Thoughts On Assisted Suicide and Other Things

Things that run through me brain.

coffee, must have coffee, dog must go out and pee, feed cats, feed dog, coffee, make coffee,coffee is cooking too slow, ahhh coffee. 
clean clothes, do I have any clean underwear, where are my socks, dog must go out and poop,dog needs more water, breakfast, what should I eat, need to be healthy, eat more salad, eat more vegetables, stop watching tv, coffee, eggs, need to make some eggs.  Eat more salad. eat healthy, live longer, don't die...coffee

 You can see how this goes...of course it changes a bit as the day goes along of course. 

I've been trying to eat more salad, can you guess?  So far I've had it for about three days in a row.  A big, healthy bowl of greens, peppers, olives, cucumbers, egg, turkey...some chia seeds. 

Why is it so much easier to eat a bacon cheeseburger?  I want to know this!  But I guess that we can only do the best we can.

I've read that when people are depressed they have to start with small goals.

My goal is: Get out of bed.  I count it a good day when I can pull myself out of my bed.  Having pets helps with this because they are always needing something.  Plus my cat will menacingly stare over me and prod me with her paw until I get her some crunchies.

Stress kills by the way.  As a group, we people seem to think that we always have to put forth this brave front all the time, this desire that we are fighting or succeeding. 
Guess what...none of that matters.

So I've been following Brittany Maynard's story and I find it to be interesting for several reasons. 

Now, I do not have a terminal disease, but one day I will die.  I can understand why someone would choose not to go through the treatment for a disease that is untreatable.   I get not wanting to suffer.  But I do not understand the term Death with Dignity. 

This term just underlines a very American attitude towards death.  Americans are ASHAMED to die young.  That's right.  Because we have this can-do, will-do way of thinking and place so much on what we consider "success" vs "failure"  when our body "fails" beyond our control we feel ashamed.

Ashamed that we are not healthy enough, ashamed that our family and friends may have to face our death and think about their own, ashamed that we are letting others down.

I don't know Brittany's motives, frankly I don't really care what she chooses to do.  Either way, death is not an easy nor dignified thing.  Dying with a full head of hair vs wispy grey chemo hair is the same thing...the pain is the same, the struggle is the same. 

I just want to tell people, THERE IS NO SHAME IN DYING. 

Dying is the most natural thing, we all do it.  There is dignity in every death.  There is dignity in every death.  I really wish that Americans could start to view this thing called dying in a non-clinical, I've failed kind of way...

See people are afraid to talk about death.  We don't like to be reminded of how fragile we are, or the pain that we may feel, or the pain that our loved ones will feel.  Death can never be sanitized.  We think that we are in control of so many things, but we are not. 

And some may say that it is not dignified for a dying person, to lose control of their bladder and have their three children crowd around her bed and clean her up.  But I think that is the most dignified a person can get, to accept such help, to feel such love, to be so...human.

No matter what Brittany Maynard decides to do because it is her body, not mine.  I just hope that she knows there is no shame in getting cancer even before you turn thirty.

Because I CAN.

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Not good, but not terrible considering I do absolutely nothing to advertise it.

So people are out there in the world reading what I've got to say.  I picture y'all on your Phablets or iPads...clicking at the drivel.

But honestly, c'mon  most of you read those awful Buzzfeed "articles" which I'm beginning to think are written by about twenty monkeys in a room somewhere with a massive server, hunkered down with trucks of bananas in some over-priced Brooklyn hovel.

I'm a writer. Or at least that seems to be my chosen hobby.  I write stuff.
Now, there are some really great things out there being written and posted by people, but there are also some self-serving blogs du jour.  I don't read them--on purpose.

But what really matters in this life ya know?  Importance in the grind, the running on the wheel, the great surrender to all things blah.

We are all supposed to grow up someday, right?

What if we chose not to grow up?  What if I choose to continue to think with the openness of my young brain(well maybe younger than it is now).   Well, I believe the world would be a better place.

I'm not an overtly social being.  I don't claim to have mucho acquaintances.  But the people I choose to be a part of my life, while not many are the people that I would do anything for, go anywhere with and ultimately love the most.

Most of us have experienced failed relationships.  Romantic, friendships, co-workers...etc.

I used to focus a bunch on my own failings. WHAT WENT WRONG??? I would plague my thoughts with that question.

Now, I've decided to think, what went right?  Let me 'splain.

