Contains: mental health topics, including seeking emergency help.
I’m back to work tomorrow, and I’m terrified. I was hoping that a full 4 weeks of vacation would bring me back that vigor, that ambition, that I-can-do-all-the-things-and-be-calm-about-it feeling that I felt two years ago, after hiking the West Coast Trail.
I felt alive. I wanted to wake up in the morning and take on the day. I used my bullet journal extensively, even starting each morning by writing in it on the porch with my coffee. I wanted – expected – to have that feeling back by now. Not that productivity is the goal of vacation, but… it would have felt nice.
Then I read this comic by ADHD Alien (original post)
and hoo-boy that sounds familiar. I’ve been in the “quitting” stage for a good half-year now, in one way or another. Burnout is what brought me to the hospital, about a month before my vacation.
But of course, an inner voice tells me that relating to self-reported ADHD symptoms does not a diagnosis make. Since it’s gotten worse in the last few years (and I don’t remember it being this bad in childhood), it probably isn’t “legitimate” according to the DSM-5 and I am deficient – intellectually, morally – if I don’t pull my own shit together. And even if I do deserve to claim a disability, if i don’t internalize that comic right now and fix my ways, then I’m just being willfully useless.
Out loud, now, Rosie: “That is bullshit.” Another thing I struggle with is calling out the inner narrative when it criticizes me. I’d rather appease “them” by going along with the bullshit, to my own self-detriment, until I can’t anymore and I can point to myself and say “look at what you did to me” than push back. So even writing that down was a small act of injury, which I took in order to practice calling bullshit (and believing myself when I do). I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do. Some inner voices don’t deserve to see the light of day.
So I really, really hope that that PEI takes action on the 1000-patient psychiatric waiting list that I’m on. But if the 5 years I’ve been on the 4-year-long family doctor waiting list is any indication, it’ll be a little while.
I’ll get back into the swing, but I might have to take it slow. Assistance, as described in the comic above, would be appreciated.
YYC (Calgary) has these cute little shuttle buses that take you between the different terminals. I almost got this posted in the time it took to get from terminal C to A (Alex’s gate to my gate).
Continuing Peter’s work on hooking up FreshRSS with Drupal to “like” posts, I wanted to do the same on my WordPress site. Knowing nothing about FreshRSS nor WordPress, and unable to peer into the FreshRSS database (the .sqlite file is encrypted?), I went the route (lol) less travelled by, and coded a FreshRSS plugin. Hey, turns out I didn’t need much MVC framework, once I grokked how the CustomCSS plugin worked.
I’m too tired to include a full walkthrough, because I’ve been at this since 8am. Here’s the code on Github. I had to hack FreshRSS so that it fired a hook after a successful “favourite”. I also noticed that poetry wasn’t showing up well on FreshRSS because of a workaround from five years ago, so I submitted my first blogging-related pull request.
After reading Ton’s description of setting up a network of test sites, I did my debugging on a pair of test subdomains. The sites that have been “Liking” each other all day are Crowley and Aziraphale. 😈😇
After getting frustrated with Commafeed and its refusal to actually refresh, I finally got FreshRSS installed. I insisted on making a subdomain (rss dot lefaive dot ca) and it took embarrassingly long to get configured correctly. (You have to add a CNAME record with the registrar as well as make and enable a vhost, and then make sure that the root directory is readable by your webserversheesh Rosie what were you thinking).
@thecomichunter has a permanent 2-for-1 sale on used comics, so on Friday I found two Volumes 1 of series I haven’t read, that were both priced at $9.99.
The Wicked + The Divine. Vol. 1, The Faust Act. Image Comics.
I’ve been meaning to read this comic for a while, since I heard it was captivating, “Gaimanesque,” and non-cis-white-hetero-dude-centric. But every damn time I walked into the comic book store, I forgot it’s dang name. Cue (at least 4 times): “Do you have The Sacred and The Profane. Or something like that? The Cursed and the Blessed?Angels and Demons?!” But then (when I finally found Vol 1) I got cold feet, because it looked awfully violent and it had a kind of cheesy premise:
Every ninety years twelve gods return as young people. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are all dead. It’s happening now. It’s happening again.
Back cover, Vol. 1
But I gave it a shot, and oh gods I’m so glad I did. “Set my heart aflame” all right. If I were to “8th-grade-book-report” this [source, and what I’m actually referring to as told by Tufekci and Ellis], I’d say the theme is the difference between agency and power. As Baal says at the beginning of Issue 4,
“We don’t get to change anything. We get to change you, and then you choose what to do with it.”
page not numbered
In today’s world of “influencer gods” (and if you know me, Tufekci and Ellis are core to my own personal pantheon), attention and admiration is a form of power, but under The Algorithms it’s a power to keep doing that thing you’re doing that pleases the masses. Pleases, and maybe shapes. Can the millions of rabid fans of Natalie Wynn and Oliver Thorn actually change the world? Stop global warming, implement UBI, and abolish property? Maybe, if we get our fucking act together. But those “gods” can’t do it on their own.
