All in the Same Boat

Living next to person with Schizophrenia changes how you see and hear the world. I share a common wall with my neighbor, so I hear her up late at night slamming cupboard doors, sometimes the same one over and over. Talking to herself in the breezeway. Repeating the same stories to me as we get our mail, and sometimes as I drive her to the store. Misty can't drive and some days can't even go outside for fear of the world. Just last night she came to my door asking for help with a stray cat that she couldn't tell was hers or someone else's. Her cat is black and small, so was this. This cat had a collar, so does hers. I checked to make sure her cat was in the apartment, and it was. It still amazes me that she can remember such details about me and Peanut, yet can't remember what she just did a few minutes ago in her certain states. This is the person you see walking around town, because she cannot drive herself, she never will. This is the person that will never be the so called productive aspect of society. This is the person that needs support. That means money. That means resources from the government. This is the person that apologizes because she is confused about being confused each day and she did nothing, nothing wrong to become that way. This, is a person. In need. In my apartment complex. On the Earth. Sharing the same space. And if the humans that hold the Congress had their way, they would throw her out of the life boat to drown. How confusing is that?

No, Not You Shithead

My neighbor's sister drives a bright yellow car. When I went out to my own car the other day I had a scratch with yellow paint on my door. No wonder how it got there. It isn't a terribly large scratch, or dent. But on a silver car, it isn't going to go unnoticed. I walked back up the stairs, knocked on the door, twice. When my young neighbor answered she was perturbed, as usual. I told her about the scratch, and the paint. Behind her, sitting on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, anger seeping from every pore of her being was her younger sister. My neighbor announced that they would no longer park next to me. I just looked at her. She then asked if I wanted insurance information, which I immediately said was useless, it is too small, not the point, not what this is about.

What the teenage girl, seething on the couch, bothered that I pointed out that she did damage to someone else's property is missing, is the truth. She knew she hit my car. Yet, she was mad at me for telling her so. She knew she should have told me, yet she didn't. How dare I show her where she falls short? How dare I tell her where she is wrong?

I don't remember being such an asshole when I was that age. I also don't remember it being allowed. It never crossed my mind, and if it had the expectations of how to behave would have cleared it right out but quick. The older I get, the more grateful I become that I get to remember myself and those memories don't resemble some of the shitheads running around loose ...

Well, some of the memories.

See No Evil

I watched a video of an Egyptian Police van plow at high speed through a group of protesters, throwing some feet into the air and literally smearing a human across the road like roadkill. I can't get it out of my mind. I was warned that I may not want to look. I may need to look away, and I did, I just looked back too soon.

The horrors we as humans are willing to do to each other has been on the tip of my mind. I watched the documentary "Restrepo" a day ago and it hasn't settled with me. I will never understand war. I don't think I want to understand it. I don't think I want to understand anything that celebrates the destruction of civilizations. Do men inside war even really understand it? When they are haunted by their dead, yet seek to end the lives of countless others?

Rwanda. Congo. Darfur. Serbia.

Humans have all of this potential, and yet. And yet.

Respect the Rabbit

Tomorrow starts the Year of the Rabbit. I have been living the daily rabbit life for over a decade. What does the bunny want to eat, what does the bunny want to chew. Just what does the bunny. It has changed how I view the entire world. Maybe the universe. I went from being a very terribly picky omnivore, to vegetarian, to vegan, back to vegetarian, then ultimately back to vegan. Once I brought The Bun into my home, into my life, nothing about me was ever the same. I loved something like I had never loved anything, or since. He let me love him completely. With that I learned more about me than I had ever before.

I was never a good "meat" eater. I was always aware of what I was eating. I payed attention. I went camping and hunting with my parents, I saw the dead deer, I saw it alive in the field before it was hanging from the tree in the camp. I wanted my burgers burnt. I couldn't chew bacon, I would gag. I never ate steak. At Thanksgiving I would always ask for the white meat, knowing it would have the least amount of grizzle and veins. I drove my dad crazy at McDonalds asking for a special burger, onions and cheese only, making them cook it on the spot and having our car pull over and wait. My dad hates waiting. This is called portent. I was the opposite of the typical kid where vegetables have to be hidden to get them to be eaten, my meat had to be hidden.

As an adult (this is of course subjective, I do not classify myself as an adult, never will) and moving into a home and finally having the opportunity for my own choice of companion animal, The Bun moves in with me and becomes the love of my life. By devoting so much of myself to him and learning so much about what the modern world has and is doing to the rabbit, MY world changed. I could no longer look at him, and separate what we call "meat" and him. Him. My Bun. I could no longer use makeup and cleaning products that were tested on animals, primarily rabbits. I no longer support companies that refuse to stop testing or their satellite companies. It was a revelation and a massive shift in the direction of my life. In family life and public life it has been difficult. I have been ridiculed. Mocked. Even badgered into being someone more socially viable, and at times I was. When I buckled to the pressure, I didn't like my self, and I haven't really respected myself for a while. I think I am back on the track of respect. So, this may just be the best Year of the Rabbit in quite some time.

On The Driver's Side

I told my Mom the other day while in the middle of a crying jag, that all hospitals should supply newborns with guides on how to live a life. Sure, some would say the Bible, Quran or Bhagavad Gītā would be the guide. But no. I'm talking about a guide on how to pick a mechanic, a lover, balance your checkbook and survive the event of running over a cat with your car ( this is new for I ran over a black and white cat this very night, and I don't have the immediate talents to deal with it. I needed help as I picked up the still warm body from the road with my bare hands. I sobbed and sobbed as kind neighbors stopped, put on their hazards so he wouldn't be run over repeatedly until my parents showed up to help me remove him from the scene. ) Everyday guidance is the kind I am talking about. Useful. Applicable.

Her reply was that they couldn't. There would be no way to give a guide to everyone that would work, because everyone would need it to be different. No universal guide. She said it so simply, and it was more profound than she knew. Or knows.

In Hitchhiker speak, the answer is 42. The question? No one knows.

My Grandma used to freeze her trash. I thought it was crazy too, until I considered what trash she was freezing. She was only freezing the trash that would cause a stink until it could be taken by the trash man. Leftover carcasses, scraps of casseroles, bones or any food that would rot and leave any odor would be wrapped in foil and put into the freezer until trash day. This could be seen as over orderly, OCD, desperately neat, any title you feel it deserves to make sense of it. But now, at this age, in this time, I get it. I would freeze my trash. Then. But now, we don't have the need, or the inclination. We have disposals (if you are lucky) we have weekly or biweekly trash removal. Recycling, composting, plastic wrap, plastic storage that could survive in space is how we handle leftover food now.

She had a trash compactor for many many years, longer than I was aware of any sort of disposal. I thought it was fun, even a bit exciting to put the tiniest bit of rubbish in the compacter and listen to it crush into near oblivion. The thought of where it was going, who took it there and how long it stayed, was never an issue. Never brought up. The big black plastic bag was just taken out, out into the metal bin and then taken away. Away.

I have been thinking about the freezing. The freezing of what would be offensive, the leftovers, the stink. We have these reminders, scars of what has happened in our lives that we sometimes have no idea what to do with, where to put them. Can we just freeze them, until they are so cold, hard and brittle that we either don't feel them anymore or they are covered up in the back of who we are that we forget? The problem is the thaw and the ultimate stink that will choke up your whole life again. I don't know if there is any away that is away enough to throw these memories and who will hold them? Who is in charge of burning the heap?