Why?

 

Why?

Why, in this season when we try to engender peace on earth, and feel good will towards all men, as a new year is about to begin, and horrible things are happening around the world, would you purposely bait me with your abhorrent politics?

You did it on purpose. You knew the reaction it would cause.

Congratulations, you ruined my day. I’m furious, and I’m spending too many hours wondering why I bother even acknowledging you.

The one of you who delivered the poison in your “annual holiday letter” -which you delivered atop the Christmas gifts you dropped off at my house – was an especially aggressive touch that blows my mind. OK, so it wasn’t directed specifically at me but at everyone you sent that missive to.  I’m sure you feel it was a fine thing for you to do in the spirit of honest recording of your best moments this year. But you know what? I’m guessing if I were to respond honestly in kind, you wouldn’t be generous in your attitude about my thoughts and feelings. And you know how I feel about your politics, so why, why, why would you poison the gift-giving gesture by including that letter?

I know you have other relationships who feel as strongly as I do. In fact, you begin your letter advising us that you’ve blocked a number of friends on Facebook because you know you stand on opposite sides of the political divide, and you want to be able to stay friends even so. So why would you use this time of year to get in our faces? And why would you include a sentence that says “…for those who care to judge me…” – I was trying not to, until I read that challenge.

But since you sent an open invitation, here goes: Yes, I do judge you. Anyone who actively and proudly and loudly and publically supports a rapist, racist, lying, thieving, lazy, narcissistic, bullying, would-be fascist, insurrrectionist, misogynist, massive threat to our democracy who has made us a laughingstock internationally, who cozies up to dictators, who endangers the stability of the world, who is the author of the kinds of threats and hate speech and meanness that poisons our country, who divided us as a nation and amongst families and friends, in all likelihood beyond repair, who is evil and mean and nasty and proud of it and encourages his followers to threaten and carry out death threats and bodily harm on people who don’t agree with him – how can you not, after claiming that that person “resonates” with you – your words – not expect to be judged, by moral human beings, to be of the same lost and evil and horrifying type? What do you expect?

And how, after you’ve handed me this thing about you that I now can’t pretend I don’t know, do you expect me to be grateful for whatever else you’re handing me this holiday season, no matter how lovely it might otherwise be? And what, exactly, do you expect me to feel about the time I spent on the things I’ve wrapped, after careful consideration and hopes that you’ll enjoy them, that I’ve given to you?

It’s not just me; I know you’ve given this poisonous sheet to others who try to like you in spite of what we know about you, and who now, at your invitation, can’t help but judge you?

Why, why, why would you poison our experience like that?

In case you’re totally oblivious to your intentions and how we react to them – you just proved we judged you correctly. So keep it on Facebook – I don’t have to read it if it’s there.

The other one of you who has injected mean thoughts into my holiday attempt at peace did essentially the same thing, except it was a more personal attack. After the Covid years of your silence, when I told you we can’t talk about it since you were spouting nonsense at me about it, you sent a personal letter in your Christmas card to me. Until I read it, I was pleased to think maybe we still could connect, as we had in the past. In the letter, you told me about some fun things you did this year. But you headed the letter with a nasty comment about our current President, and a snarky comment about some inane conspiracy theory you say “the lefties” – you know I’m one – are supposedly plotting.

I’d like to write back to you to say how interesting your travels sounded. But what do I do about that first paragraph of yours? Do I ignore it? How? It was clearly put in there to get a reaction from me, and you knew when you did it that the reaction would be a bad one. So – if the letter was somehow meant as a gesture of friendship – you destroyed it. It became a gesture of meanness.

Why? Why did you think that was an OK thing to do? Oh, wait, I know the answer: because you are also a supporter of the Evil Far Right, and The Orange Ugliness has made it an act of courage, in your minds – in fact, he’s made it a blessed activity – to be abusive and nastily challenging to those of us who see him for what he is.