Back to the book. When I say it is non-cis-white-hetero-dude centric, I mean there are maaaayyybe two named characters who fit that description, but barely get any lines. Basically everybody is female, and has a ton of power, and it’s great. And when they talk about sex (and they do, a lot) it’s because rock-star-power (often) includes being a sex god, and they own it. They are gooooorrrgeoooouuuss but their bodies are never played up for a (presumed straight male) reader to gaze at. If you like women dressed as Bowie, though, you might want to find a towel. Why am I going on about this? I’ll get there…
Our audience-insert (and Faustian) character is Laura, a teen girl who drops out of school to be a groupie. This is such a departure from how other comic books (and society in general) have treated this stereotype of rabid super-fan, and the concept of female fandom in general. That was refreshing, though (spoilers!) I get the feeling that she’s “more than” the normal teenager that she seems.
I’m terrible at reviews, but here are some stray thoughts:
I did not get all the musical references, but a quick bit of Googling made Laura and Luci’s first conversation a little bit clearer. Apparently they have an accompanying #wicdiv playlist? Makes me feel a little bit better about including an audio suggestion in my last college paper.
I was tickled by how Laura was portrayed at being bad at research (“oh god no don’t make me go to page 2 of google”) before being ribbed about it by a woman with a Masters’ degree (“Little Miss My-first-search-engine”). Info literacy ftw!
“1-2-3-4” is super cute motif and I wish I could work it in here somehow. Oh. Heh.
The art was amazing, the use of panels and space and eyeflow and “camera” angles was quite excellent.
In contrast:
Ex Machina. Book 1: The First Hundred Days. DC Comics.
I liked Brian K. Vaughan’s work in Saga, though to be honest I got a bit bored because it felt like it was going nowhere, and quit reading a while ago. This was quite different, and, sigh, I think I’ll quit reading now.
Other reviewers took issue with the scale of the narrative and the presence (or lack thereof) of New York City as a character in its own right. I can agree, though am not an expert storyteller and did not pick up on those myself. But it just seems like it’s not a story worth sticking around for.
Premise: A civil engineer gets superpowers from a mysterious probably-alien object and becomes Magneto-for-all-things-mechanical. After a short misguided career as a vigilante, “The Great Machine” hangs up the helmet and becomes mayor of New York City. Oh, this engineer is a straight white cis het dude. So, classic power fantasy meets reality makes this a “modern” comic. He has to deal with an attempted assassination, a couple of murders during a blizzard, and a publicity debacle including racially-charged artwork at a publically-funded museum. His attempts at getting involved usually just screw things up more, and supporting characters actually solve all the narrative’s problems. Yet this is somehow his story – of how hard it is to rule a city that doesn’t want to be governed, when you have to consider so much more than yourself. *eyeroll*. There’s also a bunch of casual racism, homophobia, ableism, and misogyny. We usually say “it didn’t age well” but you know what? It was hurtful then too. Oh, I promised to get back to the male gaze, but I really don’t want to. It’s there. It’s gross.
The art feels claustrophobic, which is uncomfortable but suits the theme, and interestingly? the fun-shit-in-the-back-of-the-comic-book shows how they created the storyboards using photographs of actors, then illustrated based on that. It’s lifelike, I guess, but feels creatively constrained, and ends up looking a little tableau-ish.
The Black character was cast as a white actor.
So I guess it embodies its own theme, of the challenges faced by well-intentioned white guys when trying to fix “the great machine” of society on their own, without interrogating how the machine works, who it runs for, or whether mechanical determinism is a good metaphor for society in the first place.
[Edited because I didn’t want to stand behind the phrase “it didn’t age well”.]
I am writing this on the traditional and present homeland of the L’nui Mnikukand Epekwitk First Nations. Under the Peace and Friendship Treaties, this territory – as part of Mi’kma’ki – was never surrendered, and is still Mi’kmaq land.
Ton, you asked “what was the import” of the paragraph like that in my last post, the one about the garden.
Short answer, it’s a territory acknowledgement. It’s a thing that’s become common in Canada at the beginning of a meeting or ceremony, to show our respect to the Indigenous Peoples who were here first, as part of the ongoing project of Reconciliation.
Also, what I just said is a steaming pile of bullshit.
