And another thing...

My much-beloved Caitlin Fitz Gerald - international relations pundit, Twitter superstar, and all-around badass friend since birth, has a new blog, Drawnward, on which she writes and draws about issues of personal interest and international importance (which topics, luckily for the rest of us, overlap for her pretty much all the time).

To the surprise of no one, she wrote one of the best essays about last Monday's hideousness. Read it and love it. 

Fuck the police... except sometimes.

(or: The perils of seeing both sides.)

Note: This post is an amended version of an e-mail I sent to comedian Hannah Gadsby, in reply to a Tweet she posted on Saturday morning Melbourne time: 'if I were suspected of something really bad then I hope I had done it because it doesn't seem to matter either way.' Odds are she stopped reading roughly two sentences in because... well, she has no idea who the eff I am, for starters; but should I hear back I'll post her reply.

As I'm sure you all know, I still follow the Australian news very closely. Of all the sickening news of 2012, the Roberto Curtis story stands out in my mind as especially disgusting. It was the definition of 'miscarriage of justice' and of 'police brutality', all wrapped up in one heartbreaking package. And back when I moved back to the States, I was plunged into the Casey Anthony trial, and after the verdict I remember saying almost the exact thing Hannah Gadsby tweeted: I hoped Casey had actually done everything she was accused of and had somehow mistakenly got away with it, because she was going to be punished for it for the rest of her life either way.

But I think this case is different.

All apart from the photo and video evidence that linked the two suspects to the marathon bombing, there was the rampage they went on Thursday night. They shot a police officer who appears to have posed no threat to them; they carjacked a Mercedes SUV (so clearly had some new money tacky in them as well, but even I'll admit that's not a criminal offense) and announced to the driver that they were the marathon bombers; they engaged in a gunfight with officers wherein they (the brothers) were throwing explosive devices at the cops. When the elder brother's body was recovered (after the younger one drove over it in a desperate attempt to flee), it was found that he had been wearing a suicide vest.

These were not innocents, or potential innocents, trying to escape their own miscarriage of justice. I agree that a fearful innocent would run from police if she/he felt in danger - I know my ass would be breaking land-speed records - but this was not that.

I grew up in Boston, I lived here until I was 22 and moved to Sydney. When I had to leave Australia, it was to Boston I came. I have worked, hard, to try to make a new life here, to put aside the heartbreak of having to leave the people I loved and the city I loved and the country I loved and the only adult life I'd ever known, and create some happiness. I worked to forge new connections with the city I loved (where, less than a week ago, two bombs were exploded in a spot I walk through several times a week, where people I know and love watched limbs fly past their faces and only by the tiniest of margins escaped without losing their own). I found a job (at Boston Medical Center, where 23 critically injured victims were brought). I met a girl (who works an hour north of Boston and whose greatest fears all came true at once, when I was stuck inside the city and she was stuck outside while bombs went off and made echoes of being evacuated from an office building in Manhattan 12 years ago dance in her head). And she and I live in the beautiful, fun, and safe neighourhood of Inman Square, Cambridge (in a house that is exactly, *exactly* two blocks from the now-notorious address of 410 Norfolk Street). We spent all of Friday in lockdown. The entire city, inner and outer suburbs, shut down for an entire day because of two people. Can you even imagine that? I'm not being facetious, I'm seriously asking. Because I was here and I lived through it and I can't imagine it.

And now I live in fear that the US will fuck it up worse. I had been hoping so hard that they would turn out to be local white Christians with a crazy tea-party bone to pick. Ideally they would be ranting stereotypes, with weird teeth and a misunderstanding of the word 'socialism', and I would laugh at them and hate them and go to bed knowing that no one here would try to use them as an excuse to go to war somewhere. I had feared so hard that they would turn out to be furreners, especially dark-skinned Muslim
furreners who would be so very furren that they could be nothing but the Other, and another round of madness would ensue. But what I got was dead in the middle, further complicated by the endless stream of reports about the younger brother, Dzhokhar, who as by all accounts the sweetest, kindest, gentlest boy anyone had ever met. He used to skateboard around my neighborhood, for fuck's sake. And now this? What happened? How could we as a community have failed him so suddenly and so utterly that he did this?

