Apologies to Monty Python

I had a coughing fit in Trader Joe's the other day - I was petrified I would be thrown out bodily.  I tried to hide in the vitamin and health products aisle. I suppressed my cough and prayed that my mask was muffling the sound. Better to sound like I am choking than - gasp - coughing!

This morning I awoke to the same grey hazy sky.    I opened my front door and smelled smoke.  I closed my front door and went to open the back door hoping the other side of the house may be different!  Nope, of course not - wishful thinking.  Smokey air, smokey air, smokey air.  The same awful news on the radio.  The same terribly depressing headlines only today made far worse by the travesty of Nancy Pelosi getting her hair shampooed and blow dried while we cower indoors. Nothing new.

There and then I decided to look at the bright side of life.  For this reason I have entitled this entry "Apologies to Monty Python."  

I remember Brian nailed to the crucifix singing 'Here's looking on the bright side of life ."

I too, am now looking on the bright side.  "I do not have covid 19 - my sense of smell is fine.  What unbridled joy."

 

Overview

This morning I received a whats app from my sister.  Someone narrates that Netanyahu has to go - enough of his narcissism, his insatiable greed, his lies, his corruption, his manipulations, his put down of the 'radical left', his betrayals, his control over the henchmen he has appointed ...........

Everything could be, and is, synonymous with our orange monster and his henchmen, with Kim Jong-un, with Lukashenko, Putin, Erdogan, Modi, and on, and on ...... ad nauseum.

As I said in my entry entitled Acquiescence,  everything and everyone is interconnected, and that is one of our lessons to be realised in this pandemic.  

I know I have struggled mightily lately to keep afloat with all that surrounds us, compounded by the fires and the noxious air.

Yes, everything is interconnected - and all over the world we see male leaders united in their quest for power and absolute control, for avarice, for utter contempt of the planet and its inhabitants.  It is not just our orange monster - 

We are in the midst of a major paradigm shift - a desperate struggle between power over vs. power within, dominion.

So we are witness to a planetary movement  - protests, strikes.  People are uniting to denounce racism, corruption, greed - people are rising up to demand justice - the right to health care, to education, to unpolluted food and water, the right to breathe, the right to live!

These desperate leaders bring out their military might to crush opposition, but I can see and feel and know it will not be crushed.  We are in the midst of an enormous transition.  We feel now as if we are moving blindfolded, in the dark. We do not see signs, there are no roadmaps, we don't know where we are going, we are lost in the wilderness. But there is a massive change fomenting.  And we are all part of it. Each of us has a role to play, the farmers, the labourers,  the fishermen, the teachers, the doctors, the nurses, the parents, the artists, the actors, the poets - and each of us is working to change to the best of our own abilities. And it is not easy, and we get depressed and feel hopeless and scared.  We feel abandoned and alone.  We are in unknown territory.  We lose faith and will.

BUT we cannot lose that glimmer of light, of hope.  There will be a change, and if not in our lifetimes, in those of our children and grandchildren.  

Things will not be same as before, 'as soon as there is a vaccine."   That is an illusion propagated by the monsters who think the millions they are pouring into looking for a cure will 'fix' everything and the world will continue as greedily and thoughtlessly as before. 

I don't believe there will be a quick fix  the novel coronavirus. I don't believe there will be a quick fix with a different government.  This undercurrent of change will go on - and eventually there will be some light.

I do believe there is an overview of all that is happening now. Hopefully lessons will be learned, and things will be different.

Our new normal

 

This is our new normal - three years in a row (or more).  Three years of enormous, deadly, catastrophical, unprecedented fires brought upon by climate change and our way of life - moving into wilderness areas, urban spread.

Our new normal happens earlier each year, and lasts longer.   

This year we have learned some new terms - mitigation, herd immunity, flattening the curve, - some new ways of being - isolated, socially distanced, masked

My vocabulary has catastrophically decreased

Unbelievable

horrendous

and a very appropriate word in Hebrew "hazui"  which means hallucinatory

This is for the most part, all I have to say.

Of course to top it all we are in the midst of a pandemic

Condensed version of the first couple of days of this week

 It has been very hot - unusual for August.  Hot and humid.  MOST unusual.

