Some shadows, like pandemics, cover the world. Others, like this one, are bigger. (with thanks to Bob, the Bluebird of Bitterness, who is more about Silliness and Strangeness)
Tag Archives: Widdershins
The Numbers Game
I’ve settled into a place, adjacent to where my Spirit finds equilibrium. Hardly any news-chasing, once a day really. Daily needs are met, and I’m feeling the stirrings of creativity. They don’t last, not yet, but I feel the day coming when they will.
I have one little quirk going on though. Each evening at around 11pm I open the Johns Hopkins Corona virus/Covid-19 site and log the confirmed cases numbers and compare them to the previous evening’s tally. Just the confirmed cases. I know if I did the same thing with the deaths, my still fragile and vulnerable ability to see my way clearly through this would not survive the immersion.
What solace I find in this, I’m not sure of. Perhaps it connects me to the stark reality of what our entire species on this planet is going through, especially because of how physically isolated I am here on our little island in the middle of a lake.
Oh, and one other quirk. I catch myself wrapping the fingers of my left hand around my thumb, most of the time without realising it. Not quite a fist, more of a protective gesture, because there are times when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and stay there.
Why am I telling you these things? I want you to know that no amount of peppy/supportive/uplifting videos, or tweets or facebook posts or ‘lifestyle’ articles is going to keep the grief and fear every one of us is feeling, (to greater and lesser amounts at any given time, it ebbs and flows) at bay for ever.
There IS a monster stalking us, and to deny our minds and bodies the ability to express those feelings is to give the monster another way to threaten us.
I’m not saying go dig potholes in your front yard, (well, maybe I am, a little bit, so long as you don’t have any close neighbours) but allow your body, your mind, your spirit, to tell you what it needs from you, your conscious mind.
Embrace the quirk … go crochet yourself some toilet paper.
Re-usable as well!
Also … because I’m also feeling hopeful and sentimental…
And the Typhoid Mary Award for What-The-Fuckery in 2020 goes to …
… Naomi Davis… and Clea Shearer…, a couple of plucky gals who aren’t going to let a little thing like a GLOBAL PANDEMIC stop them from doing something BREATHTAKINGLY FUCKING STUPID, (yes, I’m SWEARING and SHOUTING) like getting into their big rigs and heading out on the open road in search of … well, in search of more communities to infect.
Clea, accompanied by hubs, his mum, and their two kids are going from California to Nashville.
Naomi accompanied by hubs and five children, all shining bright with that true frontier spirit, are already on their way from New York to somewhere west.
Here’s the article that inspired me to make this award, and after reading, I’m sure you’ll all agree they are truly worthy recipients of this particular award. (there are, of course, many other types of ‘what-the-fuckery’ awards and recipients to be had during this time)
The article has live links and screen shots of their social media posts in case you think I’ve finally been taken over by the Twilight Zone.
Apart from the incredibly valid concerns mentioned in the article, there are a few more than haven’t been considered.
Emptying out the grey and black-water tanks. (that’s waste water, from the sink and shower – grey, and toilet – black) The corona virus has been demonstrably proven to exist in feces, (poop) so I don’t care how big your tanks are, with that many people pooping and showering and washing dishes, you’re going to need to empty them with alarming regularity.
Believe me, no matter how clean the facilities are, no matter how careful you are, you are guaranteed at least one splash. Even if you aren’t carrying the virus in your innards, you have no idea who was emptying their tanks, and had their singular ‘splash’ before you, or what they were carrying in their innards.
The corona virus has been demonstrably proven to remain airborne for up to 3 hours. (because the virus itself if really, really, really tiny) It has been demonstrably proven to remain on surfaces for hours to days, depending on the surface.
(Dr John Campbell has all the proofs to back up the ‘demonstrably-s’ I’ve mentioned, scattered throughout the last few weeks of his videos, usually from various global CDC’s and medical journals, scientific papers, etc)
Plus, the nomad community, although gaining more and more acceptability is still seen by many to be the lifestyle of those ‘unfortunates’ who can’t or won’t get a mortgage and live in a ‘real’ house, and can’t or won’t get a ‘real’ job … so when this finally blows up in these idiots faces, and it will, the fallout won’t be just on them.
But they’re not considering the true impact of the consequences of their actions on others, are they?
Funnily enough, when you think about it, that’s how this whole mess started in the first place.
-oOo-
It’s not that there aren’t other people out there doing reprehensible things like this, it’s just that out of an abundance of common sense, Mrs Widds and I have cancelled our ‘Wunder-Lusters’ plans for this year, and these reprehensibly arrogant fuckwits really got up my nose.
‘Common sense’ because until an antibody test becomes readily available, neither of us will know (unless we actually get sick) if we’ve even be exposed to the virus. (we’re both in the ‘vulnerable’ category. Mrs Widds is a disgustingly healthy 70, and I’m 61 with a compromised immune system) On top of that a viable vaccine won’t be readily available, probably until the end of the year.
About ‘Typhoid Mary’
Noticing Strange Things …
… like WordPress still not letting me ‘like’ comments on other people’s blogs, or my own for that matter … my solution: I’m going to reply with ‘liked!’ instead. The really weird thing is that every now and then, if someone has already ‘liked’ a comment, mine will stick too … very strange.
… like not being able to watch or listen to the news anymore without bursting into tears. Not huge tears, usually, just the leaky throat-catching, heart-squeezing kind … reading it is fine, (‘fine’ being relative these days) my exception being Dr John Campbell’s daily video updates. He’s the voice of grown-up, clarity without the sugar-coating or sensationalistic sound-byte-chasing that exists in mainstream reporting, and he’s usually onto things days before them too. This is his YouTube channel.
