Red-hot, record-breaking days.
Dita Parker
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Somewhere over the rainbow
How goes it, sweetie darlings? Are you all right? Seems as if crisis upon crisis is being heaped upon us, doesn’t it, and you don’t know which way is up because everything is going down the drain through a gigantic garburator, and what comes out the other end is anyone’s guess.
WTF is going on, right? Well, first came the autotrophs…stuff happens…more stuff happens…humans come along…steady string of shit happens…and here we are, two billion years later, living in the Anthropocene, a youngish manifestation of life on earth, debating intrinsic values and negotiating inalienable rights like the savannah (or aquatic?) apes we are, fresh off the evolutionary boat.
But enough with the mangled metaphors. WTF, right? Yet…it’s not as if anything new is going on; maybe it’s just new to some of us. It’s not as if we haven’t been warned; the existence and consequences of crises such as climate collapse or inequality have been studied, established and documented, repeatedly. It’s not as if we have the right to be indignant or surprised; there’s just never a good time for a crisis. Do you have empty slots in your calendar? You might have, but you won’t be filling them with crises, are you? Of course not. There are a thousand and one things you would rather be doing. And I’m not berating you, being cheeky, snarky, or *gasp* a cynic. Of course not! We are, after all, an optimistic race. Positive and forward-looking. Shit happens, life goes on. People die, but life goes on. Of course it does; but we seem to be, as humans always believe they are, in a unique crossroads, a time of great change and big decisions, living in life-threatening and upending conditions. Of course we are. This is, after all, the only time and place we know, we haven’t lived in another. And we have to live and learn all on our own. Past mistakes are past, we have to make our own. Past teachings are past, we have to learn those lessons on our own.
But…there’s just no time for that, or a tug-of-war. Every day wasted bickering is a day wasted. We have the facts, the numbers, the data. But when those facts have no bearing on you, it’s easy to skate over them. When that data means upheaval, loss of revenue, loss of privilege, there will be denial and dismissal from those who profit from the status quo. Can there really be as much poverty and inequality as advertised? You’ve never been poor/discriminated against and don’t know anyone who has been. Is the climate in crisis? The weather seems fine! But just like the weather is what you see out the window and the climate covers the entire planet, my experience of the world is mine, and your experience is yours. We’ll never know what it’s like to be someone else. We’ll never live in someone else’s skin, walk in their shoes. But we can imagine. I’m not at all surprised so many women are taking part in the BLM protests. Many or most of us know what it’s like to be dismissed or discriminated against, so damn straight we empathize.
I think that’s what the world desperately needs and has always needed: empathy, imagination. Without them, you don’t and won’t see the world through anyone else’s eyes but yours. Without them, you don’t and won’t see the consequences of your actions. Facts and numbers and data are absolutely essential when you’re trying to win an argument, but to win a heart you need stories. Books, plays, movies, music, fine art are all fine vehicles, but real people, real lives, real experiences are better; you can’t dismiss them as figments of someone’s imagination.
Let’s listen to one another and speak our truths and tell the world what it feels like to be human in this time and place we occupy together. It’s not a competition but there is a prize: more compassion and cooperation, more empathy and unity; a positive change; a more inclusive world. The suffrage and abolitionist movements succeeded. The LGBTQ+ community is fighting for and winning recognition and rights. The “natural order” of things isn’t natural at all, it’s man-made. So is the climate crisis, gender, racial, regional and economic inequality; they are connected and they intersect. Let’s wise up. Let’s take responsibility and let’s take action. Let’s challenge leaders, companies and governments who won’t. Let’s not vote for or put up with Teflon suits, the Bolsonaros, Johnsons, Morrisons and Trumps of this world. (If it talks like a misogynistic bigot and bully, looks tailored to corporate needs, and seems to both shirk responsibility and avoid accountability, trust your gut instinct and first impression, it is, it does, and will keep doing.)
And let’s challenge ourselves. You are the leading expert on being you. Listen to other experts on life on earth. Read, discuss, think, think again. Admit that you have cognitive biases and distortions. We all do. We are encouraged to brand ourselves, and with all the talk around identity, you can’t help but think that maybe you should get one. Before you know it, your thinking becomes entrenched and every person, idea or circumstance that doesn’t fit doesn’t count. Don’t let that happen to you, dearest denizen. Fight it. With all your might. You are the one and only you just the way you are. Respect and celebrate that by respecting and celebrating the uniqueness and full humanity of others. And be prepared to change. Change course, change your thinking, change your ways, change your mind. We are, after all, a hopeful race. Cooperative and creative.
If you’re tired of being a consumer, a commodity, a resource, become an agent. If you’re tired of witnessing the degradation of your fellow humans and our habitat, become an agent. An agent for change; an agent for good; an agent for a more equal, livable world. If you feel as if there is no reason to get out of bed in the morning, dearest denizen, sweetie darling, my friend from afar…you have found your purpose.