I watered my little bit of earth Saturday evening.  Early Sunday morning I was awakened by what I took for deer outside my window making rather a racket.  Then I heard rain - RAIN in mid August.  Thunder, lightning, absolutely unheard of.  But indeed, this happened.

The stifling heat has continued. I do what I learned to do in Israel, when we didn't have airconditioners. Pull down shades and make everything dark as possible.  Open up the house when the sun goes down.  And the sun goes down in a  breathtaking fashion.

Yesterday I took my car to the car wash.  This morning I awoke to the stifling heat with streaming eyes and the smell of .... smoke, ash.  I decided to go for a walk at the Berkeley Marina where at least there may be somewhat of a cool breeze.  My clean car was covered in ash. I made a futile attempt to wipe it off  While doing so the driver in a car coming down Stockton stopped next to me.  An Indian gentleman said "ash because of the fires. Bad air because of the fires."  He is right - I nodded sympathetically and we wished each other well.

I arrived at the Marina and parked my car.  A woman was just getting into her car in front of me.

"Lord," she said. "It is hot - go by the bayside. Also, you can't see nothing - the air is so bad." I nodded sympathetically, and she continued.  "My son is near Japan on the Ronald Reagan," the man in the White House doesn't know what he's doing. A ripple from Japan comes across the pond toward us. 

What he doin? Building walls - taking breasting babies from their mothers. It aint right. Sending those border police to cities, helicopters on us?  It aint right. And now the Post Office - and all them black people being killed by the cops, and everyone sick and dying. It aint right."

What his daughter and Melania doin"? What they know?"

I kept nodding in acquiescence - but each time I opened my mouth (under my mask) to say something, she carried on.  Her mask was under her chin, as she had finished her walk - perhaps it was easier for her to speak.  Also, I agreed with every single thing she said.  

She got ready to get in her car. As she opened the door I said "we have to vote."

"Right she said," turning on the car, 'and we got to keep on laughin.'

"Take care," I waved as she left.

It is wednesday - the week is far from over.

 

Malaise

I am not sure whether anyone is reading my posts.  If there is someone out there in the ether, you may have noticed that recently there have been no new entries.  I feel that I am experiencing somewhat of a covid-induced malaise.  It is not a true depression, but I am definitely not gliding along on a pink cloud of joy and happiness.

Objectively there isn't much to feel optimistic about.  This pandemic continues unabated, and I think the reality of what is happening cannot be absorbed all at one time. But every few days a little more sinks in. I speak to family and friends in Israel.  I was supposed to go there in April - when we realised that was not going to happen I thought I would visit around Rosh Hashanah.  That is obviously not going to happen - and maybe not next April either - who knows when.  

A cousin in South Africa had a knee replacement and I had entertained thoughts of going there to help. I am comforted that she does have support of family and friends - but the fact is she is far away.

Our world has changed, and is changing, and we do not have any roadmaps, either on a personal or a global level.  My dreams show me how I am floundering - an ongoing theme of having to go somewhere that is familiar, but now nothing looks the same and I just can't find my way. None of the roads I knew are quite the same as I had remembered, and they don't arrive at wherever it is I want to go.

I have had night time hallucinations of someone standing at the foot of my bed looking like a cross between a masked alien and an insect.  I also dreamed of a big dog swallowing my mask. I heard the dog gulp it down and called the vet who said it will cost me $5,000 to operate.  I was quite desperate as I did not have the money, or if I did spend it,  I would have nothing left.

Unmistakably themes of anxiety!

And I feel increasingly anxious as the orange monster sends out storm troops to cities, threatens to postpone elections, on and on.  Democracy hangs in the balance. Climate change (which doesn't exist) is threatening our very existence.  

OK - I get it.  Of course I am experiencing a malaise, to be out singing and dancing from the rooftops would be delusional.  To top it all, I think I should be expressing non stop gratitude for my situation, which is, in fact, not so bad.  After all, I do have a home, I can pay my rent, I do have friends and family, I am back in art class, I do have food -  yes, I am grateful, but not ecstatic!

Sorry. 

