Category Archives: Uncategorized

Wrapping My Head Around the Election

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I’ve been unsuccessful in trying to formulate how to write about the election. But my son Bix did a good a good job of it, so I quote his blogpost on the subject here, as follows:

Fuck The Unenlightened Self-Interest Of Trump Voters
Nov 11, 2024

In the end, after the past week of watching this take and that take, but mostly just avoiding any real bothering with any takes at all, about how the election went the way it did, I’ve settled in the only place that makes any sense to me.

Whatever the perceived self-interest of any given Mine Furor voter—be it caste allegiance or aspiration, simple racism or sexism, some claim to an economic concern, or even (somehow) abortion rights—the only thing that matters actually is pretty simple:

They were willing to sell out the safety, dignity, and humanity of their neighbors to fascism in order to get what they wanted.

None of the other chatter, be it considered opinion or hyperventilated bloviating, amounts to anything but noise, and anyone who covers the angle of “what happened” without this focus is a distraction.

I’ve already mentioned it, but if you still haven’t done so, go watch this debate-ender, or from here if that link insists you download TikTok.)

Whether a Mine Furor voter engaged in selfish indifference or willful ignorance amounts to the same thing, and after three election cycles now it’s pretty evident that they are stubbornly unreachable. They should still get to benefit like anyone else from progressive policies, but it’s past time to let them go.

If the Democratic Party decides the road to victory runs through mega-donors, high-class consultants, and yet another rightward shift, they’ll be a lost cause, too. This country’s path to correcting itself lies at the bottom and to the left, which just so happens also to be the symbol of antifascism.

Bix is selling Everyday Antifascist t-shirts, so I went and bought one today. I hope you had a chance to watch the video. It says it all.

My African Drumming Addiction

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A couple of months ago, my senior center brought in a teacher of African Drumming, so I took the six Friday course, and loved it.  He is back for four weeks now in October, and I can’t wait.

My daughter came and recorded the last session he gave so that I could practice at home.  She said that I was the best one there, but, after all, many of the folks who were drumming barely had the strength to get a sound out of their drums, and their sense of the African rhythms was as weak as their hands.

I think my experience ballroom dancing helped a great deal to hone my sense of rhythm and my ability to improvise.

This new series starts this Friday, and I am psyched.  I even made a t-shirt with an image with djembe drums.

My Meandering Mind on a Sleepy September Saturday

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250 SHADES OF BLUE, and I have most of them hanging on my closet!  I have three pair of “navy” jeans and a pair of “navy” pants; each one is a different color blue.  And forget about having any of them match up with any of my “navy” tops.  (Note:  First World Problem)

I DON’T HAVE A BUCKET LIST; there is only one thing I want to do (again) before I die.  I want to go to a ballroom dance with a partner and dance the afternoon away.  Why “afternoon”? you ask?  Because the dance is at a senior center at 2 p.m.

So, here’s my plan, since I don’t have a partner (and assuming that the shot I will get in my back on Tuesday at the Pain Management Center will solve that limitation):

Sometime in the beginning of October, I will contact Sara at EdanSe Company and Ballroom and ask if she might know of an intermediate male dancer who is free on the afternoon of October 21 and would like to earn $50 for two hours of dancing with me. At first, that seems like a lot of money, but it’s worth it to me.

I quit ballroom dancing several years ago because my knee was giving out.  And I stopped driving at night.  Since then, I got my knee replaced, and if my back gets treated, I’ll be good to go (in the daytime).  Sara should remember me because I wrote and shared a poem about her young twin instructors.

LUNCH WITH BETTY, whom I haven’t seen in more than a year, was yesterday, at her Senior Center.  It was my first ever Center lunch, and I have little desire to return.

Betty was part of my pre-Covid writing group, and she was one of the best writers in it. Today, she is a tiny, frail looking woman with silver hair and carefully applied makeup.  At age 95, she is now part of another weekly writing group, and she recently just stopped taking weekly ballroom dances.  (For which she paid her teacher, privately, more than I could ever afford.)

Betty holds court at a lunch table comprised of three men and one other woman.  They are like her entourage, and she she regales them with her writings, delivered in a volume that her (hearing impaired) fans can accept.  She, herself, she tells me later, has one cochlear implant and one hearing aid.  She also has congestive heart failure and upper back pain for which she carries around a microwavable heating pad.

