problems.  And how do we rise above our nervous minds and just see life, not as a personal obstacle course, but as simply and objectively just happening? And whether life is a drama or a comedy is up to our perspective, or our mood?

Can we learn to navigate the slings and arrows without taking it all so personally,  like life has it in for us, and maintain objectivity and humor? How do we keep our humor with tragedies like last night’s club shooting, or the massacre of 21, including 19 little kids and two teachers in Uvalde, or any of the mass shootings that are today so horrifyingly common place?

The theatre comedy/drama masks, Thalia and Melpomene respectively, could actually just symbolize the range of human emotions. They let us know that in life, sometimes we cry and sometimes we laugh. It’s just been so much more filled with tears than laughter in recent years. 

And I think that is why I have turned off the news more often lately and turned on old comedy movies. Only so much shit a girl can take. 

Norman Cousins had it right in his Anatomy of an Illness. He was told by his doctor that he would not survive ankylosing spondylitis, a painful collagen illness that rendered him immobile. He checked himself out of his hospital room and into a hotel room and watched movies that made him laugh until he had laughed himself well.  He restored his immune system with humor.

I don’t know the answers. I just know this world is killing us because we take it to heart. I know no one gets out alive, anyway. But, maybe we could enjoy our brief time in this insane world more if we just took ourselves less seriously, and paid attention to our higher selves or intuition.

As the Beatles sang in Within You Without You: “When you've seen beyond yourself, then you may find peace of mind is waiting there. And the time will come when you see we're all one. And life flows on within you and without you.”  

So, carry on and try to see the absurdity of our ego created human situation. Cry or laugh through it, life just is, anyway. As Winston Churchill said, “Just keep buggering on.”

Maybe if we reminded ourselves by daily singing one of my favorite songs, Eric Idle’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, we could shirk off even the worst life has to offer. As Eric sings:  “If life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten, and that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing. When you’re feeing in the dumps, don’t be silly chumps.  Just purse your lips and whistle - that’s the thing.” 

Jacosa Puella

January 22, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M

Deprogramming to Bridge the Divide

 

        Have you ever felt surrounded, out-gunned, and overwhelmed by the loud insanity yelling over you constantly online, and think your head might explode? Have you ever wanted to just shut the world out, singing loudly, Lalalalalala with your fingers in your ears?

        You are not alone, despite pandemic isolation making you wonder.

Life has not felt normal for about seven years now.  Thank you, Trump, MAGA, QAnon, KKK, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, militiamen, white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, and just plain old GOP, the most dangerous organization in US, etc.  

Our pandemic isolation, that has caused a lot of psychological and financial woes, could have been cut far shorter, with fewer deaths, and businesses and schools remaining open, if we hadn’t had such an influx of misinformation, disinformation, and crazy conspiracies. And thank you, anti-vaxxers, for bringing back polio, too, BTW.  Gee. We missed it.

And now there is a new COVID variant for this winter, due to its mutating, also thanks to anti-vaxxers. We owe them so much. Dogs have to have all their shots before they can get together with other dogs.  But, you can’t even explain that to that anti-information group.

I’ve read and heard a lot of the disinformation was Russian propaganda.  Nothing Putin would rather see than US citizens dead from a virus, and/or at war with itself, to divide and conquer US.  Putin has been spreading disinformation and fomenting division and violence in US, at least since the orange con man formally launched his campaign, June 16, 2015 on that escalator with his paid audience. 

I want to blame the Trumpers for buying into the lies and conspiracies, and spreading them along with all their prejudices and hatred. Trump gave conspiracy cockroaches permission to come out of the woodwork and wreak their havoc.

It’s worse right now, of course, because it’s that voting time again.  So much more propaganda and so many more lies are swirling about US in election season. So many loud and obnoxiously opinionated and ignorant folks are feeling their oats. And, too, again, there are probably a lot who are Russian bots.  

The wrong-headed stuff I’ve been reading and hearing lately are staggering.  They are projecting Trump’s worst attributes onto Biden. There is so much hatred of Biden online.  None of the things that they accuse him of are true. But, they are true of Trump. Trump is the pedophile, sexual predator, con man criminal, and traitor the misinformed MAGA crowd says Biden is.

And you can’t make sense to any of the purveyors of this garbage. They yell over you.  Republicans and Democrats used to be able to debate and argue in Congress, and go out for a beer after. The good old days. Now Dems need to wear Kevlar jackets to Congress. 

