But really.. how's everybody doing?

[richjensen]

I'm fine. Pretty much. Just feeling my friends. Hoping for the best from the hellscape. Strong acquaintance / light friend dropped dead a couple weeks ago at 36 (not COVID) and I'm old enough to see that happen a few times, so... Just grabbing a moment. Peace y'all. The world can be what you want if you can give it a bit of time. <3

[yourfriendclaire]

I’m okay. Also feeling grateful for friends/community, even in its now-shrunken form.

[richjensen]

I am glad to hear you are okay [mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention]. I'm actually quite optimistic about the next few years. I don't think people are generally as dumb as everybody thinks. I understand people doing the math differently and being depressed about the number of dumb, misguided and evil people, but I'm lucky and don't get depressed that way. By my estimation we have a fairly constant and manageable number of D, M & E Ps but maybe - like exposed fuel rods in a nuclear reactor - they are presently arranged in a dangerous configuration that compounds some of the chronic, systemic design flaws. Still, I'm on the wow-the-world-got-so-bad-we-might-fix-it side of things. Also near the wow-it-feels-so-good-when-I-stop-beating-my-head-against-the-wall category.

Perhaps the theme is 'life remains precarious. enjoy and do what you can while you can.' Also, 'be nice to the other guests.'

[yourfriendclaire]

"Be nice to the other guests" is a good motto. I've always been buoyed by your optimism! It's true that the helper quotient is booming, and newly empowered & imaginative. The thing that's saddened me over the last few years has been the dearth of imagination, just people being incapable of thinking up new ways of being rather than assuming the inevitability of things. Hiking in LA a few weeks ago I had this sudden visualization, standing at a viewpoint and seeing the city's canyons covered in architecture, of how the city looked before (white) people. And then I thought about how the whole Earth is a paradise, we just hide it. Things felt more manageable to me that way: all we gotta do is uncover.

[m o l l y]

An activity I enjoy when I am unfortunate enough to be in a huge box-store parking lot is to look up at the sky and imagine what the land I'm standing on was like as the wilderness it once was. The sky above this Ikea parking lot is the same sky that was above what was once a wild Belgian overgrown little forest full of wild boar, gentle spiders and squalking water birds.

I also invite you to consider wabi-sabi: "A way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and peacefully accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay."

I love you; peace on earth.

[matthew]

I’ve been pretty not great, especially over the last week. This thread has shared a lot of knowledge and helped tho <3 Glad there are good people out there such as yourselves

[yourfriendclaire]

This last week has been way hard. Love.

[meadows]

How about that air quality, OR and CA?

In PDX we had a weird hot wind storm yesterday that also carried a bunch of smoke over from, I think, a fire on Mt. Hood. It was gritty, hot, dry, irritating, and made those deeply grey/purple/pink smokey skies.

I'm sensitive to the particulate and can't wear contact lenses, have to drink lots of extra water, etc. Also the cat's eyes seem irritated. It was insanely hot and stuffy in the house with windows closed but I know that LA is having waaaay worse temperatures right now. How are ye all doing?

[alexshred420]

Doing pretty bad. Portland cops are still attacking protestors, Proud Boys also attacked protestors yesterday in Salem without repercussions, some of my favorite parts of Oregon including Opal Creek are burning, had my appendix out last week, some great people at work got fired with no explanation, COVID still ravaging the country, I hardly ever see friends...

Feeling pretty much the opposite of Rich. No hope, no optimism, no future. How are other people dealing?

[alexshred420]

Like, once all of the west's forests have burned in a few years, what's the point in even being here?

[marijke]

I'm on Alex's page... mostly despairing. Wondering why I do anything, what anything is for, but still just plugging away.

Life feels untenable. Intimate relationships are fraught. Work is a fully abstract concept.

In the early mornings I have been swimming in the Columbia while the dog runs along the shore and I feel free then.

[meadows]

I feel really terrible, physically and mentally. The only point of joy or calm is petting the cat, and he is getting PET.

[joni]

FEELIN' BAAAAAD BABAY!

There are two fires raging pretty good to the east of us, the closest is only 10 miles away and 0% contained. We're waking up to stranger and stranger light and our garden covered in ash. Fires are part of ecosystems, we can't forget that, but it's just so much piled up and testing humanity right now. Did you all see that just days after record-breaking heat, Denver was hit by a winter storm!? SNOW!? It's hard not to feel like we're in a biblical apocalypse. Has it ever been this much bad all at once?

Our booking agent was laid off from one of the largest agencies at the beginning of all this and let us know he didn't know what was next. Then a couple days ago I read via Rolling Stone he started a new indie agency with a five other ex-employees and didn't tell us. That was extra stress that felt pretty awful (we've been with him for 13 years), but it turns out he's just a scatterbrain and thought we already agreed to go with him wherever (we did) and we didn't need to talk (we did need to talk). We talked and it was nice. Turns out he did pretty much the same camping trip we did a couple days before us. He's booking tours for Summer 2021, which he says still seems nuts, but he had some hopeful things to say about a new sense of community in this new hypothetical touring landscape.

Meanwhile I wanna devote more energy to this message board.

[joni]

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] I'm so sorry about your appendix. What was that like!? Hospitals!?

I'm going back to the dentist today for a two-part "deep cleaning" that will require an anesthetic injection. AND it's expensive!