I thought you were better than that; we used to avoid politics or any discussion of them, because we knew we stood on opposite sides; and we had fun together. We were friends. We had other things in common. But now, I judge you to be the same as the other person, the one who delivered the poison Christmas letter. And I don’t want to be friends with someone who supports the horror show devil. I’m not sure you can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t care that you’re in accord with the Nightmare in Mar a Lago. When my father, now deceased, used to send me similar toxic political stuff because he enjoyed cranking me up, I called him an asshole. Want to guess what I’m calling you now?

By the way – I asked all the other lefties I know what conspiracy theory you were referring to – and not a one of them has a clue. So once again, a science fantasy invention from the Far, Insane Right; I kind of wish I could ask you what planet you’re on when you hear and believe this stuff, because it isn’t the same one I inhabit.

A friend just suggested that the best response might be that I write my own end-of-year holiday letter, and send it to a few carefully selected individuals.

Let’s call this a good start.

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

December 26, 2023

 

Music and Dreams

 

December 26, 2023, NH: no socks, but leg warmers and Lynxie in the distance

I’m not a musician, but I always have music running in my head. I asked The Husband, who is a musician, if he always has music running through his head, and he said no.

“Really?” I asked him. “Your mind is quiet when you aren’t thinking about something?”

“Except for the humming noise that’s always there,” he said.

“That’s in your ears,” I told him. “It’s because you’ve become an Old Fart, and you can’t hear most of what I say to you.”

“Yeah, well, you mumble and besides that, you’re weird,” he replied.

Amazing how they always hear that kind of thing. My deaf grandfather could hear a whisper from two rooms away, if it was about him.

But I do have music always in my head, and The Husband’s right, it’s partly pathological. Often the music is just a phrase, that I may have made up, because I don’t recognize it; and sometimes it’s a line or two of a song I’ve heard; and most often it changes every few minutes, all through the day, unless I’m concentrating on something else, like writing this essay; and I don’t much pay attention to it. But when I’m doing something mundane – like walking down the hall or grocery shopping – I often find myself humming or singing or even whistling whatever bit is currently circulating, and I don’t usually notice that I’m doing it.

It was pointed out to me years ago by the chiropractor whose office was next to mine in the clinic space we shared. “I like that you’re always whistling or humming,” he said, by way of nothing, one day. “That way I always know where you are.”

Hmm.

The other day, a total stranger in the Co-op parking lot came up to me, as I was pushing my laden cart out to my car. I must have been singing out loud.

 “Are you learning that piece for a performance,” she asked, kindly, “or are you just self-comforting?”

Huh.  Now there’s a new concept.

I had to think about that awhile: what is this concept of “self-comforting”, anyway? Was she making a New-Agey kind of comment, or was what I was doing actually comforting me? If so, why did I need comforting --- oh, never mind: who doesn’t need pretty much constant comforting in this current world of ours, anyway?

I don’t know the answer; but I started to notice how I feel when I notice I’m doing the music out loud. I have to admit that if it’s out loud, I do feel lightened emotions, and sometimes I actually will consciously up the volume and sing loudly and on purpose and feel kind of elated when doing so. And what’s maybe more telling – I always hum when Rasta Furian and I are having a love-up. He thinks it’s the human way of purring, and we both enjoy it. Rasta has a very extensive repertoire of purring noises, so maybe…maybe he’s actually singing?

Same day!

However, I also have a pathological music thing: I have what the late Oliver Sacks, in one of whose books I discovered the name of the pathology, calls musicophilia.  I dread, dread, dread the periods when I’m sunk into a musicophilia time, because during those times, there will be one – just one – musical phrase, usually part of a song I’ve heard sometime in the past 3 weeks (it rarely happens immediately), and it will play incessantly over and over and over in my head, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks, and sometimes for months. My latest bout happened this summer, and started soon after I got back from F-FL, and it was there for 7 months before I finally got rid of it. I don’t dare even tell you what the phrase was from, because as soon as I let myself start to think it about it even in this off-hand way, I can feel – literally feel it, it’s a sensation in my spine and brain – that it could catch me again in a flash.

