Author: samandoat

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It Is A Virus, People

I think many people don’t understand why we need to lockdown our cities and practice social distancing and wear masks and all of these cumbersome annoying things that have suddenly been foisted upon us.

If you live in a place with a population of 200,000 that has one hospital and 400 beds and a deadly virus comes and infects even half of the people, making even 1/8 of them in critical condition, requiring hospitalization, you are not going to have enough beds, supplies, personnel to handle the crisis. And many more people will die because they can’t be treated.

If you go outside and are near large numbers of people, the chances that one of them has the virus increases. Being close to others facilitates the spread. And a virus spreads fast.

If you don’t wear masks you can give this disease to innocent others without even knowing it.

And the biggie – you can DIE from this virus. Hello? If you don’t die, you may also suffer greatly while being attacked by it. Especially if there is no hospital equipment to help you.

The people you love can die from this.

These are just some of the reasons. I wish that the people giving time on television would make it more clear to their audience why it is necessary to close things down for a while.

It is not violating your rights. It is not political. These things are to SAVE your life. It is not a hoax. It doesn’t matter so much where it came from. It is not a plot for socialism. Lockdowns and social distancing have nothing to do with economics. What matters is how do we stop corona virus before it kills many people. It is a VIRUS people. We are trying to slow down its spread so we can cope with it. So we can save lives. So hopefully we can eradicate it without too many casualties. So we can buy time to find a cure or effective treatment so others won’t die. Get it?

When you get sick don’t you have to do things you don’t want to do to get well? You knew it was probably not forever, and you believed you would win if you followed doctors orders. So why is this different?

I think it would pay you to read about other pandemics and try to get an understanding of what is happening here, and realize this is not a personal attack. This is not a personal affront to your precious liberties.

Not being prepared, not doing the right thing is the affront. Not giving hospitals enough or correct PPE is the affront. Not caring is the affront.

Yes, there are profound repercussions to having to do this. But unlike what has been said by a politician, who claimed “there are more important things than living”, I happen to disagree with that statement. How about you? You want to die so the economy floats? Don’t you think that having millions of people die and be disabled from this disease is not going to affect the economy? Think about it.

This will be over. We will get our lives back. But the longer people act stupid, the longer we will have to fight this pandemic. This is a VIRUS, people.

I am also amazed at how many people can’t amuse themselves for a month. They go crazy.

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Explain To Me

Tell me how countries that pre-covid times professed to not have enough money for health care, education, pollution, the homeless, now suddenly have trillions of dollars to bail out corporations?

How is it there is no money for PPE and ventilators and beds and hospitals and . . .?

How is it they can barely give the people who work, who risk their lives daily to keep everything going, a few measly dollars a month?

How is it we could not have basic income and avoided all this mess, when clearly, clearly the money has always been there.

Explain to me.

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Lockdown

We’ve been in ‘isolation’ and social distancing for only a month, and people are whining like crazy about it.

I’d bet a month ago, most were complaining about having to go to work!

What if you were really a prisoner, doomed to solitary confinement for life?

This ‘lockdown’ is only for a few months out of your whole entire life. AND it is for your and others safety.

Hello? This virus is quick and causes immense suffering and death. Is it worth going out for a get together, a concert, a meal, a rally, a protest, something social that lasts a few hours which you can’t wait to get back home and be alone again?

Here you are in the comfort of your own home. You can have most of what you need delivered. Computers enable us to chat and see our loved ones, do our work, be creative or just waste a whole lot of time on.

We have books and articles to read. Courses to take. Hobbies to start or dust off and rediscover. Instruments to play. Movies to watch. You could completely reinvent yourself!

This is a gift of time few of us ever get. Every day is ours!

I know there are difficulties. Children mostly I have heard. Normally when you don’t see or hear from your children for 10 minutes you freak out.

I get it. Being stuck with others 24/7 is definitely a challenge.

So this is a time of zen. Accept what is happening and deal with it! What a rare opportunity for personal and professional growth!

To clean the house.

Play with our pets.

Do nothing!

Grow up. Be responsible. Change your habits and perspective. Get your creative mind to work. We all need new ideas. Maybe change the world.

If you do have to go out, and many of us do, please wear a mask and gloves. Protect yourself and keep a safe distance from others. This is no time for vanity about how you look (though some people have been mask fashionistas!).

This is not forever.

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Oh, So Much!

There is so much I could rant about today.

But then there is this:

There is oh SO much to be grateful for, despite the times we are in.

