The Art Project Part Two and my Whiny Week

 

My lunch today consisted of a double serving of mashed potatoes and gravy from Kentucky Fried Chicken and it felt decadent to indulge in a classic comfort food. Don't judge. I deserved it after the week I've had since my last post. I got rid of all the pain in my arm and hand and replaced it with a nasty head cold and a hacking cough that makes my insides feel so sore that I've considered the possibility I broke a rib with all the non-stop coughing I've been doing to bring up green, chunky mucus and phlegm. Too my information? That's what someone told me here at my continuum care complex. And I didn't even say it during a meal time. I live with a bunch of wimps! 

I got a haircut today and my hairdresser says they're calling it the 100 day cough and, god, I hope it doesn't last that long. I've managed to avoid getting sick all winter long and with 72 residents plus staff all around me passing the flu, colds and Covid back and forth it hasn't been easy. I'm really careful not to touch elevator buttons with my finger tips (I use my knocks) and I wash my hands the minute I enter my apartment. I keep my fingers out of my eyes and mouth and use the hand sanitizer stations whenever I walk by them. I also don't eat food offered off other people's plates which bothers me all the time but grosses me out during cold and flu season! But when my bone doctor put me on the 20 mg of prednisone as part of his diagnostic process it must have lower my immunity system (as the package insert warns can happen) because I finally got the crud with side serving of a UTI. Thankfully, the UTI got resolved with a $24 E-Visit at the doctor's website and a three day round of magic pills. 

Still, it was a successful week in terms of the art project---the Artist Handmade Book I finished it up today, on the last day of class. One person was missing because she had a "cold." Oops! and I really felt bad because she probably got it from me but she's always trading food off other people's plates so who really knows for sure? So far she's the only one I had close contact with who has gotten sick. This week I did eat my meals as take-outs or just soup in my room and didn't go to a couple of lectures but I can't keep that up for 100 days so I'll official join the choir of "cougher" who walk around with a pocket full of cough drops and X-Kleenex. Ya, I would avoid sitting next to me too. Logic might tell you that I'm past the contagious stage but the eyes sometimes overrule what logic has to say about whatever.

Art project: Since I moved to this continuum care complex I've written a bunch of poems about life here and I've been wanting to put them in a book form. But I had no idea that a class advertised as "learn to experiment with different materials" would turn in a serendipitous marriage of art and writing. A couple of my sick days were spent playing around with fonts sizes and fonts styles, then printing all my poems out on good paper. As I explained in another post, we started with a large sheet of rag paper and acted like kindergartners slopping watercolors every which way, then turning it over and doing the same thing on the back side. Our next class we be learned how to cut and fold the sheet of paper to form a book that opens up accordion-style. I made a little sampler since then just so I'd remember how to do the folding and cutting because it's so simple, its complicated and if you don't cut in the right place the accordion doesn't work. 

Between the second and the third class I cheated and went ahead and cut my poems up and pasted them on the pages and fell in love with the stupid little five by six inch book that came together. The professor liked it enough that she asked me if I'd make her a photocopy of the book so she can share it in her European workshops this summer. I don't know how I feel about having a random photocopy floating around when I'm still trying to figure out how to make it into a real book. I know, I'm a control freak. But is it so wrong to want to be the one who decides where and who gets to see my poems? And I choose you guys for this bird's eye preview. ©

 

Showing how the book opens

 

A couple of my poems:

 

The Side Table 

 

It’s a billboard screaming

an old person lives here ---

nail clippers, a forgotten mug,

a big button remote

with a crossword puzzle

next to a magnifying glass,

a shoe horn, eye drops and

and a potato chip

that lost its bag a week ago.

Cluttered chair-side tables

talk and tell stories

to our La-Z-Boys

who don’t care if they’re

partners in this classic

display of old people gear.  © JR

 

 

At Eighty

 

In the so-called Golden Years

It takes a long time to stay alive

with all the specialists to see

and pills to count.

Then there’s the memories

that want to escape

while we’re still trying

to build new ones with

classes and books

and friends old and new.