After lunch, she invites me to her home, and I follow her stick-shift Mini Cooper to an older, lovely, well-kept upper middle class home in a lovely upper middle class neighborhood. She lives alone. I aske her what she usually does all day after early lunch at the Senior Center.  Usually, she says, she sits with her heated pad behind her back and watches Asian movies on Netflix (because they are all romantic and they end happily).  I finally leave because Betty has an appointment at CVS for her flu and COVID shots.  She goes to bed around 9 p.m.

Betty has the advantage of being financially comfortable.  But she also daily faces the pains and discomforts and challenges of being 95 years old. I think that she personifies what Betty Boop would be like at 95.

 

THE DANCE OF SEPTEMBER SUNFLOWERS

It’s a different Christmas

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Everything changes.  I know that.  My extended childhood family celebrated with an overwhelming calender of Polish traditions.  (See the poem at the end of this post: https://www.kalilily.net/2019/12/24/its-just-another-christmas-eve/)

I don’t really even celebrate “Christmas”.  I”m more of a Solstice honorer these days.

But it is Christmas, and I am going to send my estrranged brother an email and wish him the best.

The last time I tried to do that for his birthday, it didn’t turn out well.  Wish me luck.

 

We are Pisces. We are water. We flow.

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There is much I need to document here about what is going on with the Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome that is wrecking my life, physically and psychologically. No one has helped me find a fix, but I am still working on it.  I will get to that at some point.

What is making it all bearable (as a result of a very recent synchronicity) is a man I met unexpectedly because of some kind of glitch with match.com.  Both of us had been members in the past but are no longer.

Out of boredom and curiosity, I recently joined Zoosk, which is a dating app (I didn’t want to date; just wanted to see what is out there) for educated elders. It must be associated somehow with match.com, because I got an email from match.com telling me that they have a match for me in Longmeadow, which is the next town.  Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link.  Unbeknownst to me, the link took me to a different profile — one that caught my interest because he plays the djembe and is a Buddhist.  So, for the hell of it, I sent him a brief reply, saying I also play the djembe.

Since he is no longer on match.com, he was surprised that his profile was still out there.  Being tech savvy, he somehow managed to find out who I am.  (I never use my regular email or name for stuff like that.)  He sent an email to my regular email address and used my actual name.  He said he wanted to check and see if it is really me or someone trying to mess with him.  He gave me his name and a copy of a document to prove he is who he says he is.  Of course, I Googled him and found him on FaceBook and Linkedin.

Many emails later, discovering that we were born a day apart (same year) and have so much in common it’s spooky, we decided to meet face-to-face, which we did yesterday.  He lives an hour away, not in the next town.

At 82, we both have been presented with a chance to find some kind of intimacy again, a chance to have a best friend as a partner and to share the good things that we are still capable of sharing.

It continues to be mystical and magical and it all takes my mind off my troubles, which of late have included two ambulance rides to the ER with unstoppable blood rushing from my nose and a blood pressure so high it didn’t register.  Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on the body’s functions.  I am working on getting my blood pressure under control.

At the age of 82, we both have our health issues and complicated histories.  But we are Pisces.  We are Water.  We Flow.

Life.

 

“…everybody hurts…”

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It’s a gloomy Monday and everything hurts. REM’s song has become an ear worm.

When your day is long
And the night, the night is yours alone
When you’re sure you’ve had enough
Of this life, well hang on

Don’t let yourself go
‘Cause everybody cries
Everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it’s time to sing along

When your day is night alone (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go (hold on)
If you think you’ve had too much
Of this life, well hang on

‘Cause everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts

Don’t throw your hand, oh no
Don’t throw your hand
If you feel like you’re alone
No, no, no, you are not alone

If you’re on your own in this life
The days and nights are long
When you think you’ve had too much
Of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
Everybody hurts, sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes

So hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on

Everybody hurts

Starting Over. Again.

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Once I was a prolific blogger. Once I was part of a larger blogging community. But that was almost 20 years ago.