Our animal companions.

The people on the front lines.

Our home comforts. Food. Computers. Technology. Good friends.

Look at the thousands upon thousands of good deeds being done every single day due to this pandemic. It is bringing out our true nature – LOVE!

Oh, yeah, there are some stupid shits, but they are a very tiny fraction of the population and not representative of most of the human race.

We are not the corruption of politicians. We are not the dirty laundry of big corporations. We are bigger and better than all of these self serving rats! We are good people.

My biggest hope is we emerge from this with a new framework on how to conduct business – with love, not to fatten bank accounts of grossly overcompensated shareholders and CEO’s. Our education system is improved so that people understand geography, environment, politics, humanity, how to think, and solve problems, and our teachers are well compensated. Our health care is just that, health care, not survival of the richest, it is for everyone and it is FREE. We finally stop talking and take action. We clean up all the pollution we’ve created and pass very strict laws to prevent contamination of our planet. No one should suffer any issue in any country.

We finally come to our senses. We are a global community. We need to celebrate our diversity and embrace it, because there are so many great ideas, art, music, technology, you name it, that we can share and create and make this world an Eden. Together!

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Mansions

Okay, I’m on a rant.

I am fed up of celebrities posting pictures of their mansions and whining about self isolation.

Madonna in her rose petal bath telling us the virus is the great equalizer. Ellen telling us it’s like prison to be stuck in her 15 million dollar mansion. Or David Geffen afloat in his boat hotel (way beyond the normal definition of yacht) in the warm sunny tropics, really suffering it. Oh, boo f’in hoo.

Even just seeing Drake showing off his place makes me want to puke.

Stop it.

It doesn’t make me feel better to see how well you live. It doesn’t make me feel better to be patronized. I never cared in the first place what opulence and splendor you live in.

I guess I’m getting cabin fever. Maybe just a little.

So I invite people to post either their favorite place in their REAL homes, or the messiest, because we don’t have a staff of 20 to clean up our messes.

Here is where I do my creative stuff.

Yeah, it really is that tiny. It is space stolen from a small area in my apartment the building says is a dining room.

This is the real world.

Okay, I’ve vented now.

Hope your enjoying your little space and making lots of messes.

PS someone told me to use a hashtag for people to post their own rooms. I have not much idea what that is, but I will put it here and hope for the best. #OutbacktheCatRealRooms

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Home Alone

I go through phases when I’m at home any length of time. Right now I’ve reached the dreamy phase.

When I’m first confined to barracks, I feel a bit lost and it is hard to establish a new routine.

Then I go through periods of neglect, laziness and generally being a bitch to be around. When I can’t stand myself anymore I immediately leap into strip the apartment to the bones housecleaning, scrub myself till I’m raw, and up and at ’em with living room aerobics 1-2-3, stretch that body, you can do 20 more reps! There, done!

And in between all my moods, I do my creative stuff and the hours and days fly by. I am in bliss!

Admiring everything sparkling and clean, my projects all up to speed and running, my body toning up, I can now relax and start to dream. Dream about what I would have liked the past to have been, what I might like the future to be. The present I can’t do a whole heck of a lot about.

I recreate the past into fanciful stories. Not that my past was bad, in fact, my childhood was idyllic! It is the adult part that sucked. Let’s see that adds up to 40+ years of it. I can do a lot of recreating with that!

The future awaits!

Sell everything and buy a mobile home and explore the land with Sam my cat. I almost did that once. My friend and I had a beautiful little van and we took many trips . . . those were better days.

Maybe go and work at a farm this summer as they are predicting a shortage of workers this year because of the corona virus. Fresh air, sunshine, dreadfully hard labour. Could this old body take the punishment? My mind likes to thinks so, but I’ve had experience with this kind of wishful thinking. It doesn’t end well, for body or mind.

Oh, well, who am I kidding. I’ll just go back to the office once it is opened and begin where it ended, like nothing ever happened.

I don’t have the courage, but mostly, I don’t have the money.

But I can dream!

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Let’s Go For Broke!

Two starlings look down on me in askance, from a wire against a grey spring day. I am alone on the street. It is Saturday, and devoid of the hustle and bustle of a normal weekend.

The birds are wondering what is going on.

Though I love quiet, this kind of stillness is not natural. It feels eerie, like a prelude to something bad in a horror movie. I don’t enjoy my walk much, even though I desperately needed to get out and get some fresh air. The world has become a scary place.

