The sciatica hosptial visit–coming together with having to find a place to live, loosing Murphy, an emergency signal from my aunt in Southern Indian … I feel likeI something broke in me.
It was a facebook friend… and comrade… who saw my post on FB, and called 9-ll–persisted when they refused to understand what she was telling them! I had tried to lie down, thinking that if I could sleep, it would give time for this to resolve, but it was so painful I would scream every time I changed positions, and had difficulty standing again.
I couldn’t get down on hands and knees again to find sandles or flip-flops, managed to pull on shorts and a shirt, get down the stairs and open the front door, Barefoot. To wait for the EMT.
There was no one home. this is why I don’t want to live alone in an apt. even if I could afford it and didn’t need to split rent. I’m strong for my age, in relatively good health. I can take care of my needs: shopping, cooking, getting around walking and SEPTA–but one crisis away from a Very Bad End…. I think of Murphy under the table, dying alone in the neighbor’s yard.
Mind/body locked into crisis mode: which means, shut off the chronic anxiety and focused on survival. Noting, that FB played a key part. And not the first time. This is the world we’ve made for ourselves, where we are scattered by distance, dependence on work, or by poverty (which needs to be defined to describe what this has come to mean for our contempory lives) –and our closest community–those who will come to help if they are able, we seldom see face to face, because poverty is more than not having money. We are in poverty when we are one crisis away from what we once called it, not for lack of money, but for the destruction of community.
It doesn’t have to be, this way.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Comrades… we can make a better world. This one is not worth trying to save.
Jacob Russell's Magic Names 