I am late, even for the US timezones. It’s still Monday in Hawaii, though, so I shall consider this post not too late. My reason is one that I find hilarious, every single time it happens. The US has elections the first Tuesday in November… Australia has a horse race. I usually write my posts for US time, which means often it’s Tuesday my time and today… I forgot. Last night I knew I had to write it, but things happened last night and I went to bed thinking “What haven’t I done?” And then I ate strawberries and cherries and chocolate with friends, as I do every year and turned home and made dinner and then realised I had nearly missed Monday. The cherries are important, because they are new season’s, just in time for the first time we normally eat them, which is the first Tuesday in November.
This fits with my current thoughts. I’m trying to work out why, right now, so many of us do not see the lives of others. We place our own life or our own assumptions about their lives onto the life we think they have. This does not actually help get rid of the really nasty bigotry I see in the world. I need to think more about the paths we walk and how to remember to look over and see and respectfully appreciate the paths of others. When I do, I may post about it. What I want to do is write a book, but the reason I keep being late and forgetting time is ME/CFS and I’m rather lucky I finished both my thesis and the last book before my current relapse, because it’s more severe than it’s been for a while. I can do more than I thought, but writing a whole new book from scratch is currently not possible.
What is even more fun than being publicly Jewish in a country that is lapsing into extreme racism? Being publicly Jewish with chronic fatigue.
Expect some of this to appear in my next novel… when the fatigue is sufficiently diminished to finish it. My brain is working on it even when my body can’t, so that piece of writing is still happening, just not on paper yet.
Since most of you who read this blog are from the US, I want to wish you the very best with your Tuesday elections. Every Melbourne Cup I want to talk about how elections and horse races are so similar and yet so different, but not this year. This year you have enough to deal with. You do not need additional bad jokes. Good luck!
Not from the U.S. (just an incredulous and distressed watcher from the sidelines), but sometimes bad jokes are the only things that help us navigate the dark and treacherous mire.
So true! And the current mire is not a nice thing and needs that help.
Wish all we were dealing with in the U.S. was a horse race. I do expect some positive outcomes from the elections, but as with everything, I worry that they won’t be enough, that nothing is enough.
I wish you were, too. I think we know more about what’s happening and why the idiots are overwhelming, but that doesn’t give solutions, just understanding. I am so worried for all of you.