nakedjen

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.

We Are All In This Together

One month ago I was sitting in the airport in Seoul, Korea rolling the dice.  My own dice.  I had gotten the last flight out of Bali and I was on the last flight leaving Seoul for America.  The destination was Seattle.  The big question was if it was actually going to depart?  Delta Airlines seemed to believe that it would, but that were not 100% positive.  No one could be, of course.  I had already spent the last 48 hours scrambling with flights out of Bali.  I knew that Korea was actually a fairly safe spot to be in terms of the virus and I actually have a good network of support there so I made the decision that if the flight was cancelled I was going to just leave the airport and stick it out in Seoul.  

I am not going to lie.  Making that decision gave me a real sense of peace.  It took all the anxiety out of the situation.  I was either going back to America or I was not.  But now it was no longer really up to me.  It was a matter of whether or not Delta decided to fly the plane. 

The flight from Seoul to Seattle actually did happen that evening.  It had very few passengers and the most surprising part of the whole journey, to me, was that while I was vetted thoroughly in Korea before boarding (temperature, travel, physical health) when I landed in America in Seattle no one was wearing a mask or gloves and I was not told to self-quarantine or even asked about where I had been.  I just walked right off the plane and right into America and was welcomed home practically with a bear hug.  In fact, my suitcase had literally EXPLODED on its way off the plane and all my stuff was all over the luggage carousel and everyone was quite helpful in helping me gather it up and shove it inside and then the people who help with luggage (I still had to fly to Salt Lake City) were also very helpful in duct taping my suitcase up so it could make its final journey home. 

America was not in any way prepared for the virus.  There were no marks, yet, on the airport floor telling me to keep my social distance.  There was no signage about the virus.  Seattle, which was at the time a HOT SPOT, had very few people at the airport, but they had yet to alert the world that perhaps we should be taking very careful precautions.  I eventually made my way to Salt Lake City, quarantined myself for 14 days, have still continued to practice careful precautions and have watched as our numbers in America follow the predicted trajectory.  Math and science and data of this virus are proving more powerful than whatever magical thinking we all wish to apply.

*****

I am a healthy white woman with access to excellent health care.  I even was able to get a test for the virus once I got back to Utah.  I do not feel unsafe here, but the color of my skin and my own demographics create a very privileged bubble that allow me to shelter in place and order my groceries online and not worry about how I'll feed my dog and even to send money and supplies and food to my friends (and strangers) who are not nearly as privileged as I am.  

Before all of this began, long before, I would say to the people in our community clinic that we're all in this together. 

I still believe that.  

Now, more than ever.  

I have no illusions that it probably is going to get a whole lot worse before it ever starts even begins to creep towards getting better.  I also can't even imagine what better looks like at this point, only that it looks incredibly different than anything we ever knew before.  

In fact, we can only hope that it will for the survival of us all. 

I am in no hurry to die

1,000,000

That's a lot of zeros. 

Back in February when I was still trying to suss out if I would actually get on the plane to Bali or not, there were 19 known cases of Covid19 in Indonesia.  I knew that number could not possibly account for all possible cases in Indonesia because testing was not widely available and at that point in time it was only being provided to people who were actually presenting with all known symptoms at hospitals.  We now know there are plenty of additional symptoms and plenty of people that are wandering around who are asymptomatic and who can have this virus and be spreading it among the community without even knowing it at all. 

Just now the numbers of known identified cases in America tipped over to 1,000,000 cases.  Known.  Identified.  This means someone had a test and tested positive.  

The good news, if there's going to be good news, is that we're providing a lot more tests in America.  The better news, if you'd like it, is that the majority of those 1,000,000 cases will make a full recovery.  The disheartening news is that for every single one of those cases there are probably at least one if not two cases that are currently undiagnosed.  Walking among us somewhere in this country and maybe standing not quite six feet away from you or me in line at a grocery store waiting patiently to check-out without a mask on because, well, they don't have symptoms and do not believe they actually need to wear a mask and it makes them uncomfortable.  Later today that same person who stood not six feet from you or me and coughed gently will go visit their own mother at the eldercare facility.   They may, also, for all we know be one of our valuable essential workers.  Again, this virus is not picky.  It doesn't care who you happen to be or where you happen to live or what precautions you actually take with your own health.  If it wants to infect you, it will.  

America might be in a hurry to lift restrictions and get back to business.  

I am in no hurry to die.  

Free Hugs

That sign. 

There was a time, not even that long ago, as recently as January, when I would pass a total and complete stranger holding that sign and I'd gladly drop everything that I had and outstretch my arms and sink in for a long embrace.  I'd touch my heart to theirs and feel it pound away.  I'd not worry who they were or where they'd been or what might be lurking on their clothes.  I'd breathe deeply and take in their scent, their essence, wallow in all of their everything.

