depressing shit

I am finding this whole thing so surreal… And I find that I am surprisingly paralyzed in the midst of this amazing time when I am forced… FORCED… to stay home and go no where… a dream come true on so many levels.

Interestingly, my daughter, who passed away last April, made a point of sending me an intense message about 6 months ago. She spoke very vividly and powerfully to a friend of mine who was in meditation, and she said:

“Tell my mom.
A storm is coming.
Watch for it.”

I have been wondering what the heck she was talking about ever since. Not any more. I think this has to be it. If this isn’t an almost perfect storm, I don’t know what is.

So, how to cope? How to manage? What do do?

If I figure it out, I will let you know. I am trying to make myself work on my website today. I’m just having a little trouble finding my way in. In the mean time, here is some eye candy.

  • Vinegar-saddened potatoes, seasoned in the shadow of an man bursting with regret, accompanied by a side of angsty pomegranate steeped three hours in leeks, ennui, and the bourgeois consumerism of a successful older sibling.
  • Orphaned zucchini aged in the sound of children’s laughter, embittered in vinegar, anise, and the deep-eyed stares of a loyal dog, gazing ever-hopefully out the window, even though her owner is late coming home from work.
  • Friendless goat in emotionally processed micro greens. Do make sure the greens are micro, as they have to be small in comparison with the universe. This dish is best served at a table for one, far from home, while browsing Facebook on your phone.
  • Feet of an overworked duck, braised for the amount of time it takes Sisyphus to roll his boulder up and down the same mountain three times. For the braising liquid, try to locate at your local wine store a debauched pinot noir, with a misanthropic nose, surprisingly empty on the palate, and a sardonic finish.
  • Porterhouse steak, burnt to black by your ex-girlfriend, served on a collectible plate featuring images of her looking really great since you two broke up.
  • Stringy Rooster, marinated in what you think is, at first, an awkward silence, but which turns out to be the casual indifference of eternity.

By Torrey Peters.

Back in the winter of 2008, I was looking for an illustration of my current frame of mind and found this. The painting is by Ejnar Nielsen. This is the information that came with it:
painting by ejnar nielsen. now, this is more of what one would come to expect from a Scandinavian artist: depression, despair, gloom, angst, fatigue, suppressed anger… clearly, i am in my comfort zone 🙂 …

any one who has endured several winters in Denmark, and then imagines oneself having to suffer through such a winter one hundred years back, living in poverty as many rural people did, it is not hard to imagine why someone could be as somber as our subject is, regardless of what it is that he might actually have encountered during his lifetime leading up to this moment. to me, when I first cast my eyes upon this painting, I thought, “ahh, the perfect winter painting.”

in all honesty, though, there is a truth seeking element in this painting that is also unusual for danish art – which draws me to this work.

the choice of subject soberly confronts the notion of death and dying, a topic that elicits extreme discomfort in Denmark, supported by the fact that most old people in this country die alone, either at home or in nursing homes (this I know, from research I once did for a feature film that I worked on)…

the positioning of the subject, off balanced in an almost empty space, is very typical of Scandinavian work, and it brings to mind both Carl Dreyer’s film work, and of course, Bergman, enhanced by the “wide screen” format of the image.

From my old blogger blog – shirleytwofeathers.blogspot.com

Ok, so I was looking for an image for a Prosperity Project post, and ended up on this website… I’m never eating meat again! I say this… and I think it might even be true. I don’t want one dime of my money to go to support the companies that do this shit!!

This really pisses me off! If I actually follow through on this, my life just got way more complicated!! Me not eating meat is one thing, but what about my dogs? I have been making my own dog food with turkey and rice. It’s easy, it seems (now I’m not so sure) to be healthy for my dogs, and up until today, I felt pretty good about it. Now, I’m not so sure… How can the food we eat be even remotely good for us when this is what happens to it?

For example:

  • Over 300 million turkeys are killed every year in the United States, 40 million of them specifically for Thanksgiving.
  • These valued lives that humans breed, are killed when just a few weeks old.   Their short lives are filled with pain and misery.
  • All turkeys get for Thanksgiving and Christmas is a terrifying, violent, death.
  • The majority of these are raised in factory farms where they are stacked in cages in windowless sheds where they can’t live naturally (or happily) in any sense of the word.
  • They are debeaked and declawed without anesthesia, making it difficult or even impossible for them to eat.
  • Often they cannot move, and many die in the conditions before they are fully grown.
  • Those who survive are fed until they are grotesquely obese and cannot stand because their skeletons are too weak from confinement.
  • Factory-farmed turkeys are fattened up so quickly that often their legs cannot support them.
  • They collapse and try to drag themselves along on their wings.
  • Tens of thousands die because they cannot get to food and water points.
  • Over-burdened in this way, and trapped in close quarters with too little oxygen, many turkeys die when their hearts explode from the physical stress.
  • Most birds are fed a cocktail of antibiotics to keep them alive yet diseases run rife in the filthy conditions.
  • Male turkeys are bred to be so big they are unable to mate naturally.
  • They have to be clamped upside down and their seed taken by a farm-worker, collected and forcibly injected into the females.
  • To stop them cannibalizing each other in the cramped, unnatural conditions, turkeys have their beaks sliced off, which can leave them in permanent pain.
  • At the slaughterhouse, most are hung upside down and dragged through an electrified waterbath to stun them.
  • It often does not work and many birds are fully conscious when their throats are cut.
  • Some are even alive when they are plunged into boiling water to loosen their feathers.
  • Others may be killed by gassing; often birds gasp and flap violently for several minutes.
  • Beating a turkey to death with a crowbar is an acceptable practice in U.S. farming of animals. Still not illegal.
  • Turkeys do not receive even the scant protection given to pigs and cows by the Humane Slaughter Act and many are tied upside down still alive and conveyed to the part of the factory where they are knifed.
  • Not all die right away and suffer unspeakably by bleeding slowly to death.

There’s more, and it’s way worse, and I’ll spare you the details. If you’re curious, follow this link. I do not understand why there is so much disrespect for living things. What I do understand is that it is pervasive and undeniable. But where did it come from? How can a person sleep at night knowing they are managing, operating, owning, or simply working in places like that? Are they totally anesthetized? Do they think only humans are alive?

So… now, having posted all this… I’m going to go to the kitchen, wash out my big stainless steel cook pot, fill it with water, dump in a fair amount of rice, and beans, and … yes … ground turkey. And I’m going to feed it to my dogs – whom I love – and I’m going to send Reiki and blessings and all kinds of good energy into that food … and to the living beings that agreed to be made part of it … and I’m going to be prayerful and grateful … and I hope that’s good enough!

If an image has posted without permission please leave a comment and I will happily remove it, replace it, give credit, link love ~ whatever you prefer.

Have problems? Need something fixed? Don’t know what to do? Ask any how-to question, and get an immediate answer from The Plumber Dude. How cool is that?

Your question:
Plumber Dude says:
The Plumber Dude
Christmas


I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!

My Stats