The Third Reality

 I've become a bit of a news junkie, just waiting for the Orange Caligula to get his cumuppance.  

Which it looks likwwillnever happen.

My significant other, while he is a gentleman AND a gentle, loving man, is also a (gasp! clutch da pearls!) Conservative, and consumes a lot of Right Wing media, so while I consume Joy Reid's The ReidOut show on YouTube and Brian Tyler Cohen's No Lie podcast as well as the more mainstream Comedy Central Daily Show and Jon Stewart's The Problem With, in addition to my mainstay, NPR, I believe that Fox News is being sued and Biden has been our President since November of 2020.  I believe that the insurrection on January 6th of that year was an act of treason, and I want Orange Caligula in PJs that match his complexion, and jingling chains.  I want him charged with treason.

But when you tune into Fox news, "Trump is doing great!  Etc!"  It's bizarro world.  Republicans, apparently, just MAKE SHIT UP THAT THEY WISH WAS TRUE AND THEN DECIDE TO BELIEVE IT WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT.  This involves all methods of denial, including violence, all forms of bullshit schoolyard argument, including "I'm rubber and you're glue", "I know you are but what am I", "Nuh-uhhh!" of endless denial until the bell rings, and just bald face lying.  Living in an alternate universe adjacent to our own, Republicans cheerfully look down on us with the righteous condescention of the hyper-religious, and this is no coincidence; Republicans are deeply entwined with the hyper-religious, as long as they also embrace scary racism.

I started to wonder: Hey, what if EACH of us just decided to live in our own made-up reality?  What would mine look like?

A small herd of blue butterflies brings me my tea tray each morning with reports of the ongoing biome restorations around our precious globe.  The Gaia Reports are the Number One popular news report internationally and nationally!  Our Elder Councils (staffed not only solely by women from Origin Nations around the world who also must have the qualification of being grandmothers, or grandmother age) head the Gaia Councils, who also form the next generation Gaian Guardian Educations and Trainings, which have by popularity combined with scouts and other youth programs and grown in schools as well.  Recently a program to begin integrating small farming interests with golf course lands (and ultimately replacing them) has been very successful, providing employment, youth programs and healthy food for surrounding communities.

That's where mine STARTS.  But I am a fecund LIAR and I can go ON...

Dog Magic

 There are no Odds with glio blastoma.

As the cold-eyed surgeon tod me, off-handedly, over his shoulder, from his computer desk, "This cancer recurs one-hundred percent of the time."

While I quipped back,

"Never tell me the odds," the joke fell flat in the face of science.

When I plug my arrays into my cancer machine to get Blue Light Time, as Optune users will know it by, and when the tumer treating fields are working and killing the cancer cells in the brain through use of the remarkable machine that is now the only, that I know of, proven therapy in use against this terminal brain cancer, I know I am doing my one job on earth now.  But even when I am plugged in, getting my blue light time and doing my job, it's difficult to master my thoughts, which tend to wander toward the negative and lead me down the spiral staircase into depression and anxiety.

Terminal cancer is a negative future, but this is not just terminal cancer.  It's also a future of unpredictable neurological deterioration.  this cancer robs, rabdomly, sight, speech and language comprehension, ambulation, recognition of loved ones, and other neurological functions.  It's not if, but when.  100% guaranteed.

This should light a fire under me to finish my novels, rather than actvating a wierd freeze response of a writer's block.  But it has.

Though recently, magic has happened on another front.

I got a dog!

I talked about this forever.

I've co-owned many with my boyfriend Jim, but never had a dog of my very own, and wanted one for most of my life.

I finally could not not do it any longer, and the impulse took over; I think a visit to the dog park pushed me over the edge.  I happened to witness a burly, neck-tattooed dude nuzzling his long-haired chiguagua and bathing in the bliss of the moment, and I burst into tears.  "I need that!"  I cried out to myself.  The next day I was at Foothills Animal Shelter meeting George, a twelve-pound miniature poodle, and Jim and I brought him home the next day.  

It was two days later when I had the blue light on and George on my chest, nuzzling me, in bed that it hit me: we were both out of our prisons.

Most of the time I plug in, turn on the blue light and put most of my effort into not thinking negative thoughts and trying to soothe my feelings without turning to alcohol or Atavan, which I need to save for my MRI visits.  The cold, hard future of 100% guarantee decline and death is a kind of prison.

 George is no longer in that concrete and steel cell at the shelter waiting to go who-knows-where? Seems to me, in that way, we are both out of jail.  When he snuggles me, this little being covered in stinky white curls demanding my attention and letting me know he wants his collar off for the night and a nice scratch around the neck afterward (our after-potty and before-light's-out ritual)I get a rush of endorphin bliss and peace of heart that I haven't had in what feels like centuries.  The emotional comfort I get from his affection, from his mere presence is impossible to describe.  Just the act of making his half hard-boiled egg and two Tablespoons of brown rice breakfast while I make my own breakfast has a soothing effect on my heart.  I never would have thought that the extra effort of braving our slippery, freezing, terrifying deck steps with my cane, my paralyzed left side and an untrained dog on a leash would be so fulfilling, but it IS.  Down AND back up on my hands and knees.  

It's been a rocky transition with George showing aggression toward our super-mellow tripod Labarador retriever Leo, who shruggs it off like a Buddhist monk, and our poor Lucille, a tortie Queen cat, who bolts back off into the cold rain but returns to snack and hide under Jim's bed when I keep George in the back of the house. This is deeply distressing to me.  I was pretty close with Lucille, and now I've betrayed her.

George has a hair-trigger response to the very sight of her.  It's horrible.  I can't stay ahead of it.  It's also distressing to Jim.  I'm hoping it won't be long before Jim can be holding Lucille and I can be holding George while we're in the same room, mellow and quiet.  We got there with Leo.

But I am expecting, or asking, a lot, very quickly from George.  Fresh out of prison and I'm asking him to hold an audience with the Queen.    

George got me out of jail. And he keeps me out. And that's a LOT.