WTF is going on, right? Well, first came the autotrophs…stuff happens…more stuff happens…humans come along…steady string of shit happens…and here we are, two billion years later, living in the Anthropocene, a youngish manifestation of life on earth, debating intrinsic values and negotiating inalienable rights like the savannah (or aquatic?) apes we are, fresh off the evolutionary boat.
But enough with the mangled metaphors. WTF, right? Yet…it’s not as if anything new is going on; maybe it’s just new to some of us. It’s not as if we haven’t been warned; the existence and consequences of crises such as climate collapse or inequality have been studied, established and documented, repeatedly. It’s not as if we have the right to be indignant or surprised; there’s just never a good time for a crisis. Do you have empty slots in your calendar? You might have, but you won’t be filling them with crises, are you? Of course not. There are a thousand and one things you would rather be doing. And I’m not berating you, being cheeky, snarky, or *gasp* a cynic. Of course not! We are, after all, an optimistic race. Positive and forward-looking. Shit happens, life goes on. People die, but life goes on. Of course it does; but we seem to be, as humans always believe they are, in a unique crossroads, a time of great change and big decisions, living in life-threatening and upending conditions. Of course we are. This is, after all, the only time and place we know, we haven’t lived in another. And we have to live and learn all on our own. Past mistakes are past, we have to make our own. Past teachings are past, we have to learn those lessons on our own.
But…there’s just no time for that, or a tug-of-war. Every day wasted bickering is a day wasted. We have the facts, the numbers, the data. But when those facts have no bearing on you, it’s easy to skate over them. When that data means upheaval, loss of revenue, loss of privilege, there will be denial and dismissal from those who profit from the status quo. Can there really be as much poverty and inequality as advertised? You’ve never been poor/discriminated against and don’t know anyone who has been. Is the climate in crisis? The weather seems fine! But just like the weather is what you see out the window and the climate covers the entire planet, my experience of the world is mine, and your experience is yours. We’ll never know what it’s like to be someone else. We’ll never live in someone else’s skin, walk in their shoes. But we can imagine. I’m not at all surprised so many women are taking part in the BLM protests. Many or most of us know what it’s like to be dismissed or discriminated against, so damn straight we empathize.
I think that’s what the world desperately needs and has always needed: empathy, imagination. Without them, you don’t and won’t see the world through anyone else’s eyes but yours. Without them, you don’t and won’t see the consequences of your actions. Facts and numbers and data are absolutely essential when you’re trying to win an argument, but to win a heart you need stories. Books, plays, movies, music, fine art are all fine vehicles, but real people, real lives, real experiences are better; you can’t dismiss them as figments of someone’s imagination.
Let’s listen to one another and speak our truths and tell the world what it feels like to be human in this time and place we occupy together. It’s not a competition but there is a prize: more compassion and cooperation, more empathy and unity; a positive change; a more inclusive world. The suffrage and abolitionist movements succeeded. The LGBTQ+ community is fighting for and winning recognition and rights. The “natural order” of things isn’t natural at all, it’s man-made. So is the climate crisis, gender, racial, regional and economic inequality; they are connected and they intersect. Let’s wise up. Let’s take responsibility and let’s take action. Let’s challenge leaders, companies and governments who won’t. Let’s not vote for or put up with Teflon suits, the Bolsonaros, Johnsons, Morrisons and Trumps of this world. (If it talks like a misogynistic bigot and bully, looks tailored to corporate needs, and seems to both shirk responsibility and avoid accountability, trust your gut instinct and first impression, it is, it does, and will keep doing.)
And let’s challenge ourselves. You are the leading expert on being you. Listen to other experts on life on earth. Read, discuss, think, think again. Admit that you have cognitive biases and distortions. We all do. We are encouraged to brand ourselves, and with all the talk around identity, you can’t help but think that maybe you should get one. Before you know it, your thinking becomes entrenched and every person, idea or circumstance that doesn’t fit doesn’t count. Don’t let that happen to you, dearest denizen. Fight it. With all your might. You are the one and only you just the way you are. Respect and celebrate that by respecting and celebrating the uniqueness and full humanity of others. And be prepared to change. Change course, change your thinking, change your ways, change your mind. We are, after all, a hopeful race. Cooperative and creative.
If you’re tired of being a consumer, a commodity, a resource, become an agent. If you’re tired of witnessing the degradation of your fellow humans and our habitat, become an agent. An agent for change; an agent for good; an agent for a more equal, livable world. If you feel as if there is no reason to get out of bed in the morning, dearest denizen, sweetie darling, my friend from afar…you have found your purpose.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Run boy run
Temperature: 15/59 degrees
Eating: a slice of chocolate date cake I wanted to test for our end of school/start of summer holiday festivities. When did it turn into a buffet? I blame the male adolescents who eat Everything All the Time.