And Republicans continue on the smear campaigns. The Neanderthal blonde with the voice of a Velociprator in Congress, told the orange con man’s mob at his last rally the other day that Democrats are killing Republicans. She lied and made up stories and they believed her.  She was stirring up more violent insurrections.  How is that legal? Free speech does not covering yelling fire in a theater. It should not cover trying to start a violent overthrow of the government.

Is MTG now just MT with the impending divorce?  As Stephanie Miller said on her radio show when she heard about the divorce, “Her husband wants a Greene New Deal.” MT is a Q crazy and Q is eating her and all their brains. 

They accuse Dems of drinking babies’ blood.  I mean, really? Remember the pizza parlor in DC, with the basement where supposedly Hillary Clinton was sex trafficking children? Remember the man who took a gun into that pizza parlor to shoot them? The pizza parlor has no basement. Innocents out for pizza that night could have been killed due to these lunatics.  How do deal with the gullible? Again, you can’t talk to them.

And sadly, I am related to some, not Q, but Evangelicals who think Biden is Satan and Trump is the second coming.  I got tired of hitting a brick wall with them and being accused of only reading “fake news.” The more I reasoned and gave them facts and stats, the more I heard I was fake news.  

So, I decided to read an article on deprogramming the brainwashed.  Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong all along. I was creating an armed camp on the other side by disagreeing with them and trying to get them facts.

The article said we should pretend to understand and even be on their side. Get on their good side, so to speak. Contradicting and arguing with brainwashed subjects is spitting in the wind.  One must get their trust, not get their hackles up.  I’m not good at this.

But, after nearly losing family members and friends, (Well, I did lose a few along the way.), I decided to try the professionals’ advice.  Get their confidence by agreeing with little things.  And when you get them to let down some of their defenses, ask questions about stuff they believe. Using the Socratic method.

But, you need to ask questions in a way that does not sound like you are putting them down or belittling their beliefs.  Not as easy as it sounds.  Because when I hear or read the things they believe, I have to breathe deeply, and try to see things from their POV as to why they have accepted such outlandish ideas.

Sometimes they have some stuff right.  Sometimes I have some stuff wrong. So, I figure I can start there and let them correct things I say and say, oh, I didn’t know that, or concede a point or two.  Take them off guard and then ask them questions that may make them question what they have accepted as true.  Then if you can get a little trust, gently throw in a few facts that they can check.

Maybe ask them questions that make them see why the other side is saying what they are saying, as in who is to gain from that?  For instance, I have relatives who really believe Biden is corrupt and his family is a crime family.  They think Trump is just misunderstood and has been attacked forever.

Where do you start with that? I used to give them titles and authors of books to read. They didn’t read them.  They just said the authors were anti-Trump or they had Trump derangement syndrome.  They tell me I have Trump derangement syndrome. 

Gotta hand it to that con man. He’s good. They really believe his victimhood stories.  They are the ones with  Trump derangement syndrome, and it goes deep.

So, how does one get through that wall of brainwashing? Not easily.  I’m a work in progress.  I only read one article on deprogramming so far. And I’ve only begun work on one relative.  But, I am hoping that I am learning that my tactics were not working at all, and I’m hoping that by adapting my tactics, language, behavior, etc., I can affect a change in their thinking.

I’ll keep you posted.  This could take a century or two.  The misinformation and disinformation is very ingrained.  Between the pervasive Russian propaganda going around social media, and the grifter in chief having gotten so many people’s confidence, and still being allowed to hold rallies where he continues his big lies, and so many Republicans willing to repeat the lies to win elections with his ignorant base, it is a Sisyphean task.  

I’ve never seen the nation so divided as it is now since the country was taken over by probably the best con man America has ever seen.  There’s a new book out by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Divider, Trump in the White House 2017 - 2021. I haven’t read it, yet.  I have lived it, though.  Those years left me, and so many of us, with such angst and dismay about how far we have fallen, fearing for the future of democracy.  

I should probably also read the book, Talking Across the Divide, How to Communicate with People You Disagree with and Maybe Change the World, by Justin Lee.  Maybe that should be my next non-fiction book in my deprogramming education.  

We saw the culmination of the divide and the lies on January 6, 2021, and the committee hearings are still going on.  But, many of us fear that that insurrection was not the culmination, but rather a dress rehearsal for those who would overthrow our government and install a fascist dictator.  Fingers crossed.

