Tag: Suicide

London Calling

T.T.

This week I returned from a week long trip to London. A trip that was planned at the last minute, with no plans upon arrival other than a car service to pick me up and take me to the hotel which was all booked on United Airlines sight. And with that I was off to the races.

**Note** None of my time there did I hear, discuss or care one iota about the Princess of Wales and the endless speculation regarding the photo, if the sightings were real or anything about this situation until I came home and one of the many idiots in the building I live in asked me details about her for reasons I do not know or care. I wish her well but that subject to me is filed under: NONE OF MY BUSINESS *****

The first leg of the trip was to say the least eventful. The woman in the seat in front of me lost her cell phone in a hole in the plane. There was a slight hole in the wall of the interior cabin and that between the plane shell and what I assume was the cargo portion or shell of the plane. The plane had not take off so with that we were delayed and the Flight Attendant informed us that this had happened two weeks prior and they had to remove the seat in which to retrieve it. This time the two Mechanics arrived and went below managed to somehow retrieve it, affix the exterior panel and within an hour or so we were off. With a hole in the plane interior. I landed and checked into my hotel right above Victoria Station, the Covenant. A fabulous location and frankly a fine place to stay as it had all that I needed for the few days I was there

The next day was very unplanned so being that the location was so central, I just walked and found my way to Buckingham Palace and timing what it was I managed to see the changing of the Guards. I informed the Volunteer that we too in America had a similar program only ours is just every four years and to say the least in the words of the former President, I suspect this too will be “wild.” American politics aside it was interesting to observe the way Tourists stood respectfully and acknowledged crowd control by unarmed Officers and that the flow and movement was actually quite seamless. I watched some of it and while I love pomp and circumstance I did wonder what the point and cost of it as Britain’s inflation is high. The rate of exchange for Dollar to Pounds was 1.33 so that I had to add that into the costs of my trip. So for a Medium Latte at Starbucks it was just shy of $6. That said I decided to eat my way through London at the finest Department Stores in the world. There is Harrods food hall that is must, followed by there numerous cafes, I of course chose the PRADA one being that my hat, purse, wallet and cosmetic bag screamed the label. I felt for a moment a little like the ladies of AB FAB, a caricature. But then again I saw plenty others who were by far more so, including the infamous CHAV of Sascha Baron Cohen’s impersonation.

My favorite and perhaps most fun was a Champagne bar in Selfridges on the main floor where I met a fabulous English lass and we pub crawled to of all places Claridge’s, which is a hell of a posh place to stop and sip more Champs. It was a glorious afternoon and one of the many I managed to have despite the rain. Walks to Hyde Park, finding the Tate Museum and the Houses of Parliament where I witnessed another changing of the Horse Guard by total accident and finally spending my last afternoon on Bond street and having more Champagne at the home of all food and tea – Fortnum and Mason. I walked almost everywhere and finding jewels on the way, such as Gail’s Bakery which many locals were amazed that I had discovered this delightful bakery as I went on my morning walkabouts. Which landed me at the Tate that had two major exhibits, one with the art and fashion influence of John Singer Sargeant, the other about Women and Revolt in England from the 60s to the present. I chose the former over the latter and I can say it was as delightful as Gail’s Hot Cross Buns. I believe the Queen is dead but from that exhibit I learned about the Artist through his work, and to say he may too have been a Queen – in a non royal sense. Now I finally understand the “Dandy” reference that was about Men who dressed well and fashionably. We used to call them Metrosexuals. Sure okay. How about a Man who just simply cares about the passions of fashions and how he presents himself; Iconic, and leave it at that. But the exhibit paired the paintings with some of the actual garments worn in the portraits and they were divine. I had a delightful morning that led me to explain to the young attendants that these were the original selfies of the day and when you had money and time you made sure they looked well. We could all use that as an example of patience and good grooming. I on the other hand did not follow my own advice as I only dressed well for one evening at the Royal Opera and it was still very dressed down but upon walking into that infamous hall I was to enthralled to be interested in my fellow Patrons or what anyone was wearing.

That too was spontaneous as I had found my way to the shop I had to go to as it had sustained me during the pandemic – Liberty of London. I have no idea why during the pandemic I bought food, some clothes and the like but as all things are, they just are but a pilgrimage had to made. I had a great time just wandering about and buying nothing more than a book on of all people the designer Yves Saint Laurent. Funny how in England a French ex pat who lived in Morocco and was to me the influencer that I most gravitate to. This being the time of Dior, Chanel and Lagerfeld with numerous films, series, and documentaries, including many Museum exhibits as well on their influence in fashion. Some of it financial as the Houses pay for it and others are due to personal relationships, but this is what draws the eyes. Much like the Singer Sargent one at the Tate it is because much of fashion is about history of the period and how fashion is like all art and pop culture, from it we learn about the larger and more commercial aspects of society. It does seem that while today’s iconic fashion houses came from the same era and still bear their name long after the original Designers/founders have gone. But there seems to be a deep fascination of late with (or maybe always) with Coco Chanel. Watch the New Look on Apple it certainly will change your views on both Dior and Chanel and their time in World War II and the role of fashion in history when it comes that era. Hey we had a similar retrospective regarding Halston so at least we have some comparison although nowhere near as interesting. Or not, depending on one’s level of interest.

From there I found my way to Covent Garden and with that found the Royal Opera House, wandered in and secured a ticket for the final performance of the Flying Dutchman. It was spectacular and the performances were first rate and a production that was much more stripped down than the one I saw last year at the Met and by far more intimate works in this house. I was glad I went.

But for this trip plans and itinerary was secondary and oddly of all things my wanders made food the primary. And when I looked at my credit card statement upon returning, other than the car travel to and from the airports, it was the largest expenditure and yet none for any large expensive dinner. No it was simply indulging all day on treats and snacks with Champagne stops (there was that money and well spent) at varying Wine Bars that seemed to call my name, my personal favorite name – Prada. Yes that Prada and they have a cafe attached to Harrod’s. And even the quinnessential Afternoon Tea I found myself not at a Tea Shop but at the French baker of Macrons, Laudree. How so not English! But it was a delight to sit on the balcony on this cloudy day and watch below the Street Entertainers and the crowds; a great way to be a part of something while not being a part of anything. And after days of wandering, I often stopped at Marks and Spencer (again another Department store) quick stop food shop for a sammie and fruit plate to eat later in my room. There is something about the idea of sitting on a bed, watching bad British TV that seems decadent over sitting a table alone eating any food. Honestly eating out is boring as hell on your own and my first night in the hotel when I thought I would do so by first stopping at the Bar and having an amazing Cocktail they have, a Bourbon one made with my favorite pour, Buffalo trace. It arrives under as cloche and once removed plume of smoke arises and with that it is magic. With that under my belt I assumed I would wander out and find something better than pub food or perhaps even as good, but that was not to be and the story here is what must be filed under trigger warning.

The adage goes, no matter where you go there you are. And it seems that this phase in my life I have few encounters that fall into the category of fabulous and with that I did when I met the young lady at Selfridges’ on Saint Patrick’s day, who compensated for the encounter I had upon my first true day in London. As I said above I was going to stop in the Hotel Bar and either have a small plate and call in a night or cross over to one of the numerous pubs that aligned the block for a meal. It all changed when I made the “mistake?” of speaking to the lone man at the Bar sitting two seats over. He was surprised and I asked if he was a guest or a resident and with that it was off and running. He had been drinking long before I got there and yet it had not lightened the mood, it only enabled the room to become even darker than the lighting despite the windows that looked over the bustling Victoria Station below. Watching the commuters wander to and from was soon to be an irony as the conversation progressed.

We discussed some politics and he announced or declared to me I was a Republican of which I informed him clearly being a Liberal and Feminist that would be near to next impossible, so I knew he did not either understand our party system or was simply drunk. What unveiled throughout our dialogue that he was so similar to the angry white men of late that define our version of Conservatives I often thought I had never left home. He pronounced himself largely successful and had two adult children who were also the same, he was “rich” as he informed me more than once and was 67 with two children under 10 at home with his current wife as his first had died years ago and he had this new family which clearly was a burden to him.

I get that as I am fast approaching 65 I know I could not handle children under 10 and with that know I would not see them become adults. I also wonder why in an age of choice particularly for men at age 45 he would marry and enable/allow or “permit” a woman to have children he did not want nor need. I also can believe a Woman can think she will be fine, he will change his mind and the desire to have a family can be the primary factor and by choosing to do so with an older husband there is a security there that he will or may die but the financials are already in place. Yes folks all Marriages are bargains to be had, negotiations and compromises made. They are in fact TRANSACTIONS. And this is why I have closed my pussy for business.

Over the next two hours or so, I tried my best to be witty, to change the tone and nature of the conversation, but mostly I just thought that the less said, the less mended and his constant remands for me to stop talking and chattering about nothing secured me in the fact that I would at least get some story out of this encounter but it was not one I suspected in the least. The man confessed he was quite suicidal and planned to do so earlier but the school children the terminal stopped him but that he was going to kill himself that night by throwing himself in front of a moving Subway/Tube car.

As a Stranger in a Strange Land expect strange things but even this was not something I could have possibly thought would happen but here I was and yes confessing one’s sins to a Stranger is perhaps a safety valve we all need, the Catholic Church marketed that to great success for Centuries.

He constantly reminded me of that and informed me that we would never see each other again, we had never even exchanged names only where I was “from” and what I did for a living, both of which were deigned with numerous insults on how I spoke/my accent (which when I corrected him that I was actually NOT from New York but Seattle Washington that threw him a loop) and my profession for teaching young people to be Thugs and Gangsters. It was fascinating to watch the anger spew in my direction and dodging those as he was a drunk angry white man and these misdirections were easily tossed aside. But I stayed because of the suicide declaration and I again needed to figure out how to discard that with the least amount of damage – to me. He I cared little about and frankly would have loved to push him in front of a moving tube, but as my Mother said, “Don’t go to jail doing the world a favor.” Or should I say “favour”

But as he proceeded to insult, demean me and of course his wife little was said about the children other than how they might grieve and I offered suggestions other than throwing himself in front of a speeding vehicle and in turn involving all those other strangers as well into his self loathing. He was insistent that it was to be done, the discussion of insurance and how they do not pay on suicides made me realize that the Dutch Courage of massive quantities of liquor is one thing, another if one wants it seen as an accident. So now he has not only instigated me into this but allowed me to be a collaborator for potential insurance fraud. I sat with my drink he offered I assume as payment for services rendered and I ordered a Spring Roll and sat and finished it as he realized that I was done talking, and had said that literally when it arrived. I had enough frankly of it all, food, booze, his company and the miasma of pain he had vomited upon me.