Drinking: Recent events have put me off the sauce.
Watching: The Good Place
Listening: to the sounds of spring and summer
Reading: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. Every human being even remotely interested and invested in equality should read this book. It will make you gasp and seethe, but never again will you be able to say that who knew.
Writing: a letter to my coming-of-age son so that if, for whatever reason, I’m suddenly not here, he’ll always remember how much I loved him, and what I wanted to say and wanted him to know. Does that sound crazy to you? Call me old school, old-fashioned, but I felt at peace when I was done. There. It’s all on paper. So that he’ll never have to doubt or second-guess, and so that he doesn’t forget. No quotes, like the ones below, just the heartfelt words of a mother to her son.
Thinking:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
(Rudyard Kipling)
Feeling:
Oh, and you in all your vibrant youth
How could anything bad ever happen to you?
You make a fool of death with your beauty
And for a moment I forget to worry
(Florence + The Machine)
Eating: a slice of chocolate date cake I wanted to test for our end of school/start of summer holiday festivities. When did it turn into a buffet? I blame the male adolescents who eat Everything All the Time.
Drinking: Recent events have put me off the sauce.
Watching: The Good Place
Listening: to the sounds of spring and summer
Reading: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. Every human being even remotely interested and invested in equality should read this book. It will make you gasp and seethe, but never again will you be able to say that who knew.
Writing: a letter to my coming-of-age son so that if, for whatever reason, I’m suddenly not here, he’ll always remember how much I loved him, and what I wanted to say and wanted him to know. Does that sound crazy to you? Call me old school, old-fashioned, but I felt at peace when I was done. There. It’s all on paper. So that he’ll never have to doubt or second-guess, and so that he doesn’t forget. No quotes, like the ones below, just the heartfelt words of a mother to her son.
Thinking:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
(Rudyard Kipling)
Feeling:
Oh, and you in all your vibrant youth
How could anything bad ever happen to you?
You make a fool of death with your beauty
And for a moment I forget to worry
(Florence + The Machine)
Friday, May 15, 2020
Please don’t go
How’s your week been, sweetie darlings? Mine has been incredibly sad. Starting last weekend, really. So, if you’ve had all the sad you can bear with all the Covid coverage and what not, I suggest you find something else to read because I’m not fit to cheer you up. I’m sorry but there you have it.
You see, one of my oldest and dearest friends was hospitalized. She’s had health issues for a while now and has taken a turn for the worse. Much, much worse. And she’s been keeping this turn from her friends because she’s been keeping the truth and the inevitable consequences from herself. As if that would change the end result, which it didn’t, since she is now, as I said, in the hospital. It’s a relief. It also makes me and another dear and close friend of mine and hers sad and angry and disappointed and worried and scared, and a hundred other things; trust me, we’ve felt it all along the way.
You see, we’ve been best friends for almost forty years now, so since we were kids. These are the oldest friends I have, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that we’ve managed to stay together. I’ve lost so many friends (acquaintances? both) along the way (because the internet/mobile phones didn’t exist, to geography and ghosting, after betrayal and exploitation) that these women, dearest denizens, I’m not willing to let go. Till death do us part. But I hoped that would be decades from now. We’ve shared and gone through ev-ery-thing together. Our whole lives, all the ups and downs and joys and sorrows, pains, miseries and victories. We had plans for old age. So what are you doing? What are you doing to yourself? I love you. We love you. Why have you stopped loving yourself?
How can I bring her up, talk about her this way? Oh, I’m sorry. Do you know who I’m talking about? Maybe you do. Maybe you know someone who is struggling, someone who is fighting their way into the light but losing faith, will and spirit fast. Maybe you feel, like I do, that you are losing this person. Maybe I am. Maybe you are. Maybe we are and there’s nothing we can do about it, and by God we have tried, time and time and time again. It certainly feels like loss, a loss before the fact. And it’s a self-regarding grief you feel, but isn’t it always, that you are about to lose someone you depend on, count on, lean on. How do you live without them? How do you live in a world without them? Love has held you together. Isn’t love supposed to conquer all and heal all and make everything all right in the end? But when someone has decided to give up on the world and everyone in it, they don’t hang on love, do they? They hang on the thought of the pain ending. They hang on anything that dulls that pain, be it drugs or alcohol or a variety of self-harming habits that only hasten their descent into their personal hell. Throw all the love you have into that abyss and see it disappear into a gaping black hole. That’s my experience. Tell me, please, there’s some other way this story ends, because I know it happens. (So why do I have a bad feeling about this?) Tell me your loved one got clean, got sober, found the will to live, found Jesus or Buddha or the Flying Spaghetti Monster [it’s a thing, look it up], found their way back to herself or himself or themself [it’s a word, look it up.].
