Path of Least Resistance

Another page in the plague journal: keep mourners to ten or
Uncle Jim's unburied corpse will haunt your dreams

Hip Surgery Revisited

4 years, 5 months, 1 week, and 6 days ago, I had hip replacement surgery, which brought an end to 1 year, 7 months and 6 days of pain from osteoarthritis.

Not satisfied to know that I was merely out of pain, people would ask me after my surgery whether the whole rest of my life had been restored as it was. 

Not entirely. My surgeon somewhat impatiently explained, "you can't possibly expect an artificial hip to have the same range of motion as a natural hip."

As is my wont, I took that sage advice on advisement - because even natural hips have different ranges depending on the person - and set out to test the limits of my new hip, specifically in terms of a yoga practice.

I assumed Ashtanga yoga was a non-starter, and learned through experimentation that most other classes, even Yin yoga, were too risky one way or another.

So that left yoga at home. I did back and hamstring and shoulder stretches every day. As the post operation years and months passed I stretched the limits of my stretching until one day, two weeks ago, I felt I might have stretched too far.

I had.

A slightly dislocated artificial hip hurts more than anything you could possibly imagine, but only under certain circumstances. Those circumstances are the fifteen to thirty minutes after I rose from sitting on a soft chair or from lying in bed. Once the hip settled back in, I could stand and walk without any pain.

So, for the past two weeks, during the day, I have been standing or walking or sitting perched on the edge of hard chairs to keep the hip in place and the pain at bay. At night, I cinched a yoga strap around my hips to stabilize the joint. My new morning routine included gingerly hobbling around the bedroom for half an hour until the pain subsided.

I wondered how I could live like this. Long car rides, or flights, seemed out of the question. Movies, if theatres ever reopen, would also be more anguish than they're worth.

Entreaties I have made to health care professionals have so far gone unanswered, so I can only speculate that what I was doing to avoid pain also served as therapy. I'm sitting on the couch as I type this, confident that when I stand I will not be hit with excruciating, debilitating and crippling pain. The hip's reset.

And I now know for absolute certain, 4 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days after the fact, what are the limits of my hip.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

That's a relief.

Hard Act To Follow

  

Kensington Market store front decorated by ShitShow, the same guy who 
did the small curb side graffiti we saw on one of our first COVID walks.
Both epic and disturbing.

The focus has changed now that Trump's in the rearview mirror. In what might be my last blog about DJT (but I'm making no promises), I ask some questions, make some observations and analogies, think of some fictional treatments, and make a couple of predictions.

What's the Last Gasp Gonna Look Like?

Recent media speculation about Trump is what will be his next act. Will he rule the Republican Party from Mar A Lago? Will he drown in litigation and criminal charges? Will he go to jail? Will he be assassinated? Since January 6, the first one's less likely, though the odds are improving on the next three.

If he lives and stays out of jail, he might become a kookie recluse like Howard Hughes, who was also a germaphobic emotionally immature billionaire obsessed with being seen as rich, powerful and successful with the ladies. 

Other Numbers Down ...

Lots of people are looking at different business plans now that Trump is out of the spotlight. For example, the people selling merchandise at Trump rallies, and the YouTube stars who became members of the multi-million view club in the age of Trump – Randy Rainbow and Legal Eagle, to name two.

Not a God King, But Still ...

The media also speculates about Trump successors like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. But I think Trump is a once-in-a-generation asshole. Pretenders to his throne don’t have his combination of dull-witted charisma, life-long sense of entitlement and mental illness.

In the same once-in-a-generation vein, Trump is like Rubens - a great painter who amplified his production through his “workshop”. While the master was still active, there seemed to be lots of other people who shared his genius. But once he was gone, his followers showed themselves to be talentless hacks.

Future Fiction ...

Some of my readers know that I am writing a novel. Part of writing a novel is preparing query letters to send to literary agents. That art form requires a deft hand at identifying genres and crafting plot summaries. While procrastinating about writing a summary of the book I actually have written, I thought of these possible future novels written in the wake of the age of Trump.

