Wed. June 25, 2025: Boiling, Inside and Out
image courtesy of Three-shots via pixabay.comWednesday, June 25, 2025
New Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Hot and humid
I was already over the day by 8 AM. Not a good way to start, especially on the “luckiest day of the year.” Can I tell you how tired I am of toxic positivity? There’s a lot of bad stuff going on now, and people have a right to be upset and scared. Saying that will just bring more of it on you, you “attract what you think” and to “reset your mindset to positivity” – textbook blaming and shaming — how about you fuck right off, if you’re not going to actually roll up your sleeves and join the fight against systemic abuse? People can’t vibe their way out of systemic oppression. Stop blaming them and start dismantling these systems instead. Otherwise, you’re condoning those systems and training people to give in and not try to change the very structures causing the harm. The Supreme Court threw out the Constitution and people are being kidnapped and human trafficked. Congress sends “strongly worded letters” and “is concerned” but doesn’t actually DO anything except try to fundraise.
Merrick Garland and Chuck Schumer could have prevented any of this from happening. They CHOSE not to. The Supreme Court could have been expanded to 13, and prevented that. Not doing so was also a CHOICE.
So don’t tell me I have to think happy thoughts or else bad things happening are all my fault, motherfucker.
Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Ken Martin are all useless. They need to get out of the way and let people who have actual ideas and aren’t afraid to take action lead.
The way senior Democratic non-leadership is determined to hold onto their personal power at the expense of the country is disgusting.
I managed to write a spell for Llewellyn, which was fun, and finish the draft of the ekphrastic poem based on a painting that included the Lenormand. I turned around a small coverage and wondered why I even bothered. I need to be completely done with all that. It’s not worth any of my time or my stress.
I did some adaptation work, adapting one of my comic noir plays for radio. Just a few pages, but it will get there. Looked at submission calls. Worked and reworked and reworked the poem. Worked on the newsletter, so that it is ready to go out tomorrow.
As I suspected, the conflict with the old family friend escalated. This person, under the premise of being “nice” and doing something to “help” us, has put demands on it that I can’t meet, have said I can’t meet, and is now angry with me for not saying “how high?” when they say, “jump.” This individual is more connected to my mother than to me. My mother is over 100, and many of her friends died. I don’t want to be responsible for hurting a connection. But my mother was irritated too, and said the demands were ridiculous.
There are a whole group of people from a specific era in our lives who’ve known us for a long time and always congratulate themselves on doing “nice” things for us, but those always come with obligations. “Look at what I did for you and now you’re not appropriately grateful.” It has nothing to do with doing something for us; it’s about making them feel good about being generous. They watched me partially grow up and still treat me like I’m a recalcitrant twelve-year-old, not an adult in my sixties. It’s not cute. They don’t respect boundaries. They are committed to Never Being Wrong. Many of them are also former clients of my mother’s pet sitting business, and they never let me forget that I am the daughter of “the help.” None of them have ever had to worry about money. And I’m just done.
I fashioned the “nicest” response I could under the circumstances, laying out the reality of the situation and saying if these obligations were part of it, let’s drop it. I did not send it immediately. I’ve let it sit overnight, will tweak it, and send it this morning. Which, of course, will cause another spate of rage, because I am supposed to respond within an hour or less any time I’m contacted, and respond the way required. Because, you know, they’re doing something “nice” for us.
Anyone who thinks the US doesn’t have a stringent economic class system has never spent much time here.
I attended the literary committee meeting for WAM via ZOOM. It was such a terrific, invigorating meeting! We all fell in love with the same plays, and had reservations about the other plays. We all are eager to read more by certain playwrights, and widen relationships. I feel so lucky to be involved with this group of smart, creative women who are willing to take risks and have honest conversations without retaliation for different opinions. We expand each others’ way of seeing and broaden understanding, which is a good thing.
Dinner, then relaxed. The top-heavy oscillating fan tipped over and had to be put back together. But something bent or warped (because it’s made of such lousy materials) and now it screams when I turn it on. I will have to take it apart and see what I can figure out today. I think there’s still one fan we haven’t put to work yet, so I will get that one and use it instead. Amazing how the old fans soldier on for years and the “improved” ones all fail after a few months.
One MORE thing on the plate.
I was happy to see that New York City stepped up in the ranked choice voting and chose a Democrat who actually wants to make things better, instead of an establishment figure. That should send a message to the party at large, but it won’t.
I went to bed early because I was exhausted. And relieved that we survived the worst of this heat wave. It only got up to 94F yesterday instead of 96F, although it felt like 103 outside, supposedly (I did not go out). I had gotten it down to 82 inside, which was perfectly comfortable, albeit a little humid, and it got up to 87, which was a little more uncomfortable than I would have liked.
It’s only supposed to get to 87 today, and I’m trying to get the temperature down as much as possible. Tomorrow will be in the 70’s, so it’s mostly about getting through today.
Woke up with a migraine, due to a combination of factors: heat and humidity, sense memory stress, additional stress from the conflict with the old family friend, additional conflict because the ghostwriting client is still dragging their feet on payment.
I started looking for other work to overlap with the ghostwriting work, because, as I told them, I cannot be working 6/8/10 weeks on a project without payment. The contract adjustments were supposed to fix that, and yet, they’ve found a workaround. We will see how the next few months work, but I will add a few more clients to the roster to diversify the workload a bit more and not have to rely on a single client too much (since that worked so well with the script analyst work – yes, that’s sarcasm). I had some feelers out in the UK, but heard back from one company that they are not hiring Americans in this climate, which I totally understand. I foresee another issue coming up with the ghostwriting client where I will need to put my foot down, but we will deal with that if and when it happens. No use borrowing trouble, right?
On today’s roster: polish and submit the poem, work on another spell, dive into the fight over my mother’s bills (this will take months to resolve), swing by the post office and the library. Yes, I will actually have to leave the house today. Deal with the fallout from being honest with the family friend.
On a happy note, I have been invited to participate in Words on Art on Words at the LAVA Center later this summer. In July, I will go to the gallery, look at the pieces on exhibit, choose one, write an ekphrastic piece, deliver it by Aug. 22, and it will be exhibited from Aug. 23 to the end of the exhibit at the end of the month. Another artist or writer may read my piece and create something in response to it. The vision is that the summer is an expanding conversation between word pieces and visual pieces.
In other words, I will be spending a good deal of time in Greenfield this summer! The exhibit will not be open when I go for my play reading this weekend, so I will go back in the middle of July.
Stay cool!