There are ways to stop that kind of pathology (some of you might think of it as an “ear worm,” and you’ve probably all experienced a limited version of what I’m talking about at some point in your life).  The cure, a psychiatrist who was a long-time t’ai chi student of mine, one day explained to me when I was bitching about my then current repetitive song agony during class, is to sing – either out loud or in your head – the nonsense song that’s called something like “Mairzey Doates and Dozey Doates” or some such thing – does anyone actually know? – which no one really knows or understands the words to - every time you notice the offending music, over  and over until it stops. So it takes time and persistence and attention, and it’s exhausting, and the longer you wait to do it, the longer it takes to be effective. But, blessedly, it does work, and that weird little ditty, for some reason, doesn’t get stuck and replace the one you’re trying to kill off.

My 7-month problem took so long to eliminate because the piece that got stuck was from some music I actually like very much, so for too long I was sort of enjoying it, until I wasn’t. And then the irritation had to get big enough for me to remember the cure and apply it.

So: how, you might wonder, can even the ear worm of ear worms be present 24-hours a day? Because I have another strange mental thing – not a pathology, really, but relatively rare (which I also learned about from Oliver Sacks’s writing – someday I’ll maybe also tell you about tasting colors, which he also illuminated for me and that I had no understanding of until I found my symptoms described in his books. That’s called synesthesia, and I have a very mild case).

But to my point: I’m also a lucid dreamer.

Lucid dreamers are aware they’re dreaming – I don’t know how it is for all lucid dreamers, but in my case, my normal-consciousness mind always actively observes the dream I’m having, and often either makes commentary, or can stop the dream if I don’t like where it’s going, and redirect the action, sort of like the director of a play. I’ve several times actually said to my dream characters, “Ok, let’s change this. You say this other thing, instead of what you just said, and you do this thing instead of that thing in response, and let’s see where that goes.” And then I resume the dream again.

I find lucid dreaming quite useful – I never have nightmares, because dreaming, for me, is more like watching a play or a movie: one of my favorites was the dream in which I, and some dream-friends, were battling vampires who were attacking our castle from the skies, and we could fly, and shoot arrows, and, of course, we won. Or at least I assume we did, because I wouldn’t have it any other way, though I don’t remember the end of it – it was one I continued for several nights because I was enjoying it so much.

I also can restart a dream I had one night, if I enjoyed it, the next night. And I consciously recognize repetitive dreams while I’m dreaming them. I often think to myself, “Oh, it’s that dream again!” and can make little changes or decisions – do I want to walk or ride a bike this time, do I want to take that path or go the other way, and so on. Because I find that repetitive dreams usually have messages: i.e., they’re usually something I should pay attention to because my mind uses them to work something or other out, or warn me about something. I remember them (being a lucid dreamer doesn’t mean I remember my dreams for any length of time any more often than other people do - only the really good ones), recognize them, and experience them from the normal-conscious part of my mind in an observing and decoding way, sort of like a math problem I’m working on as it happens.

But lucid dreaming also means that the part of my brain that has the musicophilia pathology is still present while I’m dreaming, and I’m aware of the music playing over and over incessantly. It doesn’t become background music to the dream; it’s just always there and always playing in the normal-conscious part of my mind. Two or three different parts of the mind must be involved, because, while the music doesn’t interfere with or become part of the dream, neither am I any more able to stop it playing while I’m dreaming than I am able to in an awake state.

It’s maddening.

Speaking of which, senile dementia seems to run in my family. One of my waking nightmares, as I grow older, is that at some point I’ll be taken by it; and some kind-meaning soul who doesn’t know me, or doesn’t remember about the musicophilia, decides to play music for me, because music seems to soothe people with dementia and Alzheimers.  What’s most likely to set my musicophilia off is music with words. So if, in such a circumstance, you see me trying to stab myself in the brain or rip my ears off, assume the musicophilia is driving me insane, and sing for me the Mairzy Doates ditty, over and over, into my ear, for however many hours and days it takes until I calm down.

And don’t turn the music back on!

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

23 December 2023

Photos by Deb Marshall, help with one...

For the record: I was out reading for almost 2 hours!