Miscalculation 

Genre: Science fiction 

Plot summary: A futuristic Nazi hunter travels back in time to kill Hitler, lands in the wrong year and instead tries to stop Trump from running for President. His attempts work, until  2011.

My MAGA Mom 

Genre: Young Adult

Plot Summary: A socially awkward protagonist meets their soul mate at a MAGA rally they're attending with their parents. They negotiate the ups and downs of their young love while helping their parents deal with Trump's defeat.

(Dis)loyalty

Genre: Mystery

Plot Summary: A congressman’s tortured and decapitated corpse is found floating in the Potomac. He had once been a staunch supporter of Trump, but turned on him after the January 2021 insurrection. A promising novice Black FBI agent is put on the case with a veteran agent, but she finds troubling clues that he may have been involved with the murder, and that she's his next target. 

The 'Gator Riders of Trump

Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: in the not too distant future, greasy-faced white people will rule the Florida swamps.

 Finally, two predictions ...

One or more disaffected Trump supporter(s) will stage a desperate and doomed raid on the ex-president's Florida home to wreak their revenge on the man they've finally realized was lying to them all along.

Kimberly Guilfoyle will dump Trump Junior.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

America's God King

Craziest church I've ever seen: Lima, Peru, December 2014.

A while back I used a metaphor to describe Donald Trump to explain his influence on America. I said he was a virus.

That was just an affectation of my youth, however. I have a new idea about DJT. And it's not a metaphor. 

Trump has become the God King of America - you know, like an Egyptian pharaoh, a man following on the tradition of the divine right of kings - that primitive way that humans used to order their societies, the way that America was specifically designed not to follow.

The current head of the world's largest democracy is, peculiarly and oddly successfully, a proponent of those good old days when rulers got their credibility from God all mighty. 

I can prove it to you. The hallmarks of rulers anointed by God are infallibility, unaccountability, the narrative of their legitimacy, intolerance of difference, and devoted adherents and priests that enable and enforce all of the above. 

Infallibility - Donald Trump does not tell lies. He tells you what the truth is. Example: "Frankly, we did win this election."

Unaccountability - Donald Trump answers to no one, not Congress, not the 80 million plus people who didn't vote for him. See example above.

Narrative - Trumpism explains that America was founded by white people whose success relied on an underclass of enslaved or underpaid black and brown people. If those people are elevated to where they are no longer an underclass, or are allowed to vote, well, that's unAmerican, and must be stopped.

Intolerance - Donald Trump is right and if you disagree, you are wrong. You should at least be fired, but could also be killed.

Adherents - Trump's followers, even those who cannot vote for him, are zealots dedicated to the gospel, believers in the infallibility and enforcers of the unaccountability and intolerance of the God King. That's why you can't tell them anything. And why they resort to violence.

Priests - Every God King needs his acolytes. Trump still has Rudi Giuliani left and Conrad Black.

Like I said, the institutions of American governance were designed to offer God Kings no foothold, and, this time, it looks like they held well enough to bounce Trump off. 

But it is amazing how close he got. 

Bruce's Art Project

Take all the discarded Christmas trees lying around and decorate them with all the discarded masks and gloves lying around and call your masterpiece 

"2020: You Just Can't Get Rid If It"

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Cleaning House

Those were the days: Women's March 2017. Credit: Denver Post, Getty Images

In compliance with pandemic measures, I spend a lot of time indoors. And, because I'm retired (it's been more than a year now) I've been looking for things to do. For the first couple of months of lockdown/ retirement, I did a lot of house cleaning. That got old pretty fast, so, even though I knew the dust was accumulating around me, I chose to ignore it, and just let it keep piling up.

The other thing I do in retirement is write, mostly in the small bedroom at the front of our house, the one that overlooks Sherbourne Street. 

The other day, I idly ran my finger across a surface in my writing room. The surface noticeably changed colour in the wake of my moving finger; an impressive drift built in front.