I got up went to where the Bartender’s were standing by the till, inspected my bill, made him pay for my drinks as that was the least of it, I covered my own food and said that he was a problem and perhaps they needed to stop serving him. I left and spoke to the Front Desk about the man and his issues but I was vague and not insistent just passing on the info. And then I walked up and down the staircase to the floor of my room and back to the Lobby, I realized that despite this not America and the fact that if one did call for a “Wellness Check” the Bobby’s do not carry guns so this would not end in the normal way it does here but I did want to absolve myself of any of this – not guilt but responsibility. I took the Agent to the bar door and pointed him the lone soul sitting there, insisted he call Police or a Cab to get him home and away from the Station and the potential for his suicide to be reduced. He is truly mentally ill, very drunk and no one should be liable or responsible for his acts. Not the Hotel, not the Tube Driver or Passengers and especially ME. NONE of us deserve that and with that I left. The next day I stopped in on my way up to pick up wine to take to my room, as I sure as Hell was not planning on sitting there again should he return and want a repeat or whatever… I was told the Police came and he was escorted home. That ends that and with that the story now falls to the one he can make or not with those whom he wished to abandon. They need the right to choose and make that decisions for themselves. His Children, his Wife and the Adult Children can in turn be responsible. I would not wish that on anyone but again that is the choices we make and once you are an Adult you have that right to make choices, to make decisions and be they right, wrong, good, bad or somewhere in between they are yours to make. They are not those for others to do or to assume responsibility. I frequently say, “Are you an Adult?” when someone levels off a complaint that seems relatively easy to correct and solve. Hate your job? Find another one? Hate your wife? Divorce her. We have become children and we now are in search of the perpetual Big Mommy or Daddy who will resolve it all. It explains Social Media just like the Portraits in the Tate, the first selfies. We are all indulgent it seems.

Ah London. Despite it all you are just like us. Good, Bad or somewhere in between.

Friends-Giving

T.T.

With Thanksgiving now past we move into the core of the holiday season which actually concludes at Valentines Day in February. So for the next 10 weeks expect some sort of display, advertisement or article on how to stay sane/keep fit/find gifts and of course travel and do so despite rising costs of both travel and entertainment. Wow that sounds so fun!

I also will read numerous articles on loneliness and of course the rise in social isolation that has maintained since the onset of Covid in late 2019, when we thought it was just a simple virus and to be cautionary. Remember those holidays? No me either. I was still traveling between Nashville and Jersey and saw many travelers wearing masks as they were coming from Asia. I had been reading about the virus and knew instantly this was not something that will pass, little did I know how bad it would be. And then by the New Year it turned quickly to shit. Remember those fun pressers with Trump and the counterpoint Andrew Cuomo who would use their pulpit to bully and to coerce others into compliance and cooperation or sheer ignorance and little respect for others let alone their own health? Yeah and the rise of Fauci who retires next month and to never see him again either is fine with me. All three of these Stooges did little to assuage or comfort Americans with their endless polticizing, conflicting and contradicting messaging and of course the sheer bullshit that came out all of it from both sides of the political aisle. Not the first time I have seen a transmissible disease used as a political football, but hopefully the last. Nah, we had Monkeypox and that seems to have faded but that is fine as vaccines for diseases that are totally preventable are on the decline. Enjoy those pox/measles and the like at your holiday buffet and then when you have illnesses later thanks to the post affects of them, you can thank yourself and your family for their ignorance and lack of access to proper medical care. Folks few people have family Doctors and rely on Urgent Care and ER’s for their primary care which by then is now past the preventative stage. America, bringing back epidemics one at a time.

So with that we enter the phase of the moon where after three years of paranoia and hysteria we are to gather together and put all that aside to share a plate of food that may or may not cost more, taste any better or be worth all that time or travel to sit at a table and talk about what? Sports? TV? Movies? Books? Oh wait no one reads books they read Social Media that tells them about books. So they talk about I guess Book reports that they saw/heard on Tik Tok.

I go to a great deal of events of which I write about here, largely because this is self published and with that it is still considered published work and for that I can get some tax credits for the cost of doing so. I struggle keeping up the blog and was beginning another to draft fiction and see how to create work from what is ostensibly non fiction and turn it into fiction to avoid the whole concept of what is “creative non fiction” versus actual non fiction. Meaning that I can change names, situations and blur truth with well lies or made up shit isn’t that fiction, created non truths? Sometimes writing linear stories are boring and why most non fiction is not well read or sold other than a few bios that draw the eye and then the Author disappears back into the world to never have that kind of success again. The late Author, Julie Powell of Julia and Julie is a good example. She never had that kind of recognition and acclaim that began as what? A blog. From that drew attention and success which it evolved into a book and movie that was never replicated again in her brief time on earth. Or how about James Frey who wrote a creative non fiction book that was so beloved by Oprah, then it was discovered it was just that – creative fiction. His life ended in a similar fashion, once infamous now just sorta famous, a cultural footnote.

And that is the struggle for many who despite having had fame, fortune and success is finding a path that maintains this course of life and that the creative fuel or inspiration maintains. It ain’t easy. I can do small doses of inspired thought and then like any drug, it lasts for a moment and then back to real life. I get why people do drugs as they cannot handle the let down, the sense of high and with that the power it brings that makes one feel unique, special, loved. Read Modern Love in the New York Times or LA Affairs in the LA Times. These are the stories of the heart and head that talk about the success and failures of finding love and romance in the big city. I find them incredibly amusing, boring, sanctimonious, sad, or interesting. I don’t read them all the time but I do occasionally pass over them. I read one today, “When love calls, go.” My first thought, “Hang up the phone or don’t answer.” Honestly I did not get one word of that as it was a cultural story that one would have to understand the history behind the concept of race, identity, religion and belief in the institution and dogmas that are embedded into the belief of arranged marriage and its import to one’s family and history. But it continued to reinforce my belief that religion is the bane of all existence, especially to Women. Had that woman stayed in Hong Kong, had a thriving career, remained with her family and met someone on her own or not, what could have happened could have been equally if not more satisfying or joyous than meeting a dude and marrying him and moving across the globe to satisfy what appeared to be her family’s wishes, not her own. Wow. Just wow.

And in that same paper they had a story about a Breakup Bootcamp. It charges 4K to mend a broken heart. I knew in my heart I had potential to be a cult leader as I watch the Vow Season 2 on HBO and yet I also could not go through the charades and machinations to maintain such bullshit and duplicity. I mean once I cleared that first million I would be out of there and claiming that we must end this and go on our own journey to seek knowledge and freedom. Then I would immediately move to Switzerland.

I am not going to comment on any of that absurd bootcamp but it is about the same cost for some visits to Therapist over a brief period and add Yoga, a Sex Worker and a short vacation, it adds up so this is fine frankly if that is what you need to feel better. I am sure the ESP/NXIVM folks felt the same after their thousands of dollars dropped for bullshit jargon and coaching from ostensibly two white people that look like Middle School Teachers. Wow. Just wow.

But it is this pervasive FEAR of being alone. This has fueled many of the shooters who have no social ties and cite a lack of a “girlfriend” as their reasoning. The most current crop that shot up a Bus, a Walmart and a Gay Bar seem to have the most diverse reasoning or lack thereof as to why as one committed suicide (the Walmart employee) and the others “motives” at this point will either evolve or never fully be understood as again it is less about the why but more about the how. How they get a gun and ammo and feel compelled to act upon their rage in a manner that kills and harms people just living their lives is the only thing I care about. This is not about mental health as you are already crazy to start amassing guns, get tactical gear and ammo to then act on your rage. Yes, you are crazy. The end literally and towards people who had nothing to do with your rage or anger. The exception it appears is the Walmart crazy who while working their expressed paranoia, delusions and rage yet not one co-worker or supervisor felt compelled to listen to him and inform those around him that this is a problem. And that may explain his list and targets. We truly do not actively listen, we patronize, ignore or simply are that self involved to not. Almost all shooters have expressed similar anger prior to their acts and yet again and again we go “mental health” but hey its clear we have no fucking clue what defines mentally healthy.

And again we have this insatiable belief or idea that you must be partnered off, have a hand count of life long friends whom you rely to be that family of another kind. Great my family were nuts so would this be a sane family and what is sane. While I found my Parents challenging as parents they were not bad people so being their friend is not an issue and with that I accept their limitations and have moved on the therapy stage of blaming them for all my ills. What I did learn was independence and the ability to rely on myself which can be overwhelming and at times I would appreciate someone else to do the heavy lifting. I would actually really love someone to plan something and include me in a genuine offer of friendship. This would be inviting me to a play, a movie, a walk. An ACTUAL invite with the exchange being that they do the planning/organizing or get the tickets and I will pick up a meal, drink or something in the future in which to reciprocate. I can truly say that will never happen. The last time I was invited to something was in Nashville to a baseball game that I did not want to go but felt I could not say no as to not hurt their feelings and I dressed and was ready with a no show text about 20 minutes before. I knew it was a lie and was furious and it was then I decided to lie and fuck with that individuals head from that point on. But is that mentally healthy? No, but I found it by far more entertaining and when I left I finally did admit that I made it all up I could in fact write fiction! I was by far more creative when I put my mind to it but it also changed how I saw people and the limitations I could foresee as I moved forward in life. And that led to the policy of No Compromise. Since landing in Jersey City I have had two social encounters with two different Artists, one I went to Governor’s Island with (which turned out to be the longest and best thing of that) and another who I met for coffee and she drank none and we walked around Union Square for about an hour. It was boring and neither of them I have seen again nor even remember their names. But again effort made, it was stalled and I moved on. No harm no foul and no compromise.

And this weekend I read the below article in the Washington Post from of all things an Economist who is concerned about the concept of Social Isolation. What resulted was not a far reaching discussion on health, loneliness and the overall affects it can pose on mental or physical well being. This was about the issue of choice and of situation. Yes the rise of mental health issues and the like that can be serious when we speak of those who are alone, and wish to be otherwise. That is completely different when one chooses be alone and or is simply alone, and yes folks I was in a marriage of one so you can be in partnerships that are of that nature. I refer to my Parents who again were the role model of that which I duplicated to a tee, so yes I do now know that boundaries and interests and relationships do not need co-dependency in which to thrive. And yes folks that my Parents did not do things together, sleep together, socialize or have interests together they were utterly co-dependent on that dysfunction that I thought that was “normal” or “healthy” and today I find myself content with the idea that yes that works for me now. Irony I am back to where I started only now I can articulate that and am sure I do not want a partner to live with me or fuck me. I just want a great friend whom I can do things upon occasion and have trust and respect as the foundation of such. That will never be a Woman they are incapable of it. We women are an unhappy lot and I just look to the Karen who lives in 946 below me and that performance in my Apt. on October 10. Then last week to get on the elevator with me and act as if she had no clue who I was confirmed it, she is what? Crazy. Just not gunshot crazy. And that is what falls under the umbrella of a mental health disorder.

