Ours! Ours! Ours!

Being discharged from the hospital put me in mind to despair the jovial but utterly dumb face of rapaciousness

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Greetings, Friends.

I’d have been more gratified if they’d told me I have great legs, but all I heard was that I have great veins. Good looking veins invite more needles, more IVs to plug into my body, and with ease. Not that the punctures were unnecessary, but they were attractive to those who purvey them for your benefit.

The needles are out now. I am still sore, especially around my wrist where a large IV was installed. It upsets me to talk about it. I still flinch when I think of the steely invasion, even now, at home, in my cozy place, where friends have been dropping in all week with soup, loaves of homemade bread, and other provisions.

I was confined to the critical care ICU for only three nights, and had my own blessedly quiet room on the telemetry floor for one. Now, what remains are the sticky outlines of all the electrode leads attached to at least 40% of my upper body in order to endlessly graph my heat rhythm, which had been so out of control that it landed me there in the hospital, and the tape applied to my skin to keep all the IVs from moving around. I have tried scrubbing off the gunk, but it requires such aggressive application, it leaves my skin raw. The gunk will have to come off on its own.

The first day back in the wild was about reorienting, reviewing my new routines, which includes a lot of data collection on myself, and accepting and organizing offers from friends for meals. So much outpouring of love and concern. A friend from the north said to me over the phone, “That’s the South for you,” which I found mildly upsetting. Couldn’t it be simply that the people here care for me?

By the second day, I was largely inert, sitting on the couch feeling disillusioned and sad. What was the point of struggling to get better, only to live in a world where, despite my being one of the 99% + of the world’s population, the remaining .01% is closing in on complete control of all the resources. We must really anger these weirdoes who pretend to be human, who pretend to have actual hearts. It should inspire us to do something before the surveillance state is complete.

But I got over that, too, because even though I know it’s true, they don’t own my heart, even if they’ve damaged it.

The rich have been sucking the marrow from our bones probably forever, but as a former antitrust reporter, I know that there are definite dates when America was handed over to wealthy devils, every Neo-liberal who has ever drawn a breath, who most certainly had a plan.

In our life time, it began in 1980 with the rise of the Chicago School, a bunch of godless phonies bending the White House to its aims of creating cartels, swapping our rights as citizens participating in a democracy for our “rights” as consumers, which was euphemistic, and they knew it. What we really have become by their design are slaves in a so-called free market that they and others like them manipulate from the shadows where we can’t see what is actually happening.

That’s Reagan’s true legacy. So long as his jelly bean jar was full, POTUS 40 was happy to be the jovial but utterly dumb face of rapaciousness.

Sitting on my couch, listening to the birds outside my open window, with the breeze flowing in, because it’s unusually pleasant and dry, I can’t help but caress the spot where underneath lays my sweet heart. It now is hardened on top, flaccid on bottom, and I must work to undo the heart failure, that’s part of the routine now, the one with data points for me to track my softening process.

“My sweet heart. I am so sorry, my sweet heart,” I am compelled to say, sometimes aloud, because the urge to reassure my heart that I didn’t mean to abandon it, that I didn’t mean to make it support me without supporting it, precedes my cognitive ability to remind myself to be more logical. But I literally have become hard hearted, and it seems the most practical thing to do is massage that rigidity back to warm softness.

When did it happen that I became inflexible?

There are several points I am certain of, but most recently it has been that I have toughened myself to withstand the toxic vapors of the gaslighters and liars. I made my heart like iron against them. I’d wanted all my life to be in Washington, but when I got there, it was rotten to the core. Shields up.

When I left the hospital, there was news of $1.8 billion for what? A private army of thugs, goons, and desk shitters? Why the hell would I ever want to pay my taxes again? I cheer for the Capitol police who are suing to block this vile lie that these reptiles were anything other than a mob of violent and dangerous mercenaries.

I felt myself crumple. All this time, I have been so sure that I have dropped out, not cared, and protected by my focus on what I can actually have an effect on locally. But no longer being plugged into the info streams that control us, that shape our ideas of who we are at every little level, I didn’t know what to put in its place, and my poor heart stood guard alone, against it all.

These psychos are not coming for me, per se. I am not under siege. And yet, I can feel the hatred the .01% have for us. It’s palpable, it’s real, and they want us to feel it’s inevitable. They want our resources, they want our savings, they want our relationships, they want our imaginations, they want our blood, they want us dead. Look around. How could it be otherwise?

My out-of-rhythm failing heart was triggered by my overactive thyroid. My body has been exerting itself heroically to face these truths, even when I consciously said I would shut myself down from them.

Beyond collecting data points on my electric impulses, my primary focus now is on strengthening my faith and trust in something that will carry me into the future of my imagining, regardless of whatever these nonhuman and Christian nationalist bros think should happen. My hope will sustain me when the world splits in half from the strain of these self-serving assholes.

In the meantime, my energy is growing, and yet I am tired. Still, as my stamina grows, I realize how sick I have been for a long time. I am so blessed to have had a chance to correct course.

Here’s something relevant from my friend, Val, who just reminded me of something Grace Paley’s dad told her to caress and talk to her heart every morning:

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Hey—for paid subscribers, would you like to have a zoom call in early June? I’d love to know more about why you read FGA, what you’d like more of, what I’ve been thinking of, and just get to know you. We could definitely make it a regular event.

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Meanwhile, everyone, check your thyroid!

Whitney

PS: Remember Reservation Dogs? We’ll never see the likes of that show on streaming platforms again. It was too funny for the brittle bro egos. I worked very hard to find this hilarious clip. This show seems to have vanished with nary a trace. I was happy to find this clip, even though it was embedded in this Facebook account. To unmute it once you’re there, go to the top left corner.

Ours! Ours! Ours!