Call me Goofy

I’m a visionary type, idealistic.  I glaze over details in politics, and take in the gist of what’s going on.  I read historical books and essays to understand the back bone of the system.   After years of reading all the papers, The Financial Times, The New York Times, and papers from around the world, I gave up trying to remember minutiae, because I discovered that my mind processes things abstractly.   I tune into news reports and periodicals here and there but I don’t think it’s necessary to do so every day.  It becomes a bombardment.  News organizations are generating business for themselves and sometimes it’s all too obvious.  When there’s a crisis I tune in more regularly.  But I might have stopped paying attention because a lot of politics is a game that I just don’t compute because I don’t have any quile.

I see how someone might think that what I wrote yesterday about the market system was simplistic, idealistic and naïve.  Generally, the message I wanted to convey is that there’s a connection between injustices and the way that the market works, and that if you’re indignant because these injustices keep happening, maybe you should look more closely at that connection.

While I didn’t mean to say necessarily that we should be a tribal world community, I do think that there are some great opportunities to come up with a better global market system now that the world is smaller.

I don’t think there’s any wrong or right way to look at the world, because it’s really all just a process.  I just wanted to share ideas that people would think about.

I’m sure that environmentalists and naturalists might have considered that their ways for harvesting food and having community stem back to people in small tribes from around the world.  I’ve seen adages and proverbs from these tribes on walls of some of our institutions, such as the Museum of Natural History in New York City.  Wisdom from these societies is in our faces but we’re not getting it.

I cried after Hurricane Sandy thinking of climate change and what we’ve been complicit in doing to the environment, because it occurred to me that there were tribes and indigenous people who thought of the planet as a living thing to be respected.  I want people to realize that these people who have been dismissed as barbaric and primitive may have a lot to teach us.

I’d love for us to experience a heightened consciousness that helps us to see the connection that we all have to each other.  When you trample over some of us, or dismiss us as insignificant or as a drain, in the long run we’re only hurting ourselves.

I can understand that there’s a philosophy of living that is hedonistic or dog eat dog at the root.  Just don’t complain about crime, crooked politicians or wonder why you’re all depressed. There are other social maladies that can be attached to this type of an existence.  Call me goofy, but I think this is just the price we pay for ‘living well’ in a material world.

 

That Bitch Sandy and A Broken Ring

I love fellow blogger Claire Cappetta’s playful comments on my blog.  I admire the way she weathered that bitch Sandy – pun totally intended.  She was in the midst, filming as it happened – wow!

http://clairecappetta.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/my-video-view-of-sandy-before-it-hit/

While she experienced her own trial, she became part of a community spirit with those in her area helping others in need.  Inspirational indeed.

http://clairecappetta.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/hurricane-sandy-new-friendships-and-a-new-surreal-world/

I enjoyed her book A Broken Ring.  It’s about a woman’s self-discovery during a series of abusive relationships, something that a lot of people can relate to.  Her character comes out in the end with a sense of empowerment.

Not surprising that someone with the fortitude to help others throughout her own challenge could create a story encompassing a journey leading to self-recognition and strength.  I advise you to check it out.  It’s an engaging read.

Claire is also an activist, helping to raise awareness about domestic abuse – boy I tell you – she’s someone to be admired!

Glad to be part of your blogging community Claire!

REE-spect – my damn holiday!

I’m wiser in maturity.  I respect people and I’m community-minded.

I took my Halloween decorations off my door yesterday, to respect the people celebrating Xmas.  I want to show respect to the neighbors who have a wreath on their door opposite mine.  I didn’t give a hoot about stuff like this before.

Since my namesake hurricane came this year around Halloween I didn’t celebrate properly.  But it just felt plain rude, keeping the gravestone on my door, intruding on their holiday.  My holiday is gone now.  I need to get over it.  That’s maturity.

A few years ago, I left the Halloween ghoul on my door through Xmas, but made it season ‘appropriate’.   I cut a thought bubble out in white paper and wrote “Merry Xmas!” on it.  I attached it to the ghoul’s mouth like he was saying it.  Get it?  I merged two holidays!

Though, everyone knows I’m the ‘lovable’ freak on the top floor, the kindly spinster who ought to have eight cats but for some reason doesn’t.  They accept that I leave my Halloween decorations up until I officially feel Halloween’s over.