And when I read the article and the comments that followed they too confirmed the reality is that most people choose to be alone, they are bored, frustrated, exhausted. Some come to it from years of having to care take and be the primary care giver, have had tremendous loss and want to be alone and some manage to have a healthy relationship with their partner/family and feel no great urge to be the life of the party. I am a great advocate of the “random” where your path crosses for an hour or two and take great pleasure in that exchange and then move on. I finally accepted that and often do make an offer of a future time but I don’t mean it and I really do. That is being polite. Most often I don’t remember their names and make sure that I am appreciative and thankful but I am done with it. The nice man I met with his friend (and yes I do recall both their names they were delighful and deserve that respect) on my Birthday whom I had dinner I die offer to reciprocate. My first attempt was in that same week to meet by coming into the city and running errand and saying I was stopping for coffee so if he was around to let me know and left it there. His response, “I don’t drink coffee.” So I told him to have a nice day and keep in touch. He did and with that I have been deeply bored with the texting and after my disaster at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the German Actor in Hamlet I realized I was truly done with plays and theater. I had my few tickets left and was going but not going to discuss or pursue any further drama, literally or figuratively. So this weekend I planned a trip to Baltimore in January to see the John Waters exhibit and attend their acclaimed Symphony. As I planned it I recalled that the Gentleman was coming to see Death of a Salesman again (where we all met) on the 13th but I simply dismissed it then moved on with my plans. And sure enough the very next day I got a text with all the tickets and theater he was planning on attending that weekend. It was packed and unless I attended one of them on the same day and time I could not possibly reciprocate with dinner. I was secretly relieved. But with that I responded. “Wow great choices, shame I don’t do Broadway anymore and with that schedule I doubt we would have a chance to get together anyway. Enjoy”. His response was Happy Thanksgiving anyway. Loved the deep inquiry into “What you don’t do Broadway anymore?” Yeah, like coffee. Again the lack of curiosity and interest said more than had he expressed as such. Even if I wasn’t going to Baltimore that weekend I am back Sunday morning, but with a short window and his lack of coffee I am not sure what he thought we could do. Have Breakfast? I actually don’t do breakfast. So with that I suspect it is done. I am relieved as we had nothing to talk about but the play. There is only so much to talk about there. I am not sure he thought we were to be anything more than friendly acquaintances but the inability to communicate and speak about things other than a single subject be that theater, politics or sports is a problem folks.

I find it fascinating that people find me so “intelligent” which is great but it is really that I simply read, retain and seek knowledge and experiences. It takes so little effort to find things to do that I like. I went to see the play, Piano Lesson, with a very star studded cast on Tuesday. I have been a fan of August Wilson as despite all his plays taking place in Baltimore where he once lived, he lived his later years in Seattle and it was from there is how I became familiar with his work and life. He lived a short distance from me in Mt. Baker and sadly our paths never crossed but I am sure he would have been a lively conversationalist. And with that I decided to stay in the City for the night as to avoid another drama at my home And at what had to be the best find of hotels in Manhattan, Public, in the LES. I have fond memories of that hood, often staying there when I would visit. It is still a mixed but thriving area and with that easy access to and from Midtown and the PATH exchanges. I had the best time at Public, from a room upgrade to a bottle of Prosecco on the house, I can not say enough good things about the service or the hotel. It is a must go to stay or just to dine, drink or visit. I am going to have to find another excuse in the future to stay despite my disinclination to attend Broadway in the future. Yes that much was true as there is nothing next season I plan on seeing unless I buy day of or lottery. It is not worth it. Two more to go with an Off Broadway show, Man of No Importance and the Musical 1776, my calendar is now full of Opera and some Cabaret. But theater is no longer my muse and with that we will always have our moments but it must be exceptional in every sense of the word.

And you do atttend Cabaret you can reserve a table or sit at a bar seat and with that I will never sit anywhere but a bar seat. I am seeing Sandra Bernhardt next month and Joe’s Pub to end the year and wisely will take the bar. I did Below 54 last week as well and they “upgraded” me to a table. I shared with a Mother, and a Daughter and another young woman who also joined the table. I knew after I was cut off mid sentence I had nothing more to say so I listened to their conversation progress and the best part was the Young Woman was originally from Nashville, confirming that I needed to keep my mouth firmly on my wine as flashbacks and reminisces were not on the menu. So I listened to the table next to me discuss their theater going and thanks to that convo again reminding me why it was time to forego it as they defined the “type” of NYC theater audience. Their discussion defined pretentious but while they trashed one production the irony was that next to them at another table was the Stage Manager of said production. Ah NYC folks it is a small town. I have come to the conclusion that yes I am smart and smart enough that small talk is being polite but silence is golden, like the Tony Awards.

So why are people alone? Read Bowling Alone a 20 year old book by Robert Putnam. It explains it and shows that little has changed but the methods in which we did connect and socialize have eroded and with it today’s Social Media is anything but a manner in which to meet and find others just like you. We are all now algorithms, and as in math, like finds like to solve the equation. Math is Hindu-Arabic, its own language and you read it right to left and we are Americans who suck at math. That may be why as we are also not bi-lingual and we assume that all of the rest will come to do as we do, as we do it. Yeah okay.

So embrace aloneness, do not confuse it with loneliness. If one suffers the one prospers and you must find the ways to those tiny relationships that can boost self esteem and self worth. My stay at the Public Hotel did that. With that I found out 946 was gone for the week, but I am glad I did stay regardless; I needed to treat myself to civility and dignity. And that is how you meet others in that orbit of positive energy that enables me to thrive and survive. I have let the thoughts of suicide pass over me and that is all they do – pass.

I spent Thanksgiving watching old movies. First was Blackboard Jungle (which irony had Sidney Pointier as the bad student which only decade later he would be taking on the redeeming Teacher role and my influencer in To Sir With Love) and folks there may be more closeness to reality than I imagined when I read this about a former Teacher at one of the many schools I subbed at in Nashville – Johnson. This was,the last stop before Jail and I knew this Teacher but the story was right out of the movie. That school had many problems, including that at one point Nashville Police quit as they did not feel safe there. Yeah no one did, it was literally a block away much like the other school in Jersey City Bright St which was, until this year and it explains why I subbed there as well, but not one moment did I feel safe. There was no learning, no security and frankly no point. So after that flashback, I then watched the original Boys in the Band from 1970; a film about a Birthday party but in reality a gay night of anger, rage and recrimination by a bunch of Queer friends who define the word in a dysfunctional way, not a fun “gay” way. Toxic friendships are just that toxic and with that it shows that even Men straight or gay have anger issues. Yikes, how perfect for the holidays to remind yourself maybe being alone is not that bad of an idea.

Opinion Americans are choosing to be alone. Here’s why we should reverse that.

By Bryce Ward

November 23, 2022. The Washington Post

Bryce Ward is an economist and the founder of ABMJ Consulting.

The covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on our social lives. Cancellations, closures and fear of a potentially deadly infection led us to hunker down and avoid acquaintances, co-workers and extended family. Time spent with friends went down. Time spent alone went up.

Thanksgiving was not spared. Americans spent 38 percent less time with friends and extended family over the Thanksgiving weekend in the past two years than they had a decade prior.

And now for the scarier news: Our social lives were withering dramatically before covid-19. Between 2014 and 2019, time spent with friends went down (and time spent alone went up) by more than it did during the pandemic.

According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the averageAmerican spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline.

By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization and new technologies all played a role in the drop. (It is notable that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014.)

Covid then deepened this trend. During the pandemic, time with friends fell further — in 2021, the average American spent only two hours and 45 minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).

Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, co-workers and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019 and only 10 hours a week in 2021.

On average, Americans did not transfer that lost time to spouses, partners or children. Instead, they chose to be alone.

No single group drives this trend. Men and women, White and non-White, rich and poor, urban and rural, married and unmarried, parents and non-parents all saw proportionally similar declines in time spent with others. The pattern holds for both remote and in-person workers.

The percentage decline is also similar for the young and old; however, given how much time young people spend with friends, the absolute decline among Americans age 15 to 19 is staggering. Relative to 2010-2013, the average American teenager spent approximately 11 fewer hours with friends each week in 2021 (a 64 percent decline) and 12 additional hours alone (a 48 percent increase).

These new habits are startling— and a striking departure from the past.Just a decade ago, the average American spent roughly the same amount of time with friends as Americans in the 1960s or 1970s. But we have now begun to cast off our connections to each other.

It is too soon to know the long-term consequences of this shift, but it seems safe to assume that the decline of our social lives is a worrisome development. Spending less time with friends is not a best practice by most standards, and it might contribute to other troubling social trends — isolation, worsening mental health (particularly among adolescents), rising aggressive behavior and violent crime. Americans rate activities as more meaningful and joyful when friends are present. Friends and social connections build on themselves and produce memories and fellowship. They also boost health and lead to better economic outcomes.

We can hope, as covid-related barriers recede, that people will change course.Time with friends did increase in 2021 after the vaccine rolled out; however, at the end of 2021, it was still an hour below the 2019 level. Furthermore, a Pew Research Center survey made public in August suggests that covid might have changed us permanently — 35 percent of Americans say that participating in large gatherings, going out and socializing in-person have become less important since the pandemic.

The potential harms of these trends are sufficient to demand that Americans devote some resources to understanding and reversing them.

You can help reverse these trends today without waiting for the researchers and policymakers to figure it all out. It’s the holidays: Don’t skip Thanksgiving with your family. Go to that holiday party (or throw one yourself). Go hang out with friends for coffee, or a hike, or in a museum, or a concert — whatever. You will feel better, create memories, boost your health, stumble across valuable information — and so will your companions.

Put effort into building relationships that you can count on in good times and bad because, as the song goes, that’s what friends are for. Besides, you just might have a good time.

Life Loving

T.T.

In the reality of our world, women do give life and with that we need to celebrate it. But we also know that for many it is CHOICE one makes. I chose not and have been grateful that I had access to Birth Control and came of age in a time of Safe Sex ensuring that I was healthy and disease free. I was assaulted on Feb 9, 2012 and do not know what happened to me that night other than I was found unconscious in my wrecked car. My memory erased not only by the injury I sustained but what a drug test in the hospital found the presence of a substance commonly known as Date Rape drugs, Benzodiazapine. I did not knowingly or willingly take the drug as I left my date briefly to use the rest room and the rest is all a blur. But with that I realized that I had no power no recourse and no way of ever getting justice. Today only served to remind me of that.

Anne Sexton’s poem came to me after the day where she celebrates her being able to keep her Uterus after a scare where they thought she would have to have a hysterectomy. Ann was a fantastic poet who had two children by the time she was 21 and with that suffered immensely from what we now know is referred to as Post-partum depression. In and out of hospitals for what were the better part of her life, she was still a fantastic poet who wrote of the mysticism and reality of life of being a woman in the world of her now. She sadly took her life at age 46 and I wonder if had she had better care she would have lived a full life in which to flourish. The implied bias and neglect in medicine when it comes to women has not changed much and I know that from my own experience and that of others. We have not come a long way baby and that was proven today.

In Celebration of My Uterus

By Anne Sexton

Everyone in me is a bird.

I am beating all my wings.   

They wanted to cut you out   

but they will not.

They said you were immeasurably empty   

but you are not.

