bandit king of lunch and string

i tried this treatment, but even though seebs gives the BEST squish, and hermes is the softest cat in the universe, it did not help!

it got worse and worse, until i was mourning all life and the futility of endeavor!

and then i remembered i had skipped lunch, and i had a protein drink, and now i'm happy again. <3

 

aaaaa there's a research team studying whale biology by collecting bacteria from blowhole exhalations with a drone, and they call it

snot bot

i love people so much

 

i had nice dreams for once! i was making many delicious pies and tarts. my signature creation was a 'stained glass' fruit tart where i used biscuit cutters to make concentric rings of different fruit fillings, and only took the cutters out right before the end so the fillings didn't mingle. it was really neat looking. slices of fruity rainbow!

 

ok i did a bit of googling and there are rainbow tarts aplenty that involve slices of raw fruit, they are lovely and not what was happening in the dream



what i was making was jam tarts



except using circle cutters to divide the colors of jam. that's actually kind of doable, now that i think about it.

 

for the past 2 years, i've been struggling with the concepts surrounding mortality. it's been confusing.

i accepted my mortality a long long time ago -- i remember it horribly clearly, a night when i was maybe 5 or 6 years old. i got my parents to give me a children's aspirin by claiming i had a headache, even though i didn't; i don't recall why, probably just to feel nurtured. but not understanding how medicine works, i thought the aspirin and the headache canceled out, and if the aspirin didn't have a headache to cancel, it could do anything. just like that, the realization that not only would i someday die, but that it could happen sooner and it was out of my control, came over me with unspeakable intensity. in tears, i stumbled out to inform my parents i'd lied about the headache, but their reassurances weren't much help. it wasn't the aspirin i was worried about. worried was the wrong word. i was grieving. it was fear, but also a deep, yawning sadness. i got through it, though, and digested it, and it didn't really bother me after that.

fast forward to 2 years ago, when i had my top surgery. medical phobia, recovery mishaps, freaky religious visions post anaesthesia, the works. ever since then, mortality's been bothering me again, and i couldn't figure out why. it's not like there was anything new there. nothing i hadn't already worked over many times. but i found myself flinching from the very concept of death, to the point where i was having trouble writing, because my stories had death in them. i was thinking a lot about afterlives, and finding that the idea i was quite happy with before -- that our selfhood might sort of return to the wellspring of creation rather than remaining individual -- felt absolutely horrific. what was going on? was i suddenly a coward???

well, it took me way too long, but these past few days -- ever since i learned i'd probably be having spinal surgery -- i've been leaning into it instead of running away from it. and it finally came to me. it's not that i'm any more afraid of death than i've ever been. it's that i became afraid that death is banal and pointless. that life is banal and pointless, because everything we do, everything we are will be erased.

when i look at that question head on, it becomes manageable. there's nothing banal and pointless about a sand painting.

i'm not instantly all better, but i feel a knot of anxiety that's been bugging me for two years beginning to loosen.

 

ultra delicious cold lunch. my shirt smells like rice vinegar and my fingers smell like salami but i regret nothing.

 

MONSOOOOOOOOOON

wonder where i can put this hanging basket of mini patty pan squash where it'll get rained on but not beat to crap by hail. screen porch steps maybe. that's shade, tho. hmmmmmm.

 

last night

me: yeah, i'm pretty tired too, what time is it?
sleepy seebs: it's... a clock time. with numbers in.

 

having the first vague scribbles of a thought that i want to jot down before i forget it:

the thing where social media leftists/progressives/etc will note some abusive business practices or other unacceptable thing, and just go "capitalism!" in this dismissive despairing way is... not good? because that's the end right there. it completely erases any possibility of a solution other than like, violent communist revolution. sometimes people mention unionizing, but it feels kinda phoned in.

i mean yeah it's a lotta work to do something like maybe name the company and location, and see if you can get other employees of that company from other locations to speak up about whether that practice is done at their stores too, and piece together what anti-union strategies the company has so you can expose them and counter them, and so on.

but i'm pretty sure a violent communist revolution is even more work. and if gutting the target managers' manual on twitter feels too risky and confrontational, you're probably not up for doing gun murders anyway.

 

yeah, i think you're right. if you do find the post again, please throw me a link.

 

my snoob is a good snoob <3 i should knit a parasect plushie

 

notes to FUTURE JESSE from me, past jesse:

• you have a cute little hand-thrown flowerpot you're not using. you have excess parsely starts. meenah has no greens to nibble on the counter. make it happen.
• it's time to admit the garden problem is not one you can fix. ask gui nicely.
• it's not the end of the world if you have to toss those smoothies. but you could freeze them for later instead. that's an option you have.
• bring the clipper upstairs. then that's one less step whenever you get around to buzzing your head.
• HYDRATION SOLUTIONS. FIND THEM.

 

i mean, co-ops and localization are things that want explored, but without breaking all the good stuff we've figured out so far. the communist experiment has already been done, and it's shown us that centralization and other staples of the thing are terrible ideas. we gotta figure out a way to share the resources without placing the decision-making authority in the hands of people with neither stakes nor accountability.

now that i think about it -- isn't that the problem with american capitalism? decisionmaking is done by people with neither stakes nor accountability?