I want a reason. I want clarity, I want to believe that the mosque and halal butchery down my street and all who use them will be safe and left in peace, I want the eyes of the world to watch how we treat this boy and feel that we treated him fairly and that justice was done for everyone, not just for the victims. That is what I'm hoping for now because that's all that's left to hope for. And I think that's why I had to reply to her tweet, at what have seemed to her to be an utterly interminable length: I want the rest of the world to understand, to see that the officers did work to take him alive, to see that he will get a fair trial, to see that there won't be any misplaced retribution against people who happen to have an accent or a region or a nose or a god in common with these two brothers. I want the world to see that, and even more, I want it to be what really happens. And if it doesn't, I want the world to believe that I and others like me will yell and scream and do whatever we can to hold accountable anyone who was involved. I have to live in this country, at least for now; I am going to do my damnedest to make it somewhere worth living.

And a P.S. to John Ashcroft, John McCain, and the other dumbfucks who are pushing for a military trial: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an American citizen, acting with only his brother, with no ties to any cell or group here or anywhere else in the world. Get your heads out of your asses, Miranda that shit, and try him in a US court under US law. Justice doesn't only need to be done, it needs to be seen to be done. Quit being fucktards for once, for god's sake. 

Insert tired 'electoral dysfunction' joke here.

My plan for tomorrow is to go to the polls first thing in the morning, then spend the rest of the avoiding the fuck out of the news. I don't want to know, I can't bear to speculate, until it's done and dusted and completely out of my reach.

I cannot accurately describe, let alone overstate, the degree to which we have been inundated with advertising about this election. For the last two weekends at least, on free-to-air and network TV, both college and professional football games' ad breaks have been taken up entirely by ads for (or more accurately, against) candidates, with maybe a truck ad thrown in for good measure, or something for one of the colleges playing in the game, or a station promo for an upcoming program. That's IT. And of course, it's not just football; all TV is like this at the moment, but it's during sport that I notice it most because that's the only thing I watch live. Thank fucking god for TiVo.

Two billion dollars got spent on this election. Two billion dollars. Do you know, can any person actually comprehend, the good that could be done for this country with two billion dollars? And the truly insane thing is that no one wants this - literally not a single voter wants this - but we also refuse to cap campaign time or spending. So this is what we get, and grossly, this is what we deserve. I have been sickened by this entire process; I get nauseated just thinking about it; I hate the whole pack of bastards, all of them, on both sides.

I will vote, of course; I did my due diligence, of course, and looked up information on the candidates and on the ballot questions, of course - state and local, binding and non-binding, of course - because the one thing that none of this constant, unavoidable electoral advertising provides is actual facts, of course. And of course I'm trying to convince people that as hideous as it all is, it's still critically important to vote; and I'm having to work very hard to do that because all this slimy commercial bullshit makes it very easy for the real slime to hide - you hate all the candidates enough, you stop noticing that some of them are sociopaths whose main concern in life is making sure that I never, ever feel the tiniest bit safe in my own body. And not just me, but your mothers, and sisters, and daughters, and partners, all of us: if we get raped - if we get as cruelly and painfully and thoroughly violated as is physically possible - and get pregnant, we're lucky! That baby is a gift from God! And conversely, it's also our bodies' fault for not shutting down correctly! These are the words of people who might be heading my fucking government. And here's the thing: it's a real and legitimate fear right now. From this excellent article by Julie Rovner of NPR.org:

"According to just about every court watcher, thanks to two appointments to the court by George W. Bush, there are almost certainly four justices on the court right now that are prepared to either reverse or significantly modify Roe [vs Wade]," Kilgore said.

And with four justices older than 70, it's considered highly likely that the next president will have at least one chance to appoint that pivotal fifth vote.