They said you were sick unto dying   

but they were wrong.

You are singing like a school girl.   

You are not torn.

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

and of the soul of the woman I am

and of the central creature and its delight   

I sing for you. I dare to live.

Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.

Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.   

Hello to the soil of the fields.

Welcome, roots.

Each cell has a life.

There is enough here to please a nation.

It is enough that the populace own these goods.   

Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,   

“It is good this year that we may plant again   

and think forward to a harvest.

A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”

Many women are singing together of this:   

one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,   

one is at the aquarium tending a seal,   

one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,   

one is at the toll gate collecting,

one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,   

one is straddling a cello in Russia,

one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,

one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,   

one is dying but remembering a breakfast,   

one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,   

one is wiping the ass of her child,

one is staring out the window of a train   

in the middle of Wyoming and one is   

anywhere and some are everywhere and all   

seem to be singing, although some can not   

sing a note.

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

let me carry a ten-foot scarf,

let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,

let me carry bowls for the offering

(if that is my part).

Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,

let me examine the angular distance of meteors,   

let me suck on the stems of flowers

(if that is my part).

Let me make certain tribal figures

(if that is my part).

For this thing the body needs

let me sing

for the supper,   

for the kissing,   

for the correct   

yes.

Man’s Man

T.T.

I have no clue what that means as the definition of Man is not what the moronic Bitch from Tennessee, Senator Marsha Blackburn, failed to ask Justice Brown-Jackson that question during the hearings for her placement on the Supremes. Wonder why? Well I will take a stab at it as that has a broad meaning among men. As noted when I went to Marc Maron’s show on Saturday he was suspect of “Bro Culture” and that the collective hive mind that comes from listening to varying roided up podcasters and his Doctor of Assholery that defines not just toxic masculinity but insane as well. What is with witches of late? First the Supreme ready to toss out Roe uses a 14th Century Judge who believed in them, as does that asshole. Really? Really? So I am going to go that a “Man’s Man” believes in the subjugation of women, that women are evil and that liberals are fuckwits. Okay then. Oh and sports are awesome!

Today I read the article below from the Washington Post. If there is a reason for gun control right there it discusses the rate of success and fatality in suicides among men. That white men are the largest actors with regard to suicide over men of color. So on second thought, what control guns? No way!

Do I hate white men? No, just some of them. Okay most of them. I love to agitate the AWM by just ignoring them or staring at them as if they are zoo animal and it makes them really uncomfortable. They are not confrontational in the least about that when under the female gaze, they are likely thinking, “She wants to fuck me.” But they will never know that for certain as that is the control I actually have over them. Ask the one I rejected Saturday night. I loved when he tried to move my hand towards his crotch and I thought, “Wow I am in High School and this is pathetic.” And with that I walked away. Power. No compromises. Remember that women when you are asked to suck his dick, don’t.

With that thought, realize that today this AWM (aggrieved, angry you pick) are afraid. There are two factors in play here, grief and fear, they are co-joined at the hip and it explains a great deal of the behavior here we are experiencing. The endless whining and complaining is a reflection of the coddled classes having to come to terms that the world they were sure they were conquering/managing/planning to join is never coming back and therefore invalidates all their former self. And the fear factor folks (an irony on top of an irony that of all people Joe Rogan hosted that show) who are just afraid, of what? Every fucking thing, Covid, Anarchy, Democracy, Black/Brown People, Trans People, Republicans, Liberals, Women, Dogs, Cats and the future. When you have a collective grieving over the losses that came from Covid and the constantly afraid you have a problem. Both are very hard emotions to manage and in turn grasp as it seems on any day the roller coaster of feelings takes over and with that you either go inward and enter a state of depression or you turn outward and become aggressive and in most of those cases that is expressed through violence, on the self or others. I have said one thing Americans are good at is FEAR. White people are especially afraid of EVERYTHING – everything and everybody. I do feel that the POC’s get the brunt of that but that is because they are the lowest hanging fruit and are easy to see and therefore target. Then comes the others, Women again easy to spot and why they are truly angry at Trans as that is that whole “Can I fuck that gal.. what she’s not a gal? What hole do I use, I am not Gay right?” Or then Immigrants again largely faces of color and lastly Liberals, who unless have a bumper sticker are harder to spot. And with that the last target is the one they know that they can see in a mirror, themselves. That fear of loss is now grief and they grieve that they are not Men anymore whatever the fuck again that is.

So as I have said repeatedly men need to talk to men more and from that not men who spout what they need to hear, but more importantly what they don’t. Again want to know why Rogan, et all are popular, as they are life affirming and with that the enter the chamber of echos. Toxic masculinity has a home in social media and among men who have no outlets of healthy release. I would really like one of these assholes to tell me the last book they read. Oh wait that is right they want books banned? No they don’t, their wives do. Reading is fundamental to knowledge and from knowledge one has a better sense of purpose, of self and of others. Cannot have that can we now? Fear baby, fear.

So read the article below and well shrug as I lost empathy on this crew a long time ago but never say never.

The reinvention of a ‘real man’

In cowboy country, a father and husband troubled by suicide reimagines American masculinity, one conversation at a time

By
May 23, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Listen to article
21 min
Bill Hawley, left, speaks with a veteran in Buffalo, Wyo. As the prevention specialist in Johnson County, he helps people struggling with addiction and mental health issues.
Bill Hawley, left, speaks with a veteran in Buffalo, Wyo. As the prevention specialist in Johnson County, he helps people struggling with addiction and mental health issues. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

— In BUFFALO, WyomingBill Hawley believes too many men are unwilling or unable to talk about their feelings, and he approaches each day as an opportunity to show them how.“There’s my smile,” he says to a leathered cowboy in the rural northeast Wyoming town where he lives.“I could cry right now thinking about how beautiful your heart is,” he says to a middle-aged male friend at work.

“After our conversation last week, your words came back to me several times,” he tells an elderly military veteran in a camouflage vest. “Make of that what you will, but it meant something to me.”On paper, Bill is the “prevention specialist” for the public health department in Johnson County, a plains-to-peaks frontier tract in Wyoming that is nearly the size of Connecticut but has a population of 8,600 residents. His official mandate is to connect people who struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, tobacco addiction, and suicidal impulses to the state’s limited social service programs. Part bureaucrat, part counselor, much of Bill’s life revolves around Zoom calls and subcommittees, government acronyms and grant applications.But his mission extends beyond the drab county building on Klondike Drive where he works. One Wyoming man at a time, he hopes to till soil for a new kind of American masculinity.

His approach is at once radical and entirely routine.

It often begins with a simple question.“How are you feeling?” Bill asks the man in camouflage, who lives in the Wyoming Veterans’ Home, which Bill visits several times a week. Bill recently convinced him to quit smoking cigarettes.The man lumbers forward on a walker, oxygen tank attached.“We can talk about triggers for a hot minute, or six, or 10,” Bill encourages him. “All those things are going to try to sneak up on you and trick you.”“I’ve got a whole bunch of triggers,” the 72-year-old veteran responds, finally, between violent coughs. “Well they’re called triggers, but they never go away.”Here in cowboy country, the backdrop and birthplace of countless American myths, Bill knows “real men” are meant to be stoic and tough. But in a time when there are so many competing visions of masculinity — across America and even across Wyoming — Bill is questioning what a real man is anyway.Often, what he sees in American men is despair.Across the United States, men accounted for 79 percent of suicide deaths in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also shows Wyoming has the highest rate of suicide deaths per capita in the country. A majority of suicide deaths involve firearms, of which there are plenty in Wyoming, and alcohol or drugs are often a factor. Among sociologists, the Mountain West is nicknamed “The Suicide Belt.”More and more, theories about the gender gap in suicides are focused on the potential pitfalls of masculinity itself.The data also contains a sociological mystery even the experts are unsure how to explain fully: Of the 45,979 people who died by suicide in the United States in 2020, about 70 percent were White men, who are just 30 percent of the country’s overall population. That makes White men the highest-risk group for suicide in the country, especially in middle age, even as they are overrepresented in positions of power and stature in the United States. The rate that has steadily climbed over the past 20 years.Some clinical researchers and suicidologists are now asking whether there is something particular about White American masculinity worth interrogating further. The implications are significant: On average, there are more than twice as many deaths by suicide than by homicide each year in the United States.

TOP: Bill, with dogs Jade, left, and Loki, moved to Buffalo in 2000 after his suicide attempt and sought to rebuild his life. BOTTOM: Bill now works as a suicide prevention specialist and talks about “whole health: mind, body and soul.”

Bill, who is 59 years old and White, is working out his own theory. It has to do with the gap between the expectations men have for their lives and the reality of their individual experiences, worsened by cultural norms that discourage them from expressing any emotions besides anger.Toxic masculinity often turns outward. But it also turns inward.“Talk saves lives,” Bill often says — because it has saved his own life many times since he tried to kill himself two decades ago, after a cascade of bad behavior and mental anguish led to a divorce, to hopelessness, to estrangement from his two older sons.And so now he talks to other men “about that brokenness we all feel inside,” about “whole health: mind, body and soul.” He is unnervingly unafraid to be sappy. Some men respond with uneasy, unblinking stares. But, perhaps improbably, some respond to his earnestness by talking about their addictions, about their problems with middle-aged bullies who still taunt them about “acting gay,” about their search for scarce therapists in rural America who can help them heal.It is slow work.How are you feeling?The veteran brings his cough under control and begins to tell Bill about his deceased wife. About his long-deceased father. About his recently deceased son.And then about Vietnam. About the fellow soldier who suddenly killed himself one day while they were sitting together.“It’s the same nightmare every time,” the man says, eyes growing wet. “I just could never understand it.”Bill touches his arm.“I want you to know, once you quit smoking, that doesn’t mean I stop visiting you. I’m going to keep visiting you and supporting you and helping you,” Bill says.Bill is just a man living in America in 2022, one of 162 million, caught between old standards for American masculinity and a new world where such ideas are in rapid flux. Here he sees an opportunity — to help men be better to others by helping them be better to themselves.If the myth of the American cowboy was forged in frontier towns like this one, why can’t it be broken apart and put back together here as well?* * *

Bill, who is part bureaucrat and part counselor, chats with the owners of Buffalo KOA Journey, a campground, while delivering thank-you notes to donors.

Bill’s reflections on what it means to be a real man are rooted in part on the kind of life he wants for his 16-year-old son, Jeremiah, who is just beginning to claim some freedom for himself. The two argue over the usual father-son things. How fast Jeremiah drives his car now that he has his license. Math assignments. Whether Jeremiah has started packing for his overnight school trip.Bill might be a steady talker, but Jeremiah alternates between teenage monosyllables and explosions of excited sharing.Tonight: syllables.“So, Jeremiah, let me know if you want to get your car running before you start homework,” Bill tells him one evening before dinner.Jeremiah recently bought a burgundy Pontiac Grand Prix SE for $500 on Facebook Marketplace. To make sure the battery doesn’t drain overnight, he has to reach behind the front panel each evening and manually unplug the lights.Sometimes, he forgets.“I’ll grab my keys,” Jeremiah says, disappearing into his room.“That’s helpful,” Bill says in a singsong Dad Voice. “I’ll pull around.”Privately, Bill sometimes feels like being a good dad to Jeremiah is a do-over.