Because the way I see it, she is lost and in no hurry to find her way back to anything anymore. Her friends and family have tried to bolster her, help her, but she is neither strong nor motivated. She seems to have passed the point of caring. To hell with life, the universe and everything, I’m winehousing it to the bitter end.
I’m hurting so fucking bad right now. But nothing compared to how much she is, I’m sure.
Don’t go. Please please please don’t leave me here without you.
You see, one of my oldest and dearest friends was hospitalized. She’s had health issues for a while now and has taken a turn for the worse. Much, much worse. And she’s been keeping this turn from her friends because she’s been keeping the truth and the inevitable consequences from herself. As if that would change the end result, which it didn’t, since she is now, as I said, in the hospital. It’s a relief. It also makes me and another dear and close friend of mine and hers sad and angry and disappointed and worried and scared, and a hundred other things; trust me, we’ve felt it all along the way.
You see, we’ve been best friends for almost forty years now, so since we were kids. These are the oldest friends I have, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that we’ve managed to stay together. I’ve lost so many friends (acquaintances? both) along the way (because the internet/mobile phones didn’t exist, to geography and ghosting, after betrayal and exploitation) that these women, dearest denizens, I’m not willing to let go. Till death do us part. But I hoped that would be decades from now. We’ve shared and gone through ev-ery-thing together. Our whole lives, all the ups and downs and joys and sorrows, pains, miseries and victories. We had plans for old age. So what are you doing? What are you doing to yourself? I love you. We love you. Why have you stopped loving yourself?
How can I bring her up, talk about her this way? Oh, I’m sorry. Do you know who I’m talking about? Maybe you do. Maybe you know someone who is struggling, someone who is fighting their way into the light but losing faith, will and spirit fast. Maybe you feel, like I do, that you are losing this person. Maybe I am. Maybe you are. Maybe we are and there’s nothing we can do about it, and by God we have tried, time and time and time again. It certainly feels like loss, a loss before the fact. And it’s a self-regarding grief you feel, but isn’t it always, that you are about to lose someone you depend on, count on, lean on. How do you live without them? How do you live in a world without them? Love has held you together. Isn’t love supposed to conquer all and heal all and make everything all right in the end? But when someone has decided to give up on the world and everyone in it, they don’t hang on love, do they? They hang on the thought of the pain ending. They hang on anything that dulls that pain, be it drugs or alcohol or a variety of self-harming habits that only hasten their descent into their personal hell. Throw all the love you have into that abyss and see it disappear into a gaping black hole. That’s my experience. Tell me, please, there’s some other way this story ends, because I know it happens. (So why do I have a bad feeling about this?) Tell me your loved one got clean, got sober, found the will to live, found Jesus or Buddha or the Flying Spaghetti Monster [it’s a thing, look it up], found their way back to herself or himself or themself [it’s a word, look it up.].
Because the way I see it, she is lost and in no hurry to find her way back to anything anymore. Her friends and family have tried to bolster her, help her, but she is neither strong nor motivated. She seems to have passed the point of caring. To hell with life, the universe and everything, I’m winehousing it to the bitter end.
I’m hurting so fucking bad right now. But nothing compared to how much she is, I’m sure.
Don’t go. Please please please don’t leave me here without you.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Waiting for Gadot
Temperature: the police and other authorities must be jumping for joy: 5.5/42 degrees; that’ll curb any inclinations to storm the parks and beaches this Valborg.
Eating: a Walpurgis Night/May Day home picnic. May Day is a public holiday and street carnival, now private and indoors. 🙁 Such is life.
Drinking: whatever goes with our snacks; mead (a May Day staple) and scrumpy (my May Day staple).
Watching: from afar what friends and family are having and how they’re celebrating.
Listening: I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Reading: The Other People by C. J. Tudor. And if you haven’t read her, you should, because her books are horrific (and I mean grippingly good).
Thinking: When oh when do I get to see Wonder Woman 1984? [Or Promising Young Woman? Damn. Double damn!] I’ve loved Wonder Woman in all her incarnations since the age of six, and GG is no exception.
Feeling: That’s not the only thing or person, factual or fictional, I miss. Oh well.
Eating: a Walpurgis Night/May Day home picnic. May Day is a public holiday and street carnival, now private and indoors. 🙁 Such is life.
Drinking: whatever goes with our snacks; mead (a May Day staple) and scrumpy (my May Day staple).
Watching: from afar what friends and family are having and how they’re celebrating.
Listening: I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Reading: The Other People by C. J. Tudor. And if you haven’t read her, you should, because her books are horrific (and I mean grippingly good).
Thinking: When oh when do I get to see Wonder Woman 1984? [Or Promising Young Woman? Damn. Double damn!] I’ve loved Wonder Woman in all her incarnations since the age of six, and GG is no exception.
Feeling: That’s not the only thing or person, factual or fictional, I miss. Oh well.
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