We read that there were to be fireworks at 7PM, so we got Doug in the car and drove him to the outskirts of town. Unfortunately, there must also have been some at midnight, because when we got home (at, like, 12:20 ‘cuz we’re old and not mad about crowds), we found Doug in a total state. The poor wee creature was frantic and beside himself.
I know it sounds like a killjoy thing to say, but fireworks should really be banned. The impact of their noise on animals is nothing short of traumatic.
I worry the above might sound like performative internet gloating. Believe me, I’m far too aware of my shortcomings, or what I feel I should have accomplished by now, but I’ve been making a concerted effort to flip that around and see through a lens of gratitude, which really does change everything. I’ve been happy lately, and I think that’s a large part of it — no winter gloom this year.
The other part — which is related, and I’m still wrapping my brain around — is noticing how my brain veers toward suffering, whereas in any given moment, everything is probably going pretty well. Okay, sure, our livable habitat is falling apart, injustice, bigotry, war, inequitable wealth distribution, yadda yadda yadda, but my focusing on that accomplishes nothing and feels a bit like borrowing from other people’s bank accounts of suffering.
I don’t know how to square this dichotomy, between enjoying my personal life and still trying to do good, but I get the feeling it’s more of a “Yes, and…” than a “Yes, but…”
As far as ambitions for this year, I feel like my best opportunity is to work on establishing ongoing practices rather than concentrating on specific goals.
Waking, packing, and flying home the next day… it was a challenge. Nearly a week later, I’m not entirely okay. I think I barfed out my whole gut biome.
P.S. Pepto-Bismol, I’ve learned, should only be taken in emergencies, because continuing with it for days has… consequences.
Someone asked me recently what I think about the state of the web. Here was my reply:
I would definitely pay for a Free Web — which, as I write that, sounds ironic, but I mean an internet which I, and others who have the means, would pay to build and support as a resource for everyone, so it wouldn’t have to be skewed to serve advertisers or platform-owners who need to twist the thing and manipulate people in order to deliver quarterly shareholder profits.
In fact, I think the whole idea of shareholder dividends is the thing that could wipe us out as a species, because the ends of these activities will always be perverted toward profit — which, as we’re seeing, tends to run counter to human welfare.
But I don’t know how such a project begins. It’s not my bailiwick, so I just try to keep my activities to the small corners of the existing web that I can stand. More and more I find myself turning off the radio and just generally tuning out of any forum of opinions and news, because I don’t want to hear about politicians and businesses and world disorder anymore. That’s not the level at which I experience life, and I have no agency over these things.
Along those lines, the other day a woman started talking to me from her car in the Michael’s parking lot. “What are you making?” she asked.
“Oh,” I replied, “I’m just getting a few things for a zine workshop I’m teaching this afternoon” — I omitted “at a camp for queer kids”, because people can be awful and you never know who’s who.
The woman seemed perfectly nice, but then quickly made a conversational right-turn and started telling me about this movement God led her to, which was going to return all of our money because income taxes are illegal and everything we’ve paid is being held in a tunnel filled with gold that runs from the Vatican to Israel, and the 33 families who control the world are about to be overturned by the military and a cabal of not-dead people like the JFKs (senior and junior), Elvis, Marilyn Munroe, John Denver, Freddie Mercury, Prince, and TuPac. Trudeau is a bad guy because he sold Canada to China just before becoming Prime Minister (?!), but Trump is a really good guy, acting as a patsy in the whole Mar-a-Lago investigation so he can reveal documents to the world that prove…
She kept going on and on for what must’ve been fifteen minutes. It reminded me of the review I’d read about JK Rowling’s next book, a 1200-age brick about a thinly disguised stand-in for herself who’s been victimized for daring to speak out about trans people.
I am getting the distinct impression that exposure to the internet is driving some people crazy.
I felt mentally defiled by the whole exchange, and disturbed that this woman’s mind has been deranged in such a way that has become the primary concern in her life, which she feels compelled to pull strangers into.
So, yeah, less of that would be good. Not that I could tell you what the profit-motive is behind spooling out conspiracy theories on the web, but I suspect it looks something like getting people all het up about imaginary outrages so they stay completely inactive about the very real ones that are right there in front of us.
So how was the workshop?
I guess I’d been thinking of it as a chance to reach kids who were like Past-Me, to inspire them, to make them feel great about themselves, and maybe to find a new line of community activity for myself.
I won’t lie: It was very hard. I got nuuuuuuuthing back from the kids. They listened well, for the most part, but they just did not respond or feed back at all, so I had to keep talking and making suggestions and moving through the exercises I’d planned. Thankfully, most of the work didn’t involve any actual input or creation, just making a chapbook, notepad, and learning how to fold and cut a zine.
When it came time for them to create their zine, I was pleased that they were all heads-down, doing something. One even made a more advanced version of the zine, and I could see a few drawings in it that looked lovely.
The camp counsellors who participated were really fun, and I was so moved by what they had to say about the camp and its importance to the kids. And, strangely, once we were finished all the — y’know, actual workshoppy bits, the kids started talking and opening up.
I stuck around for dinner, where I got to speak to a few more of the grown-ups, because by Day Three the kids had already formed their little groups, so there was no real opening to join them at their tables.
That evening, they were doing a Queer Prom, which sounded brilliant, but again, it was for them, not for me. (Though I think I would really benefit from getting to re-do that right.)
The next morning, when my mom picked me up for church, I thanked her for persisting through raising me as a teenager. They are hard work, and I must have been awful. Kindly, she said she doesn’t remember Ian or me being any trouble. We weren’t allowed to be.
