I should have been writing these last long weeks, but I have not. I found myself exhausted and quite to the point of stopping on the side of the road and just sitting down with my luggage like a worn out refugee fleeing the wars.

So much has been going on, for instance–two weeks ago I had a torn retina that had to be repaired which was a surreal adventure to say the least. And also I got James’ labs back from when we finally got to in to see a GI specialist and they are alarming. He may have a liver disease called NASH, which is a kind of stenosis of the liver and is very serious. It may even be life-threatening. I cannot know this however because I haven’t talked to anyone from the office and, as I expected, no one has called me so far today to discuss the results. It is my hope that he does not have this disease and that the reason his liver enzymes are all over the place as they have been for months is that he has a gallstone. This was discovered when he was in the hospital last July and as this new GI specialist said he should have been referred to a surgeon as soon as he got out of the hospital, I’m doubly hoping this is the case. But he was not referred out in a surgeon. There were so many other things going on that I forgot about his gallbladder and when James did see a GI specialist last September (who could not follow him because he could not take his insurance) that guy dropped the ball, either because he did not have the records from the hospital or because he did not read them I do not know–he has since retired. In any case I’m hoping that James’ liver will prove to be OK after his gallbladder situation is taken care of.

That’s all the housekeeping I care to do right now. We are hanging together body and soul so things are mostly OK and I have discovered, anew it’s always anew isn’t it?, that I have to be a sapling instead of an iron rod. I have been kicking and screaming and fighting back against reality–the reality of James, the reality of my brother, the reality of life just not being easy OK it sucks laws of physics I hate the toasters I hate the ovens I hate the plants that refuse to grow. All that stuff. I must bend before the wind I must bend into the rain I must bend low to touch my lips to the earth and say thank you thank you I am alive for another day it may be a painful one but at least I am alive for another day. And that just about sums up what’s going on with my mental health.

Two weeks ago I decided to watch THE ZONE OF INTEREST. Now I never watch Holocaust movies or movies to do with American slavery or the American Indians or anything that might upset me I already know enough thank you very much do I really need to feel guilty or horrified about how horrible I and all other people are? But I heard a review of this movie and that everything was done pretty much with sound and so I decided I could handle that which I did do. It was OK. I didn’t fall apart. Except maybe I really did fall apart and I just… which is (thank you very much, captain Kirk) that I needed it to be graphic and disturbing instead of mostly done with sound… that the beauty, the accomplishment of the film makers, was to make it even worse because it had been stripped of the visual element. For the most part. In any case it was a highly effective film and I found myself sort of maybe torn to pieces by the fact that the German people…What, come again?

I’ve always had this question about the German people and how it all happened and why it all happened but I’d never seen or read anything at least not in many many years about how… I don’t know how to explain it without spoiling this movie. But if you are planning on seeing the movie I’m sure that you will know already that it is basically about this little Shangri-La where the head of the concentration camp at Auschwitz and his wife and their children live surrounded by the ovens and the screams and the smoke, the constant constant smoke. And that was the thing that got me the most was how in the hell can you be living in a situation like that and ignore it? But it was even worse than that. The wife knew exactly what was going on and still felt that she was living in an absolute paradise. It boggles the imagination because it wasn’t that long ago and she is pretty much the same as I am really, completely immersed in her domesticity, happy in her garden and her little pool for the children her plants her greenhouse her servants. How very boggling and bizarre.

,,,

So my brain settled into the aftermath of watching the film and I wanted to know more and so I find myself as of yesterday reading a book, and when I say reading I almost always mean listening, to now a book called APPEASEMENT by Tim Bouverie. It is basically about the world trying to appease the Germans after Hitler came to power, to hold off the war as long as possible. It is an erudite book–the author assumes that you already know everything you need to know to dive into the book so if you are not a history buff I don’t recommend this to you at all. It was, I think, well-reviewed although I must say I depended mostly upon the New York Times to do that reviewing for me. The reader of the audio book has very soft squishy S’s which made me a little nuts at first, but after settling in I am learning so much. So very much. And I’m quite excited about it and I’m having to make sure that I don’t read too much of it every day because I’m also reading, drum roll please, Ursula K Le Guin for the first time.–THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS.

This, as it happens, is a new campaign to take a deep dive into classic and maybe not so classic science fiction that I have never read. I’m astonished by how amazing her writing is just super superb shall I say literary? It is easy to follow clear beautifully stated I am enjoying it so far very much. I also just finished the classic Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I really liked it, but didn’t love it as I did the Martian Chronicles which I am still in love with.

Last week I read Jonathan Haidt’s THE ANXIOUS GENERATION. This was pretty difficult. If you have no interest in psychology or moral philosophy this book will still speak to you if you have children or are interested in the sociological atmosphere/history unfolding around you in these oh so postmodern times. Haidt argues in his book that giving kids smartphones, as differentiated from flip phones, in or around the year 2010, and the advent of Instagram in 2014, precipitated a kind of rewiring of the intellects and lives of children. It’s a big book with big ideas and maybe even bigger solutions offered at its end, and it’s hard for me to say exactly how I feel about it because I haven’t gotten to discuss it with anyone yet. I was counting on my husband to read it at the same time but he has gotten mired up in some Harry Potter fan fiction.

