My Blue Heaven

Two mid-century Blue Heaven serving dishes were donated to the thrift store yesterday. I snatched them up.
Seeing them at home, I'm not sure I entirely like them. They're more like the idea of what I'd like than what I actually like.
I don't know... I can always take them back.

 

 

A Weird Thing Comes into Your Living

Last night I started reading The End of October (2020), by Lawrence Wright, usually a nonfiction writer (of books and for the New Yorker)--about a new virus that unleashes a global public health crisis and societal breakdown.
He wrote it between 2017 and 2019.

Talking to NPR in April 2020, Wright said,

"The timing of publication — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic — is a coincidence.

"But the parallels with what's actually happening in real life, that's not coincidental," he says. "I researched it very carefully and I talked to people who knew what was going to happen.
They all knew it. They just didn't know when.
They laid it out for me. ... So the fact that it's unfolding as they suggested it would and as I reflected in the novel is no surprise at all."

Arranging books on my shelves, I was a little surprised to see that I own more books in the sci-fi category than any other. (I shouldn't be surprised---they're some of my favorite books.)
The Martian is the only one that's classic sci-fi though--being about an astronaut, and full of science––and even that is really a Robinson Crusoe story: What if you were marooned?

The others are mostly speculative "what if?" stories––mostly about living after some kind of apocalypse, social or biological, whether that's from zombies (World War Z), a virus, or extreme social control (Fahrenheit 451 and All Systems Red).

Troll: A Love Story; Fludd; and LOTR aren't sci fi... What genre are they? The 'A weird thing comes into your living-room' genre? (Troll is the weirdest good book I've ever read. I did not see it coming.)

LOTR is Fantasy, but I don't care about its fantastic world-building aspects, I only care about poor schmuck Frodo discovering a weird, dangerous thing has come into his living room (and he has to get rid of it).

"A weird thing comes into your living. What do you do?"
That's the category I like.

Whether it's a plague, or new tech, a dangerous leader, or, say, even a baby––strange things do drop into our familiar places.

Or we become the stranger in an unfamiliar place. Even without the radical displacement of being a refugee, it can be unsettling just to move across town, such as when I moved in with HouseMate three years ago, and then again into Apartment 320 this summer. (I've figured out where to catch the bus, vote, and buy milk at 6 a.m.––the gas station four blocks away––but I'm still getting my bearings.)

Confused, Overwhelmed, and Sad

Sometimes I determine I will only write cheerful stuff, because in this grim world, cheerful stuff helps.
That's what the Toys do for me! They don't care about human woes.

But... Cheerful is often how I feel, having that sort of temperament, but it's just not where I live or exactly how I think.

I think almost daily, for instance, of the murder of George Floyd by an agent of the State, one mile from where I work in one direction and––taking an L-shaped turn––where I live (both homes) in the other. 

I bike past George Floyd Square on the way to work. Protestors have held the square for two and a half years, though now in tiny numbers. The outline of Floyd's body is still on the pavement, where hand-painted signs read, among other things, THIS IS SACRED SPACE, and protected by concrete barricades.

Now that it's cold and snowy, I take the bus, which remains rerouted to bypass the intersection. (Traffic can go through, but it's slowed by the statue of a fist in the center of the intersection.)

I exchange paper letters with my friend I know from the art collge, who lives on the other side of town.
Recently she wrote to me:

"I want to touch on something you mentioned in both your letters––I certainly noticed––and that's the lingering trauma and sadness from George Floyd's killing.

I know I can't shake it––it all still hangs over me––but it's not on the forefront of our national conversation (not the way it was, anyway) so I feel like it's something I'm kind of carrying on my own, or an still struggling with, alone.
So I'm glad you said it, too.

I still just feel so confused and overwhelmed and sad about that time, the way a child feels, I think.
Just, so sad."

Yes. Confused, Overwhelmed, and Sad. There's that rip in the fabric of how we see the world, our society, our city.

But besides that, for me working at the thrift store right near the killing, there's a distinct before-and-after. There were always people hanging out on the streets, doing illegal business, or just trying to live.
But it's almost lawless now.

The police ... well, it's hard to say exactly how it went down, but people at the store definitely perceive and say out loud that the police chose to let the situation break down, like a wound left to gangrene.

And, yeah, it does seem that way, and listening to tapes of what police said at the time of the first protests, that's not just conspiracy theories driven by paranoia and powerlessness.

At any rate, whether the police, the City, acted and are acting (or, not acting) out of ineptitude, or lack of will, or active retribution, the result is bad.
It used to be that the cold weather cleared out the corner, but now the hardcore business-people there have set up a couple barbecue grills and burn fires all day to keep warm. A neighborhood resident told me that at night, the fires are raging bonfires.

Many of the people doing street business don't want to change, but there's a much larger category of people who are caught in addiction and––almost more hopeless?––untreated, severe mental illness.

In the stories I like, some poor protagonist finds themself thrust into some awful situation, and through pluck manages to carry on. Sometimes they triumph, in some way––always at high personal cost (Frodo can't go home again)––sometimes they just carry on.

At any rate, the stories I like frame our story as ADVENTURE, and it helps me to see myself in an adventure, and not just a shit show.

Hello, Star Trek!