Milagros; take two and call me in the morning.
Dear Contemporaries,
Do you worry about overuse? My dj played this the other day, and she explained that it was her favorite* Neil Young song and she doesn't like to play it very often, because she doesn't want to 'overuse it.'
Well, it has happened to me; I used to love some song, and somewhere along the way, someplace while I was getting it into my cells, into my blood, listening over and over (or as they say now: 'on repeat'), breathing and sleeping it, I fell out: out of lust, out if infatuation, out of the desire to consume it wholly. What does that mean? Not to you, but to me? Am I so fickle? Is there only so much daily enthusiasm? Is it so that familiarity breeds contempt? Ooh, I sure hope not!!!
But, overuse; In my shoulder there is a thing like that, and if I had it to do over, I'd have saved it a bit more; I would have turned the crank of the press with my left arm, might have taken some care when I was painting to stop now and then, as I do now; to stop knitting before two hours have transmuted themselves into three inches of cloth; I have this Thera-putty now, which I squeeze and twist around in between some number of rows now; I don't know if it helps, but, it is kind of fun to squish this stretchy yellow goop- it's kind of unstructured, compared to the repeated yarn loops.
And, what about relationships? Or chocolate, sugar, caffeine, alcohol? And, ooh, what if one day you woke up and suddenly analgesics didn't work for you? It'd be a hard rain that fell that day, and you'd have to face all these endless little headaches and sprains, pains and bruises with nothing but ice and tears!
It isn't our topic, I know, but I would be, umm, under the weather, feeling delicate, nearly every day if it weren't for these medical marvels of medication. I won't list my ills or my cures, but, I think often how uncomfortable I would be without the things I 'take.' Without, for example, sunscreen. I have a friend, who maybe doesn't wear it? In any case, she has to subtly maneuver you to the shade when you run into her and stop to talk. It's a weird, distracting feeling; you know her mind is on something else, but what? Over years I have realized what it all is, and so now I say; let's move over here, into the shade. But still, just saying goodbye in the driveway at the car is a problem for her- she is always, everly, antsy, on her way to out of the sun. Her world revolves around the not-sun. Think of it.
Anyway, I want to mention it here, because I think we have an odd relationship to medication here, in our culture. I think we think we have failed, we are losers in the game of health, when we need a prescription balm to ease things. We seem to feel that it is actually dangerous poison, prescribed by sadistic Dr. Frankensteins, and that anything else, even lighting candles and praying to the Big Head in the Sky would be better than to take this pill. I ask you, I ask myself, why would anyone make a cure that would harm more than it heals? I know, you are going to tell me it is about money, and I am going to say no, I do not believe that. You are now going to tell me that they are ignorant, foolish; '"they used to think smoking was good for you!!!" Well, that fallacy isn't worth a response from me, either. Your world of dehumanized idiots is not the one I live in, even though you are right next to me. I am fine with you just hating yourself for needing medication, but I am not, not, not fine with you acting like only weak, failures of humans need or take medicine. So you are going to have to contemplate all that; that big, fat cognitive dissonance in your brain, and if I were you, I'd see a doctor about that.
*Hmm, what is mine??? Now I feel like I have to find one, and quick! This is the nature of competitiveness, isn't it? Out of nowhere, you have to have or do or be something else.
PS
I have, and I invite you to join me, spent some time, many inches of knitting, and square feet of painting and drawing, considering why I may have harbored this 'medicine is for weaklings' crap, and I can tell you that you grow up in it; it is there when you are just 15 months old, and you fall, and you cut your lip, and you howl out in the pain of all that misery and shock, and you are told to 'stop crying.' It is there when you hear your people talking about how so and so needs to take such and such now, because they are old, and will die soon. So, yes, we are afraid, and that is fine, but the medicine is not what we fear actually, is it now?