Jacosa Puella

October 3, 2022

Do No Good

 

“No good deed goes unpunished,” my mother told me, often. I chalked it up to her sense of humor, until I realized what she meant. Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) echoed my mother’s words yesterday, when he said do not be a do-gooder. 

Well, he didn’t exactly say it yesterday.  He died three years ago. But, I listened to a two hour talk he did years ago that I happened across yesterday. I hadn’t read or heard him for decades.  But, when he popped up on YouTube on my iPhone, seemed like a good distraction. I was trying to avoid my book, They Want to Kill Americans, by Malcolm Nance. 

Brilliant book, but terrifying about the state of our country since the con man, Putin’s useful idiot, the orange Caligula, occupied our White House and encouraged every mentally challenged, mentally ill, angry, hate-filled, racist, paranoid, and heavily armed militant to come out of the woodwork to start a revolution in his honor. 

Trump was trumpeting the end of democracy in America.  He wanted to be king. And he told his violent supporters they needed to go “fight like hell” to get that golden crown and throne for him.

I can only take Nance’s book in snippets, it seems. Snippets probably being another term I inherited from my mother.  I want to be aware of what is going on in our country and the world, but I have to look away, or I’ll lose my mind with it all. 

I can’t look at the hell Putin is raining down on Ukraine’s population or I can’t stop crying.  I can’t even watch those ads asking us to help poor, abused pets. Yow.  And I need fluff escapist fare, too, at night before bedtime.  Otherwise, nightmares ensue.

I once woke up, during the days when I set a radio alarm for work, to news going into my subconscious. I was apparently not ready to wake up and get up, and the news just kept playing into my dreams. 

I had nightmares of holy terror happening around me. It was truly terrifying. I was happy to finally wake up and get out of that bloody war zone.  It’s not just yellow journalism, of "If it bleeds it leads," stuff. I guess the worst news sells the best. That’s why mainstream media gave us that traitorous crook constantly.  He made them big advertising bucks.  Sadly.  

I learned then to avoid reality before bed and upon waking. I saw a meme the other day that summed it up.  “Now I understand why roosters wake up and scream!”  

Only so much reality one can take in one setting.  As the saying went during the 60s/70s, “Reality is for those who cannot take drugs.” Reality can be a tough pill to swallow, especially now. Though my history buff friend tells me humans have always been this horrible. And Steven Pinker says we are less violent today than we used to be.  Yeah. We are no longer drawing and quartering people, I guess.   

I had, as you can imagine, and I can imagine you had, too, a very tough time since that lying, malignant narcissist stole the election in 2016 with help from Putin and company and began destroying our peace and our democracy. 

So, I needed something a bit more uplifting and hopeful yesterday.  I set aside Malcolm Nance’s well researched warnings and picked up the Ram Dass talk. I can’t, nor would I attempt to, encapsulate an entire two hour talk here, but bottom line, Ram Dass was saying, don’t do good. Be good. 

Jesus may have said something similar.  I think our being creatures with finite brains, precludes our actually being able to see or understand the big picture of life.  We just slog through our own darkness and often just project our own assumptions onto others and decide they need us to do something to make their lives better, when we don't even know what we're doing with our lives.  

We might think we are doing good and yet be making matters worse for someone or a bunch of someones. Maybe our trying to help someone who is just doing their own thing and struggling through as we all are, could make them want to punch us. Maybe it could come off as if we feel superior and they are inferior and in need of us.  I don’t know.  I’m trying to remember Bible lessons I learned nearly 70 years ago.

Malcolm Nance is just good. He doesn’t try to do good. He’s currently in Ukraine fighting to help Ukrainians save their democracy, while warning US that we are a gnat’s wing away from losing democracy here, too. He cares.  He fights for what he sees as right and against what he sees as clear and present dangers. Trump and Putin are both huge clear and present dangers to both our country and the world, and humanity at large.  

I recommend everyone read this latest Malcolm Nance book, (Profits all go toward helping Ukraine, and they do need help.), as well as all his books.  But, I also recommend taking a vacation often from the stress of trying to face reality. Hearing Nance tell us that January 6, 2021’s violent take over of our Capitol was probably a dress rehearsal, is agida inducing, to say the least. 

I am hoping that the January 6th Congressional Committee and the DOJ keep indicting Proud boys, Boogaloo Bois, Oath Keepers, KKK, Nazis, etc., and that judges give them long sentences and take away their rights to own guns. 