And don't even get me started on the gay thing. One of the great joys of being a member of multiple disenfranchised groups is that you find yourself weighing out which one is most likely to put you under threat at any given time; at this exact second, being a woman is slightly nudging out being gay, with economic class and other distinguishing characteristics lagging behind, but if Romney gets in it's all up in the air, especially if Massachusetts (re-)elects Scott Brown, a Republican senator who won last time through a combination of universal frustration with government, Democratic incompetence, a desperate desire for a new face, and what some X-factor that can only assume involved burying a black cockerel at midnight, and who this time could end up being the vote that gives control of the Senate to the Republicans.

I'm just so fucking disgusted by it all.

Stormy weathurrrrrrr...

Hi all! I have a long post that I've been working on, but based on a concerned e-mail I received I thought I should do a quick post about Hurricane Sandy.

So far so good for everyone here: Colleen and I are both home today (I'm off work; she's working from home, and cussing extravagantly in a way that gives me new insight into her professional life), and everyone we know is safe, including my auntie who lives in D.C. who was my biggest concern.

We went out this morning to take the dog for a walk and the wind was already up, but the worst isn't supposed to start until around noon (about an hour from now). I'm not sure how in-depth an explanation of the storm you-all got down there, but the short version is that for New England, the hurricane is only part of the problem; around here we're also getting a Nor'Easter, which is the standard-issue brutal storm in this region that brings high winds and rain or snow depending on the season, so we're actually getting what's called a hybrid storm - in this case, a Nor'Easter sandwich with a big ol' scoop of hurricane in the middle. Add to this a full moon that was already going to give us exceptionally high tides, and, well, it's a mess. The last time we had a storm like this was in 1991, and that's the one they made the movie 'The Perfect Storm' about; fortunately, this one isn't predicted to be quite as bad as that because the hurricane will be making landfall south enough of us that we'll be buffered from the worst of it, but it's still going to be a hell of a thing.

It doesn't look like we'll have too much rain in Boston, but the wind's going to be brutal - I'm watching it pick up outside my window even as I type - and parts of coastal Massachusetts are going to get battered by waves and tides, including an area called Plum Island, which may not survive the storm at all... but then, it's predicted to be gone in 20 years anyway, so it's really only speeding the problem. The big concerns apart from the coastal flooding are wind damage and downed power lines. But we've got lots of food and the animals to keep our feet warm, so hopefully we'll be okay. I'll check in when it's over, but honestly, I'm pretty confident that we'll be okay. I'm planning to spend the day doing housework and roasting a chicken, so it's really pretty much business as normal until it isn't, if that makes sense.


XOXO

 

Verbatim

Me, to Flattie Karen: You know, I never worked until I drank for a union.


XOXO

If it were New Year's Eve, it would be a song.

Maybe it's much too early in the game
But I thought I'd ask you just the same...
What are you doing 15 November- 01 December?

Enter the Confessional #5: Mental as Anything

Hello, out there! It's been a while, no?

Well, yes. It has. It's been a strange stretch. The short answer is that I had a bit of a brainsnap. I had a small health scare that fortunately (and completely as predicted all along) turned out to be nothing, but in combination with a few other things was enough to trigger the kind of protracted anxiety attack I usually associate with talking to immigration officials.

It was rough. There's no point in trying to make it pretty or funny, really: I wasn't functional, and even once I got the medical all-clear, I still couldn't calm down. And that's the bit that seems to make the least sense to other people, and I understand that; the best way I can explain it is this: you know when something happens that really, really pisses you off? And it pisses you off so badly for whatever reason that even if it's comparatively small, you just can't shake it off? And then you're in a shitty mood, and every little thing that happens to you after that seems designed to make your life hard, and in a tiny corner of your mind you know you're being irrational but you're just so mad about the world that your logical brain can't get a look in? Well it's like that, except it's being worried about stuff, all the time. It doesn't matter if the original source of the anxiety gets resolved; my brain is so frantic that it can't stop worrying and will start to seek out other things to focus on. Everything I encounter makes me feel more and more anxious, sets me off more and more and more, and I can't break through it at all. When I'm at my worst, I feel like I'm spending all of my time talking to myself in my head, with my logical brain trying so hard to calm me down and talk some sense into me, and my anxious brain spinning unstoppably right the fuck out.

