What does the future look like when you

                                                                     get what you want 

                               how will the days unfurl

how might it end up?

                                              The confluence of  planning and chance

all of your dreams, made whole 

 

                                              Every enemy,  injured (blinded, crippled, burned) 

 

                                              every intention, 

no matter how cruel, 

                                                  fulfilled 

 

 

 

 

Exquisite desserts taste good before you even have a bite

 

 

 

 


reQuest 2019: the reTurn  

Oh, people say they have good intentions.

"You didn't take it the right way." "You can't take a joke." "I was kidding." "Well, we certainly can't be funny around you."

I try to enjoy all of my feelings. Be positive about them. Do a really good job: if I have a mean feeling, I try to have the most thorough, black, dark, horrible mean feeling. If I am sad, when I go to bed I go towards it, not away from it. I try to feel it entirely, embody it, let sadness spread throughout me, feel just down in the darkest deepest trench sad.

And then I can't maintain it. First of all, if I try to really really FOCUS on a feeling, total all body all mind focus, it's like zazen. The monkey brain gets bored. "Done with that." says the monkey brain. "What is for breakfast tomorrow? I'm hungry now. What, are you still trying to feel sad? That's stupid."

Ok, this could happen over an hour or well, with family deaths, years, sigh.

And people say they have good intentions, but they are such liars. Part of my family has PhDs in mean teasing and triangulation: whispering about person A to person B and then being SHOCKED when it gets back to person A from person C. Though really they are at the pro level. I got poked by persons D from one gossip chain and person E from another, both coming from the same source person B. She musta been burning up the email and phone lines... now, there were at least eight people with me as person A. NASTY. I don't play with them no mo' because I just don't like the game. I hate that shit.

I felt hurt at the person saying "You should have some compassion for your patients." the other day but at the same time, I was hitting a nerve without thinking about it. I was talking to my Ex mostly, who is an RN who works in a memory loss nursing home. People die frequently. He is really good with the staff and the patients. Also the families. However, the acquaintance had a wonderful girlfriend who moved out. He is alone. I think he'd like to think that if he becomes old/disabled/is losing his memory that he could off himself and his doctor would make it easy. Um. Really, people want to control everything including death. Also, the people who think memory loss is THE MOST HORRIBLE THING IN THE WORLD AND UNENDURABLE SUFFERING are NOT the ones who have memory loss. I think it's the family who suffers more as their person leaves a living body. But... so when exactly is the right time to take them to the vet to have them put down? And isn't that a slippery slope?

Currently in Washington state we do have a law. The person has to have two doctors agree they are terminal within six months and that the person is not super depressed or crazy. Dementia takes something like 8 years on average to kill people so it is not a qualification for either the law or for hospice. We can get hospice when the person no longer cares about eating and starts dropping weight: "failure to thrive" is a qualifier for hospice. I had a new one this last week. Not dementia but an elder dropping weight. Not in hospice yet: I think he knows but his daughter is still in denial. I don't think he wants a lot done but is going through the motions. It's tricky to offer intervention and yet still remind him that he can say no, I don't want that test....

When someone upsets me, I feel hurt, I want to react, I want to whack them with my new really really heavy cast iron griddle, when my own black intentions arise: I try to admit them to my consciousness, admit them, welcome them, enjoy them. My own black intentions are very dark and then my conscience blows up like a feathered puffer fish: STOP THAT! THAT IS HORRIBLE! HOW CAN YOU THINK THAT! YOU ARE WORSE THEN THE PERSON WHO PISSED YOU OFF!

And it is all internal. I don't have to act on any of it. My feelings come and go like teenagers clearing out the refrigerator and leaving mud all over and breaking chairs and denying that they know anything about it.

Enjoy. Isn't that positive?

Theme song: Turn it off.

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