 

 

Cold Comforts

 

Rasta on the comfy chair; socks and blankies ready

I don’t live on a farm, but I do live down a long dirt driveway in a story-and-a-half log Cape set in the middle of an old cow pasture, with woods behind and to the side. I also am part of that generation that grew up in rural New England – one town over from where I now live, in fact – when all the old folks, and all the younger folks who weren’t well-off --- which was pretty much everyone --- had large gardens, did a lot of canning and freezing, had a root cellar in the corner of the house cellar, cut a lot of wood for heating, and often kept a few chickens, and maybe a milk cow. My rural grandparents, who I grew up next to, kept the chickens; and there was a dairy farmer up the road, so no one local kept cows.

So I’m the child of the not-well-off child-rearing generation of that time. I married a city boy – what was I thinking??? – and we’re the not-well-off rural folks who are now grandparental – or in our case, grand-auntal and granduncle-al age. I don’t live on a farm, but the way we live is still reminiscent of that lifestyle I grew up in. I have a giant garden, and can and freeze and store most the vegetables we eat all year; we bake bread weekly; we don’t have a root cellar, but make do with baskets in our tiny walk-in pantry and cellar; we burn wood (and the Husband cuts wood – pretty good for a city boy!)) to stay warm. When winter nears, we stock up on all the things my parents and grandparents did: candles, kerosene for the oil lamps, food staples like flour, maple syrup, honey, sugar, mustards, some exotic sauces, ginger beer, vinegars, and jams (which I no longer make), and chocolate – yes, chocolate is a food staple. It’s one of the four main food groups, which are: Red, Green, Garlic, and Oily. Chocolate fits into the Oily category.

Some of the things we stock up on weren’t available up here in the north country when I was a kid: olive oil, tomato paste, chili sauce, decent coffee, mushrooms that aren’t slimy in a tiny little can, really good cheeses - many made locally, and spices that aren’t just salt and pepper but from many different cultures, among other things. Back then, we made our own fermented foods in great crocks in the cellar, but now we can buy locally made stuff with spices we’d never even heard of when I was a kid. And fruits – then we had frozen or canned blueberries and if we were lucky, a few frozen or canned sour cherries, strawberries, and blackberries, and rhubarb sauce. We had baskets of apples, of course, and sometimes a few pears. Now we grow and preserve all those, plus peaches and raspberries, and we can buy so many fruits I rarely or never saw when I was a kid. I was an adult before I ever saw, or tasted, a mango or avocado or persimmon or Clementine or Meyer lemon. Amazing! 

Tarp-covered rows of wood; snow shovel ready

In our backyard are many cords of wood piled up, because we heat with it, mostly. And nowadays we also stock up on cat food, cat litter (the cats of my childhood used the great outdoors whether they wanted to or not, no matter how deep the snow), cat treats, and birdseed and suet.

By kitchen and back doors, all winter reside containers of ice melt, and in the garage is ice melt and clay cat litter for spreading on the icy days; in the woodstove room, which we call the Chapel because we put a stained-glass window in the gable end, live my plants: potted bay and kafir lime trees, which live outside in the summer; a pot of “cat grass” – which is just oat grass, also used as a green mulch in these parts – for the furries; Christmas cacti, one of which belonged to my grandmother, and amaryllis that usually decide not to bloom, plus pots of freesia and Canna lilies that will bloom, sooner or later. Orchids, which will bloom from time to time, live on the cabinet counter in the cooler dining room, in the west window.

We keep a big pot of water on the woodstove, plus a Japanese iron teakettle, and we have a huge water fountain on the floor. Capes have small rooms, and the air dries out fast when the woodstove is cranking. And yes, during periods of no electricity, we stay warm, can melt snow for flushing and cleaning, and I have many times cooked on the top of the stove – it’s excellent for making soup, cooking rice. Every time a big storm threatens, the kitchen shelves get covered, just in case, with numerous pitchers and jugs of water for cooking and drinking, and the bathtub is filled with pails of water for flushing – something I’m told city dwellers with city water don’t have to think about.

