Greenstorm's Journal

My poem-a-day on fb ended on Imbolc. We're at equinox now, the time of balance.

A lot of things have been happening in the world that, according to the way I and my peers were educated, were only supposed to happen in countries that (insert scientific racism here).

I'm alive and supported. Mom came up for almost two weeks, the longest I've visited with her since before I lef-- was kicked out of home. We're on the same page about the current state of the US, and we're both from here. We both don't know what to do about my anti-vax pro-musk anti-civilization brother. I'm honestly very curious about how my other brother and his wife, who are currently pregnant, will deal with the whole thing.

My body and my mind still are low capacity. The gardening club did a seedy saturday last weekend, and I've been going in to the studio on sundays to work to encourage the new folks; I'm still recovering from that three days later, and not as fast as I'd like. Part of the issue is that having emotions is an activity and I've run out of shows that don't eliminate people, kill people, use long-term threats to people as the main meat of the show etc to watch to avoid spending time on current events.

While due process is evaporating in the US, my left-leaning friends are also slowly letting go of the idea of laws that apply equally and of due process in Canada. It's been a long journey and it showed up first awhile ago, first of course with the concept that the right/wrong people shouldn't have the right not to be physically assaulted (nazis, rapists) and has been trailing on from there. When a system isn't working there doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to envision an equitable system that works, just calls to tear the system down, but only for the parts of the system they don't like. No energy is spared for thinking something might ever be better, or what consequences might be.

Which is how, I guess, we get to the slow death of the concept of universal rights that seems to be happening. Enough polarization, I guess, that folks can't hold onto the idea of everyone as humans. Or maybe they consider that the experiment of the concept of rights has failed. I'm still chewing on this one.

And meanwhile a very great number of people are about to die earlier than they expected. Between Palestine, AIDS and malaria programs, vaccinate-able diseases funding & related medical collapse, and various flavours of famine, well.

There's no fixing it from here. Only amelioration, our seedy saturday gave away thousands of packets of seeds, we had over fifty people come (the municipality is something like 1500 people, the area something like 3000). I gave away lots of micro tomato plants. There was a feeling of abundance. People walked away with arms spilling packets of seeds. We raised many of them and many seed companies contrubuted. For a second we were supported, and maybe people will grow a connection to the soil.

But because I was out in public during the weekend I ran into and talked to more people than normal and I just--

Maybe conversations with myself, here in this space or in the realm of poetry, are the way I need to make meaning before I can interact socially about anything other than pottery.

One of the pottery students is from the soviet union. Then she lived in New York during 9-11. She prefers not to talk about it, as do I, honestly. She's found a way to believe that people are mostly good.

I'm trying to find a way to believe, not that people are good, but to reconcile how I myself, plus baby chicks that eat each other and plagues and humans that genocide pretty regularly as a matter of archaeological fact and lynx populations that starve periodically and the way it's easier to eat a prey animal alive by going in through the intestines but also each new spring and adult crows feeding other apparently adult crows and the way a plant makes more seeds than I'll ever need, how to reconcile how all these things coexist *with me inside it all*. Do I have a role? What is it?

This is the time when I'm starting tomato seeds.

The talking point is that immigrants are important because they fill roles, like doctors and nurses, that our society can't fill from within itself. These humans are important because of their utility.

I would think that a stronger argument could be made that, for instance, palestinians who watched so many people be killed around them, trans people who are institutionally raped, dunno, take your pick from the so many groups, that they should be given a place where they can rest and heal without being bothered to serve folks and be grateful. An argument that humans care for each other because we're human.

But it's not a stronger argument I guess. How do I reconcile that?

It snowed today, it'll snow again tomorrow and the day after. Disability wants more paperwork. Folks want to schedule things. My ability to think is overloaded and I am nonetheless stealing it selfishly to write here, to think about meaning and context. Doing so leaves other people waiting until my capacity recovers, it leaves the possibility that I might lose disability funding and rely more on other people. It keeps me myself.

I'm used to making meaning with such a quick, bright, flexible instrument. Now what I use is unfamiliar, erratic and slow and landscape-shifting as a glacier. I think, not in moments but in months, and as I think the beginning and ends of the thoughts fade into murk.

It's new, but it's also me, a person I love and trust. I want to see where this takes me.

I want more people to be safe.

I want to understand how I can be a human, and other people are somehow humans too.

Equinox has passed. Fittingly, this is the week where snow is warming into liquid water. Geese group up and each group guards its puddle, splashing and spraying water and posturing and calling to each other. Everything is dripping. The driveway ice has dropped two inches, leaving a tarp and my truck and any other obstructions to the sun sitting on pillars while streamlets run down and back to disappear under the snow. The fences have grown a foot as the snow slowly subsides: on my one window that was covered I can see it consolidate from fluffy white into shimmering blue ice underneath. This is how glaciers are formed.

I celebrated this equinox by loving things, gently and carefully: my animals, which I've been practicing with, and people just a little around the edges. Maybe I'm waiting to love my garden because it's such a huge project, such a huge part of my heart, but it's beginning to seem possible. It feels like learning to walk: one step at a time, sometimes I try and find that I'm back on the ground, and sometimes I cross a distance without noticing until afterwards.

I went out and shoveled the sundeck without any clothes on at solar noon and my skin couldn't remember what to do: do we sunburn with the sun still so low in the sky? How do we deal with this kind of radiant heat? It was lovely. It's reached 8 or 10 degrees out even.

I'm getting a little less sleepy. I'm not functional, but I do have moments when I'm beginning to feel close to fully awake. I still can't think well. I've never had good working memory, but for a long time I've been able to repurpose the part of my mind that forms words right before I speak them for that use. Now that is gone too. I can't perform data manipulations in my head at all: I can't do 10 + 12 unless I write down the 10 and the 12, for example, because I can't remember the original numbers plus do the operation in my head at the same time, but if I'm looking at them I can easily perform the operation.

Doctor's appointments continue, slowly.

Hazard has been roaming outside again, and his coat is soft instead of heavy. I watched him jump atop a pallet the other day, and when it fell over he shook himself off and complained to me. It's good to see. I was worried about him and now I'm not, though I suspect I'll need to prepare for next winter to keep him sufficiently entertained.

Whiskey continues to snuggle me relentlessly and Demon bestows the favour of his lounging, purring attention twice a day or so. Whiskey has definitely won in the last several years: he gets to sit on me more or less when he wants now, laptop or not, though he respects mealtimes.

Avallu comes in for snuggling most evenings, waiting outside the dog door and distressing the cats by blocking it with his back, and Thea comes in many mornings. This weather makes Thea ecstatic: she runs in joyous circles around the house and poor Avallu has more invitations to play than he can handle. He'll come put his side against my leg and lean, looking at me for help as she rockets around. She's dug a bed beside a large square haybale, the 3' x 8' ones, and has set up most of her housekeeping there. As livestock guardian dogs they have such a stable temperament and they are usually very low-energy unless there's a threat. I rarely get to see them act like playful puppydogs, and it's fun. As the season heats up they'll seek shade and slow down again.

I sit on the couch with the cats and watch "vocal coach reacts to--" videos and sing along. Last night I made a chocolate cake to go with the can of pork stew I pulled out of the pantry. I've permanently opened the curtains to the patio door and I've even cleaned the porcelain parts of the bathroom. Each day is incrementally healing. It's been so painful; it's just good to not be in pain, and so good to be actively loved by living creatures who accept me absolutely.

The days are getting better maybe but I'm not keeping track. We're all tilting towards the sun together but I'm not thinking about it right now. It's just a day that's actually ok, and then another.