One year it ended in April.  But I try taking them down sooner now because Halloween is anticlimactic when you take your decorations down from the last year in, let’s say, August only to put them right back up on October 10^th.

So I’ll take down the Halloween decorations inside my apartment after Xmas, that is, if the world doesn’t end on Friday.  Oooo, I’ll bet there will be some slamming End-of-the-World parties on Friday.  I wasn’t invited to any of them so I’ll be celebrating Armageddon by myself this year.

‘Never to return’

I had a great birthday.  I always do.  I look forward to getting older and older, moving forward, upward then out of here, ‘never to return’, to quote that uni-browed wonder Frieda Kahlo.

This attitude helps me to treat every birthday like a holiday.  I took the day off and went to the NY Botanical Garden.  I walked through the forest to the waterfall.  The sound of the rushing water had a tranquil effect on me, so I stayed there for a long time.  I used a twig to etch my name and birthday, 11/17/62, in the dirt with a circle around it.  One of my best friends called.  We had an enlightened conversation for a while with the sound of the waterfall rushing in the background then mom called and that was a nice conversation too.

I hung out a bit in the forest then went to see the Japanese kiku chrysanthemums.  I had a hard time finding the greenhouse and had to pee and couldn’t find a bathroom.  I found some stupid porta pottys and unfortunately had to use one of them.

I walked and walked and walked and felt it in my ass and legs because I haven’t slept enough and had some pre-menopausal weirdness going on —  or — maybe it’s just because I’m half of a hundred years old!  But the landscape is so lovely there, though Sandy wreaked havoc on a hundred of their trees and a lot of the pretty leaves had blown off of them.  The walk to the chrysanthemums was worth it however – what a fascinating display.  I have wack pictures taken with my cheap phone camera which doesn’t do them justice:

That last picture is a group of chrysanthemums that had been grown from a single stem — too bad it’s all fuzzy right?  And who the hell is that nice lady?

I came home — ate what I wanted to eat — a hamburger medium rare and huge onion rings from the Piper’s Kilt.  Being a cake enthusiast, of course I had cake and cake!  Since Halloween was somewhat intercepted because of my namesake hurricane, it’s still going on in my apartment, which is decorated thusly.  Usually Halloween’s officially over for me after my birthday anyway.  I watched the movie Vault of Horror with the last of my Halloween candles lit and said ‘This is the life’!

And thank you all for wishing me a Happy Birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet Corn!

They said to buy canned goods for the hurricane.  The only canned food I buy is Goya Black Bean soup to put in my quinoa.  I bought a bunch of canned foods for 9/11, and for a couple of other hurricane scares.  The cans got bloated after while so I threw them out.  I usually just eat quinoa everyday because I’m like that.  I eat it with steamed vegetables.  It makes life less complicated to eat the same thing everyday.  I can think clearer.

For this hurricane I didn’t go crazy.  I bought two cans of soup, two cans of sardines, a can of sweet corn, a box of matches, a gallon of water, a Jesus candle and the regular groceries I usually buy.  I stood in the canned vegetables aisle and zoomed right in on the sweet corn.  Arthur from The King of Queens yelled “Sweet corn” once because he was amazed at something.

I forget that I like corn.  I had corn on the cob from the food co-op summer before last.  It was delicious.  We used to eat canned corn when I was a kid.  My mother put butter on it.  My grandmother made corn pudding.  Mmm mmm!  I put the corn in my quinoa yesterday.  Isn’t corn good roughage? – I don’t know.  But corn isn’t in my regular diet.  One of those misguided fanatics told me once in addition to the perils of eating ‘swine’ that I shouldn’t eat corn or lima beans because they’re fake food.  What?!!!  Maize is fake food??!

Speaking of fake food — while in the canned food aisle I looked at the Spam.  Hell no – I will not eat Spam.  It’s good though.  But every once in a while I will buy some really crappy shit like Fluff, or deviled ham – I mean like maybe once every six years – for nostalgia’s sake.  When I was a kid, we ate that shit sometimes.  But my family grew into consciousness about shitty food in the mid-seventies.  The Entenmann’s section had only three cakes left in it today – they cleaned that out before the hurricane.