SHOOT!

T.T.

This is America, shoot first ask no questions later. That applies to the Police who have not discontinued their random need to shoot anyone down in the street, in their car, in their home or anywhere they are when the Police feel “threatened.” From what it appears they feel threatened 24/7.

One of the reasons, aside from their screaming racism and endless poor training on handling issues without violence, is that they are kinda, sorta right, because when it comes to guns and gun violence we have a major problem in this country. Thanks to the 2nd Amendment, everyone who also feels threatened can buy a gun and head home with little to no training, no requirement to maintain a skill set and have no limit on how many guns one can own. So you can pretty much have an arsenal in your home and not even know how a specific weapon works let alone the type of bullets one uses, as well as alter said weapon to make it even more powerful. And with that you got a problem folks and yes we all should feel afraid to some extent as you never know who is packing heat and what they can do with it as they too are afraid. In other words this is always a lose-lose situation. I believe this is an other example of guns and the harm they bring.

On Feb 14th at about 9:45 p.m. at a Chase bank in southwest Houston, Tony D. Earls, 41, who had just been robbed at an ATM, took out his gun and began shooting at a pickup truck carrying a family of five, including the 9-year-old girl, who was later identified as Arlene Alvarez.

The girl’s father, Armando Alvarez, saw the shooter just 10 feet away as the man continued to “spray the vehicle,” he said. One of the shots struck Arlene in the head and he watched his child “go down immediately” Armando said, adding “I immediately stopped, pulled her out of the vehicle. “I hope nobody ever has to go through this.”

Earls is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and was released on $100,000 bail. Rick Ramos, an attorney for the Alvarez family, said Earls does not have a valid case for self-defense because there was no “immediate threat or fear” for his safety when he opened fire because the robbery suspect had already fled the scene.

This was the second recent shooting of a 9-year-old girl in the Houston area. Last week 9-year-old Ashanti Grant was shot in an alleged road rage incident while watching cartoons in the back seat of the family car, according to her family. Ashanti Grant remains in critical condition

And this week began a motion to keep the most recent insane school shooter into an adult prison as he awaits trial. I agree with the Prosecutor that he should not be named as much of his motive was to be infamous with others who have been convicted of heinous crimes. Wow Stephen Sondheim called that one with his musical, Assassins. And we can thank his parents for buying him a gun the day prior. Thanks, Mom!

However, much gun violence is self directed. Since Covid gun ownership has risen and in states with Stand-your-ground laws they are finding a rise in both self harm and homicides. A recent study has concluded as such and once again the South shall rise again in that number.

Texas is also turning towards legalizing vigilantism and with that California is taking a tack from the same ideas in Texas regarding Abortion and doing so with guns. So we are a nation divided and we use laws to cover our assess when compromise and conversations about resolutions to the subject would do so much more. But again I look to my last place of residence and see that they love being on lists top or bottom, they will be on them.

And to ensure that they continue to be the most terrorized State in the Nation, Tennessee is stepping up their gun laws. They are not at the level of Missouri which is ranked with Kansas for having the least effective gun laws in the country, and with that the higher ranking on gun violence. But Tennessee is not a state to sit anything out, they are not called the Volunteer State for nothing. And it is why I ran for the exit door, Tornados and Covid on my heels, not a day goes by where I don’t thank the stars or whoever that I am not there any longer. I think about visiting and dismiss that as absurd but I also know my way around there and feel confident that as long as I avoid the ones I know I also can avoid the ones whom I don’t. As neither are really anyone I want to see. I did laugh when in my old hood they build a Soho House, talk about pretentious and idiotic but then again that is Nashville.

But this new tentative law, which I believe the Plumber/Governor will sign into law is just insane. Street cops, really? This week brought the federal convictions of the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery for Hate Crimes. These charges often hard to prove had no shortage of information regarding these assholes racist beliefs and the trial was so devastating to the Jurors, one asked for counseling and two cried as the verdict was read, so imagine this coming to a town near you. These men claimed to be acting as Police, and they have been convicted of his murder in State courts. They were too “vigilantes” And this is quite possible in Nashville and the surrounds. I have driven all over the state and it is quite a mecca to the home of the founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Guns, guns and more guns. We are a nation addicted to violence.

Fury over ‘reckless’ Tennessee bill that would class some gun owners as police

Gun safety advocates condemn proposal introduced in state legislature as ‘blatant attempt to legalize armed vigilantism’

Gun owners at an NRA meeting in Nashville. A separate bill would allow 18-year-olds in Tennessee to apply for concealed carry licenses.

Gun owners at an NRA meeting in Nashville. A separate bill would allow 18-year-olds in Tennessee to apply for concealed-carry licenses. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Adam Gabbatt The Guardian Thu 24 Feb 2022

Gun safety advocates have condemned Tennessee legislation which would designate some gun owners as police, allowing civilians to carry firearms in locations usually reserved for law enforcement.

The proposed law, introduced in the Tennessee house and senate this month, “expands the definition of ‘law enforcement officer’” to include civilians who hold an enhanced handgun-carry permit – earned by taking an eight-hour handgun safety course and paying a $100 fee.

It comes as a separate bill which would allow 18-year-olds to apply for concealed-carry licenses was approved by a Tennessee house subcommittee on Tuesday.

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun safety group Moms Demand Action, told the Guardian: “Encouraging people to arm themselves and play police puts everyone at risk while making the jobs of actual law enforcement much more difficult.

“The process of obtaining a handgun permit doesn’t come anywhere close to the extensive training that real officers go through, and it’s ridiculous to equate the two. Extremist and dangerous bills like these are part of the gun lobby’s blatant attempt to codify and legalize armed vigilantism.”

She added: “Tennessee has the 14th highest rate of gun violence in the country, and lawmakers should be focused on passing policies that will actually make communities safer, not reckless bills like these.”

The proposed bill was introduced in the state senate by Joey Hensley, a Republican, who told ABC News that the aim of the bill was to allow people with an enhanced handgun carry permit to carry their guns into locations where off-duty law enforcement are allowed to enter, including a store or restaurant that prohibits firearms.

“This is trying to open it up so that people who go to the extreme to get this extra permit can have the right to defend themselves in more places,” Hensley said.

Hensley’s plan has not just alarmed those who advocate for better gun safety. The Tennessee State Lodge for the Fraternal Order of Police, the state’s largest police union, said that it is “adamantly opposed to this bill in its current form.”

Scottie DeLashmit, the president of Tennessee State Lodge for the Fraternal Order of Police, told ABC that officers “spend countless hours” honing their skills, and must qualify annually with the same weapons. DeLashmit added that officers also spend hours training in “driving, criminal law, defensive tactics, etc.”

“These vigorous standards are in place to ensure officers are familiar with their weapons,” DeLashmit said in the statement. “The enhanced handgun carry permit training is far less demanding than anything required from a cadet attending a basic law enforcement academy.”

The bill was introduced in the Tennessee House by Chris Hurt, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Hensley, who was a member of the House for ten years before he was elected to the state senate in 2013, has a history of supporting extreme legislation, including anti-LGBTQ laws. The Tennessee firearm association donated to his reelection campaign in 2020.

So Much for That

T.T.

The endless push, both as a metaphor and literally, regarding anti-bullying has done little to stave off actually bullying. There have been numerous suicides and of course mass shootings that pretty much tell you that whatever message is being sent out is clearly not working

  • Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it.
  • Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University
  • A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying
  • 10 to 14 year old girls may be at even higher risk for suicide, according to the study above
  • According to statistics reported by ABC News, nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying, and 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because of fear of bullying
And last week in Charlottesville the schools were closed for two days due to threats of violence.  And they are not the only ones that have had said threats as it is a growing issue across the country. Just last year several schools in Detroit were closed    Last week one in Fairfield California, another in Pennsylvania, one in Connecticut.  They may all be fake but in today’s climate it is difficult to tell.
Then we have endless violence or threats of violence against Teachers and others within the schools which  has escalated to proportions where Teachers are afraid and it is an issue significant enough to be a part of the dialogue with regards to funding for education.  Here in Nashville it was part of a town hall that Channel 5 News held to discuss the problems in the district with regards to the soon to be ex Director of Schools here.
And this issue parallels directly with the growing youth violence that dominates the cycle of news here as most crime is committed by Juveniles often well under the age of 18. 
Now race is the dominant issue in Nashville, most of the Educators and Staff of late voicing their concerns are Black, the Students they serve and are often both the victims and perpetrators are Black or of color so while the race card is tossed there is something to be examined as to what factors in that – systemic historic racism, poor employment or low employment, inadequate child and health care and of course religion all play a significant part in the marginalizing and disproportionate issues facing families of color. Why I put religion in this is because here in Nashville the largest and loudest voices of the choir of concern literally are choir members.  Few here are not actively engaged in Churches who hold great sway over the city and its political mien.  Many are like pop up shops when a controversy unfolds and immediately demand restitution or attention only to fold up the tent and reconfigure when another comes along. I have quit counting the groups and looking up their origins and tax status as I know for certain none have them as they are astro turf groups funded by whoever has the real agenda on file.  This to me became apparent during the transit debate and many of the “beards” as I refer to them go back to their day jobs or briefly consider a run for public office only to lose and move on.  It is a cycle you have to actually see to believe.
Then we have the real problems that are violence against their own.  I often feel that is the real reason little is done as it sort of solves the problem of where to house, put and deal with those from the Black Community.  Case in point was the recent shooting at an East Nashville Bar where two attractive white kids were killed and yet another man who was of color was killed the day before and only of late have they decided to connect the murder.  The other a near fatal injury has yet been solved but again it took the Police 23 hours to find the Waffle House shooter and he was less than a 1.5 miles away from the point of origin. But then the victims were all faces of color, the shooter however was not.  But that whole crime could have been prevented had the Police followed up on the vehicle theft found in the killers apartment complex parking lot. Imagine had they questioned the neighbors and with the description of the young man in place as he took the vehicle from a BMW sales lot with the keys and yet simply retrieved the vehicle after failing also to arrest him during a high speed chase the day before.  Things that make you go hmmm.
So when I read the story about the young Fifth Grader who died from an by a classmate during the school day there were things in the story missing that again make me go hmm.  I am appalled that an altercation grew to that level but then again I have actually seen one first hand here in school that hair, scalp and blood were all a part of the process as a young girl pulled a young man from a desk by the hair and dragged him across the floor. That school had been the scene of escalating issues over the two days I was there and since that time has had a series of problems with a Teacher taking a gun to school and a Coach assaulting a student.  It had already been in the news for all the fights and yet this is what defines Nashville Public Schools – horrific.  Although today I am a school where they are celebrating diversity and it is one of the few schools I love from its history to its present day it truly represents that in every way.  We have had, however, Teachers be assaulted and in turn hospitalized when children in that age cohort have assaulted them, we have School Resource Officers leave schools due to the verbal abuse and we have had many situations of physical assault student on student that includes sexual abuse as well.  It is non stop here and it exhausts me and it is why I call the schools dumpsters and the student are just trash bags thrown in with no regard.  It embarrasses me to be a part of something so vile that no one knows how to fix it and to say that it is all about race and racism that led to the downfall of the Director clearly thinks that what he did and more importantly failed to do for the faces of color would be considered racist if he did not share the same face of color.  How it gives him a pass is beyond my understanding.  
And when I watched CBS News cover a story about a Principal in Newark trying to save his students from shame and offer an option you realize that yes one man can make a difference.  And there are many Administrators and Teachers who don’t share the same color of skin, the same religion, the same gender or culture that go the extra mile to devise programs and methods to bring dignity in the classroom.  To say one cannot learn from one who is not different than they is losing the point of diversity which I am seeing all over this school today.  I wish all days were like this here but who am I kidding.

