Why Not Just Let That Shit Go? Or, How Not To Be A Total Dick During A Pandemic

A bit blurry. I know. But hilarious nonetheless and a good image for today’s writing, #HeresMyButt

Stay-at-home/shelter-in-place, day one, and I have already gone out to go feed my cat.

This is the week that KWeeks and I are together; on alternating weeks, he is with his daughter. I have abandoned my kitty to stay with Khristian but go home daily to feed him wet food, love on him, remind him I will be home soon.

There were still cars on the road, but not many. There were still people walking around, but not many, and usually alone or in groups of two, close together so you can know that they live in the same household.

What there was a lot of, unusually for Hampden, was police cars. I passed five in the mile-and-a-half drive to my house. It’s not tanks down the streets, but it feels close to that.

This seems fitting, this sense of lowering doom, as this will be the last week that Khristian and I spend together for who knows how long. The perils of joint custody, I suppose, with me as the casualty.

Woe is me, right? I wonder how many other people are struggling with this and not saying anything. Divorced people who share custody of children but cannot bring themselves to be kind enough to fully disclose what happens in their houses, placing the kids, the custodial parents, and their partners at risk.

It’s situations like this that make me believe that we will not, in fact, come out any better on the other side of this. Even when it comes to endangering another person’s life -whether you like them or not – there are still people so wrapped up in their own bullshit and power struggle that they cannot see what is best. They cannot rise above their ego to consider other people.

Here’s a thought: if you are normally a total selfish dick, maybe now is the time to step back and take a look at that behavior. Maybe now is a good time to let go of your vitriolic hatred. Maybe you could stop doing things that intentionally hurt others. Maybe you could soften just a little and recognize that things could be so much easier if you just let that shit go.

So. What are you learning to let go of? What are you still clinging to? And how is that working out for you?

Walking

Ceci n’est pas une weed.

So Maryland is now under a “stay-at-home” order, which doesn’t do much extra except to restrict travel in and out of the state and to make it a crime to linger, loiter, or otherwise hang outside of your house in groups larger than ten, closer than six feet. You can still go get food, and you can still walk around outside. You can be arrested and fined for breaking these rules, and you have to be quarantined when you come into Maryland (and you are urged not to leave).

KWeeks and I have been walking.

We have been walking around the neighborhood, talking about how surreal it all feels, except it’s not actually surreal it’s just a normal day except that we have this other information about this terrible virus, and KWeeks is not working on a Monday and we can have drinks in the middle of the day when it’s not the weekend.

KWeeks and I have been walking.

We have been stopping a lot to look at what’s coming up from the ground and to pick up various pieces of interesting wood. I am supposed to be writing a book about foraging, due for publication in 2021, but this feels uncertain, much like every day that we wake up, but it also feels right to look for ways to be sustained and nourished by the earth anyway right now, and did you know that most of the weeds in your yard are not only edible but are also delicious?

KWeeks and I have been walking.

We have been discussing that there’s no guidance in a “stay-at-home” order for how to deal with children of divorce, especially those with joint custody of their parents, and what’s best, safest, and most supportive for child(ren) and parents alike. Is returning a child to the other parent “necessary” travel? Is it safe? Wise?

KWeeks and I have been walking.

We have noticed that young children from families all across the neighborhood are not really observing social distancing, and then I have been noticing what a judgemental fuck I can be when I look at groups of people who are close together but I am pretty sure they are not living in the same house, which is the only acceptable time that you should be closer than six feet, but then I look at those children, laughing and happy and really only see them as the carriers of disease that they are.

KWeeks and I have been walking.

I don’t know how much longer we can exist in this state of trembling attention.

Sunday Poetry

Photo credit: me, of one of the iterations of The Quiet Show, by KWeeks, who is also featured below.

So I put a lovely poem up here last Sunday, and I thought I would continue, only this time with one of my own.

This was published in February in Put Into Words, My Love: Poetry & Prose: A Petite Pomme. This little journal (available on Amazon) is the second publication from Pomme Journal, and it is a pocket-sized compendium of poems about love. Each poem is accompanied by a simple line drawing, and the book is beautiful.

Here is my contribution.

Tracts of longing

And I am loving you in this morning’s rainy strangeness,
Filled as it is with dark clouds and sunshine,
Both.

Birdsongs at 5 a.m.
And the dawn chorus of your upstairs neighbor’s footsteps,
Too early.