This sense of foreboding lingers on even in the confines of my safe apartment. My one cat apartment, where once everything seemed boringly mundane. My cat is uneasy too, his routine disrupted, though I try hard to leave him alone until he wants my company. Things are not the same, and probably, will never be totally again.

I always wished that we could have one day a month, at least, where all activity and noise ceased. No lawnmowers, traffic, radios and the like, just quiet. I still think we need to do this, not just for our sanity, but the worlds.

Just ask my two starling friends. They too have never experienced such quiet. I wonder how they feel about that.

No question that spring is arriving anyhow. Many song birds have returned and filled up the gloomy air with their cheery and now more than ever, welcome familiar songs. Many flocks of geese honk their way above me. It should greatly cheer me, but I only feel afraid.

However, I am encouraged by how quickly the world is recovering from our continual onslaughts of pollution and noise. Amazed is more like it. Too bad it took such a crisis for this to happen.

I am also encouraged by how quickly people showed their true colours, of community, compassion, sacrifice.

I wish that all the good this Covid-19 is bringing could outweigh all the bad of it, and most of all I wish that our entire way of being and conducting business will change for the good. We will leave our greedy, selfish mindset behind. We will stop emulating and worshipping those who set money and their own personal adulation above everyone and everything else.

I should like to see a complete restructuring of society as I now see it does not reflect our true selves and our true values. Pre-virus it was a society based on the greed and control of the select few and is in no way representative of the true spirit and nature of mankind.

This is not a time to just go back to a society of greed and arrogance. This is a time to start anew. We have a golden opportunity to change the way we do things. To still have all the benefits without all the bad.

If only this time history did not repeat. That we learn our hard lessons and make the necessary adjustments. We finally realize we are a global community, we are all in this together. There is no us and them. We end poverty and pollution. We have free health care for everyone. While we are at it, let’s go for free higher education. Free public transportation. Free housing for seniors. Let’s go for broke!

And NO it won’t make us broke. The money is there, it is just crammed up in the 1%. And what do they do with it now? Build more f’in cars, telephones and rockets. Line their own pockets, demand we kiss their . . . . Uh, uh, there I go again!

Wealth is not a bad thing. It just needs to be used a bit better.

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Us and Them

The Covid-19 crisis is a time to remember that there is no Us and Them. This is a time to finally get rid of this mentality. We are a global community, faced with the same problems, and in need of everyones help to solve.

It is also a good time to take off those rose colored glasses concerning our history. There never was a pure race, a better time, or a perfect culture. This stupidity causes immense suffering and death. This thinking leads to dictators and totalitarianism. We can’t live in or recreate a past that never was. We must build a better today and a future.

We have not been soiled by immigrants, the others, the THEMS that populate our tiny planet. We are THEMS to somebody else.

No single person, culture, race is to blame for any of our current problems. WE ALL are to blame.

There is only US, WE, together. We are all one species. Homo Sapiens. All of us.

We occupy the same mote of rock in this infinite sized universe. One part of this dust speck is not separate from the other.

The sooner we get to this point, the faster we can solve our biggest threats like pandemics, pollution, poverty. These affect us ALL.

Stop politicisizing everything and everyone. It is time we smartened up and work together.

It is also time to stop pandering to the 1%. We are all in this together.

If this disease doesn’t teach us that, the next one will be a thousand times worse.

If our current crises don’t teach us unity, the next crisis will kill us.

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Never

I like the word Never.

It is both final and infinite.

It is like a buffer stop at the end of the train tracks. It is also like the universe, an infinite expanding je ne sais quoi.

And not terribly helpful.

You’ll never be an artist or writer (well, 19 books and a blog 2 1/2 years running later. . .)

You’ll never get a degree (a Bachelor of Arts if you please)

You’ll never make your living as a creative (well, still working on that one!)

My point is not to brag. My point is never is a long, long time of not. There aren’t too many things that are never. People are changeable, adaptable and quite clever. The universe is always on the move. So is time.

We usually can find a way to disqualify never.

And that is by doing.

The people who tell me never have just issued me a challenge. But sometimes it’ll get me down. It has in the past, destroyed me.

I hope no one has told you a never that stopped you in your tracks.

If it has, I challenge you to question that never. Nevers can become beliefs, and when they do, we stop examining them and just live them.

Take a belief out of your pocket and have a good look at it. Is it your never?

I’ll never do or have or be this or that? Who says! Only you.

Take your never out for a walk and show it who is boss.