Tea With Me: 20th March, 2020 Friday
Lung Rabies Blues
Well, I have clocked something key. I have always known I have an addictive personality. I hook into something that feels right or good for a while and I obsess around it in various behavioral forms and then almost as swiftly as these obsessions rise with their inspired behavioral responses, I find them gone, the inspiration dead and grey. And the behaviors no longer compulsory.
Just so you don’t launch into diagnoses, I have always been aware that I have choices here. The only one that really gripped was cigarettes and I left those 15 years ago. I flirt every now and then usually after wine, My kids freak a bit, but hey, I have this down.
We are in a twilight thing. All of us in shock. What to read and what to internalize as truth. Nothing is firm and all around us swirl of fear of this lurking thing among us.
TV series are a brilliant hook. Streaming, O My Gods and Godesses, thank the Stars of inspiration to created this amazing when I want as much as I want story feed. I have consumed the current canon of English language TV shows. Some of higher standards than others. Husband has a liking for my selection as we enjoy the stream together. I will not list the ones I hold inside my brain for my Inner Intellectual is too shamed of how friggin long that list is actually.
Some years ago my Youngest, in need of communal downshift after first semester college, introduced me to the first edisode of “The Walking Dead”.
Repulsive, terrifying, shocking, electrifying, adrenal draining!!! I stopped it. How could they do this.
And then because of being Mama and the need of Child for distraction, I consented to hitting the play button.
And I was a goner. ‘
Seen every friggin episode of TWD and its spinoff, FWD, Fear the Walking Dead. For those of you wise people who refuse to self expose, let me defend the choice to what some may term squander my fine attention on this Tale.
As my obsessive gear kicked in, the episodes wore on. Lo and behold, the Zombie terror ensuing adrenalin rush waned and the story of what happens to our moral compasses as the Social Contract Infrastructure fails became riveting. Yes, I know, William Golding did it in the age when authors were still Gods. But we live in a different age 65 years later. I tell ya, TWD and FWD offer a myriad of trajectories about how different personalities, demographic backgrounds, previous life experiences, sexual orientations, etc respond to the end of the world as we know it with undeath just a bite away.
There is good and evil for sure. Heroes and Villians. But both of those are shades of greys, not straight up blacks and whites.. Even the stoutest most righteous moral compasses wobble depending on the momentary situational pressures.
But the Straight Up Evils, those that land firmly in the Blacks, come from those who want The Power. The Trumps. The Ones who leverage convenience and self preservation over what is right for all. They for the most part have comeupence because, of course, there is the cast whhose group dynamics and individual appeal command the writers to make sure they set up their insurmountable threats to be, at the last second, impossibly erased.
And then we cheer.
Its that cycle of excruciatingly built stress to how the hell relief which is part of the hooks it reels me along for. yet another hit the play for the next episode.
So as the last few weeks have ratcheted up the Fear Lung Rabies Show, I find myself hitting my Apple news app tab every five minutes or so. It hit me not too long ago, this feels like the first few weeks of Trumpety Dumpety Shock Wave after the 2016 election. The universe had inverted so astoundingly and how could he truly reign.
I railed and ranted as my obsessive switch flipped and then, as usual for me it waned as I watched this Horror unfold in the background of my Mother’s Death, December, 2016.
Inauguration, OMG and marches and his friggin voice resounded all hhis oh so transparent eyes, I waited for the episode to end.
All the fuckups, kids in cages, Brett Kavanaugh, slashing all good things Obama, the assassination of the terrorist which I may remind you is a War Crime still, then Impeachment OMG, are the credits rolling yet?
Oh no.
And now we have this Lung Rabies Lurk which he fucking knew or at least someone tried to tell him.
We know the Senate had a briefing because a few of our highest elected Statesmen of the GOP variety, dumped their stock portfolios and some invested in work from home companies way back in early 2020.
And today he screams on television that Obama did this too…OH MY GOD…
And I do fear my obsession switch has thrown to the point of irrepairability as I hit that Apple News tab more than Facebook now.
I am riveted to this Horror Show and wonder at the End. Will it tank the World or waft away in Spring.
The Sun in Oregon is screaming Spring. Its radiation, as I so consciously wash in its rays, signals peace and calm. Its touch whispers, “This will go. Do not fret. You are me and I am you. We will last. It will not.”
Bless us, every one, no matter which side you pray to. Even in Social Distancing, we are not alone.
Tea was black and creamed.
Ta.
Tea With Me 