#131 - Rabbit rabbit! Time to live in reality!

Well hey hi hello, good morning (depending on where you are in the world AND what time you read this), welcome to 2024!

I rang in the end of 2023 with two cats and a hot water bottle on my stomach in attempts to soothe my cramps, but thankfully with the addition of an edible (or, more accurately, three edibles because the east coast refuses to sell anything higher than 5mg/gummy) I was able to fall asleep despite the fireworks my neighbors gleefully set off through the night.

But! I woke up this morning at 6:15 ready to take my too-early New Years Morning Walk.

One of the things that helped turn me into a bonafide Morning Person a few years ago was the chance of experiencing my neighborhood when it was empty. And in the past few years I’ve come to know the mornings when it will be empty empty. Like not another soul on the street, limited cars, just me and a few delivery bikes empty.

(We can’t even begin to get into how much I love the walkability of this city and my neighborhood/life in particular or this essay will just become a rant about how much I hate parked cars/how much priority they have over pedestrians.)

New Years Day is one of the quietest mornings. Everyone stayed out the night before, many are nursing the biggest hangover they’ll have all year (thanks champagne), and it’s a bank holiday so the usual rush just isn’t there.

I love any day that you can’t completely confirm an opening time on Google tbh, reminds me of a simpler time.

But this morning it was raining. And I don’t do rainy morning walks.

So, I tried to meditate, because that’s A Thing I do now (and last night I actually had an incredible sesh and went into a trance state and came out of it when the guide was counting down so I’m even more psyched than usual) but Weem wanted cuddles (and when Weem doesn’t get her way she gently-but-firmly-without-breaking-skin bites my arm) and my nose was stuffy so it never fully worked. I uh, semi-tated.

And then I had coffee and journaled and set a new land speed record for my six pages of 38 minutes. I got back into journaling six-a-days back in November but I’ve been slowly building up my discipline re: not looking at my phone and powering through the writing as a stream of consciousness, and it all came together this morning after I literally tossed my phone to the other end of my bed and let it out.

Then the rain stopped. So I ordered a tuna melt from one of my favorite bagel places 0.5 miles away and set out for a Diet Coke to grab along the way.

It was 3 hours later than I had planned but, guess what, still an empty city!

The Bodega on Suydam that ~suddenly closed~ a few months ago was ~suddenly back~ this morning, complete with new Grand Opening signs and a digital OPEN sign that uses the American flag to fill in the letters. Fascinating choice, would love to know more about how it was made.

I would wager that I was the first customer of the day and the guy wasn’t expecting to see anyone during his morning pre-roll sesh behind the counter. So me and my giant cherubic cheeks set down two Diet Cokes and wished him a Happy New Year despite his coughing and I think he was bemused by my limited purchases and general nonchalance due to my aforementioned Big Narc Energy.

The bagel pick up? Smooth! Tuna melt and a Diet Coke is, in fact, the breakfast of champions!!

It’s weird that it was raining this morning because it should have been snowing. We haven’t had winter yet and it’s already January. The Christmas music felt like it was speaking of a world that has already gone this year. And in many ways, it has.

I used to hate New Year’s because it felt arbitrary. The real New Year is the spring solstice (for the northern hemisphere anyway #bigblockofcheeseday), when the world comes back to life.

But I’ve come to appreciate the traditions associated with it. I think resolutions, goal setting, and the idea that we get to create and then hit our own reset button is incredible. I love clearing energy in meaningful ways collectively, of appreciating what has happened while looking forward to what’s next.

Honestly, a kiss to bring in the new year? Oh my god one of the cutest things humans have ever done are you kidding me?? To usher in the next phase of life with a demonstration of love and affection for our fellow humans what could be better?!

The theme of 2024 for me is alignment.

I set a lot up for myself in 2023 and now it’s time to knock them down.

But my own personal progress will mean nothing if it happens in a world that continues to feel so grossly misaligned with the values I hold so dear. And here’s where we’re getting into the real stuff so, turn back now if you’re in more of a light > heavy mood.

It’s been catastrophically heartbreaking to see nativity scenes this year. They were still up this morning, caked in soggy confetti. The fake baby Jesus’s swaddled and protected, cherished and celebrated, while the real babies of Palestine suffered.

I’m tired of getting distracted in conversations by nitpicky word choice arguments. No matter what you want to call Biden, his actions and lack thereof in regard to a Ceasefire are atrocious. He is not listening to the will of the American people. I call my senators every day now. That’s just become part of the routine. I email, I call, I cry.

I’m yet to get a response, and one of my senators is the head of the Democratic party. Senior leader my ass. Leader to whom, Chuck??

I haven’t been doing a lot of public writing recently, because it all comes back to this. My days come back to this. My grief comes back to this. I don’t want to feel helpless, but in a world controlled by Who Has The Bigger Bomb, what power do any of us have if our collective voices do nothing to sway those who have their finger(s) on the big red button?

I watched Oppenheimer in November and had to scream into a pillow immediately afterward. Because it did destroy the world. And now we have to rebuild it, aware of our capacity for devastation.

Eisenhower warned us, he told us to stop, he told the American people that the military industrial complex would only pick up steam, he told us to make sure other ventures made money. And, like Washington's speech warning of the two-party system before him, we called him a War Hero and continued doing the very thing he asked us not to.