The onslaught of social media drove personal blogging out into the internet hinterlands. But, as folks get fed up with the advertising and limited opportunity for actual communication on platforms like Twitter and FB, there is a growing interest in resuscitating old blogs and setting up new ones.

I originally got into blogging through the example set my my son, who is inspiring me, again. I haven’t written anything in over a year (including poetry), so I’m hoping this current effort will get me inspired.

Meanwhile, I continue to slog through the the depressing overtone of our times, hoping for impeachment, hoping my adult son, diagnosed with autism three years ago, will be able to find the help and support he needs from “the system.” Writing helps both of us deal with the struggles of our lives.

Well, here goes “starting again.”

Still Scrambling After All These Years

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You would think that by now, by age almost 80, I would have figured out what I want to be when I grow up. Or, rather, what it is I want to do with my remaining years. I wish I could still dance, but both knees are badly arthritic. I wish a had a group of women friends (like I used to in Albany) to hang out and laugh with, but I haven’t been very successful in meeting more than one such person since I moved here a decade ago. I don’t think anyone realizes how much life changes when you get to be my age and you can’t physically do the things you love without dealing with the resulting pain as well. I kind of opt for avoiding as much pain as I can. And I wish I could find some new, painless ways to have fun.

I think that for elders who are wealthy, options for having fun are various and many. They can travel first class; they can hire caterers to throw great parties where they can meet interesting new people; they can get massages every day to help ease their aches and pains; they can eat at gourmet restaurants and can socialize at the best night spots. It also helps if you have a partner, but there are a lot of women (many more than men) left alone to figure out the rest of their lives after their partners die.

Of course, we are stuck in a time in which it is certainly NOT fun for 98% of us middle class folks, as we wait for someone to end this governmental travesty.

There certainly is a lot I think about that I’d like to write about: toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, loneliness and aging, sacred psychology, technology, my newly-leased orange Honda Fit (photo to come).

This is a start.

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Every post below this is from earlier incarnations of Kalilily Time. There’s good stuff here, and I don’t want it all to disappear. But times are changing. I haven’t blogged in a a year.  It’s time.  It’s the times.

GUNS AND PENISES

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Google it. Lots of stuff out there about that.

As I was strolling around my peaceful and gun-free, politically Republican neighborhood just now, I had this epiphany. Well, really, Freud had it before me, but sometimes a cigar IS more than just a cigar.

Posts on FB made me contemplate how I feel about guns – and penises. Because I don’t dislike either, and believe that each has a legitimate place in life. While I don’t want or own a gun, that has not been the case in my past life as far as penises go. But I really wouldn’t want to walk around the street seeing either of them hanging out of insecure men’s pants.

Guns and penises. Think about it (and I’m sure many psychologists continue to do so). Just the word “cock” brings up images of both artifacts. And you can use either to “shoot your wad.” Each can be used for violence, and it is usually men who use both for both.

They are both useful, in their place. And both can be dangerous in the wrong hands. (ahem)

I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as my research shows, all of the mass shootings and bombings in America have been perpetrated by men. (I think they were all white men, but that’s not the point here).

Penises and guns. I’d bet my bippy that men who are out-of-control gun fanatics also have some sort of issue about their penises. If you can’t shoot one as well or as often as you want to, how about shooting off the other. If you can’t display your penis in public because it’s illegal, then display your gun, right?

Oh, yes. Guns are fun to shoot. So is sex. But there is a time and a place.

I think it’s interesting that gun fanatics say “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands.” I bet that they feel the same way about their penises.

Yes, there are plenty of women who like to shoot guns too. There is sense of power (I am told) in shooting off an automatic weapon. I understand needing to feel some kind of power in a culture that has made so many of us, men and women, feel impotent. Power and impotence. Guns and penises.

I have a 15 year old grandson, who plays Grand Theft Auto. I also have a daughter and son-in-law who continually have conversations with him about the the issue of guns and violence, and long ago taught him the difference between fantasy and reality. Actually, the three of them sometimes game together. But it’s their thing, not mine; I play Candy Crush Saga.

Guns and penises. I think there needs to be a whole lot more research into how their essences overlap.

Now, you might bring up the issue of breast feeding in public as some sort of parallel to guns and penises. I have my own middle-of-the-road feelings about that, too.

But for now, it’s Candy Crush Saga.