Since I wrote this another story hit the news about a rape and assault with a broomstick in a high school locker room. Not the first nor last as I recall this from Bellevue, Washington schools a few years ago, from an elite private academy outside Nashville, and perhaps the most infamous, Steubenville Ohio.   This is a story not new in the least. That is what defines rape culture, hyper toxic masculinity.  So much for that and what MeToo was about before it was hijacked by celebrity. 

  

Immolation

T.T.

To Immolate: To kill or offer as a sacrifice, often by burning.

I often say my anger is my fire and in turn my balm to protect me from immolation.  I joke that I very rarely get into kids faces unless they plan on immolation.  I get that depression is anger turned inward and sometimes we turn it outward and yes that includes suicide as the damage it brings is like a blaze that burns through a town like those in California that takes decades to recover, if ever.

I get up angry and often go to bed that way.  Nashville has turned me into a three alarm fire that no first responders could put out.  I cope by controlling the blaze through sarcasm and avoidance.  I go out of my way to avoid encounters that put me at risk and in turn use the ability to have an extensive use of language in which to spew a spark or two.   I call the schools Dumpsters, the children Trash Bags and the people of Nashville Garbage as there is little I see here to counter or oppose that view.  As I sit here in a classroom of 8th graders I see the same behaviors and idiocy that I witness in the adults in the community – ignorance, oblivion, cruelty and sheer lack of dignity.  For a long while I said that they children are the reflections of the mirrors that were held by the adults in the room or more importantly the lack of adults to provide a solid frame in which to reflect and learn.  The sheer violence by the youth here is the most telling as once again I awoke to a man being shot on his front porch by teens demanding money.   This man at least lived but this is not the first nor last of the day or of the week with regards to gun violence here and frankly everywhere.

I used to also say I am not one who should have a gun as I might actually use it. At first I thought on others as people really annoy me but then of late I have thought what would it mean to end one’s life at the end of a gun and no, I don’t have the courage.

If you are following the travails and stories about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes then you will know it is a complicated story where one employee was so despondent about working for her, his marginalization in the company and in turn his name attached to the varying patents she licensed (as he was the true creator and she truly just a con artist dropout with no real knowledge experience or any cred that would be able to build such a concept) he chose to kill himself through a combination of Advil and Booze.   I remember a time when things were so bleak I was researching how to poison myself in a similar manner when Tarot Card/Gypsy stopped me and said. “Whatever you are doing there you need to stop and come see me and let me read your cards.”  I laughed and went to a Yoga for Trauma class (irony I was going to that) and later dropped into her temporary “office.”  I dropped a couple of hundred dollars and let her ‘read’ me.  If you have seen the John Oliver show he discusses this deception and how they play upon people and I say that if you are aware of it and go in with the idea that there will be so much you will believe, so much you will spend it is no different that therapy which is equal parts bullshit and equal parts more bullshit. Talking to someone, anyone at times regardless of who they are is what matters and that is the most challenging part.  One of the reasons I don’t go to therapy here is that my exposure to the people have led me to believe that empathy, compassion, kindness are traits they do not possess here. They mask it behind the God Bless and the Prayer but in reality they are nasty fucks and not in a good way.

To find those who connect and are willing to listen really listen and hear you is not easy and this weekend brought that to a head when two students from Parkland chose to end their lives and one at the hand of a gun.  This weekend marked the first March for Our Lives that the survivors of Parkland had organized over the issues of guns and gun violence in America. This weekend also marked the families and survivors of Columbine getting together as they are now approaching the 20th year of that horrific shooting (April 20).   We are now likely having more and more shooting-versaries as the situation here has reached critical mass and more suicides, addictions and other problems that will result from those who survived.**ETA** Since I wrote this this morning another casualty was added to the list, a parent from Sandy Hook, Jeremy Richman.

We are all complicit in this by not giving a flying fuck about people. Social media is not a compensation or method of connecting to those in the real world.  The lack of engagement, the ability to hide and in turn abuse, ignore or simply live in a bubble of bullshit has turned us against one another in ways that I see in the children.  They are rude, they are disconnected, they are morons and it shows in the adults they become.  I witnessed a man at my coffee shop openly gesture, look and talk about me to his girlfriend and when I covered my face with my newspaper but just enough to still observe him, he laughed and said: “She just covered her face with the newspaper.” His girlfriend did not look in my direction nor seem to give a shit but he and I stared each other down as he walked out right by me, my face full of rage and his arrogance.  Yes this is the Nashville way – assholia.

And while kids are frequently found with guns with them on campus I doubt seriously any of them would ever act on committing such an atrocious act I don’t doubt they would gun me down on the way to a bus, out on a walk or sitting on my doorstep.  This is your future America, be afraid be very afraid as we are immolating.

No Parking

T.T.

When I read this story last week about the man found dead in his vehicle for over a week, it could either be a very typical New York story about life and in this case death in the big city or a story of isolation and desolation when surrounded by thousands of people.

Imagine being in your car and slowly dying and not even a Meter Maid feels worthy enough to even ticket you.  Imagine that people pass your slowly rotting corpse without a glance.  Imagine dying alone on a city street and passers by do just that.

There are many elements to this story and the parallels cannot be ignored to the Male Bomber in Florida – unemployed, in his 50’s, failures professionally and personally and social isolation.  One chose one one type of “cide” as in suicide the other homicide.  As in life he failed at that.  But what does that say about our society as people who would walk by that van with its hateful missives, people knowing he was using the beach showers as a way of hygiene and another man who decided to die on the streets and feel so frustrated and alone and who had family chose to not seek help.  Nor the same for the Pittsburgh shooter (who was 46) or the Kentucky man  who had some misguided racist fantasy and a history of violence  to do what their younger halves started and they feel the need to finish. He too was in his fifties – he was 51.

Again this week I have watched my former Attorney meltdown on social media.  A man with impeccable credentials and a strong career that got sidelined with illness. Then a descent into what I suspect drug use and in turn a desperate attempt to find some reason for his declining mental health, and rather than seek a proper Psychiatrist he chose Neurologists to test for traumatic brain disorder he believed he sustained from his Osteomy.  When that proved negative going to a clinic away from his sole support network and is sure that all the childhood trauma was the result of his declining mental health.  From what his daily postings on Facebook show is a man who veers on suicidal ideation, self harm as this current week has photos of him cutting himself.  He is abusive, whiny and when not is manic taking up marathons and triathlons and other athletic endeavors even starting a foundation for those who suffer from the same health frailties  then folding it, moving to Alaska to take up photography and crab fishing and quitting practicing law.  All of it broadcast on Facebook for friends and others to comment, to provide likes and basically not think any of this is disturbing and should not be on social media in any shape.  A wife who shows up then returns back home 300 miles away leaving him in this odd facility treating him for PTSD via an experimental method and not looking at other potential diagnosis to explain his mental health.  His family history is also part of this and one can assume from his mothers suicidal issues, her own abuse of her son and in turn his leaving the family home at 16 she may have had a mental health diagnosis of her own that is similar to her son today.  But again having proper diagnostics, proper medical and mental health professionals is the key to helping those resolve issues and in turn belong and find their way in society.   And like the bookend to the mass shooters who were all in that sweet spot of under 25 the men over 50 are to finding ways that defy the norm.  We have a problem with guns and drugs and not nearly enough mental health care that is both accessible and available to offset what could escalate into dangerous behavior.

I have spent the better part of the week trying to reconcile my own anger and in turn my desire to leave Nashville as soon as possible.  I cannot speed up the healing process nor do much more than wait but it becomes a challenge when you again are isolated and alone doing nothing of meaning or of value of which society places great emphasis.  For women being “retired” or doing odd jobs it considered less an eyesore and in turn acceptable but for men this becomes an embarrassment and that sense of shame turns outward in the same way the boys do when they elect to hurt those who they perceived hurt them.   But it exhausts you to meet new people and explain your marital status, your work status and of course health so fuck it and say nothing, do nothing but keep as busy as possible with as little interaction as possible.  

Suicide rates are up with Boomers and in turn the only time I ever felt that was was after my injury the result of my dates failed attempt at drugging/raping/and or killing me.  Again I have said this many times the car accident in a perverse way saved my life. That said suicide ideation is common with head injury and I understood and while I tried talk therapy that was largely a wash so I did things my way and without help and that is how I roll.  That said it takes a toll.  But we are truly a country not divided we are segregated and in turn isolated from one another and it explains the rising tide of hate crimes, the calling the Police on people just being people and of course drugs as when all else fails, anger turned inward is depression and drugs take that edge off.

Watching the crew special on Anthony Bourdain once again I learned how they had traveled with him, worked with him and they did not know him and it was clear that while they respected him they did not “like” him and they worked around the descriptive asshole label that at least two Producers were willing to allow with amusement.  But watching the crew painstakingly try to reconcile the snarky smart man they knew with the man who ultimately took his life while filming an episode with his best “friend” Eric Ripert along clearly confused and distressed these people.  I am sure they were going “Why us and why?”as a mantra the days after.  There is always survivor guilt and shame that perhaps they shoulda, woulda and coulda done something. No, no they could. not.   I had bailed on Bourdain years ago when I realized the asshole was among us, his name calling, belittling other Chefs and Cooks while simultaneously taking up with multiple Italian women each a little more damaged than the last was not something that interested me nor did I feel to see any more parts unknown or make any reservations as they were just recycled stories like leftover meals.  And his incident in San Francisco that led him to the hospital was enough to know that he had serious issues that were being neglected.   This is the case for many of fame as they have the ability with wealth to be insular and in turn those around them are co-dependent upon them for work so they can never say or do anything to stop the propeller from turning or in turn it could turn on them.   The poor are not as lucky the spiral downhill is fast and furious not starring Vin Diesel.  But some of them before they go want to take others along with them on the ride to hell.   Did any of these men the past week think they would not get caught?  Or was that the point, infamy by death?