Because territory acknowledgements are not reconciliation. They can be, and are in danger of becoming more frequently, an easy way to say you did something, while actually not doing anything at all. It’s a transposition of the Catholic ritual of absolution, a salve for the guilty white conscience. It lets us pat ourselves on the back. We did dun good. Chelsea Vowel (âpihtawikosisân) wrote an excellent analysis of this. So what’s the import? Is it just performative wokeness, a transaction for social capital in front of other Lefties?
This morning, trying not to get anything wrong, I read the texts of the Peace and Friendship Treaties (1752 and 1761-62) for the first time. In writing this post, I learned the Mi’kmaq name of the Lennox Island First Nation. By doing this I’m educating myself, realizing how much I don’t know.
It was 2010 when I saw this mural in Montreal: NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND.
I remember how uncomfortable it made me. I didn’t like how big and in-your-face it was. Stolen land? Isn’t that a bit harsh? What do they intend to gain by calling it that? Just make us feel guilty and shitty about something awesome like the Olympics? It’s too late now anyway, it’s happening. If land theft happened, it was so, so long ago. What are we supposed to do, just pick up and walk away from where we live?? Just… die??
When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released their report in 2015, they called (among other things) for educational institutions to be truthful about the history of Canada. I mean, according to my grade 8 social studies, history started in 1534 when Jacques Cartier was welcomed(!) by the Natives and developed right up till Canada became Canada in 1867. We didn’t learn about the Treaties. We didn’t learn about the Indian Act. We didn’t really learn about the harm done by Residential Schools. We didn’t learn about the 60’s Scoop, or the continued forced removal of indigenous children from their families. And of course we didn’t learn about the many ways in which Indigenous communities are currently being denied clean drinking water, health care, education, criminaljustice, acceptable housing, food security, self-determination, sovereignty over their land, and even a planet that can sustain human life. These are Treaty rights, Indigenous Rights, and Human Rights. But the idea that this country was and is built on strategies for wiping out ethnic groups i.e. genocide goes against our cultivated self-image as a smiling, multicultural, meritocracy.
For me, it all fell apart when I learned about the Doctrine of Discovery. I mean, I had kind of assumed that people could move to wherever they wanted to and make peace with (or take over from) whoever lived there. Isn’t that just human nature, back to the Roman Empire and before? Well, no. This 15th century Papal Bull, that says that non-Christians are non-people, gives Christian explorers the “right” to claim “un-exploited” land as their own. Which is what happened. Which led to settlers, the violent removal of Indigenous people, and a system of Deeds of Conveyance of land right up to the one I signed in “the year of our Lord [sic] Two Thousand and Sixteen.”
So when I cultivate a garden with European plants, on this “parcel of land lying and being part of Common Lot Number Thirteen in the Common of Charlottetown,” I am particularly conscious of how my life is a continuation of settler colonialism.
And I say it, because hearing others say it made me realize how much I had to learn. I learned from Indigenous activists, who are doing incredible work (and putting up with disgusting amounts of abuse). I learn from Elders, who I have been fortunate to hear speak at UPEI. I learn from friends, who have been doing this work for longer, and far better than I have.
I say the land acknowledgement because it makes me uncomfortable, and hopefully makes other settlers uncomfortable and start to question. The education piece has a long way to go.
But as Pam Palmater writes, land acknowledgements and self-education are not reconciliation. They’re the bare fucking minimum we should have been doing all along.
This post is being written on, and about my settler user of, unceded Mi’kmaq land. I am grateful to live here under the Peace and Friendship Treaties.
The garden’s coming along nicely. Parsley and genovese basil patches are finally perking back up, though we let them get too leggy before transplanting, and some of them show bleaching (leaves turning white). We’ve had delicious meals from them both. Sage, thyme, Thai basil, and rosie basil are happy little transplants. And the broccoli rabe (rapini) in rows 1 and 3 seem to be doing good! In row 2, sorrel and mâche are coming in, slowly.
A little story about mâche. The summer after I graduated high school, my Mom took me to Europe. We stayed in a little apartment in the Alps [Mom, if you remember what town it was I’ll mention it here] and discovered this weird little lettuce that came in tiny bunches at the grocery store. We wanted to eat healthy and also balance out the frozen apple strudel that one could also get at the same grocery store. It (the lettuce) was amazingly tasty, tender like no lettuce we’d had before, with a delicate rich nutty flavour that was balanced by a yogurt dressing. It was later, when we asked our friends about it, that they told us it was also called Rapunzel. As in, this was the lettuce in the Witch’s garden that the Rapunzel’s mom craved so much she had her husband steal which set off the whole darn fairy tale. This lettuce is that good.
So this is my witch’s garden, take 1. Happy solstice!
