nakedjen

Revolution

I have privilege as a white person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice:
I can go birding (#ChristianCooper)
I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery)
I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson)
I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride)
I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark)
I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards)
I can play loud music (#JordanDavis)
I can sell CDs (#AltonSterling)
I can sleep (#AiyanaJones)
I can walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown)
I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice)
I can go to church (#Charleston9)
I can walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin)
I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell)
I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant)
I can get a normal traffic ticket (#SandraBland)
I can lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile)
I can break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones)
I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford)
I can have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher)
I can read a book in my own car (#KeithScott)
I can be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover)
I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese)
I can ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans)
I can cash a check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood)
I can take out my wallet (#AmadouDiallo)
I can run (#WalterScott)
I can breathe (#EricGarner)
I can live (#FreddieGray)
I can sleep in my own bed (#BreonnaTaylor)
I CAN BE ARRESTED WITHOUT THE FEAR OF BEING MURDERED (#GeorgeFloyd)
White privilege is real. Take a minute to consider a Black person’s experience today.
#BlackLivesMatter

Solomon

“Solomon was busy judging others, when it was his personal thoughts that were disrupting the community. His crown slid crooked on his head. He put it straight, but the crown went awry again. Eight times this happened. Finally he began to talk to his headpiece. “Why do you keep tilting over my eyes?” “I have to. When your power loses compassion, I have to show what such a condition looks like.” Immediately Solomon recognized the truth. He knelt and asked forgiveness. The crown centered itself on his crown. When something goes wrong, accuse yourself first. Even the wisdom of Plato or Solomon can wobble and go blind. Listen when your crown reminds you of what makes you cold toward others, as you pamper the greedy energy inside.”

#savemylife

I woke up cocooned in comforters and the weight of a large black labrador this morning. 

I could already hear the traffic from I-15.  Cars and trucks going north and south and east and west.  Enough to make all the noise that cars and trucks make on a Monday morning to allow you to know that life is moving faster than you want it to move and that business is happening and that soon the clear blue skies will be filled with smog again. 

We could see the mountains across the valley and marvelled that we could also see the Great Salt Lake.  That was our prize for sheltering in place.  For staying at home.  For not visiting our friends and for making sure there were six feet between me and between you.  For not driving all the cars. For walks with the dogs.  For checking on our neighbors.  For eating dinner at home and getting to know our families as the humans that they happen to actually be. 

Today, though, the code color is yellow and yellow means go in our part of the world. 

Back to work, back to school, back to the playgrounds and the gyms and the pools and the office and the restaurants and the hair salons and the sporting events.

Back instead of forward.  BACK.  We are going back when we had so many chances to go anywhere else. 

Smog is going to envelop us and our lungs will get heavy with coughs and we'll wonder is it the virus or is it bad air?  Have we ever really cared? 

We won't be able to tell the difference as we sit on patios and eat our pizza and drink our beer and toast that we won the god damn war! 

Won.

Did we?  Did you?  

We only win if we're still alive. 

Transitioning to Greatness

There are some days when I never really get dressed.  

Of course, life before this virus swirled in and stopped all the clocks and created new pathways through the grocery stores and decided that some of our lives were far more valuable than other of our lives kind of looked the way it does for me now, only I thought it was just depression and I did not have a virus to blame for not getting dressed or the ennui of really not wanting to actually walk the dog or get off the couch or actually do much of anything and the only day I ever looked forward to was Wednesday, or that night really when I'd gather with my friends at the bar and play trivia and even then it was only because there was a pin on the calendar marking a point in time that was different than all the other points in time and so it all just wrapped around and around and around and around. 

That was a long sentence. If you made it to this one, I'll fill you in that time now doesn't really seem much different except that I now am aware that the days are even longer...stretched thin with the wanting of something, anything, to make them seem like I might be able to find a pin to pop the ennui and make them seem somehow different?  There's no bar, there's no Wednesday evening gathering to demarcate time and there's no gasping for air laughter or snarky side remarks because we're all too busy trying our best to be kind and gentle with one another since things are different.  Except they're not really different.  But they are different.  