Dipping my toes

Recently I have begun my first teetering tottering steps toward venturing into the world outside of my immediate surroundings. i

The first time felt like when I walk on hot sand on a beach. Waves foam onto the sand, then recede, leaving tiny little holes in the wet sand.  It looks  inviting, so I  tentatively dip my toes  into the water, and a feeling akin to pain and shock moves up from the soles of my feet, and I quickly step back onto the hot sand. Again I put in my whole foot, then the other one, and then ... with a gasp I run in and dunk my whole body and stand up feeling refreshed and exhilarated.

Well, this is a bit of an exaggeration - I have not put in my whole body as yet, but yes, my toes are testing the water.

My cousin invited me to an outdoor dinner in her lovely garden in the Berkeley Hills.

It took a while for me to decide whether or not to go -

'Where has she been, who has she seen? Has she had any contacts with people outside of her family?  - I began an intensive interrogation.  After deciding I would go I drove up into the hills wearing a  down jacket and socks because the evening was turning into a typical summer evening here in the Bay Area - cold and foggy.

Three of us sat  at appropriate social distances around the table, shivering, drinking wine and eating her always delicious food.  The evening was delightful. When I left the fog had socked in and I hadn't driven at night in such a long time.  As I wound my way down the hills there seemed to be an uncommon amount of animal life, deer, raccoons, skunks. 

I recently finished all my knitting projects and was eager to embark on a new project - a sweater.  But of course, yarn shops are only open for curbside pickup. If there is one thing I HAVE to feel before I buy it, it is yarn, so I resigned to wait until shops would reopen.

Now there is a marked uptick in infections and quite obviously shops will not be open for a long time. A friend sent me a link to a service offered to knitters - I could arrange for a face time appointment to look at yarns.  I decided I would try it, and it turned out to be a pleasant experience and I purchased yarn and went to pick it up curbside a few days later.  I was really apprehensive - what if the texture and the colour both weren't OK.  I parked outside the shop, donned my mask, knocked on the door and a hand appeared from behind the door and handed me a bag.  Muffled exchanges of greetings and thanks, back into the car and I took out a skein  -  perfect! The colour is lovely and the yarn indeed felt soft and inviting, just as I had requested.

Maybe this new life will work!

Before The Sickness Came

On one of my neighbourhood walks last Friday I met a mother and her three year old daughter. The mother and I spoke about the problem of gophers.  She told me that when she plants her shrubs she puts them in wire cages underground  Apparently this keeps the gophers out, for the most part. However, her daughter loves to see the gophers, and mom feels a bit bad about what she has done.  Her daughter went to a pre-school, she told me, and she is not sure what is going to happen now.  Suddenly the daughter interjected and said

"before the sickness came"

Yes, of course, the sickness has changed our lives over the past few months.  But the great sickness that has befallen us started very long ago.  And I am talking about the sickness of racism, hatred, social injustice, economic inequality.

I grew up under apartheid and every single day of my life I was witness to, and a participant in, the regime.  I grew up seeing people brutalised because of the colour of their skin.  I grew up under fear of the regime, and what they did to dissidents.  I chose to leave, fondly imagining that there were places that were different. That people were free to live as they pleased.

I went to Israel and discovered hatred and fear also, and I am not even talking about the hatred and fear of the Arabs.  The Sephardic Jews did not like the Ashkenazi Jews, the German Jews looked down on the Russian Jews, the Sabras (native born Israelis) looked askance at the immigrants.  The secular hate the religious.  And the hatred and fear of the Arabs did not unite the Jews.

When I lived in England I was spat upon and called a 'foreigner.'

Granted, none of these countries had an Apartheid regime.

Then I came to America and worked in low income communities outside the cosy, politically correct, immediate bubble of the Bay Area.

Hatred, ignorance, fear I came to realise, are apparently endemic to human nature.

The opposite is true as well, and we can learn to recognise and acknowledge our prejudices, and listen to others and understand them.  We can even learn to live productively together.

My hope is that with the ongoing protests of the killing of George Floyd, and against the police brutality and inequalities of our lives, that we will begin to see some change.

 I saw this sign on today's walk, and hope that it is right, for every aspect of our lives.