I perhaps sound harsh but too much compassion and sympathy are songs better left for the radio.  Self preservation takes effort and work and we all need to work on ourselves more but what about the lady or man at the coffee shop? On the bus? The dog park?  Ever had a conversation with them to recognize them and more importantly acknowledge them?  Few do and we all lose.  I love going to Kroeger’s when lost.  I can use the bathroom without a key, buy way more than coffee, get directions and be greeted by people just for walking in.  That is what grocery shopping is a chance to commune and be out with others.  Every time an act of violence occurs regardless of where the shooter takes more than lives they take personal freedom to shop, to worship,  to see a movie, to get on a bus, to just be human. That is the greatest tragedy of all as we all suffer.  So what about a man in parked car outside – stranger danger or just someone in need of help?

And the means in which to voice complaints, to pick fights with unseen enemies seems ec

Reflections Of

T.T.

When I moved to Nashville I had a clear plan in mind: First get my teeth fixed.  Next get a Teaching job.  Then buy a house and write and vest in my community.  Well two out of four and not complaining in the least, a glass half full and all.

With all the horrific things that happened to me in the last six years since my assault, prosecution, failed civil and criminal trials and appeals, regardless,  I had to leave as that bridge was burned in ways that will never allow me to cross again when it comes to Seattle.   When I find myself laughing at the ex Attorney now Junkie in rehab’s suicidal missives on Facebook I do ask myself daily, “Who have I become?”

To take inventory of one’s life is never easy and traveling through the low country last week I did none of it.  I was too busy seeking adventure, satisfying curiosity and exploring an area of the country that I never thought I would ever see let alone want to.  Funny how things change when you find yourself just on the cusp of age 60 being open to seeing and more importantly learning about other people not just yourself and all that relates to the world that we share. 

As I wrote in the last blog post the way we seem to connect or more often fail to as it has all centered around politics.  Funny that the world is a lot larger than the current events that dominate all aspects of life.  Social media has enabled people to focus on the most negative if not destructive aspects of one’s character and in turn led to perhaps more insanity than I ever thought I would witness in this life.  The current round of package sending is another example of how damaged we are as a country and one should ask if you are even a small part of it by endlessly posting/tweeting your inner thoughts and rages?  Note the Tweeter in Chief as an example.

So when I read endless posts that are largely preaching to the choir I am not sure what I should do with that information.  The same with one whom I don’t agree and what I should do with that information? Either/or the reality is that is not a conversation it is a lecture and what does one think they will accomplish? Change minds and hearts or pick a fight?  I suspect the latter more than the former.

And when I moved to Tennessee I was clearly uninformed about the culture and frankly did not care.  When you are running from something you are too busy looking backwards to look forwards and then when you do you crash into the wall you did not see.  That was my arrival in Nashville and I look back at those 18 months ago I saw a disaster from the moving company issues, to the rental car problems (in those days I had never rented a car in ages as we had car share in Seattle and it was my first introduction into the revolving door of employees here)  and my sheer confusion and haste to get things done that I should have stopped in my tracks and just waited to settle one thing before tackling the next.  Hence my next move will be on my terms and schedules with no haste to get anywhere until I do.   If one thing came out of Nashville it will be learning that and I will have the teeth I need and the book in hand in which to sell.  First about the schools which have been the most significant factor in how I see this my temporary residence and the next about what it was like living here. By the time I pack my kit  I will have lived in Nashville fewer years than Trump will in the White House. As the the saying goes: Fish like company stink after three days.  In this we mean years and everyone should be aware of their own sell by date.

Self awareness is like common sense if everyone had it we would have a much smarter populace and clearly we don’t.  Educational levels have been fairly stagnant with some slight uptick (irony that the number parallels those in Tennessee) in those attaining degrees.  But it is still a very low number and especially for those faces of color.  But again the costs alone are prohibitive and with that  milestones that mark that entrance into adulthood post college – buying a home, having a family, buying a car then upgrading said home and car – as well including travel for social or recreational pursuits or other signs of achievement are delayed.     Student loans are not deferred however regardless and in turn regardless of what profession you are seeking, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.  When a package warehouse worker is upset that their pay is been raised in lieu of stock options that are valued at 10K and thought of as retirement investment tells you we don’t get math well or understand how those options work.  A good example of a company that vested their interests in line with their company’s was Sears.  And you see how that worked out.

And while the media is decried constantly by the President I doubt he has ever read the “failing” New York Times, The Washington Post or any magazine or journal other than to fake the front cover to put his picture on it.  Ask yourself when have you?

I was asked on a plane recently how did I know all what was going on in Nashville.  Uh I read the crappy Tennessean, watch Channel 5 nightly news and review the Nashville Post and Business Journal and most of them recycle news from other sources, print press releases as news and rewrite copy given to them from an outside third party but it is still local “news.”   The reality is that buried often in the paper are facts that show how disengaged people are here from what is really going on and in turn this issue surrounds largely voting with Tennessee being the focus of an article in where? The Washington Post.

Ignorance comes in many forms and some is deliberate or willful ignorance but most of it comes from the inability to access education that enables one to learn essential critical thinking and analytical skills that come from well funded schools that have diverse curriculum and choice that is both close to home, has decent food, has time for play and time for exploration.  The ed reformers are sure that highly scheduled and regimented curriculum with “individualized” instruction coming from an IPAD clearly proves that they have never set foot in a school in their life and have no idea who public schools are teaching.

Yesterday I met a Teacher who calls himself “Chef” as he is now two weeks in at a school teaching Culinary Arts.  He has worked in the Navy and cooked at a large resort managing a large team to provide food which closed and he decided to move to the “It” City and take up teaching.  He and his wife just relocated here from Baltimore so he is very familiar with being the minority among the minority and yet he too has found himself struggling with what we have defined as culture shock.  I told him it doesn’t get easier it just means you have to change in response to it and that is not easy as that it will have you question everything you know about yourself in ways that at a certain age is not easy.  We spoke of the damaged children and their need to have you yell at them, the bizarre need to mock or debase you an adult, snicker, talk or simply ignore you as if you are invisible.  I call it auto eroticism where they literally get off on this and do whatever they can to garner attention and all of it hostile and negative.  It is perverse and disturbing and explains the endless sexual issues that dominate the news here almost daily.  The past week brought more charges against Teachers/Coaches/Adults and sexual impropriety regarding students.  Okay then.  Add them to the already increasing numbers that are well into the quads now.

He also expressed amazement about how the children had never made food nor done any prep work before let alone be trusted with equipment.  This from a district that has lead in the water and serves rotten if not garbage as food.  He could not believe the lack of communication and even respect from his own Administrative staff and that the school seemed clearly to function as separate arms attached to a body that had no head.  Yes I admitted that was the case in many schools and that this particular Principal came from another school that he managed in a year to do nothing, and I mean in a good way, to help a school function. It was at that school I was called a Racist, the kids went nuts and I left.  He clearly was not far behind me to the door to take this gig and the school is supposedly moving locations in two years.  I assume that he will bail before that nightmare begins.  Nothing here is ever as it should so keep moving those deck chairs.   This is what defines progress in the South.

As he left I wished him the best and said that he should just do what he is doing and know he is on his own but that is a good thing and that is all that matters.  His class I was covering for I knew instantly was a problem as I had been warned so I let them go to the “library.” Where they went I did not care and I told him before he left I don’t care I just want order and whatever needs to be done to keep that I do it so there is no problems, riots or issues.  Truly not caring is not a function I wish to have but I do have it to keep my sanity and my well being.

So when I read the Junkie’s plea for help disguised in a suicide letter posted on Facebook I was less shocked by this but that people and their children were posting responses begging him to not and one hateful one from a Scientologist (not shocking) and he was in turn responding I thought of those who took their lives without warning and despite my original laughter I flagged the post to Facebook.  I had already tried to reach out to him and he threatened legal action and I contacted his former partner and in turn was told to contact his wife.  So one wonders where the wife is when all of this is transpiring and in turn the rehab facility he is or now out of allowing this to continue.   So much is voiced about and on social media and its affect on people’s lives I am not sure what at this point to do other than laugh or just turn it off.  I laugh, I never said I was anyone’s role model and the nasty, damaged, violent children have definitely rubbed off on me.  I truly don’t give a fuck.   So much for reflections of the way I used to be.  Maybe I always was.   Sanity may be overrated, intelligence however….thumbs up!

Think We’re Alone

T.T.

I wrote my thoughts about the Bourdain/Spade suicide in my essay, Suicide is not Painless. I chose not to share my struggle with the issue in 2012 when coming out of a Traumatic Brain Injury suicidal ideation is very much a symptom of the injury, so I understood that,  but also add PTSD  that was the result from realizing how I sustained said injury.  And that realization, rage and fear  was truly the driver of that car, as in between understanding TBI, PTSD, date rape drugs, medical malpractice, my down time  was spent debating and researching methods and ways in which to accomplish the end so it would be final and I would be found. I had decided on drowning and as I lived within walking distance to Lake Washington I would spend hours going to the very shore I used to walk my beloved dog along planning how and when I would do it. Clearly I never acted upon it and I would love to say I found a great therapist but alas that was not the case.

Here is the rundown of the therapists I encountered in this phase of my life: I was a member of Group Health and the first was a woman therapist who was fired shortly after our first and single encounter where she was convinced I was a pathological liar, never examined my medical records confirming TBI and noted this on my medical records (which are normally kept separate)  as she enabled me to sign off of this. Did I mention that I had amnesia during this encounter and have no recollection of this session?  Amnesia too is a symptom of brain injury and Harborview Hospital dismissed me days earlier without failing to treat me accordingly with relation to my injury.

**This has largely to do whn women or anyone does not have an advocate to defend and discuss patient care, I had insurance and sufficient credit so imagine those who do not.  But hey someone in full blown brain injury should not be responsible or trusted with their care and Harborview could give a fuck less and I sued them alone.. so if you think suicide was not on my mind think again.  I got the whole Bourdain rage when he discussed how he cleaned up without help or support.  There is a rage there that can never be assauged.**

When I finally tracked her down in private practice a year or so later and showed her my complete records and info on this disorder she apologized and admitted she knew none of it. When I asked why she “left” Group Health she lied of course as that would never change. She had a history of misdiagnosing and stepping on boundaries. How did I know this?  The second therapist at Group Health I visited following this encounter, where he showed me my “meeting” with her and in turn noted that I was again a liar and drunk despite my desperate pleas for help in finding out what happened to me that night.  It was later he began to believe me but by then it was too late.   His counsel was so idiotic that I spent most of the time doing just what he thought, lying, rather than getting the help I needed. I made up stories about my family, my ex husband and others just to kill time as I was not paying for these sessions so I saw no point of doing anything to get well.

Michael was so bad that an acquaintance had already called to speak to him about my depression and to get to some understanding, so she made an appointment as a patient to seek counsel as a method of at least seeking some professional counsel as a way to assist in helping me. She was so horrified about what an idiot he was she came clean with all this where I too confessed to my bullshit. And from that we agreed to end as it was at least of waste of time and I proved the point already. 