… like losing time, as though the gap between one moment and the next expands and I come back to myself still looking out the window five minutes later.
… like people having an ‘oops’ moment and stepping back a bit when they come together and realise they’re inside the two-meter ‘exclusion zone’ – fun fact, which may not be a fun fact per se, but after a bit of observation and subtle inquiries, most people tend to judge that distance to be the height of the person in front of them.
Give it a try and see what happens. (BUT only with someone in your HOUSEHOLD) … Without thinking about it too much, stand facing each other at what you think is 2 meters, then measure what the distance really is and compare that to how tall you both are. Let me know how it goes.
Here’s a little mnemonic device that I learned when I was a wee lass in the 70’s and Australia was in the throes of converting from the old Imperial system of measurements, to Metric … ‘a meter measures three foot three. It’s longer than a yard, you see’. So, 2 meters is 6’6″ … ooh, here’s another one … ‘a liter of water’s a pint and three-quarters’ … Heavens to Murgatriod! The things I find tucked away in the dusty corners of my mind!
The Running Of The Ducks
Just another workday at a winery in South Africa.
The winery? …Vergenoegd Lȍw Wine Estate.
The Workforce? … Pest Control and Fertilization at the same time …
They are well treated and when their ready to retire they are moved to an island on the property where they live their lives out in peace.
A bit more info from the Atlas Obscura article that arrived in my email in-box this morning… and the winery website.
… and another video … because we all need more Indian Runner Ducks in our lives today…
-oOo-
May these times pass us by unscathed, but if by chance we are scathed, may we live to tell the tale, because such tales as these need to be told.
Rage … and …
Listening to the CBC news today (Monday 23rd March, 2020) – Our (Canadian) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – (to paraphrase) ‘Stay home voluntarily, or we will make you,’ – sounding a lot like a benevolent yet stern patriarch admonishing his errant children. Sanctimonious bastard.
(I get that the threat needs to be there to wake up the last of the scared, the panicked, the downright ijits, I do)
But … that this wasn’t done weeks ago enrages me. That governments the world over have not acted proactively, enrages me. That hundreds of thousands of people WILL DIE unnecessarily because of these things, enrages me.
That healthcare workers are begging anyone, any institution, who has Personal Protective Equipment (masks, gloves, etc) to donate it to them, (and that this wasn’t mandated weeks ago) enrages me.
I have entire pages on how humanity, institutions, governments, businesses, have consistently and willfully ignored the information that WAS THERE FOR ALL TO SEE over the last three months, and that enrages me.
Going to scream into a pillow for a moment … be back in a little while …
-oOo-
…. the storm of my rage, at least this wave, has passed.
I have many, many, more pages of the beautiful things individual people have done for each other over the last three months.
Rhetorical question – When did ‘governing’ go from FOR the people, to OVER the people? … it probably occurred at the same time the ‘people’ decided they didn’t want to be responsible for the consequences of their own actions.
Either way, there’s not a government left in the world that’s worth fighting for, or dying for.
I know there are good people within all governments, trying their damnedest to make a difference …. just like there were people on the Titanic trying their best to make a difference, but no matter what they did the ship still sank. The good people saved a few more lives, and other good people (or the ones who has the most money to lose – sometimes a bit of both) shifted the circumstances that set up the situation in the first place, a little …while a few other people figured out how they could get around the shifted circumstances and behave just as they had before.
I’m not asking you to start a revolution, well not all of you anyway, but when ‘things’ go back to ‘normal’ (even though that ‘normal’ is gone for ever for all of us – and was never real in the first place) remember this ‘Time of the Plague’ and do your damnedest to shift the circumstances that caused it in the first place.
Tell me, what are you going to do?
Staying Sane, And Finding Hope, In The Time Of The Plague
Yesterday I wrote this …
Yes, it is a plague, only we don’t call it that anymore do we? Far too many dire associations.
But aren’t times dire?
As more and more of the world, the global connectivity, shuts down, more countries shut their doors, and any ‘official’ number of cases need to be multiplied by a factor of ten to come anywhere near a realistic number, the word ‘dire’ comes more and more to mind.
… and that’s as far as I got.
I was planning on deconstructing the concept, and bring out the ‘hope’ in the title of this post, but one minute I was sitting at my computer writing, and the next I was sitting in the glorious sunshine in our backyard (sunshine at last!) sobbing my heart out.
I broke, no lasting damage done, but I broke.
And it’s not that I haven’t been looking after myself both physically and emotionally, but it wasn’t enough without something to empty my full-to-the-brim-with-emotions, heart.
Sometimes you have to sit in the sunshine and cry, big diaphragm-ache-inducing tears.
At some point it will happen to you too, if it hasn’t already, and that’s a good thing. We can’t go around feeling like an exposed and raw nerve forever.
Chuck Wendig wrote in his latest post, ‘…We’re all in mourning from the death of normalcy…’ In his wonderful Chuck Wendig way, he spells it out so clearly, that he’s feeling, ‘… definitely, absolutely, unfuckwithably not okay…’ Go read the whole piece, it’s worth it.
After yesterday my chest doesn’t feel as though it’s going to crack under the strain. I’ve been weeping on and off since then, at the oddest things, so that I smile as I weep. (I’ll be OK, just not quite yet)
Point in case, cats and dominos …