I will say that reading about girls being caught up on social media as tweens was in some ways excruciating for me. I didn’t have Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat or Tick Tock or whatever but what I did have were fashion magazines and I poured over these as a true disciple to the perfect girls I found there. It wasn’t long until I at 13 bemoaned the fact that the tops of my thighs touched each other when I walked, or the softness of my belly, or why doesn’t everybody think I’m as beautiful as I think I am? Which may be what saved me in some ways because I did find myself beautiful even if no one else told me that I was except for my father, thank you, Daddy. What was excruciating is knowing that I don’t think I would have survived my teen years if I were hooked up to Instagram and we’re looking at image after image after image after image after image all day long of perfect girls, girls are deemed to be perfect. (And I must add here that I realized after reading this book that I have been influenced, that is to say I have fallen under the influence of the YouTube influencers–this is the source I feel of my quest for perfection. I’ve gotten into watching lots of things aimed toward “perfection” even if it’s just the innocuous video about the “perfect” capsule wardrobe. It started with capsule wardrobes I watched so many videos about capsule wardrobes and built my own and became obsessed with it on and off for years really. But then I moved on to other things to the point that I was watching housekeeping porn without even realizing it).

Haidt also has a lot to say about children’s play in his book or rather the lack of real play. You will be familiar with this concept if you’re a boomer like me, the last year of the boomers 1964 thank you very much, or a member of Gen. Z for the most part. We got to go outside and play we remember being outside and playing until our moms called us to come into the house. According to Haidt this free roaming pliaying that we took for granted has gone out of the world for so many of American children… and  think this is true in other parts of the civilized…did I say civilized? wow spank my hands… industrialized world. During the 90s there was a higher crime rate and this accounts for some of it ,but there was also a lot of hysteria around the imaginary kidnappings of children that were immortalized on TV shows and TV movies and in newspapers and all sorts of stories about recovered memory if you were alive during that time you know what I’m talking about and you may remember the kid “Adam” who was supposedly beheaded the parents were devastated they made a movie about it and as far as I know now that’s not even true, not a true story I’ll have to look that one up myself in any case my point is you remember the 90s and how we began to be more careful with our children. I asked Roslin yesterday when it was that she started going and climbing through the…… I don’t know what to call them they’re little waterways/concrete ditches that run all throughout Brainerd built in the 30s by the WPA (there’s so history for you!) and she used to go back and hike through them. I figured she started that when she was 10 years old or so but she said at 7 years old so there you go she says she did it as often as she could get away with it. I didn’t worry about my kids all the time. But I may be rosying up that a little bit because I probably did worry about them all the time because I was certainly worried about everything else.

Digress much? Good grief. Bringing up all the stuff about free play made me remember how difficult it was for me to play with other kids unless it was one-on-one. I remember a long string, really an endless string of sleepovers but when it came to group play i.e. out on the playground or whatever I didn’t do so well I never did well in sports I didn’t even wanna do sports to me the goal of a ball in a sport is to be hit by it. So I was scared of balls, pretty much scared of other kids. One-on-one I was brilliant and I had lots of friends but in groups… I still remember Red Rover as a kind of torture that was meant to weed out the weak kids so that they could be beaten up or eaten after the game was over. So the parts about free range kids playing with each other and working things out on their own without an adult supervising everything was a little hard for me and as some critics have pointed out there are plenty of parents who do not have the option of just letting their kids go outside. Still I do get what he is saying some autonomy is good for kids maybe even a lot of autonomy. If I had it to do over I would have my toddlers folding their own laundry and I don’t say that as a joke I mean seriously they’re capable of doing it picking up their own toys bringing dishes to the kitchen all sorts of things they’re capable of doing. And I definitely would not give a smartphone to my kids. And never allow them on social media if I could possibly keep them off of it.

And Haidt Points out that things are poised to get a lot worse very soon with AI and things like goggles and headsets and virtual reality. It was an overwhelming read. I’m glad i read it. I wish that all parents would read it and take it seriously, but i don’t expect this to happen, and as one reviewer pointed out Jonathan Haidt is in for a lot of grief for writing this book. This review in NATURE pretty much shuts him down. This review in the NYT calls for careful consumption. The Guardian considers this an “anxious and essential read,” and I agree as I said. But I wouldn’t claim that it sits entirely comfortably with me–something is thin about his arguments. Not enough “proof” as the Nature reviewer points out. But really, this is all “just-now” and how, then, can we know much about it?

If I base things on ME, then I can say with no doubt that having a phone physically on my person (or on the table beside me, the bed, the purse) poises me to grab it for a look. This is sometimes almost involuntarily. And in my classes–well, I called it crotch typing. And as for the effects of social media on myself, I speak of them above. But all this is based on my OWN experience which is not something that we can base much upon. Except–when you see how a really little kid reacts to a screen–if you’ve actually been around it. Well, your skin might crawl if you stayed off your own phone long enough to watch.

I am so tired right now. I haven’t really done anything today but read and draw a little bit but I’m exhausted and I am looking forward to bed. On Thursday I have an epidural in my neck which I am desperate for and I really really hope works. I have a hair appointment tomorrow and God only knows what else will happen this week. Oh–getting my retina checked.

Onward and upward,