Your skin cool above the covers and warm below,
Fuzzy blanket and flannel sheets
Tangled around our legs
Tangled around each other.

Soon you will rise and make
Coffee sounds.
Leaving sounds.

And this lovingness of ours will linger,
In the sweetness of our scents,
Mingled in the bed,
And the way my heart’s longing reaches yours,
Even as we part.

Men Behaving Badly, Subtitled: A Day That Ends In “y”

A sheer slope of peanut buttery excellence.

Sigh.

For your edification, shock, and awe, a few links today. Take what you need, want, or like, and leave all the rest.

Start with the execrable Ernest Hemingway who spent a quarantined summer with his wife, his mistress, a sick toddler, and a nanny.

Take a break with Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter’s novel about the 1918 Spanish flu.

Keep going with Luy Irvine’s memoir Castaway (here’s just a sample) or E.M Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” about a society where people live underground in individual cells and communicate only by screens. Written in 1909.

Console yourself with this one-bowl chocolate sheet cake with fluffy peanut butter frosting (pictured above). CAUTION: This cake requires more than a 9″ x 13″ pan. It overflowed my entire oven and required many minutes of frantic fanning to avoid setting off the smoke detector. The dip in the middle indicates this interrupted baking time (you cannot open the oven mid-bake without consequences), but we are none of us perfect.

But it was, in the end, slathered with frosting and FUCKING DELICIOUS. I made changes, of course. I used my gluten-free flour blend, and the frosting was one stick of butter (really soft), 1/2 cup of peanut butter, a splash of vanilla, some salt, and enough powdered sugar, added a cup at a time. Really, you could use any cake and just add the frosting. Jesus. So good.

And also, before you go, listen to this lovely little song: “I Wish You Love.” The singer might surprise you.

Anyway. Today is Friday, in a long string of what have now become meaningless name markers of days.

What was interesting, infuriating, or rather lovely about your week?

Taking The Sting Out Of Self-Quarantine: Stinging Nettle

Baby stinging nettle.

So I am definitely in self-quarantine due to possible exposure to COVID-19. It is only a slight possibility, but I feel like acting from an abundance of caution is the move here.

Side note: if you have ever wondered what the Baltimore accent sounds like, you could either come talk to my neighbor Clarence, who is Hampden born-and-raised, or you could simply say these two words out loud: corn teen. That’s what happens when you get the COVID, hon. You go inna corn teen.

As it was rainy and cold on Wednesday (the day of this missive), I asked KWeeks if he might like to meet me at Lake Roland for a no-contact social distancing hike in search of stinging nettle. We found some on our last walk there, but I was not prepared to harvest. Now, any excuse to walk around at a safe distance from all other bipeds was enticing.

Side note, part deux: There was only one empty car in the parking lot when I arrived, and although we did pass a total of four people on our way into the woods, I stepped way aside and held my breath. #SafetyFirst

If you are an herbalist or have even a passing fancy for plant medicine, you know that I should have started tincture making back in January, or last March when everything was popping out of the ground, well in advance of a time when I might actually need them. But today I am thinking of the Chinese proverb:

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

So consider my wildcrafted tincture product the second-best time to plant a tree.

Stinging nettle is a powerhouse of a wild plant. If you forage only one plant, let it be this one. Just be careful – wear gloves to protect yourself during harvest.

KWeeks and I walked in the damp, empty woods and talked about how awful everything is. I found massive patches of nettle, which is great because I will return to harvest more for nettle pesto the next time it rains.

Another bonus of rainy woods is the lack of danger noodles. KWeeks and I saw two on our last foray to Lake Roland, a big one and a smaller one, and I am not a fan. So cold and damp + no people + no snek = fear-free foraging.

When we parted ways, I returned home and cleaned and roughly chopped most of the stinging nettle, packing it in a pint jar before covering it with an assortment of whiskeys.

This lovely human I found on the YouTube validated my choice of lower-proof whiskey but did point out that it will take six to eight weeks to fully extract the medicine of the plant – double what my last post said.

It’s ok. I am a learning robot and can make changes accordingly.

I started to dry the remaining handful of stinging nettle dry in the oven on a rack and will let it finish in my studio. Stinging nettle is good for wheezing and lung issues – perfect timing for a pandemic. It’s good for tea, but you can also smoke it – an excellent choice for the wavering former smoker that is me.

In nine days, with no symptoms, I can hold the hand of KWeeks again and walk in the sunshine. Until then, it’s rainy walks for me only.