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

Things That Go Boom

     It’s July 7th.  Bombs are still exploding over LaLa Land. I was especially fond of the one that went off, what sounded and felt like, a matter of feet from my bedroom, at 12:50 this morning. 

After I got my heart started again, and climbed from the floor, back into bed, I was so grateful I don’t live in Ukraine. And then I felt even worse for the Ukrainians. Putin is an evil, monstrous terrorist. But, that is another topic.

Is giving people heart attacks in the middle of the night a sign of American patriotism?  Is that celebrating the birth of our democratic republic?  And do we still have a republic? 

The guys who are trying to get rid of all their leftover fireworks from the 4th seem to think they are still celebrating freedom. Freedom to blow up things.  And maybe they just like to hear things go boom!  Is that a guy thing? And why a late at night thing? Early this morning, that bang had more of a ring of revenge to it. But for what and against whom?

The love of things that go kaboom makes more sense to me.  They are probably the same guys who take the mufflers off their cars and race around our residential streets as though they are in a competition with other muffler-less drivers for their lives. Between those ear-splitting drag racers, the ubiquitous helicopters and sirens, it’s a wonder we aren’t all more sleep-deprived.

Probably, also, the same guys who are constantly flipping over cars in our streets.  I did read that deaths due to car accidents are on the rise. Is it that deafening (male?) speed-demon urge, or is it due to our devices we can’t seem to put down for a minute, even while driving, possibly on top of sleep-deprivation?

Those drivers and midnight firework bomb throwers are probably, also, part of the 54% (130 million) of 16-74 year olds in our country which has a below the equivalent of a 6th grade proficiency in literacy and reading, (per US Dept. of Education).  

Our country has been dumbed down to make it easier for the greedy and power hungry to get US citizens to vote against their own interests and to give them tax breaks, or no tax bill at all. I have known people who were poor, but felt one day they, too, would be wealthy, argue angrily for tax cuts for billionaires. Sucker born every minute?

Donald Trump being the consummate con man, convinced his brainwashed “suckers” that they were right to hate, bully, and even murder those who don’t look like them, have different skin tones, speak other languages, or belong to a different religion, etc.  He and his GOP henchmen convinced them that those “others” were trying to “cancel their culture.” And meanwhile, while they were distracted blaming those others, DT and GOP were stealing their money, their rights, and installing an autocracy.

This is why DT on his campaign trail told his audiences that he loved the uneducated, or was it the poorly educated? It is far easier to convince a non-critically thinking 6th grader that he needs to fear, hate, blame, and scapegoat others than it is to convince an educated and informed citizen. 

It’s also easier to use religion to make people fear and hate the other.  Go figure. Nothing says “God” like hate and fear and guns.  Go figure, too, that his “Christian” followers also put him in the same category with their Jesus, as the Second Coming. Fear and hate sell better than sex, apparently.  

DT got his cult followers to violently act out against their own country to save their country from “them.” Them, the educated?  The brown or black people? Democrats? Progressives?  Women? He got them fearing that if he was not in our White House, they would soon be forced to the back of the bus as they become the irrelevant minority. 

And in the back of the bus, their guns would be confiscated and their “power” and freedom would be robbed from them. The “Christian” SCOTUS is ending access to abortion and possibly to birth control soon, because they want more white babies born. Unwanted, poor, uneducated, easily controlled white citizens.

He and GOP have created very dangerous, heavily armed, under-educated, under-informed,  or completely lied to, mobs.  Take a look around.  Is this the America we grew up loving, celebrating, and thankful to for our freedoms? And I almost forgot to mention the 220 people shot and killed over the July 4, 2022 weekend. Thank God for the 2nd Amendment, NRA, SCOTUS, and the Republican party which protects our right to own, and carry everywhere, weapons of war on the streets of our country.

Is, as we keep being told, America on the verge of its second civil war? I’d vote to let the south and other brainwashed and/or ignorant states to secede this time. Why stop them? The blue states support the red states.  We will save a fortune and get our rights back. I think it’s time to say farewell and tell them not to let the doorknob hit ya where the good lord split ya on your way out.  And, oh, take your Christofascist form of repression with you. Thanks. 

Jacosa Puella July 7, 2022

Don't Agonize, Organize.

Been thinking what I want to say about the dangerous insanity of this current SCOTUS. What can one say? So many things, mixed with outrage, flood the mind. And, also, words become hard to form with tears flowing from your eyes and smoke billowing from your ears. I needed a few days. Crying with protestors in the streets after that ill-fated decision to overturn Roe, (after undoing NY's gun law), while I was not actually out there in the streets with them, was helpful. 

We have four justices who should not even be on the court. Let's work on impeaching them for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings as a start. Mitch McConnell, who owes his allegiance ($$$) to Leonard Leo of the Federalist society, a Catholic Opus Dei member, (I think he has placed 5-6 justices on the court, most are Opus Dei?), installed Neil Gorsuch into the seat he stole from President Obama. 

Scalia had suddenly died leaving the vacancy during Barack Obama's last year in office. Obama nominated Merrick Garland. Mitch thought, no way is this black Democratic president going to appoint three justices. So, he created his new rule: POTUS can't nominate a justice to the court within 10 months of a POTUS election. And, go figure, it worked. Dems are just too polite. To understand what a cold, rather heartless rightwing justice Gorsuch is, look up his record. And read, too, how even the other justices think he's an arrogant, patronizing know it all.