I walk the dog in my pajamas not making any effort at all since there's no reason to make an effort at all and I never showered before but it is even less of a necessity now and I show up at my coffee shop later and later and later because even that doesn't matter anymore.  I show up because I absolutely need to get my daily four shots of espresso and there's no way I'll ever not go but now it doesn't matter to me when I actually get it.   I find myself forgetting to take my vitamins, forgetting to eat, forgetting about time. 


 

I dream of long dusty days.  Where the masks that I wore protected me from dust storms and white-outs I could see coming across the horizon when I chose to wear hot pink holey tights and unicorn short shorts and love goggles and rode my bike into the wind and never felt more alive.  Alive and unafraid and wondering what adventure might greet me at the next corner.  Hugs were free, love had no attachments, gifts showed up just when you needed them most and every single day you were reminded by a stranger, gently, kindly, exactly who you were.  If I tilt my head in just the right way, it is just like right now.  The virus is that stranger here to wake me up. 

In the books that are written about these pandemic times, how will they talk about all of us who just simply gave up while we were transitioning to greatness?  

I Don't Know What It Means

“Whoa, that’s a full rainbow. All the way. Double rainbow. Oh, my God. Double rainbow all the way, it’s so intense, Whoa! Oh my God! Oh my God! What does this mean? Too much. I don’t know what it means.” 

Rest in peace, Hungrybear9562. Your spirit and your magic and your awe always gave me giggles.  You inspired me in so many ways and your hugs (oh the hugs) were some of the most generous.  Thank you for sharing all of you with all of us in such beautiful sweet magnificent heart first head last ways. 

I always hear your voice in all the rainbows, now I will see you in all of them, as well.  

 

Now more than ever, I hope we'll all look into the mirror and look into our souls.  xo

Masked Compliance

I don't know, do you think this facemask restricts my personal freedoms? 

I know, might be hard to tell.  That's the point of Naked Fridays.  Let's think outside the masks that society asks us to wear. 

I know that many of us have our knickers in a twist over the new requirements that ask that you please wear a facemask in order to enter their establishment.  Or even to ask that you wear one if you're just going to engage in public at all.  We have thousands of Americans who are on the frontlines risking their lives every day to provide us with the basic necessities to allow our country to function, many of whom have shown up without proper protection and now we have entitled citizens protesting over being asked to wear a piece of fabric over their mouth and nose while in public.  I want to say that while I'm the first person to say that I acknowledge that I'm all about personal choice and personal freedoms, I also am a woman who encourages public health and safety.  In this particular case, science says that a facemask is helpful to protect us from one another and this unseen virus. 

Wearing a mask in public in America, I feel, is going to be similar to wearing a seatbelt and not smoking while we're indoors.  Initially, none of us wanted to ever do it.  As a child, I never wore a seat belt and have memories of sliding all over the vinyl backseats of our big Ford station wagon as my father purposely took corners a little too fast and my mother was smoking like a chimney sitting next to him, clouds of noxious smoke filling the entire car.  Now we all wear a seat belt and the smokers refrain from smoking in places where we all gather together indoors.  It's mandated in the public safety laws of every state and none of us would think of putting our child or grandmother into the front seat of a car without strapping them in safely or lighting up and smoking in the middle of a crowded restaurant or grocery store. 

Are you going to send your grandmother, or your own mother, or your teenager or your child to the store unmasked?  Just to prove a point?  Just to say that no one, no one is going to tell you that you have to wear a mask? For the safety of your community?  To perhaps save a life?  

A vaccine is not imminent.  It's important that we make our public places safe for all of us, not just a few of us.  We're not helpless, we actually do have far more power than we realize.  You are a real participant in making this society functional...right now. If you choose to participate.  If you choose. 

My mask protects you.  Your mask protects me.  It's science and it's compliance. 

Your life is important enough to me that I will wear my mask even when I choose not to wear anything else at all.  That is my promise. 

 

And now a message from our sponsors...

Social distancing may be lonely (and it is!), but you're not alone.  If you are feeling depressed, you can text HOME to 741741 and a crisis counselor will text you back immediately and continue to text with you until you feel safe. 