While I tend to be a bit keyed-up generally [audience: shocked gasp], I don't get this bad very often; but this wasn't the first time and it's far and away the smallest thing that ever triggered me to this extent. And it's so fucking hard. I disappear into my own head; I try to maintain in public but am clearly not with it; I can't sleep or eat properly. I neglect people around me, or am so distracted that I might as well be neglecting them; and if I can actually manage to focus I'm often unpleasant because the social contract has been chewed up and spat out by the Anxiety Monster. Nothing works right.

To make matters worse, the timing this time around really sucked too. I got the phone call from my doctor moments after arriving at my new house to find that a) we had no keys; b) the house hadn't been cleaned; c) there was some horrible treatment on the floorboards that had left a sticky, waxy, black sludge in every room of the house, which immediately transferred itself to everything that touched it, including our boxes and furniture and selves; and d) I couldn't get hold of the landlord. This was on a Thursday; by Sunday most of the house stuff was mostly sorted out, but the damage was done and it was all aboard the crazy train. Fast forward two and a half weeks and Colleen's so completely freaked out by the way I've unravelled that she's seriously considering moving out. It got that bad that fast.

I'm doing better now, fortunately. That's how it goes: eventually the fog starts to lift, and all of my coping tools start to work better, and given enough time I'll get back to normal. But the problem is that it happens at all. Bad things are going to happen in life, actual bad things, and I need to be able to deal with them. I can't just fall to fucking pieces every time there's a mere possibility of something having gone wrong. That's not a viable way to live. I can't put myself through that, I can't put the people around me through that. It's too fucking hard.

...Which is why I've started on daily anti-anxiety meds. I fought this for a long time. I have no problem with the idea of head meds (though I do believe that they're over-prescribed - especially Stateside, of course - because insurance companies would rather pony up for medication than for long-term therapy), and I've seen them work wonders for other people. But when it came to signing up for it myself... yeah, no. I didn't want to do it AT ALL. I didn't want to take anything that might fuck with my head. I live in my head all the time, ALL the time, and I was really afraid that I might lose that piece of me somehow.

For a long time I was able to manage my occasional anxiety attack with propranolol, which is a heart medicine that can also be used to treat the physiological symptoms of anxiety. Once I had the physical stuff in check, I could usually intervene with my logical brain and start using those tools to fix the kinks. It was nice: I only used it when I needed it; it didn't have any weird side effects; and it didn't change anything in my head. I was still in control of that aspect myself.

But this last time the propranolol didn't work. I was taking as much as I could, and I'd physically relax a bit, but I couldn't get my head together no matter what else I tried. And even though now I'm feeling better, I'm afraid of what will happen next time something triggers me. Which is as good an indication as I could ask for that it's time for me to try something else.

So... I'm trying. I started on Celexa, but after only three days I was having wild side effects from it so we left it cheerfully behind. I'm now on Wellbutrin, and it seems to be going much better. I can't say that I've felt a major breakthrough, but I'm at least not feeling worse, so that's a step in the right direction. I'm on a very low dose to start with, so it may be that I'll feel more of a positive effect when the dosage goes up; if I don't, I'll try something else.

But here's hoping that I will, because I'm looking forward to finding some fucking peace. One of the worst things about anxiety, when it gets that unmanageable, is that I never feel rested. I'm on overdrive all the time, and even my comparatively calm moments aren't nearly calm enough to let me relax properly. Right now I feel pretty good; yesterday I felt pretty good; last night I was shaky and tense for no apparent reason. I can't trust that the good times will last, and that's hard. I would like to be able to enjoy the good times without feeling like something horrible is inevitably lurking just over the horizon.

Well, I guess that's that. I hope this wasn't too much of an overshare, but I wanted to explain why I'd dropped off the face of the earth, and I decided that it wasn't worth trying to cover with fibs or vagaries. So... thanks for listening. You're a lot cheaper than my regular therapist.

*****

In other and much funnier news, Colleen and I were driving through Mattapan (a very high-crime neighbourhood) the other day, and we saw a billboard that read:

'Murder... it's not okay'

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you know that gentrification has failed.

XOXO