 

Then, about five minutes before the end of the reign of Donald J. Trump, (orange Caligula, as I refer to him), Mitch shoved Amy Coney Barrett into RBG's seat when RBG made the unforgivable mistake of dying before Joe Biden could take his place in our Oval Office. Because Amy's a woman and so was RBG, women will be happy, MM figured. A woman is a woman is a woman, to bastardize Gertrude Stein's poem. Of course, women knew that ACB did not smell as sweet as RBG. But, MM got away with it. Again, Dems were too polite. And meanwhile, Amy isn't even qualified to be on the court. She's the least experienced justice in 30 years, I read, (I guess the last least qualified was Thomas 30.). She never tried a case, and her opinions showed her to not care about justice or people's rights. She signed an anti-abortion ad and said she forgot about that, while avoiding abortion questions, just saying precedence is precedence. And she was literally, a "Handmaid" in her Catholic cult, People of Praise, where men make the decisions and women serve the men and God. Sounds like judge material to me.

Kavanaugh should have been left by the side of the road with a beer keg and a box of Kleenex. Lied and cried and yelled at his confirmation hearing about how much he loves beer. In that confirmation hearing, Beer Bong Kavanaugh's behavior also just screamed Supreme Court Justice material. Didn't it? It had to make you as proud as it made me. What a shocking performance. Witnesses came forward to shed light on his past sexual assaults. Christine Blasey Ford did the right thing to try to save the court and the nation. But, to no avail, and she suffered for it, even having to move out of her home due to threats. And he got onto the court. And who paid off all his very large debts remains a mystery. And another mystery to me, is why didn't Kavanaugh's wife pack up the kids and get the hell away from that snivelly little fool? 

Clarence Thomas, Uncle Tom or Peeping Thomas, as he's been referred to, had a similar problem with his past. Anita Hill was a hero back then, too, but also to no avail. It remains a white man's world, after all, due to gerrymandering and cheating and voter suppression. And few are whiter than that black man.

 

So, two sexual assaulters helped undo Roe v Wade for women who are raped, or are victims of incest, and become pregnant. Even if your doctor says you will die in childbirth, you will be forced to die in childbirth now, or be charged with murder. Stranger than fiction. Life always is. Isn't it? About 30 years after Thomas' confirmation hearing and Anita Hill's testimony, "Gin" Thomas, that lovely MAGA insurrectionist, called Anita very early one morning, demanding that she apologize for the things she'd said about her husband back then. Bit of a delayed reaction, I'd say. I figured Ginni had been tippling all night long, and got more enraged with every drink until she drunk dialed her husband's old nemesis and dumped on poor, unsuspecting Anita Hill.

 

We are losing our democracy and sliding into a theocracy. A theocracy which gives more rights to guns than to women. I still do not understand the guns and god thing or what makes "Christians" think Jesus would be into any weapon. Have they ever actually read what Jesus purportedly said? To me it is an unholy alliance from hell. 

Leonard Leo's long range plan has been to unravel our democratic republic and replace it with a theocracy. And he's been very good at it. He is well funded by Koch brothers and others and because Dems are just too polite. 

Let me amend myself. US is not becoming a theocracy. It is fast becoming a Christofascistic state. QAnon Christofascism. Women in the Jewish religion have the right to an abortion. They believe life begins at your first breath and ends at your last breath. I guess they will have to demand a religious exemption to this Christofascist ban to receive their God given right to reproductive healthcare.

The world is astounded and frightened to see what America, the democratic country they looked up to, is becoming. I think they fear for us and laugh at us by turns. I think the world is still dumbstruck by how uneducated Americans are and how many guns US has, (393.3 million guns to about 330 million citizens.), and how many mass shootings, (at least 250 so far in 2022), and how many children are murdered in their classrooms. How does any civilized nation comprehend, explain, or defend it? 

And I hope those who are applauding that now public funds have to pay for religious schools, too, and that coaches are allowed to pray on the field, enjoy when a Muslim school demands taxpayers support it, and an Islamic Imam spreads his rug out and prays to Allah to bless their games, or asks Allah to kill America, the Great Satan. Or the Church of Satan prays that their team wins. Go Satan!

What a world. I'm back where I started. What can one say about the state of the union today? Stop the world, I want off? My suggestion is that Dems stop being so freakin' polite! And that everyone of voting age, get off their asses and get out and vote in November like their country and their lives depend on it! They do! It's not too late to reverse a lot of the damage done.

 

We can stop our downfall by taking more control of Congress, ending the filibuster, and expanding SCOTUS. While we’re at it, let’s set term limits, too.  This justice for life is not working, either. The generic post Roe reversal poll I read recently, had Dems up by 10 points. We can do this! 

As the phrase, the Afro-American woman civil rights activist, Florence Rae Kennedy, coined, and many, including Gloria Steinam and Rosi Braidotti, quoted, and Occupy Wall Street movement turned into a bumper sticker, said: "Don't agonize, organize!" 

And Rosi Braidotti is right. "Violence, pain and resentment are conducive to paralysis, not to change." Don't go down with the ship, yet. Remain positive and fight like hell. Re-radicalize! VOTE!

Lost in time and space

Have not had time to write. Very frustrating. I apologize to followers, if you're still out here. It seems that followers are not alerted to new posts via email, so I don't know what being a follower means, actually. At any rate, I'll be back. In the meantime, keep thinking and here's a lovely quote on woman from Ghandi in 1930 as a place holder :-)

"To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"