And for a while, it felt like tech might be a salvation for the dying American manufacturing industries. But oops! Elon Musk is now more senior than some of the Joint Chiefs in terms of Pentagon delegations due to his control of Starlink satellites and his backdoor communications with Russia that definitely don’t seem super suspicious and weird. After all, when have the Russians sought to flatter Westerners in order to gain influence in political spheres?

(Do we think the KGB feels a biiig “he just…tweeted it out” vibe re: intelligence leaks at Mar A Lago? They’ve had spies on the ground for decades and it took Ramona Singer like five minutes and a golf club membership to get the exact plot coordinates of how many submarines?)

I know I don’t elect the Joint Chiefs either but jeeeeeezy creezy do I not want those guys having to “check with Elon” before making promises to our allies. Feels bad! Seems ominous!!!

I’m trying to live in reality, which is something that I struggle with because I’m a textbook Child Of Alcoholics and when you don’t get a regulated nervous system during childhood it continues to have compounding effects later in life. But beyond that, it’s soooo much more convenient to live in the lie.

To not have to examine. To not feel beholden. To not feel guilt.

But being Human, and An Adult means not getting to avoid the inconvenience of reality.

When I first learned about The Holocaust, there is an assurance that “we” didn’t know what was happening. We didn’t know about the camps. If we had we would have been interventionists sooner, right? If we had, there would have been public outrage and moral panics…right?

We know what’s happening in Gaza. We are seeing it. We are scrolling by it. There is nowhere to hide from the truth, we carry it around with us in our pockets.

I don’t want to feel helpless. I don’t want to feel unheard by my elected officials because I’m demanding they acknowledge the truth, let alone the fact that their inaction is directly causing death. Their lack of public dissent over what the democratic president is doing in bypassing them to send another $147.5 million dollars in weapons and “aid” to Israel is appalling.

We live in a democracy, so they better start acting like it!!!

I refuse to continue living life as per usual because this is not normal. The world has been in a lot of pain for a long time, but this is the most bare and broken I’ve felt it be. I’m doing a lot of reflecting on my own habits, and my values in terms of consumption (conspicuous or otherwise) in an attempt to determine the things I need and the values I am willing to fight for. It feels more urgent than ever to have a deep sense of what the purpose of my contributions are.

And I am willing to fight for humanity, because I think it’s incredible. We all just decided that the best way to bring in a New Year was to kiss. Otters hold hands so they don’t drift away while they sleep, but humans do it because we want to be even closer when we’re walking down the sidewalk. Adorable for adorables sake, I tell you!!

(I’m trying to stay focused and not go off on a rant about the smug centrists I keep coming across who are like, “Don’t let people tell you this isn’t complicated because what are we going to do about Israel in a one-state solution.” are just policing other peoples questions and therefore are worse than useless because they’re distracting my rage from its actual targets: those in power.

Also yeah, sure, “it’s complicated” but I prefer to say the SOLUTIONS are complicated rather than emphasizing that complicated situations don’t…have solutions. Humans are the world’s most brilliant engineers (apologies to Beavers, your dams are also very good. And Lord Bees! Your honeycombs aren’t bad, either) and we can’t craft a solution? I have more faith in us!!!)

(I am also SICK of people policing each others responses because ACAB includes the cop inside your head babes!)

Americans should have been known as the world’s best diplomats. The Marshall Plan is like the one thing that makes me feel like that was the plan, at some point. Instead, we have Biden, a president who’s really there because he was the “least risky” option but who has appointed bullshit donors and surrogates with no foreign policy experience to Diplomatic positions in greater numbers than any of his predecessors. Because when I think of level-headed Americans who I want dealing with our most sensitive negotiations with Japan, I want famously level-headed former Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who is definitely not infamous for his retaliatory tactics like mailing rotted fishheads to his political rivals.

In 2024, I’d like to spend the entire time living in reality. I would like to figure out how to make my values align all the way down. Yes, even if that means giving up chocolate, or coffee, or my iPhone. I’m willing to do it, because I think that I don’t ever want comfort that comes at the expense of suffering. That is not comfort, that is making me complicit in a cycle without my explicit consent. It’s not up to individuals to decide these things btw, it should be up to the government to have regulation (AND OVERSIGHT) that ensures that we, the regular degular consumers, don’t have to worry about the labor conditions that the workers who picked our vegetables were under. We should be able to trust that they were good (humane even!) but instead, both houses of Congress are much more focused on insider trading and election fundraising and ipso facto none of us can safely eat romaine lettuce anymore. UH OH!!

This isn’t nihilistic of me, btw. Or, at least, I hope it’s not coming off that way. I have hope for the institutions that we created for a better purpose, if we can root out corruption they have every chance in the world of coming back stronger than ever before.

To solve things we have to identify the problems first. A big part of the problem is corruption, but unfortunately “drain the swamp” was co-opted by theeee most corrupt occupant of the Oval Office in history so we can’t use that one. Right idea, wrong messenger, gotta try again.

I don’t expect 2024 to be an easy year. In fact, if I’m living a truthful life that does not shy away from grief in any form, it might be one of the hardest. But I refuse to believe that there is no possibility of a better future. I see the collective want, it’s so apparent. People are screaming it in the streets.

We know life doesn’t have to be this way.

So let’s make it so.

I am sending so much love and hope and strength to everyone in this new year. The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible is real, and it’s closer than ever before, even if it feels so far away and out of reach right now. This is the darkness, which means there will be a dawn if we can hold onto each other long enough.

So maybe this is midnight.

I can’t wait to see what the morning brings.