Every end of something, relation-wise has made me examine my own sense of self, who I am, what I want in these short years.  After this last ending, I know what went wrong, but I started thinking about what I did that was right, what felt good vs what felt bad.  Because the next guy I meet, I want to recognize that good stuff.  I'm on the lookout for those good thoughts/feelings. 

 I am NOT religious...anymore.  In fact, I sincerely believe that religion is what has put a wedge between people and God. But, in the my religious upbringing we were taught about how wrong we were.  How we fell so short of holiness, goodness and how nothing in us was good except for God.

The years it has taken me to overcome such early indoctrination of my own worthlessness has been many that's for sure.  The thing is, the kindest most accepting and honest friends I know and love are not the types I was raised with.  They best friends I have, don't have anything to prove.  And trust me they vary in religion and belief.  And THANK God, that they don't all think the same.

Just like when I realized that I was basically dating the same guy over and over again, at one point I realized my friends were the same.  They thought the same as me, wanted the same things, had the same goals...same political beliefs.
and look those are all natural good attributes in friendship, but when you surround  yourself with people of the same ilk. (and you know how you define yourself) then you are limiting so much in yourself.

If I only spent time with white, middleclass, christian females...what the heck?  My life would be so dismal and boring!!

Think outside the box.  Challenge yourself a bit.  Travel somewhere unknown.  Grow your brain. Be open.

Here's a story for ya.
When I was 13, I met some folks and we started to talk about music.  Now, these kids were a few years older than me, boys(who I thought were cute) and two girls my age.  I knew nothing about popular music.  I'd spent the past couple months listening to as much Bob Marley I could get my hands on.  And I didn't talk about it, I didn't know anyone else who liked Bob Marley except my parents. Plus I was afraid people would think I was a pot head.

So there we were sitting round a campfire...and when they asked me what music I liked this was my reply,
-Oh, well...I guess I like Celine Dion.

Okay, I was so afraid that they wouldn't know who Bob Marley was, or that they would laugh at me for being a total nerd with pink glasses and frizzy hair that I lied.  Yup.  I lied 100%.  I lied because I thought one of the guys was cute and I wanted to appear feminine.  It was the type of thing the other girls were saying and I didn't want to appear strange.  And since he kissed me, maybe it worked who the heck knows?
Sometimes, I wish that I could go back to that night and say, how much I love reggae.  He probably would've thought I was super odd.  I mean this was the early nineties.  It was many years before I openly talked about my reggae obsession.  (Check out this reggae roots 80 min of music!) And if it's your thing burn up da herbs.

So what the hell am I getting at??  I was embarrassed that I didn't fit in to my own demographic.  13 year old girl listening to Celine and whatever boy band du jour was around.  I learned to never lie about myself.  Sheesh, this was 21 years ago and I still feel bad about it.  But life is for learning no?

Here's my challenge:  Are you demographically closed?  Are all your friends clones?  Do you think outside your philosophical box...ever?  Try.  Just try to do it. 

Anyhoo those are my thoughts for today...

Sometimes...There Is Just Not Enough Wine

Whine that title out...puh-lease.  This is not pretty.

C'mon hasn't that happened to you?  Finish a bottle of wine, want more but realize that you've had too much to drive and the liquor store is closed anyway?
OK so maybe I'm strange.

But, I am also watching, Old Yeller.  That's right, best doggone dog in the west.  I AM a masochist.  I know how this movie ends.  We borrowed it from the library on VHS and my Mom, Erik, Sonja and I sobbed watching it.  But I just can't resist.  I'm feeling nostalgic tonight.

If we could be more honest about life, feelings, all kinds of things, I believe that our stress would melt away. But, I'm lucky.

I'm poor.  No, really I'm under the poverty limit.  But the thing is, I don't care.  I'm managing in a way I've never managed before.  In this poverty that I'm experiencing, I've been learning so much about life and I'm being taught about truths that cannot be learned or taught in a class or from a book.

And what does all this mean?   Well, that is the million dollar question isn't it?

Here's my thinking:  Most art, true, gut-wrenching art(music, writing, painting) comes from folks who've been through the worst in life.  You know why?

Those people are so in tune with the emotions needed to create, the intense variation of life.

Most artists that I know, do not live off their parent's credit cards, or abundance.  Most great artists struggle to be able to have the time and space to create.  Most have day jobs that they barely tolerate just so they can have the right head space to create...Artists do it because the have to...there is no other choice.