I'd hug them fiercely.  Love the stuffing out of them.  With abandon.  Because that is who I am and that is what they offered.  

For free.

And now?

That sign feels like a death threat.  

Not intentional.  Cloaked in hippie innocence.  From a time when all we wanted for the world was to please put down our angry masks and our guns and our selfish intentional walks and instead to share just a scant few moments of togetherness.  A genuine, full, warm embrace.  A simple act of love and kindness.  

I don my mask, I stand six feet away, I don't want to kill you. Not then, not now, not ever.  

But I really do miss hugging you.

Fiercely. 

Seconds

Every second 6 babies are born.  
Every second 2 people will die. 

I'm wondering if those numbers are skewed at all right now in these pandemic times? Lopsided toward death?  Thinking that they just may be. 

I find it hard not to obsess over the numbers.  I look at them every morning when I wake up.  Later in the day, I look at them again.  And then again.  Then still later.  I am trying to find some sort of pattern, some sort of rhythm, some sort of something that will make sense of it for the person that lives inside my head that likes to make contingency plans.

I keep telling that person that there are no contingency plans for any of this.  There's no control in this situation.  The best she can do is to maybe stop looking at the numbers.  To maybe just go walk the dog.  To relish the sun that came up today and to celebrate that she is alive and healthy and that her own test came back negative.  

47 seconds just ticked by on my watch.

That's 282 new souls we've welcomed to this planet.  
And 94 we bid goodbye. 

Different

I'm different these days.  

I suppose I've always been different, but I feel even more different these days than in all of the days that have come to pass before the one that is now.

I'm doing the best to open my heart...way, way open...before I open my mouth. 

That sometimes doesn't happen and I know I'm hurting. Maybe I've hurt you, too?  It was not on purpose. 
I'm following my breath, putting my feet down, listening for sounds outside of my own head, trying to quiet the NOISE. 

I'm so tired of hurting. Me. You. Us. Them. Everyone.

I'm just different these days and it is making me really tired. 

 

Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

 

"Something is significantly wrong with a world that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences."

 

• What I am reading   Farmers are my friends.  Especially small farmers who grow sustainably and provide food with a mind for not only our bodies but our future and the health of the planet.  Those farmers are the farmers we should be supporting.  You can learn a lot about your own government when you read something like their Farm Bill. Hidden in the pages are exactly what corporate interests want to see and what small farmers never are going to get.  

 

 

• What I am eating  Coconut Apple Ginger Dal. Again. This time with feeling. But, honestly, snow's in the forecast. The air is ugly in Utah. Sustenance is on the menu. 

 

• What I am Listening To  Pitchfork gives us an intimate conversation with musicians we may not actually have heard before. Give a listen with a cuppa. 

• What I am watching  

• What I am thinking about It feels like ages ago, and it is over 15 years ago, when I was blogging regularly, I had imaginary friends whom I loved fiercely and visited regularly at their own blogs. Our blogs were literal portals into our lives at the time and we really were like a small love army who knew one another (or thought we did).  The thing is these were the days before GoFundMe existed and if someone NEEDED something, we just all pitched in and made it happen.  One way or another.  Because it is the season, today I thought of Blue Witch. Who also blessed me with Feast of the Cash Register a very long time ago. She is the one who put it down first and I have whispered it aloud to those who will even bother to listen to me as I fuss about how I do not CELEBRATE THE SEASON. 
  
  I prattle on and on about how I gift in other ways. When I choose to gift. That I'm a stealth elf.  Showing up with just what is needed when it is needed or JUST BECAUSE, not because the calendar has flipped to the day we deign PRESENTS should be presented.  Ahem.  
  
  I'm thrilled that Blue Witch is still blogging. I'm still there in her sidebar as a friend.  Reading her today was, well, good medicine.  FOTCR, indeed. 
  
  P.S.  If you ARE in the mood for giving right now, I will suggest that you participate in THE NINTH ANNUAL JAMES GARFIELD MIRACLE. I do participate every year. It's totally worth it. xo  

• What I am really feeling: In the too much information department, I'm tired of waking up every night at 3:00 a.m. wanting to rip my clothes off and wandering the house like a mad woman.  Why haven't women told each other about menopause and all the things that happen to our bodies when it happens?? Why?!?!? What purpose does it serve to keep all of this a secret? I feel like there's some big conspiracy that says, "Right, let's not talk about THIS!!"   
  
  Well, I'm here now. I've arrived. So you know what?  I'm going to talk all about it.