We need to send a message to all those dangerously brainwashed cult members that US democracy is not up for grabs, that autocracy and fascism are a beginning of the end of their freedoms and rights, as well as ours. They know not what they do. 

Jacosa Puella

August 29, 2022

When Neighbors Don't Realize They Have Neighbors

I want to keep peace with neighbors and get along.  Doesn’t everyone?  Mostly I am friends with neighbors and have keys to most of their homes and vice versa, in case of anything.  So, I don’t want to complain too much. Everyone has a right to party now and then. 

I just want people to be aware and thoughtful of others.  Not much to ask, seems to me. I was raised to think of others before myself.  My dad was annoyingly over the top about it, too.  

Even so, I’d rather have someone aware of others around them, and courteous, rather than obnoxiously and unconsciously loud and invasive in my space.  This is a crowded city.  And we are all on top of each other. We have to do the best we can to be respectful of each other.  It’s fishbowl living in LA.

  My neighbors are now having an apparently uproariously funny party right under my windows this evening.  I’ve explained a few times that when they are in their yard under my windows, they might as well be in my living room and office. Do they forget or just not care? Their patio, their right? 

I had neighbors in that same back cottage next door years ago who were members of a band. They would come home after a gig at 2 or 3am and play live music till dawn on work nights. That was a fun time. 🤨 

I tried to reason with them and they told me I was jealous because they had a social life and I didn’t. 😳 The only way I got them to finally stop was by leaving an anonymous note at their door, as if it was from a group of their neighbors. 

The note said, if you don’t stop playing live music all night, when you go to sleep at dawn, we are going to begin pounding pots and pans and screaming in front of your door.  Hey.  It worked. 😂 At least it got them to finally take the band and move out. 

These current tenants work in TV, not music.  The young woman in the couple just finished writing This Is Us.  No loud music.  Just loud voices and loud laughter.  They seem like a nice group of people.  I never saw the show, but I heard it was funny.  

So, maybe they are practicing their humor over there. My neighbor is a very sweet girl. She is just loud, has the worst and loudest jarring laugh, and seemingly has no boundaries.  She walks over into our back area to call her cat. Never asks.  Just trespasses.  I say nothing. Again, peace has its price.

And basically, I grew up in a party, so I don’t mind hearing laughter and cheerful babbling outside my windows.  My parents were party animals. 🤣 They had parties right under my bedroom windows on their back patio, too.  Voices and laughter were soothing white noise for me. I could sleep through most of that.  Hearing the warm, friendly voices outside, so close made me feel secure.  

But, when I want to work and don’t really know the people, it’s a tad tougher. I feel invaded.  I had to close my windows and now it’s hot in here.  The owners of the property moved out of their front house, and I thought it would be a lot more quiet.  

They were also from TV/film, and had movie screenings at night on their driveway with what sounded like a Dolby Sound system.  I texted him one night to ask if he could possibly lower the volume by one decibel, (you know like down to 10 from 11?), so I could hear my TV.  Apparently, he felt I was raining on his crowd pleasing parade over there. He texted back that when he hit the lottery he was buying our building and blowing it up.  🤣

He’s a prop master who works on huge projects, making many props at home in his garage studio.  And he restored his 1928 house himself, too. I was basically living in a construction zone daily for years, often with nightly parties, too. But, he is such a nice, generous, and helpful neighbor, (if you overlook the noise), I just coped as best I could. He even gave me a noise-canceling headset. It canceled nothing.  But, it was the thought that counted. I guess.  😬

Then he and his wife had two kids in a row.  To say the kids were loud is a huge understatement.  Nice kids, too, though. But, I don’t remember ever crying or screaming that much at their ages, or smashing things.  My dad, who didn’t allow us to impose on others, would have knocked me into the next week.  But, again, after they moved, I expected a lot of quiet.  So much for theory. This is noise pollution central. There are worse things.  🧐 All considered, I don’t live in Ukraine.

It’s now the next day.  I survived. I just turned up music, closed windows, put on fans, and then turned on TV and turned up its volume, too. I guess we all have our defense mechanisms to survive living in the city.  

Not much I can do about helicopters, sirens, loud muffler-less cars, etc.  The fireworks, as I mentioned in my last blog, were loud. But, it doesn’t seem like they went on as long as they have in previous years.  Maybe after all the upsetting SCOTUS rulings recently, people lost some of their glee for patriotism and exploding things? 

Jocosa Puella

July 10, 2022