 

In the so-called Golden Years

we try not to linger on the losses

and there are many---

careers

good friends and family,

skill sets and bodily functions.

We laugh, we cry and compare

old people thrills and chills

while counting

each day we wake up as a bonus. © JR

 

Living the Entitled Life

What is wrong with people? What is wrong with me? Don’t answer that just yet because I’m going on a rant and I’ll give you my opinion on the matter first, then it's your turn. The other day I happened to sit next to a guy on campus who I try to avoid and I’ve been doing an excellence job of it until now…nearly a whole year since he first told me on an elevator that Covid would be gone as soon as the Democrats are out of office because they made the whole thing up. That was his excuse for not following the mask mandate that my continuum care complex had for all public places at the time.

He thinks we’re friends now because he joined the creative writing group and because he wrote a self-published book and I said some nice things about it. Sincere things because I don’t care if a 350 page book is vanity press it truly is an accomplishment and a commitment to put that many words downs on paper, sent them off to a printer and be able to hold the results in your hands. It’s an autobiography with a very impressive sepia tone front cover photo that makes him look like a Founding Father with his neatly trimmed white beard and stately posture, and he’s donated a copy to our campus library. He hired an editor to correct punctuation and spelling but not to touch the content. I found this out because he said when he gave a copy to a friend to read the friend reported back that Mr. DNR (department of natural resources) told the same story seven times in his book and I remarked that a good editor should have caught that. “Oh, no,” he replied, “it cost more to have the editor work on the content. I got the punctuation and spelling package only.” I didn’t say it but I’m thinking that editing out that much duplicated material would have dropped the printing costs down enough to offset the content editing service package. 

As we sat next to one another the topic of fishing came up---we were eating it at the time---and how he thinks it’s a crime that the Native Americans have exclusive rights to fish for a certain species of fish in the Great Lakes and they are using commercial fishing boats with huge nets---all because of a treaty written back in the 1800s. “They should be making them fish with canoes and dipping nets like they did back in the 1800s when the treaty was signed!” 

This guy is a NRA super supporter, a Trump Maga Republican and he put up a terrible fuss when he found out this place is a gun free campus. His Second Amendment rights gives him the right to move a cruise missile into his apartment if he wants one, he said, and “You’d all be happy I have my guns if a mass shooter tries to charge the place! I could pick him off from my balcony.” This conversation took place back before this complex was even built, at one of their marketing parties and the sales manager offered to give him and his wife back their deposit because the no guns rule is firm: he and his gun collection could not move in. Mr. DNR claims he gave all his guns to his sons to comply but I doubt that. I remembered all this when the guy mentioned the canoes and dipping nets and I wanted to ask him is he believed the Second Amendment should limit gun owners to musket and balls type guns like they had back when the Constitution was written. But I didn’t ask. We were eating dinner and it wasn’t a situation where either one of us could walk away. 

I told myself after the first creative writing session that I’d try to be open-minded about this guy but at dinner he told me he’s dropping out of the group because of Chatty Cathy---the song writer. “She interrupted me several times and others, too, and I can’t abide that.” “I know,” I replied, “I think she might have impulse control issues because of the stroke she had” and he said, “I don’t believe that. You could see she wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking about what she wanted to say next.” He told me to let him know if she drops out and then he’ll come back. "I will," I told him but in the back of my petty little mind I was cheering the fact that I won’t have to play nice with a Maga Republican in the creative writing group.

I said at the beginning I was going to rant out an answer to what is wrong with people and I guess I should keep my word. What is wrong with people is we can justify illogical thinking when it benefits us personally. And this guy’s attitude regarding the fishing rights of Native Americans vs his own right to own any kind of modern weaponry he wants is a perfect example of living an entitled life where the rules of logic and ethics are applied unevenly to serve the selfishness of oneself. And to serve my own selfishness I lied when I promised to call him if Chatty Cathy bails out of the Creative Writing Group. I was so happy I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep the smile off my face.   ©

 * photo from the GLIFWC website