Woodstove and fountain

Whenever I’m home – not working, not running errands – at least once a week there’s a big pot of soup cooking on the stove, or chicken bones boiling down to broth. This happens year round, but in winter it’s a fragrant and comforting smell and sound, and the kitchen – at the far end of the house from the woodstove room – gets warm and moist, and the weekly bread rises well in spite of the temperature outside. The cats often perch on the counter next to the orchids to keep an eye on the birds eating seed and suet off the porch railings. If I’m lucky, I’ll see the raven swoop down to snatch a hunk of suet, then fly to the pine tree across the driveway to laugh at me. When I bring the bird’s food out in the morning, he shouts from the big maple at the end of the driveway, alerting the blue jays and others that breakfast has arrived. The mourning doves, in their gray-brown coats, arrive mornings after the jays, and again late afternoon, which is also when the cardinals arrive. They all make a comforting knocking sound as they feed from the railings – as if wild winter sprites were knocking at my kitchen door.

In our living room is a big chair, big enough for me and two cats, that faces the double doors to the Chapel, where we can watch the woodstove flames dance (there’s glass in the front door of the stove), and get a stream of warm air passing through to us. This time of year, the low-lying sun also hits a solar-powered device hanging in the south windows, which turns a couple of crystals, which in turn send rainbow patches dancing across the walls and floor. My old Christmas cactus bloomed, as usual, at Hallowe’en; but the smaller one is setting up buds, and one of the freesias has sent out a flower bud stalk, as has one of the orchids. The plant with the purple shamrock-shaped leaves is abloom after its summer outdoors; and the lime tree has produced two blossoms, and has two tiny limes growing slowly. Its blossoms are incredibly fragrant, making up for its fruits, which are pretty much inedible!

Lime blossom, tiny fruit, bay in back

This time of year, even more comforting things arise: I remember to put cardamom in my coffee, which is lovely; and once a day I allow myself a quarter mug of eggnog (also local – there’s not much point in not eating local, when the local stuff here is sooooo good and better for us and our neighbors who produce it) in my coffee, then filled to the brim with local raw milk. Oh, my, yum! And it only lasts a little over a month. To sit in that warm chair with cats and fuzzy fleece blankies, fuzzy socks on feet, a mug of eggnog/milk/coffee at hand, and a couple of good books in lap --- true comfort. It usually results in a nap…

Which is, after all, what our bodies and minds crave most at this time of year.

I plan the upcoming mid-winter foods: lamb koftas with minted yogurt with lemon, for sauce; French-Canadian corton, redolent with garlic and cloves, to eat for breakfast on toast, and its near cousin, tortiere, the pie we eat for Christmas Eve; muhammara, the middle eastern dip made with roasted red peppers, olive oil, garlic, cumin, pomegranate concentrate, and walnuts all ground up together, sometimes with a few grilled olives added, and harissa strewn across the top…Oh, the comforts of the savory exotic foods we eat at this time of year!

Bright lights

This year, we have no snow, and I got soaked through yesterday running errands. The brook and the marsh it feeds across the street, and the little ponds and the brook, that runs from the larger brook that empties into the marsh, under the road, then around my house and back into the marsh, putting me and neighbors on a tiny island, were all running high and fast – it was almost like spring. But today, after repairing some wind-caused damage, and discovering that my garden shed got soaked, indoors, from the driving rain and wicked big wind that also knocked over my wellhead go-around and moved a large rock that helps hold it in place --- again – sorta like spring --- I was happy to come back in, to the woodstove, the smell of soup simmering on the stove, the happy purry kitties ensconced in the big chair, and my eggnog-coffee. 

In two days, it will be Winter Solstice. The sun will slowly, slowly, start to stay out a little longer every day. We won’t notice it for some time; but in the meantime, we have the little shining rainbow lights during the day, the shiny eyes of our furry buddies, the shine of the colored lights hanging from one of my house’s corner posts, the shining evergreen between my house and that of my close neighbor, that she drapes in lights this time of year.

It’s cold and dark, but we have comforts. Snuggle down. Enjoy.

For the blog: 19 December 2023    herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

Orchids, west window