Then we have the last Therapist that I went to as a promise to her to find someone to help. He was a nice man but two sessions in with him demanding me to learn how to forgive myself I realized it was not I who needed to forgive I needed to understand something in which he could not provide. He also realized I just wanted to rant which frankly is correct but guess what that would have exactly been what I needed and he wanted no part of it. That I was paying for so I turned to writing and massive exercise, a Tarot Card reader and ultimately I realized I was never going to get the answers I sought. So I moved on literally to Nashville.

Why I chose Nashville is for my reasons alone and they were in fact what I needed and wanted. Once those were taken care of and the dental treatments the other reason begun I started to focus on those things extrinsic versus intrinsic. Laughing at the people here may be unkind but I find it quite healing. I still feel very alone, very angry and at times depressed but mostly because I am nearly done with why I came here and I want to leave. All in good time and all on my terms.

But again Suicide is not a universal answer to life’s problems it is just one of many. But it is the most significant and substantive.  It is the final solution.  This essay poses many of the same issues and concepts I have said in many posts and in turn offers another form of insight into why some act upon that impulse and others fail or simply do not.

I recall after my rant in Vanderbilt’s Dental Office that day and I recall how I was in Michael’s at Group Health, it was full of bullshit, manipulative and yes one of anger.  I had come all this way and just wanted teeth, I wanted a treatment plan with costs so I could plan accordingly.  To get a wrong plan with incorrect information I just lost it.  I had dealt with the shock of the public schools, moved across the country and was closing out my legal bullshit from the accident in 2012 and was simply exhausted. I had only been here six months and all of them horrific as I tried to adapt to a place I did not truly belong but came again for reasons I chose to keep to myself as I knew that no one wants to hear any one’s history, their truth, their pain.  And hence I rant, I lie and manipulate as a coping strategy and it was now finally biting me in the ass and when the Cops showed up at my door a week later my first thought:  The gig was up.  And in turn it lead me to still be angry but be isolated and I am fine with it as when I have subsequent encounters with others they remind me of that Patient Coordinator – stupid.  And stupid is as stupid does. So I now laugh at them and sometimes with but I just want to leave and when I go somewhere else it is to run to not away and that is the key difference.  No expectations, no needs, just be anywhere but here.  That may be why many do commit Suicide.  


Artificial concern for people in pain won’t stop suicide. Radical empathy might.
Our language about suffering is suffused with cliches, and they don’t help.

by Richard Morgan The Washington Post June 15
Richard Morgan, a freelance writer in New York, is the author of “Born in Bedlam,” a memoir.

You’ve heard my suicide story before. I contemplated killing myself because of heartbreak, or being beaten by my father, or job woes, or being gay, or being raped, or the come-down after a bender. I took pills once in grad school, vomited them up and stared at the mess. It’s a particularly strange blow to the ego, that slop of having failed even at death. My most recent suicide plan, several years ago, was to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Only an intervention of friends, partnering with my estranged mother, set me on a better path. All of that thinking is alien to me today. Now I don’t even joke about wanting to die.

I could perform charisma and humor, but I had what felt like zero affect. I just didn’t care about anything anymore, even myself, and I could entertain these dark thoughts with alarming detachment. That’s the suicide we all know and loathe. It’s a demonic, simplistic creature, a cartoon supervillain, a composite of expectations and tired tropes. It’s a cliche. And for discouraging other people’s suicides, the cliche is a problem.

Part of how I escaped my tedious trap was by drafting suicide notes. I would write one, wait a day, read it and then see if it still felt true. Here’s one: “How bruised does fruit have to be to become not just unwanted but also inedible? And what, then, is inedible fruit? Its purpose is gone. It is a waste. That’s how I feel: I’m a waste. A waste of intelligence. A waste of personality. A waste of talent. A waste of words. A waste of love. I cannot be this man anymore. I am weary of the performance of it — wary of it, too. When I think of ending my life, I don’t mourn the loss. I never knew that guy. He was a feedback loop of habits and obligations. He never made me laugh without feeling insecure about the laughter, and never made me cry without feeling aimless about the tears. People might miss the person they thought I was. But nobody will miss the me I was in the dark. My tears were the loneliest thing about me. Nobody ever touched them.”

Another: “Would anyone I know be proud of my life? I have been blessed with many friends and colleagues — even strangers — who are supportive and encouraging. But I am very aware of the simple truth that, at the end of the day, they are glad they don’t have my life: the anxiety, the depression, the rejections, the loneliness, the poverty, the itinerant vagrancy. In one word, the brokenness. . . . It’s not a life anyone should have. I have lived wrongly. Certainly I have had moments of life the way it was supposed to be felt. Falling in friendship at first laugh, or a lover’s caress reverberating through the decades, or seeing my byline — my idea, my mind, my way of seeing the world — solidified in ink in the world’s best newspapers and magazines. But there are so few such moments. I can count them. They were not enough. And so, by extension, I was not enough. . . . I have been gone a long time already. I am proud that I realized this in time.”

Except, when I returned the next day to read these notes, they felt like they’d been written by someone else. In the elapsed time, I had grown not content but maybe restless — the kind of restlessness that reveals a faint awareness of hope, of faith in hope. Who was this strange man who had my voice but could not tether it to my soul? Reading my notes turned me into a one-man empathy machine. I was able to hold myself, steady myself, hear myself, know myself and love myself. They gave me ideas for how to cauterize my wounds: I’d visit a Korean spa to get a body scrub, gaze at the heaps of discarded skin and think, “The old me is on a tile floor now, being washed down a drain.” These rituals worked. I can’t imagine killing myself anymore — and I have a pretty ambitious imagination. Suicide notes saved my life.

With Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain and the untold thousands who commit suicide without international attention, we seem surprised to learn that plenty of people do not, as a Kate Spade slogan went, “live colorfully” — without blacks, whites or grays. Apparently life should be a sumptuous confection, a millefeuille of giddy Oprah-resonant adjectives like “blessed” and “glamorous” and “inspired” and “ready.” Apparently we’re supposed to be a woke-up-like-this Beyoncé of flawlessness, even as we step out of an elevator having just watched our sister claw and kick our husband. There is no “perfect life.” No dream job. But we refuse to believe that; confronted with suicide, we understandably say things like Andy Spade, Kate’s husband, did: “It clearly wasn’t her.” He had to dissociate the act from the actor, its own kind of cliche.

So when depression or apathy emerges, we race to theorize about toxic secrets or “personal demons,” as Spade’s husband put it. We call it a “stupid thing, this selfish thing,” as Bourdain himself once described it. That’s a suicide we can absorb. The predictable one: the internal wrestling match. The Kurt Cobains and Marilyn Monroes. These people lost a “battle,” or their dark side “finally overtook ” them. Their soul was in a kind of car accident. They lost control of the steering wheel.

But suicide is more subtle than that. Suicide is a kind of fatal exhaustion. It knocks on your door not as a monster but as a healer making a house call. We have to invite it in. Spade held that red scarf in her hands, Bourdain held that bathrobe belt in his, and both thought, “This will do nicely.” The coroners’ reports will not bother to note if their cheeks were tear-stained, but I think not.

What we need to do is make that knock at the door less appealing. Give it less space to be heard. That’s the obvious takeaway from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report about an across-the-board surge in suicides from 1999 to 2016. In 2015, there were 18,000 homicides and 44,000 suicides in America. Suicide is 250 percent more common than murder. There is something missing in our understanding, and it is this: Empathy is not a pro-forma answer to some social problem, to be dispensed in the appropriate dose but otherwise withheld. Amid all those permeating cliches of joy and woe, empathy is too discrete, too intentional. We perform empathy like a child learning to box-step for a school dance, one-two-three, one-two-three. It’s a performance we don’t really care about.

That’s the message we send when we blurt out phone numbers for suicide prevention hotlines, as TV anchors, pundits and social media users did in recent days. I’ve called those numbers. Sometimes, they’re helpful. Often, they’re just another detached bureaucracy; it’s easy to feel processed, shunted through the protocols and scripts. It can be empty empathy. What else do we expect of emotional labor we have outsourced? (Also, repeating those phone numbers assumes they’re easy to call, that they’re not triggering, as if feeling indifferent to or incapable of calling a number isn’t just one more nudge toward suicide.)

When we search for answers to our pain and the pain of loved ones, we see empathy through the lens of danger and disease. We yell, You are not alone! Telling that to a person who feels suicidally alone is the same as asking, “Have you tried not being sad?” We are alone, all of us. Nobody will ever share in the experience of being me. I will never share in the experience of being inside any of my loved ones’ minds or hearts or souls. Empathy is not a cure for loneliness. It is merely a commitment to assert that other people’s loneliness matters, that it is seen and heard and felt as much as possible.

Empathy is about undermining loneliness by flooding it with engagement. Because sometimes, even with a face-to-face human, even with a doctor — you can check yourself into, say, San Francisco General Hospital for depression, have your medical history taken — you may still receive callous and confusing care. Seeking help or offering help is not the same as helping.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 10-to-14-year-olds in America and the second leading cause of death among 15-to-34-year-olds. More than 9 million American adults — 4 percent of us — have reported having suicidal thoughts in the past year. For context, 4 percent of Americans is roughly the population of Boston, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle. It’s not just about our broken mental health system; based on data from the National Violent Death Reporting System — which, jeez, is something we have — 23.8 percent of people who take their lives are on antidepressants. Pills and doctors won’t fix this epidemic. We need the meta-medicine of a better citizenry.

In American high schools, the CDC reports, almost one-fourth of girls have seriously considered suicide, and one-tenth have attempted it. Almost one-fifth of all students have seriously considered it. And yet where are the fights for arts and language and music programs that might channel these anxious and expressive impulses? Instead, the goal of governments and school districts in charge of high schoolers is to pass the buck onto college deans, who are broadly derelict in their duty. Of the largest 100 public colleges in the United States, only 46 bother to track suicides. Arizona State University, for instance, doesn’t tally suicides even though at least two students committed suicide there last year, but its administration can tell you the three-decimal-point GPA of every student athlete. That’s what we care about.

In the end, empathy should be a way of life and love; it should be our other oxygen. It’s not about saying, “I’m always here if you need me.” There is no if. We need each other desperately all the time. That’s what society means. That’s what civilization is. It should be the core of more than just our personal, private conversations. It should be the animating concept behind public policy, taxes, civic duty. There are obvious calls, like throwing the book at a woman who texted her suicidal boyfriend: “You just need to do it.” But what if we paid more to make homeless shelters havens instead of out-of-sight, out-of-mind hellscapes? What if we invested as much in Puerto Rico as we do in Afghanistan? What if we stopped nickel-and-diming our ride-share drivers literally to death? What if we made learning Spanish as necessary to a high school diploma as learning algebra? What if we made “How are you?” real? That’s how you end the cliche.

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