Not the one where women were asked if they would rather be alone in a forest with a bear or an unknown man. The one where women overwhelmingly chose the bear. Not that made up bear.
I’m talking about the pretend bear breathing down your neck causing a “flight or fight” reaction.
For the record, my go to is “flight”. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes access “fight”.
How can you possibly manage anxiety if there really are bears? A lot of them. Not to mention, the bears that aren’t really bears don’t just go away.
I live in a fascist country where cruelty is the point. I mourn for the loss of lives and livelihood. And I’m bracing for when the dismantling of our democracy sucks us into that bleak hole.
I want to be comforted by the fact that I’m not alone, but I’m not. I am horrified. I don’t want this for anyone. I don’t want the world to suffer.
The bear doesn’t get any more real.
My job is a complete shit show that I don’t even have the energy to complain about. There is a runaway train headed right for us. It used to be about 100 miles away, but I’d say it’s half that now. Yet, I am still the only one who sees it. I’ve tried, y’all. I have tried. But they are choosing not to listen. I’m not quite as worried about this bleak hole of suckage, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a decent chance I will get sucked into it.
I’m old now. I don’t want any of this now. I am tired and I want my brain to leave me alone for a goddamn minute. For fuck’s sake. One fucking minute. I have
so much circling around in there that trying focus on one thing is like sticking your hand in a fan.
I force myself to participate in creativeness. I am taking improv classes. I have been performing at stand-up shows and open mics. Not a lot, but more than usual. I’d do more, but they’re always so fucking late. I want some blue plate special open mics. Show starts at 5:30 and everyone is home before 8:00.
I need to write more, but like I said, fan blades. I need to break out of this. This is my life. I am way past the middle part. Well, maybe not way past, but definitely past.
I really don’t have time to waste. I need to stick my hand in the fan.
Working on how.
I would support creating the Blue Plate Special Comedy Tour. Went to a comedy show last week and it took me two days to recover from the lateness.
My mind is in a strange place this morning reading this left me with the image of a bear on a stage telling jokes about scaring humans by jumping in front of them yelling “boo”.
Bears are tricky. Some of them come through here in the fall and leave big piles of poop on the road. Then there was the time my friend Everett went camping in Yosemite with a friend, and they planned to drop acid during their stay, so they concealed it by dropping liquid lsd on salad croutons, which they just packed with the rest of their food, which they tied into a bundle and tossed over a high tree branch at the end of a rope, just as the park rangers suggest.
And of course the bears pulled it down and ate them (the croutons) while they were asleep.
They didn’t stay. Now I wonder whether they inadvertently started a new bit of bear folklore: “Don’t eat the tie-dyed ones…”
Maybe we can run over the bears and get RFK Jr. to cook and eat them.