"What did they do!?"

How am I responding?

I should have gone to church this morning. Our world is a little crazy and my hair looked good, perfect combination for “should.” If I were religious, I might tell myself that Jesus said “Stay put and sit with me.” But since I consider myself more spiritual than religious, I think the idea of a quiet chair with curated music and candles is what landed me in the blue chair. I can’t say that it is my blue chair because when my partner is here it is her chair. There is another blue chair but my poodle claims that one. So, I begin my reflection in a sometimes “mine” blue chair with a mostly blue heart.

There is a part of me that wants to move to the right a bit. This is my reaction to the illiberal left that landed this beast in the white house again. And there must be another word for “again” in circumstances like this. I just keep seeing that scene in Pulp Fiction where Travolta keeps saying, “F**k me!”

I am reading a bit from folks who I think are “sane right” but I am not telling anyone who I have chosen because I know many contrarians who will dig up ammunition and attempt to end my new serotonin buzz. And, when I comment on the some of those right reads, many of the responses are grotesquely misogynistic. One response to my “Can we be better?” literally made me throw my phone from my person. Go ahead tiny boys, call me a “snowflake” but threatening sexual violence in the comment section is putrid. I still read a few but I will not comment. My guess is this is the typical banter and I am just too old to enjoy depravity.

Betwixt and between my own small-scale interactions the larger world pulses and my blue fades to black. My little grandbaby is growing up in a world that I must keep hidden from her. With my son I tried to keep the Santa secret so we could maintain a few innocent and indulgent Christmas seasons. For Molly, I watch her play with her little farm set and know that undocumented workers who sow fields are being rounded up like animals. She will be 6 years old when the next corrupt election is held. We will most likely once again choose between 2 manipulated parties. Will we even have an election? Last spring I begged my son to register to vote. “Please.. as a present for my 60th birthday?” He did it!

And for what? What does a 30-year-old father do with his sweet little girl? Do we tell her she is not an equal to her male friends? Do we shield her from the terrible truth – that as we are spinning forward, we are also falling backward? When she asks to color do I still have hope that the “Baby shark da da to da ” I draw will still inhabit our warming waters when she is old enough to slip on a mask and see the coral reef as I did at 22? I worked a manual labor job, had an apartment and a car and still was able to scrounge up enough money to fly to Cancun!,

Sweet Jesus who [maybe] sat me down here today is it true that “scrounging” up enough money to live a wider path is a thing of the past? Did I follow the 50/30/20 rule?

Hell no. I followed the “hard work and scrounge” because I didn’t grow up with AI. I didn’t even know the rule was a thing until I looked it up today!

But what good is AI if we hardly live and try to hide or act out our growing sense of doom? My young clients can tell me how we will die, I have clients who have purchased things to protect them from fallout, and others, [like me] who just hope the whatever is going to happen, happens soon so we can move on.

Author Annie Proulx wrote a short story called, “Tits-Up in a ditch.” It is about hard winters. Winters so cold that this is how the rancher finds their cows. We have experienced the warmest year on record globally – and yet here so many of us are, feeling “Tits-Up a ditch.” I don’t even know if the latter is 100% true or just AI fodder, but it fits my point so I am using it.

Me to sitting self, “No wonder blue is fading to black Fanny, you are full of negativity”. And yet, I sat the hell down and stopped the spinning. I don’t know what the preacher said today, I have no idea what Musty is dismantling today, and in my droning 4 of my curated candles have lost their flame.

But I have not. At the beginning of this day as most every day I remain cautiously optimistic and still full of impotent rage. Yes, light and shadow dance all day long. This is the human expererience. “What is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate.” Carl Jung

· “Can you believe little Molly that you have 26 bones in those stinky feet? You can march, dance, and swim with them – so far no one has told you what to do with your feet parts!”

· We have 100,000 heartbeats in a day, using the 50/30/20 rule, we could choose to use 20% of those beats to be kind, to drop the inherent othering tool and be a good neighbor.

· I can take my impotent rage and bike another 40 miles today, it does nothing for my belly, but I could haul water from the river should doom greet us tomorrow.

· I can find people I believe in, leaders I trust, and I can support them. Forwardparty.com The 2024 election showed me both parties are Tits Up in a ditch.

· I quit Amazon in January. And I can quit reading things that are not true, biased, and instead read the soulful work of Maria Popova in themarginalian.org I can read the classics that were written when the world was truly steeped in doom.

I could go on, but I guess my point is we all need to sit down and let the dark and the light sink in and then live in the doable middle somewhere.

We got this, we must for the younger generation. When I was 25, I being wheeled out of the hospital after a traumatic accident rendered me disabled for what then seemed like the rest of my impossible one handed life. The wheeler was my father. I had these giant, salty tears in my eyes. He tipped the wheelchair back as we prepared to depart into the able-bodied world. “What am I going to do Dad?” Without any help from AI my dad knew exactly what to say, “We are just going to do it.” It was the one real sentence I needed to hear.

Out we went and here I am.

Musty and the beast can’t stop me -or you. Living well is the best revenge.

*AI will not be making this “shorter and more readable,” I am stuck with me and you are too!