Tea With Me: 23rd November, 2020 Monday
Its Grey. Unusual. Light is dim and dogs are driftly dozing.
Almond Pup still has to wake at 6:30. And I do not go back to sleep. I waddle into closet and pull on something with an elastic waist and uggs and find some warm robe or sweater.
Mornings drift these days. New Mexico locked down a week ago and after a 7day spike at least Santa Fe County testing numbers dropped to half of the day before today although alot more people died.
Ya, that’s right. More people died. Every day more people die. And some of them die denying they are dying because their bodies are infected with a virus they have been told is a hoax or that wearing a mask is some political ploy to taint them with the most evil thing on Earth, Socialism.
I have been watching “the news” obssessively in the wake of November 7th driven by my Tantrum Era PTSD. Maybe if I hear it fresh in the dimension I call Reality where a larger portion of the US population is likely to agree these “Truths are Self Evident”, or thes Facts are Real Facts, I might be able to have some level of control about the deconstruction of the Social Contract I still adhere to.
Control, Ha! That is the lesson. No control. Except wearing the Mask and not going out. And cut erranding down to the bare minimum because if Amazon can deliver it in two days, that’s safer for Forager Husband so he will be here next to me for Christmas.
And if you want to slam me for being one of Amazon’s supporter’s, go ahead.
In the “media” immersion I have done in the last three months, I have found myself once again feeling like a cultural anthropologist. Having not been a “news” junkie for most of my life, having found it disturbed me for the most part and while I had small children in the house I made the decision not to run the news in their home world. So Tantrum’s Era forced me to break that avoidance habit but it happened in stages. First it was watching Bill Maher, then reading the digital versions of The NYT and Washington Post, Politico, and CNN. I even had the Wall Street Journal hard copy delivered for awhile and used it to line the bottom of my parrot’s cage and would catch a whiff of what was current in the Markets as I spread out the sheets ready to recieve Bird Shit.
Next stage as Covid hit and Hollywood locked it up was the YOUTUBE collection of videos. I discovered the charm of Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, with the occasional condiment of the CNN, Politico, MSNBC,etc., clips of slightly delayed current events.
Then the week of the election as the votes trickled in and Tantrum spewed, I signed on to a streaming access app which will allow me to watch live tv. We do not have cable or satelite as I found paying for internet gives us all we want for viewing. So deeper I sink into the culture of contemporary reporting.
And of course I am switching through all the mainstay channels of the Liberal Tower of Babble, CNN, CBS, CBSN, MSNBC, etc etc etc. And as I am finding most of what I am doing is channel switching as the bizarre commercials interupt the flow of what is supposed to be information, I am finding that what I am mostly watching are talking heads with various personality hooks which depending on a viewer’s pallette are platformed I subtley different ways so they each have their own flavor. And most of them are spouting opinions all of which are decidedly critical of anything right of center. They do, however, pepper the opinion dissing stream of conciousness with interviews with people who actually bring forth Facts and or know what they are talking about.
Ya, I have my favorites, ones I will go to for their distillation of what is happening in the Social Cosmos.
But this morning something occurred to me.
If I were tuning into any one of them and were even slightly right of center, I would swiftly find insult in this cluster of talking heads and would search for other clusters of talking heads who might not diss everything I hold dear.
Yes. There was the Light Bulb here. This is a main taproot of the Our Deep Division Tree. Its Trunk has a split. I live on the branches on its Left but not too far from center as I know this Tree is only One. If I turn my gaze up further into Left Branchings tips I see some strange fruit which feels a bit too far and its wieght is creaking the Split not too far below where I sit.
Division Tree’s Right Branching has bloomed all sorts of even stranger fruit to me as I look across the split. And sure enough that wieght is creaking the Split even louder as the Tantrum’s Wind Swirls both Branches Fruit.
Is the Tree Splitting?
Can we not see that both Fruits are from this Tree? And as they ripen and fall, can we not agree to gather both together and make the Bizarre Left and Right Jam which is the only way we heal the Tree.
I know this metaphor is stretched beyond the pale but can you get my friggin drift.
We have grown strange Fruit on both sides of this divide but they share the same DNA. This is OUR FRUIT. Niether one is Other’s. We did this together.
As this week unfolds, we will find out how fucked the certifiers might be, as we do not gather or gather or mask or not to give thanks for all we have.
I order Amazon because I can imagine Husband in an ICU, or me, gasping love at a cell phone screen to those we are leaving behind. I mask for the same reason.
I am grateful for Husband, Eldest, SIL, Youngest, all my critters, family far away, friends close by I cannot see, my home, all of you, the Sky, the Earth, my breath.
I am aware that my American Despair is feeding those Strange Fruits. And I am thankful for My America which is full of all those Fruits.
So as I cook for two enough food for all those I love who are with me phantomly this Thursday, I am making Jam in my Strange Grateful Way.
Remember to be Kind.
Tea was Black and Creamed and Day is Gray.
Ta.
Tea With Me 