This isn't a great metaphor for the gongshow in the US Capitol building on Wednesday, but I'm relying on comic juxtaposition to make my point.

Since the 2016 campaign, Trump has claimed any election he loses must be rigged. That's why thoughtful people have been worried for years that the snake that got let in was Trump all along. 

And just like me and my dust in my slovenly retirement, most people, worried or not, just let it pile up. 

Yesterday Twitter cancelled Trump's account. Imagine what life would have been like if they'd mopped that up three years, or even one year ago.

My metaphor picks up a wobble from this point on. 

Today with little effort I'm going to clean all the dust that's accumulated in my home. I anticipate it will actually be satisfying to spruce the place up. And, if I fall back into my slovenly ways, it won't be the end of the world.

America's great embarrassment for the sake of the ego of a madman, and all the neglect of the past four years, could very well be the end of the world. 

"The revolution or the civil war starts absurdly. It looks ridiculous, comical. Then six months later, your family is dead."*

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

*https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2021/01/07/if-you-were-lucky-living-in-donald-trumps-america-felt-almost-normal-and-that-was-a-dangerous-thing.html

53 Words

Trumpeter swans, Leslie Street Spit, December 27 2020

I subscribe on Facebook to a group called "Canada Writes," where other writers share first drafts, writing tips, and terrible puns among other things.

It was there I found out about the 53 Word Story contest. The contest organizers provide a theme on the first of every month and anyone who sends in a 53 word story between then and the 15th is considered a qualifying entrant.

I've sent in three so far. No nod from the judges' panel yet, but I'm getting the hang of it. One of these days.

October

The theme was "brewing" in honour of Oktoberfest

My entry:

We read the news at breakfast, each from our own glowing tablet. We consume buttered toast and hot takes. He skims Reddit. I skip from CBC to The Washington Post to whatever. Our tastes were eclectic; any topic really. Now it’s just one thing. The trouble brewing south of our long, undefended border.

Here's the entry the judges picked. 

Bouganville Tsukimi, 1944, by David Meyer

Balanced cross-legged at the intersection of adze-shaped ridges between makeshift rice paddies, the last three soldiers raise coconut cups with reed-thin arms—“Kanpai!”—then slurp the dregs of rice and taro, fermented quickly, with neither hope nor filtration.  Canisters of industrially brewed diesel and palm oil explode around them, outshining the full moon.

November 

The theme was "thanks" (it's a US contest).

My entry:

He swung in front of me, smelling of harsh sun and alcohol. Torn vest, tattooed chest and arms, sweat-stained bandana, grimy blue jeans. Three silver rings. And a distinguished service medal. “Don’t walk away, man. I want to thank you.” “That’s OK,” I said. That twenty was the very least I could do.

Here's the entry the judges picked:

Buy a Donkey, by Jean-Luke Swanepoel

The last thing the self-help presenter had said was buy a donkey. So Irma bought a donkey. The presenter, being South African, had in fact said baie dankie, Afrikaans for “thank you very much,” but Irma found the donkey to be an excellent listener, and urged her friends to buy donkeys as well.

December 

The theme was "giving."

My entry: 

The setting sun flashed a coruscating rose, coral, vermillion, trillion candlepower glow on the undersides of curling, undulating, massively expanding high-flying clouds. A warm powerful wind whipped our faces, took our breath away, made us gasp at the magnificence of God’s creation. “Oh, this gives me an idea,’ said my friend Bob Oppenheimer.

Here's the entry the judges picked.

The Signs, by Jo Mularczyk 

A woman’s scream rent the air.

“The lake is boiling!”

“Father these portents warn me not to marry,” Helena entreated. Her betrothed was old and cruel.

“Nonsense daughter.”

A bird fell beside them, dead. 

“By the Gods, Father, read the signs!”

“Enough! Today I give you to the richest man in all Pompeii.”

***

Thanks for reading!

Have a great 2020 hindsight week!

Karen