The Furious Spinner

Today Linda was dressed in her own clothes answering the phone! The rumors of her death were greatly exaggerated. They said she'd be dead by now. I cannot express to you how exhilarating it is to have her tell me what to do again. "If you're gonna rub my legs," she said. "You need to rub up toward the heart."

Ha! And her daughter is just a freaking Amazon. Blessed be.

So the world is charging toward collapse. For me, Katrina has sealed the reality of this deal. Again. I'm sure I will whine and complain and be depressed about it again...many times. But I'm not going to be helpless about it any more. The Bushies are not my people. These assholes are not my people. I'm going to get as prepared as I can be while living my life. I'm not going to stick my head in the sand. I'm not going to pretend. But I am going to try to dance my way to it as best as I can.

Here's what was overheard at my house today:

"So I think we should think about acquiring some skills that would be needed after and during the collapse of things as we know them," I said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. We should have gone to that permaculture training Starhawk was doing."

"Yeah."

"Medical training. First aid. Things like that will always be needed. How to grow food. Because no one is going to be buying books."

Mario frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Who is going to need a writer after economic collapse?"

Mario shook his head. "During the Depression writers did fine. That was the heyday of the pulp magazines."

"It's not going to be as good as that," I said. "Writers don't make a living in any of the Third World countries."

"Sure they do," he said. "The standard of living is less so they don't need as much."

"Hmmm," I said. "Maybe the end of the world won't be so bad."

Later it looked like our TV tube was fried:

"Shit," I said. "Oops. Really, I'm not whining about the TV going out. Geez."

Mario just looked at me. "We can go to Circuit City and get one today."

"Man, maybe we should just let it go. We won't need TV during the collapse of the world."

"But we'll want to watch the collapse on CNN," he said.

"That's true," I said. "Eventually there won't be any electricity."

"But until then," he said. "You can get flat screen TVs now."

"Oooh," I said.

We didn't get a TV, but I did buy a couple of pieces of chocolate after we went to the Tao of Tea, ate dal and rice, and wrote, after walking the trail at Falling Creek, after we hugged away most of the day, after I got so many phone calls (about Linda) that I startled the last caller into giggles when I said I had to go because "my husband is now out of bed and dressed. At this rate, I'm never going to get lucky."

What can I say? Life can be exhilarating.

Yesterday I said to Mario, "We keep hearing how great this country is. Well then, why don't we become heroes of the world. Why don't we save the planet? Or anyone. Why don't the French or the English? Fuck the governments. Let's just save the world. I don't know what it takes. But they always talk about the ingenuity of the American people. Where is that? Don't sit around whining about how much you have to pay for gas. Decide if you want to be like the Romans or like the heroes of the world! Let's face what's going on and fucking deal with it."

Tonight we watched "93: The Flight that Fought Back." As I was watching it, I thought it was a great illustration of what I was thinking yesterday. These ordinary people had such courage. They were faced with a terrible circumstance but they fought back. (Did you know they actually voted on what they should do? I find that strangely touching.) They knew they were going down; they probably thought they were going to die, but they tried anyway. Our own government has hijacked our country; we need to take these hijackers down. Our own ignorance and desire for comfort and our consumptive culture have destroyed the environment; we need to face it and figure out what to do—and prepare. This ain't our grandparents' planet any more.

It's an estranged world, after all... 1 comments

1 Comments:

Kim, before you get too depressed check out our Camp Casey Detroit blog at

http://campcaseydetroit.blogspot.com

For 20 days and nights about 50 activists--housed and houseless--maintained a 24/7 peace encampment in the middle of Detroit, Grand Circus Park to be exact. Last Friday and Saturday we hosted the Bring The Troops Home now bus tour from Camp Casey Crawford. About 125 Women In Black marched from 12-1 PM on Saturday and then we had about the same number at a Peace Rally where the tour folks spoke. Talk about powerful!

Being part of this peace encampment filled me full to bursting with strength and hope. Believe me, girl, we are DOING IT!!!!

By  Patricia, at 10:23 PM  

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