Moon Memo: A week in the life of a sick lady
Good morning from Portland Oregon. I'm doing an experiment this week where I'm going to write a little something every day for the Moon Memo. This was started on Saturday December 9th.
Saturday
Waking up on a sick day. I'm on day 2 of being sick, which is usually the worst one. It's when all the crap in my head migrates into my chest.
Wrote a poem about war, as I usually do these current mornings. Israel has set up a muddy field as a place for over 2 million people to settle as a safe zone during the current "we're going to kill everyone in a terrorist organization and build hearts and minds towards building more terrorist organizations" campaign. The sheer single mindedness of having to win is shown here. Fuck war.
Anyway, woke up, took Sudafed, and am trying to get to stage two of being sick as quickly as I can, so I can rumble around with a cough and be out of the brain fog. Being sick sucks. It's not useful. It makes me unreliable.
But I am writing. And I am thinking about next year. And I realize I shouldn't have brought up I was feeling sick to my boss. Two hours of vacation time flew away when I could have just flexed hours of work I do on the weekends that are work related. I really wish I was on salary. Then I could just know that money appeared, without any of the drama.
Right now, getting a second cup of coffee, and doing a little bit of admin. Spent the last 5 minutes updating Hazel rules for next year. Hazel is an app that automates a bunch of things in the background. I mostly use it to rename poems, and move them into backups. It's a way to keep from having to do a bunch of little things over and over again. I like it. It's a calm app that I don't even notice unless I am moving computers.
Of course, doing that makes me realize even more that the year is ending, and that the new one is beginning.
Every poem I've written since 2011 is 15.2 mb. That's such a small amount of space for a life's work.
Alright, more coffee, and then relaxing. Gonna read the New Yorker for the week. Try to keep quiet. Try to get healthy.
Just bought myself a water bottle, to put in my backback. Mostly so I have something to put a sticker that Sabina gave me on. It says "This meeting could have been an email", and I kind of love the idea that it's going to be on a water bottle I will have for meetings. Especially meetings that I'm leading.
Sunday
I guess it's...Sunday now? Woke up very early to rain and stuffiness.
Wrote a poem about the death of children, which seems to be a theme right now. The so called war in Palestine. The slaughter of the innocent in the name of revenge. I understand it's complicated, and that I've been able to turn a blind eye on it all these years. I'm not perfect. But it's been feeling worse and worse this time around. This feels like an end game, and I'm sick.
"The people of Israel will have to save themselves from this shameful and racist government which is committing genocide and other war crimes. They should also free themselves from American foreign policy goals, especially when American politicians are calling for the genocide of the Palestinians from within their legislative forums. It is now undeniable. I am sure that most of us have seen the video of children being made to sing genocidal songs. Do we need to pronounce what it is imitating? The Israeli prime minister said recently "The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong." Do we need to say what it reminds us of?"
[Shaj Mohan](https://proteanmag.com/2023/12/02/let-the-world-speak-an-interview-with-shaj-mohan/)
Jade and I spent a long time last night processing our trauma in the world. It's a Long December, and there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be worse than the last.
Water bottle arrived. Sticker protocols activated.
War is the enemy, not any man.
-William Stafford
Tracy Burnell on what's happening in Gaza.
This friend speaks my mind.
"I understand the situation in Gaza is complex, with no easy or obvious solutions, but committing genocide “to prevent genocide” is still genocide. This is, from my understanding, a common excuse for genocide — and yet, there is no justification for genocide...Slaughtering children will not protect Israelis. Massacring more families will not bring back the dead. Starving babies will not make Israelis safe.
One act of evil does not justify another.
It beggars belief that standing beside a genocide in the name of self-defense is the only path Biden could have politically chosen. Do we not have [a duty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect) to stop war crimes when there is opportunity? A war crime committed by our allies is still a war crime."
And on and on and on and on and on...
Water bottle is set up. It's 7 a.m. and I'm waiting for the paper. I have become that old woman, waiting for the paper on a sunday so she can thumb through the terror at her own pace.
Update: the paper never came, and I am done with the new york times at home edition. What a crock of shit. 3 weeks in a row, no paper. So that's it for me.
Spent much of the day lying about. Sigh. At some point, I will feel better, and then it's OVER for those bitches. :-)
Monday
Woke up with a chest with a little bit of oatmeal inside it. Working from home. Currently puttering around before I start the work day. Of course, it's when it's 5:30 in the morning. My coworkers aren't even awake.
Nuggets of horror in the RSS Reader.
May default to anger today. But I also may just get quiet and greasy.
Office is cleaner. Other materials are a bit cleaner.
Spent a lot of today doing planning stuff, like I always dreamed this month would be. Sitting in documents making Mindmaps for future trainings. Did some research about Oregon's racist History. (Which sucks). Currently thinking about what I can and can't do in an introductory training.
Wore a sundress because I wanted to feel pretty, even if I feel like garbage. What do you think?
Tomorrow, I pick up Jade's mom from the airport. Looking forward to some quality time with her.
Hate that even though I've done a LOT of work today, I don't feel like I was productive. Sigh. Stupid brain.
Tuesday
Good morning. I'm missing a meeting today at work because I'm still sick. Ugh. This is so fucking annoying.
What's worse is that Jade's mom in coming in, and I don't want to make Sherry sick. But the reality is that I'm sick, and she is coming, and that can't be helped right now.
Dressed and showered. Drinking coffee. Ate some food. Feeling half power. But that's better than I was when I woke up.
End of day: had a big meeting, and felt very sick afterwards. I think I'm just trying to push through it, and I'm not happy with that. Missing hanging out with Sherry, Jade's mom. Instead, I'm hanging out at home. Gonna make myself pasta and mope around a little bit.
