kvetching up

"The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone." -George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life , 1858   If I Needed You My mom was many things. She was a nurturer, a kind and caring woman to the world. Jenny and Brian circa 1996, MDA Camp at  Camp Waskowitz . She was a binge alcoholic bipolar mess when I was growing up--and could be cruel and dismissive as easily as she could give a hug when I scraped my knee. Both aspects can be true, I know. It is rare to find people that can be almost or completely one or the other, we are all some sort of admixture of fuckery and kindness at one point or another. Your mileage may vary, I am speaking only of my own experience.  I have been a person who so desperately wants to believe in the innate goodness of humanity and fails over and again to latch onto that view. When I see things like the mass disenfranchisement of black voters, t...

Entry 1    1:42 a.m. I was sitting alone late tonight watching a show that had a man on it who was a recent widow and was struggling. I began to sob. Buddy, sitting next to me, continued snoring.  Willow jumped up from across the sectional and hurried to me. She licked the tears off of my cheeks, put her paw on my leg, then my shoulder, and slightly whined. She looked at me with eyes full of empathy. It was just what I needed. Entry 2     6:28 a.m. A mutual friend of Jenny and mine, a fellow MDA camp counselor, stopped by to see me yesterday morning. Jenny has multiple factions or clusters of friends, and this friend is part of a group of 4 women that would meet every few months for dinner. We both have known this group of women since we were kids in the mid-80s. This cluster knew about el pinché, and had definitely been told all sorts of terrible untruths about me for a long time, per Jenny's distortion campaign. I don't know when it started, but I suspect...