I've had some messy emotions the last 24 hours and can't go into specifics but I'm feeling extra isolated from my people today. I mean my kids, primarily. Been discussing installing Zoom with the kid's mom so I can have regular face time with them.
I'm realizing how much I've missed everyone else, too, though. The feels are that people are important to me and I've done a lot of "we'll get together soons" and "let's make a dates" and we all know how that ends.
Let's go to the Winchester and wait till this whole thing blows over.
Now when being responsible means not being in the same room with people for the foreseeable future means, well fuckera. I want to see almost everyone. When this is over, I insist on seeing you and I will make it happen.
It surprises me to be so busy with actual work right now. I seriously have at least eight hours to fill the day, and it's just weird to be doing it when the daily tally was what it was.
Louisiana just got steamrolled after Mardi Gras and has the fastest growing infection rate in the world, while here in Berkeley the tally is only 11 tested and confirmed cases, but that gives a false sense of security when there was an elder gentlemen tested positive after shopping at my local Safeway Saturday before last. God knows if I touched anything the following Sunday that he may have handled, but I have zero symptoms thus far eight days later. The small-town that Berkeley really is becomes reality when one has actual friends who say "wait, I was there that Saturday". Yeah, people call us a city, but without the students, we're nothing but a town.
Higher density anybody?
I was going to start in on politics and then got intensely fatigued. Mitch McConnell is droning on about the Relief Bill and what he wants us to believe is the Democrats have been selfishly holding back on signing it for no good reason.
"Do you work here?" He snarked at journalist posing a question. It is disheartening how lack of simple civility has just flown out the window. What a scornful fucktwit he is, just like Frump. Who speaks to another person like that for no real reason?
So that's just how it goes and I'm so, so weary of it. What banal, boring, predictable pieces of shit these people are.
In all honestly, right now I want to do other things than hear this politicization of a rampant disease or working eight hours while sitting in my living room. I want to paint, draw, write and play the piano. There have been five zillion opportunities prior to now to indulge myself in creativity and it takes a fucking zombie apocalypse to inspire me? I think I've forgotten that I could be more like Peter Pan and fly sometimes. I have friends who live life like it's magical. More on that in a bit.
My Carter didn't beat the devil in the end, but we had this poster in our house for a long time and it still charms me.
⟺
Multiple talents are contributing their crafts, and it's one of the coolest phenomena I have seen in my lifetime. A few I've seen so far; live-stream Chick Corea practice sessions, a doll-making demo by my favorite blue-haired Cajun, Ugly Shyla, and live updates from one of the loveliest people/voices, Jenna Mammina, about the tempo of her life right now, with people like Narada Michael Walden chiming in (like whoa, that's pretty cool IMHO), and a crochet tutorial that I can't keep up with, and other live streams.
I'd like to shout out Sunshine Alchemists soap company who is relying on two orders a day to survive. Master soapmaker and proprietress, Maaike Hurst, makes soap, body butters, candles, and other luscious things and has a lot of talk-story to share, but the coolest thing right now is that she is a newlywed to her Moroccan husband, Najib, who made it by the slimmest possible margin to the U.S about a week before the Zombie Apocalypse. How strange it must be for him in this new world with the current reality.
The aforementioned Ugly Shyla makes some very cool dolls, one of which hangs in my dining room. She also creates some goth jewelry, pendants, rings etcetera and for those who want to decorate themselves to take away the sting from having some seriously fucked up hair right now (you will not be seeing a recent picture of me for awhile, I'll tell you that), hit her up here at Ugly Art Dolls to check out her magic. I'm kinda fascinated by her, so here's a pic.
Impromptu segue. My Ugly Art Doll's name is Hermione, after my grandfather's first wife. She came to me as a porcelain head and I'm not being all woo-woo when I say she came with a spirit in her. For several months after I had her professionally shadow-boxed so I could hang her up, she would fall off her mounting when I was just standing looking at her. I kept rehanging her on her mount. One day, after a one-sided discussion with her, she now stays right where I put her. That was some spooky shit, but not entirely out of character for my dining room, where my ancestor altar resides. Things happen in there to sensitive people.
Obviously, technology is keeping us connected which is entirely mind-boggling for those of us who remember having to stretch the phone cord to max tension in order to have private teenaged convos back in the day and meeting at the Downtown BART station waiting for peeps to show up with the down-low on where the hangout was.
Those were the days.
I've lost patience at this point and while I don't necessarily mind being trapped in my house for the foreseeable future, I see zero point when this is over, extending my energy toward anything or anyone who doesn't add a little magic to my world. Life is just too short.
All that and I still say we need to extend kindness and compassion to others because without it we're just doomed.
We need some magic, Goddamn it.
My grandson wants to learn magic. He doesn't have the patience yet and maybe never will to be a master at it, but no one said you have to be good at anything in order to love doing it. Something as simple as a perfect Faro shuffle enchants him. I told him a little secret about the Faro shuffle and told him he has to be able to do a perfect shuffle in order to do the magical part. He obsessed over it until he got one perfect shuffle, but he has a long way to go before he can to the thing I told him about. I want him to search for that magic. You have to risk failure in order to find the magic and I hope he takes those risks.
For proof of that, I present you with this video of a skin-crawling magical feat, performed by my dear friend and veteran comrade of the early 80s, Tom Frank. If you're interested in seeing my beloved friend impale his hand on a very sharp metal spike, please enjoy the Smash and Stab.
Other magic is simply whimsical and cartoonish and full of joyful childish wonder. For that, I offer to you Danny Sylvester aka Sylvester the Jester. I guarantee you will be amazed and amused and right now we really really need some of this.
I'm full of sideshows. What would life be without wonder and magic?
I've always believed in magic because if I didn't, nothing I've done would be as sparkly as it is. This is Jim Cellini, the late great master magician, busker, dear friend and all-around amazing human. Honestly, because of him and the love and care he brought into my life at a very uncertain time, I know there's magic everywhere.
Be the Magic.
Peace and Love,
Eva/Heather/Hanai'ali'i
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