Wednesday
Good morning from the windy city, which is currently portland Oregon. Woke up and hacked up a bunch of vile evil out of my lungs. Which was nice. That means I'm getting better. I'm just going through the stages of illness.
The desk of a sick Misha: Water Bottle, Coffee Cup, three empty cans of fizzy water, cough drops, kleenex, my teddy bear Bearnard, and all the work detritus. Ready to get the fuck OUT of this little room that I've spent the last 5 days most of the days.
Some quotes that I've picked up from the reading lately:
"Most of the time, I find writing isn’t useful because I have something to say, it’s useful because I have something I need to figure out.
The drafts, the re-writes, the disagreements with myself; all of it serves to build conviction and clarity on a topic. That’s the real value."
Dan Cullum
"No one chasing money in media ever chased Twitter. But anyone chasing power found themselves irresistibly drawn to the platform. And eventually, the platform started to actually deliver that power in ways that continue to reverberate around the world."
and
"Language: People were being tricked into basing their faith on magic; if something was said, it became real. The war was real because our leaders said it was, just as in India, when mantras were chanted, the gods became real simply through the process of reciting their names."
Allen Ginsberg
I have a pile of plaintext files on my computer that are quotes that I find interesting in my reading. Think of it as a commonplace book. There are over 1700 little discreet files on my computer now, specifically these quotes. I access them through a bunch of different notes apps, currently the beta for nvUltra. My favorite so far is called The Archive. It's a simple interface. I moved over to nvUltra because it's got a "connect this note to other notes" feature that I think is great for serendipity. Sometimes you need something to think for you. To put the work together for you. It's the only thing about Machine Learning that I actually like.
My little internet of quotes.
"As Jung argued, denying darkness does not make it go away – it makes it more powerful. It is only through bringing darkness into the light that we can defeat it."
Today at work has two back to back meetings, and a lot of openness. Now that I'm on the home stretch of this illness, I'm hoping I can just flush out the evil and let it be done.
Fired up morning ambient after sending a couple of emails. It's a little channel on Spotify for calming energizing music. The PM version of it is also really good, and the playlist is like 15 times longer. Which shows what ambient music is usually used for. I'm using it for background noise mostly right now. Something pleasant while I process.
Just piled my drinks for the day: coffee, 4 cans of fizzy water, a large regular water bottle. Eating oatmeal, which helps the throat. Still naked, because who wants to wear clothes when they are sick? I don't.
George (Mangtaquli) Noongwook, a Yupik elder from Savoonga, Alaska, passed away on March 18, 2023. He was 74.
According to George, a group of Yupik singers, drummers, and dancers can be seen as a microcosm of a society in which everyone assumes an equally important role in his or her niche.
“The [high] caliber of [the performances] came from people together — every singer had an image in the whole group — something to give to the group in the way of a voice, a dance, or most importantly the songs that they were producing on their own,” he said.
This was George’s life-long philosophy. A drummer may not have the best drumming skill or singing voice, but he contributes to the group performance by adding more volume and depth to the music. A dancer may not be the most talented, but the audience may appreciate the humor in her bodily movements and facial expressions. Or someone may not be able to sing or dance well, but their positive attitude and enthusiasm for Yupik dancing can inspire the other performers.
George said that the collective effort of all members enables the growth of happiness of the individual and the whole group. People appreciate who they are and are appreciated by others for this. This perspective may also explain why George remained a leader of the Savoonga dancing and drumming group for many decades and was always revered by his teammates.
"The collective effort of all members enables the growth of happiness of the individual and the whole group." Words to live by.
Still no poems for this sick week. I'd be worried, but I can always slip back into the river.
And of course when I bring it up, another one comes. Waleed was my friend in kindergarten. His family moved from Palestine in the 1980s, but he returned after medical school. I lost track with him 20 years ago. I'm sure he's dead at this point. I haven't thought of him during this whole thing. Gods, how could I forget.
(I just realized that this email program doesn't keep formatting for poems very well, which is disappointing. So I'm going to have to put a picture in. Alas.)
Just out of the bath now. I'm lucky that I get to do that in the middle of a work day. I have my phone with me, and it sends work stuff when I give it permission. So I can soak, and feel human, and also do some work. It's kind of a delight.
I just added a new subscriber (hello, Callie. I warned you this was a long one), and said about the Moon Memo "It's rambly, talks a LOT about poetry and organization, and sometimes about sex." Which I think is a pretty good summary of this thing.
And I'm hitting my noon wall of being sick, and have to lie down. Ugh. I wish this was over.
30 minute little nap later, and I feel a little better. Have a meeting in 16 minutes.
Thinking about tomorrow, which I have set aside as Planning Day. Spend the day thinking about the next quarter, and getting things set up and ready.
Sitting on a meeting, waiting for my boss to show up. Love her to bits, but there are times when I've had to wait like an hour and a half for her to be able to make time. I now have a personal rule that I don't wait any longer than 5 minutes. 10 minutes tops. I talked about that [last week](https://buttondown.email/moonmemo/archive/moon-memo-negative-nostalgia/)
And the meeting happened, and it was great. I really love my boss, I just wish she was better with her time management. She is getting better, though. I should be kinder.
I'm going to go and try to meet up with Jade and their mom for a quick hangout in about an hour.
(Update: it was really wonderful to see her. She's about a year into her rebirth, and it's great to see her happy. Just dropped her and Jade off at Powell's. Love to see it. But now I'm a little weezy and tired.).
I think I'm going to send this letter now. It's been a fun experiment, but I also think that it's WAY too long an email. LOL Thank you to all the folks that stuck with it. I love you all a lot, and hope you are staying warm and healthy.
Onward and upward!
Misha