Kind of like animal-lovers.  We can't help but have cats and dogs because our lives are not complete without them.  And see I observe my own age-group.  We've been handed a heck of a lot of things from our parents and have gotten used to a comfortable life.  Sure there are so many things stacked against us too, not as many opportunities, inflation, higher taxes, incredibly high student loans...

Where the heck am I going with this?  Too much wine, but not enough.
Aw what the hell...I'm getting involved with Ole Yeller.  Everything comes down to impressions,
 he's an ugly yeller dog
But hey, he ain't an ugly yeller dog, he's a purty yeller dog.


Someone's ugly yeller dog might be another's purty yeller dog.  And this is how I feel about the creative world...hell, this is how I feel about love.

My man might be an ugly yeller dog to you, but maybe he's a purty yeller dog to me.

But who cares?  Impressions, social media spinning.  For the USA the country of individuality, there seems to be an awful lot of conformity.

Cause in the end aren't we all just going to catch Ebola and shit ourselves to death?

Or contract some Hydry-phoby.

I really hope that no animals were harmed in the making of this film, Disney corporation....

What I'm Reading? Watching? Listening???

My greatest dream is to read all the books on Harold Bloom's Canon.  I've hit quite a few on it, but have many to go.  Not to mention, I like to read other "newer" works also.

I find that whenever I get a bit of writer's block(which is not frequent) I can always stir up my mind by reading.  Kindle, while not as tactile as the real paper and cardboard has served me so well over the past few years.  Mainly because I read more than one book at a time.  I've been working on my own memoir and so I find myself drawn to the art of creative non-fiction.  Here is my list of several books that I've been absorbing into my brain over the past week or two:


1.  Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times : MEMOIR

  I am of course reading this because I love the show.  And of course books are always ten times better than TV.  Jenny Lee was a midwife in the East End of London during the 1950's and her memoir makes me sob like a baby(that's a good thing chickens!)
What I enjoyed:  The humanity of people struggling to live moves my heart, and spurs me on in my own life.

2. The Best American Short Stories 2012 :  SHORT STORIES

No folks, the short story is not dead.  It lives on as a fabulous art form still.  I admit that I read this one because it was included in the new Kindle Unlimited.  I was  also drawn to it because Tom Perotta was one of the editors...and I love his books.

What I enjoyed:  The diverse selection of writers and styles, some stood out more than others.  NO the short story is NOT dead!!

3. The Secret Speech(The Child 44 Trilogy) : NOVEL

This is the second book in the series.  Tom Rob Smith crafts a great Soviet era thriller that makes me want to swig back some Stoli and nosh on some caviar, blinis, and Borscht.  Since this is a trilogy, I suggest reading the first book, Child 44.  I could not put it down.   This book isn't as easy to get into but is also a good read. Plus, I hear that it is becoming a movie...

What I enjoyed:  The suspense and mystery, the dark Soviet Kruschev KGB world.

4. Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs:  MEMOIR

I have no idea why I read this book.  I have never been a huge Sex Pistols fan or anything, but I started the preview on my Kindle and was drawn into this tale of the making of a modern artist.   He tells this story with biting wit and honesty...some of my favorite attributes.  I wonder what other fascinating tidbits it will include.  John Lydon has another memoir coming out this month too.

What I enjoyed: The descriptions of growing up in poverty in London  and every non-Sex Pistols part.  Also I prefer artists who are real, candid, and did not fall into it through the trappings of middle-classdom...the artists who've paid their dues per se.  John Lydon please adopt me.

5. The Lady with The Dog : SHORT STORY

Chekov at his finest.  Why are there so many fabulous Russian authors out there?  I mean these guys really knew how to craft a fascinating tale.  If only I could read Russian!!

What I enjoyed:  The sensual nature of this story, and c'mon he is Chekov!  I want to write like this guy.


6. A Grief Observed : Essay/Memoir

When CS Lewis began to pen this short tome, he was trying to make sense of his own emotions.  I wanted to read this earlier, but avoided it  due to my own desire not to read about other's grief.  However, this book made me cry and I recommend it for anyone.

What I enjoyed:  He pretty much calls God a Sadist...my thoughts at times.

CS Lewis. Man...I love him which brings me to the music of another Lewis.  Jenny Lewis.

Just One of the Guys(cause I'm also "just another lady without a baby")  I am loving this entire album called Voyager, which I really need to get on vinyl.

Sidenote: Jenny Lewis was in this great movie that played on the Disney channel back in the 80's(when that channel had substance) called A Friendship in Vienna

Here is is the FULL movie on Youtube!! Watch it!  You won't be disappointed.