[yourfriendclaire]

My parents are in town and I'm finding their Boomer optimism kind of comforting right now. They're sandwiched between the same fires we are but their dominant mood is still somehow buoyant, like nothing bad could ever actually happen to them. I know it's not real and I worry about what it will look like when their bubble finally bursts but it's nice to soak it up every few hours betwixt all our own personal existential stuff. I've been getting really sad recently, not so much about my own future as just general elegy-for-planet-Earth-stuff, feeling a strong sense of mourning and shame about all the beauty and complexity our species plunders on the reg. Also hopeless about how the fucked-uped-ness of things is so large that it's effectively resistant to any efforts at the individual level to make positive choices. Like what good is a victory garden when it burns on the vine?

[Abe]

I am in Portland and I am feeling.... okay?
The police sponsored violence is terrible and bad. I have turned to ancient history to help me feel better. I'd much rather deal with urine drinking proud boys than the Assyrians. Those guys were really scary.
I have been doing the following to lift my mood:
Turning election anxiety into action by writing letters with votefwd.org to registered dems in swing states. I was on a mindfulness practitioner call on Sunday with other letter writers and there were over 175 of us. That felt awesome.
Betting on the election via PredictIt. I have done well there, which gives me confidence.
Donating money from profits to good causes.
Working. I vowed to write a letter via vote fwd for every order, but I am getting so many orders I think the send date will come before I can finish. Should still be a ton though!
Exercising and Gardening.
I took a day off Monday and that was awesome. I think I'll continue taking Mondays off.

[m o l l y]

The votefwd link is great. I've been pushing my mom who lives in rural Arizona to start making calls. She is so scared of getting covid and so stressed watching the news and on top of it, no one in her tiny community takes the virus seriously or wears masks so she is just stuck in her little wooden house spiralling and feeling powerless. I think the letter writing would be very good for her to feel like she can put energy into the election rather than just scratching at the walls. Great for kids and moms alike!

[Abe]

It has personally totally turned me around. Being in PDX can be a bummer with national elections, because our votes are so undervalued both for primary and for general, so this is a way for me to make a difference.

[yourfriendclaire]

Thanks Abe. I just signed up to write letters too.

[meadows]

Got that bad air headache thumpin and am grading papers. Hard to focus, but just signed up for the letter writing and am passing it on to my mom as well. I'm happy to have things I can do at home these days.

[meadows]

There is an app that will translate local air quality into volume of cigarettes, and when I checked it at 3 am it said PDX air was the equivalent of smoking 12 cigs a day!

[Abe]

Bwuah ha ha! I am spreading the letter writing virus like crazy!

[alexshred420]

I spent Saturday volunteering with some mutual aid groups to organize distribution of shitloads of donated goods to some native peoples affected by the fires/COVID and that really got me out of my head and helped with the depression for sure.

[joni]

There is an app that will translate local air quality into volume of cigarettes, and when I checked it at 3 am it said PDX air was the equivalent of smoking 12 cigs a day!

Woah. That's interesting. In case anyone wants to download it, here it is:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/s-i-smoke/id1365605567

[joni]

And PS right now Portland (I did 97227) is 12.4 cigs for today.

[yourfriendclaire]

Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

[meadows]

turns out, we are!

[yourfriendclaire]

Smoke 'em if you...are 'em

[meadows]

[yourfriendclaire]

Sat outside for a few hours last night in 3.5 cigarette weather. If the cigarette count is measured as the effect of being outside for 24 hours, then a few hours in 3.5 cig weather is roughly equivalent to taking a few drags at a party, which, since I haven't done that in a year and probably won't do it again for another several years, seems reasonable enough. Dystopian rationalization!

[infopetal]

my co-star today says "Trouble with routine, thinking & creativity, spirituality, social life, sex & love, and self" with no "Power in…" provided. that feels…accurate.

the tears are not staying in my face this week.

[yourfriendclaire]

[mention]infopetal[/mention] <3 it's been a hard week. I bet approach of East Coast winter is ominous-feeling too. I am trying to look forward to cultivating hygge vibes.

[infopetal]

thank you @[my]friendclaire. <3 the cooling temperatures are both welcomed/cozy but also dread-inducing. I don't know how this will work when I can't have a park-based (albeit minimal) social life anymore.

I don't know if they have to do with votefwd.org, but at the farmers' market last weekend, I was given a stack of postcards + addresses to handwrite reminders to vote and send to Georgia (my home state). getting a huge kick thinking about Georgia as a potential swing state, it does lift my spirits a little.

[m o l l y]

Absolutely, the great swing of the 'swing state' does bring this nugget of hope. I mean, Georgia?! Arizona too! Every year the NRA rates the states from 1-50 on how much they approve of their (lack of) gun regulations and Arizona is number one EVERY YEAR. Ahead of Texas and Alaska!! And now it is a swing state! Swing you mighty stallion, swing!!!

God, winter. I know I am in the wrong thread but I vote for ZERO weeks of winter and whatever the fuck of the rest (though only summer all the time would be great in my book).

[infopetal]

fun fact: I grew up in a town in Georgia where you are (still) *legally required* to own a gun. fortunately they don't enforce it otherwise my gentle Midwestern family would be in trouble. I was also the only person in my high school "current issues" class who did not identify as a republican. when we had a mock democratic debate I volunteered to debate as Dennis Kucinich and crushed them all. the same county went blue in 2016 and even bluer in 2018 so I'm hopeful it is a bellwether!

[richjensen]

This week has been wild. Seems like every day was epic. Major emotions. Local, personal things. Some exciting and great, some scary. I blame the moon. And Trump leaving. And yet not really believing anything is different. Like a spellbound village. Sorry to be brief. I started to write about the week and it got too long to finish. It's late and I still haven't meditated today. Keep on y'all. Really. Keep on.

[yourfriendclaire]

Love you, Rich! Hope the great outweighs the scary.