It’s free and a nice option for those that dread phone calls. 

If you do want to talk on the telephone to someone, there's this option.

https://quarantinechat.com/

How it works.

Once you sign up and choose your language preferences, you'll be subscribed to periodic calls. Your caller ID will always say "QuarantineChat" when your phone rings.

After a brief moment on hold, you'll match with another random person. You don't have to pick up if you're busy—your partner will be automatically matched with someone else. And you can join and leave the line whenever you'd like.

It's private. You use your phone number to sign up for Dialup, but your matches will only ever see your username.

All calls are end-to-end encrypted.  

I've actually participated quite a few times in the QUARANTINE CHATS since we've all been isolated.  They're fun.  You get to make friends in far away places.  You're also given a prompt to speak about when you first start chatting so you are not stuck in those awkward silences.  

This has been your brief public service announcement for the day.  I do hope you're all staying healthy and well.  

If there is peace in your mind, you will find peace with everybody.

My Whole Foods market is a maze these days.  

In order to keep all of us from actually bumping into one another and to maintain the required social distance, there are physical barriers where there were once aisles. There walls of soda and beer and chocolate bars and haphazardly stocked HydroFlasks meant to be visual cues that send you this way and that as if we're all experimental rats searching for the proverbial cheese. 

The cheese I wanted today was my Tulsi Tea.  If it were not for the chocolate wall in my way, I would have found it immediately, but no, I was not allowed to go that way and so instead had to go up and down a bunch of other aisles to retrieve it.  Whole Foods is the only store in my area that sells this tea, otherwise I probably wouldn't don my mask to make the effort. 

I used my rat instincts to find my way back to the check-out.  The kind woman who was working the till shared that she also loved this particular tea.  Through our masks we shared war stories of the pandemic and how the tea was actually what was getting us through it.  My muffled voice saying, "It has kept the demon dreams at bay..."  and then she replied, "Oh, yes.  Exactly.  I'm so glad that I'm not the only one." 

No.  I do not think a single one of us is the only one.  Not at all.  

here today, gone tomorrow, so don't get attached to things now

How you do anything is how you do everything.

I feel a bit like Maude these days. 

My two feet, one in front of the other, tiny and compressed in their worn running shoes, follow the path that leads around the cemetery.  

I nod to the deer who keep watch. 

There are many of them now.  At least a dozen. Some standing, some laying down. 
All with big deer ears and big doe eyes and watchful gaze over the moss covered gravestones and the newly dead. 

It's the newly dead that I notice and that I count. The ones that make my heart stop for just a few seconds. 
I ponder their once full lives, their last fleeting seconds, their still living families and I wonder, always, out loud...

"Was it the virus?" 

This fresh mound of earth that was not here yesterday, now it is here today, shovels all akimbo, covered in a plastic blue tarp, a sharpied stake with a name.
"Did the virus do this to you?" 

The deer remain vigilant, keeping guard, ears spread this way and that, always listening, eyes wide open and knowing. 
There's an occasional Canadian goose honking its own sorrowful mourn, an off-key trumpet for us all, living and deceased. 

Today, there were two. Just like my tiny feet. Mounds of blue. 

I cheered for the living, cheered for LIFE, cheered for the grand adventure ahead. 

The deer will guide their journey and will keep them company as they make it. 

Welcome to the Hotel California

It's not a good day. 
I set a timer for five minutes and write.  No edits. Just write. Then I hit the publish button. 
I'm doing it mostly so I show up, but also to allow my brain a way to dump what's sitting there.

There's rain falling from the sky.  I think we've all spent too much time together (Day 51) and the buttons that we know how to push are now so large that they're like huge overgrown mushrooms on our backs and we bump them even if we're trying to avoid them.

I feel as if the entire world is on a roller coaster that never quite makes it to the top of the hill.  All this anxiety building anticipation bullshit riding up up up up up up up up up up....

It's so exhausting. 

I just want to actually get a good night's sleep.

Is that too much to ask? 

Are hotel's taking customers right now?  I kind of want to check in and never leave. 

Seriously.

It's kind of time for the Hotel California.  That doesn't feel like such a nightmare right now.