One of my patients used to be a Big Deal Specialist in the city and you can just TELL he’s SEETHING that no one out here is even qualified to understand what he did, much less how important he was. He’s also terrified of death. It’s both annoying and really sad. Like, sir, I hate to break it to you, but no amount of knowledge will protect you from the ravages of time. It’s a special kind of hell to know the stages of various fatal diseases intimately. What is it going to feel like when it’s my turn? How do doctors want to die? Suddenly, quietly. Slip away painlessly in my sleep. But how likely is that? Not very. More likely I’ll get cardiovascular disease or cancer, the greatest killers of our time.
He was so afraid of cancer he had an organ that wasn’t cancerous removed just in case. He talks down to me as if I’m his student, and who knows? Maybe I was. He was in the same city as me, and they were forever dragging Big Name Doctors in to teach us things. Maybe I learned how to elicit Achilles tendon reflexes from him.
But mostly I find myself a little scornful. Who lives without the shadow of death? Who doesn’t think about death all the time? When you die, life is a round thing, finished and whole. What will your life look like when God holds it in the palm of his hand?
Also don’t fucking call me by my first name unless I’ve specifically said you can. I don’t GIVE that permission to patients, except for my mentally ill trans and queer patients. If I wanted to be disrespected by an older man I would have married young.
You do not have time. This important doctor who based his whole life around his importance lived as rich and full a life as anyone. And now he’s clinging to it, leaving fingernail marks on the walls on his way out. No one has time. There will be a moment when you’re dying when you think, I would give anything I have to be back in that moment. Any ordinary moment. Taking the dogs out to go potty. Browsing at the grocery store. When you’re being crucified on a hospital bed, dying and aware of it through the morphine, you would give anything you ever possessed to go back and have one more agony-free afternoon. Sit on a curb or a stoop. Walk through a park. Hug your spouse. These tiny fragmentary moments that we are constantly sliding through, tobogganing past at high speeds, these are what will be our life when our life is over.
I am accountable to that self. To the dying me. What did I do with this gift and curse? I don’t believe in God, but I know that I will die, and I have watched enough dying people by now to know the kinds of things I’ll think about. I want to make that me proud of what I’ve done and how I’ve spent my life. She will be a harder judge than God, and I want her to look at this one little life and think, yes. I did what I meant to.
During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.
Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse - one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.
I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.
When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.
So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat - maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.
poor people deserve things they want, too. it is unfair to expect poor people to only buy things they “need”.
My grandfather used to tell me: if you only have 20 kr left, you buy grocery for 10 kr and flowers for the other 10 kr because you need a reason to live as well.
“Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.”
something my mum always taught us was to look for the resources we’re entitled to, and use them. public land? know your access rights and responsibilities, go there and exercise them. libraries? go there and talk to librarians and read community notice boards, find out what other people are doing around you, ask questions, use the printers. public records offices? go in there, learn what they hold and what you can access, look at old maps, get your full birth certificate copied, check out the census from your neighbourhood a hundred years ago. are you entitled to social support? find out, take it, use it. does the local art college have facilities open to the public? go in, look around, check out their exhibit on ancient looms or whatever, shop in their campus art supply store. it applies online too, there is so much shit in the world that belongs to the public commons that you can access and use if you just take a minute to wonder what might exist!!!
today was my mum’s birthday, and I showed her that thousands of people were liking and sharing her advice. she was very moved and pleased, and wanted to add that you shouldn’t just feel entitled to be in these spaces. you should feel at home. no matter who you are or what you’re going through in any phase of life, public spaces and services belong to you.
Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain
Organization is engaged in commercial, for-profit business activities
Income/Assets are being used to support illegal or terrorist activities
Organization is involved in a political campaign
Organization is engaged in excessive lobbying activities
Organization refused to disclose or provide a copy of Form 990
Organization failed to report employment, income or excise tax liability properly
Organization failed to file required federal tax returns and forms
Organization engaged in deceptive or improper fundraising practices
Other (describe)
to simplify: churches are forbidden to promote specific political parties or candidates, in order to maintain tax-exempt status. no religious institution is allowed to make explicit political statements, including “this party is bad,” “this party is good,” “you should vote for x,” “you should not vote for x,” or “let’s raise money for x political party or campaign.” all of those things are super illegal! if they’re going to act as a political entity, they need to pay taxes like any other political entity! report their asses!!!!
MAKE THIS GO VIRAL - REBLOG IT ….. REPEATEDLY
My American followers, please do your part
Ooooh I know so many pastors that violate this rule
She’s an eco-vengeance iconoclast who loves coyote pee and running at manic speeds. She’s an unstoppable chaos queen with a stink-nipple on her butt, who turns luxury Arizona golf courses into free range charcuterie boards for her grub-worm girl dinner. She’s a guerilla class-warfare legend whose mating call sounds like the hissing warb-garble of a cappuccino machine milk-steamer.
She’s the internet’s most beloved trash-eating ungulate — the uncompromising, the indefatigable, the lovely javelina.
You love to see it.
Oh we DO.
Oh this reminds me of that news about capibaras retaking posh BBAA neighborhoods built over their natural habitats.
ALT
