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| Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. |
Winter lights, from the sun and otherwise. It's one of my favorite things about this time of year. There are fewer lights on the tree this year, because our two longest strands died over the course of the last year. No, we didn't know in time to order replacements online, so the tree's a little less lit this year, but it glows all the same. No farolitos, either; we just pulled out our old outdoor lights, and the ones that still worked are the ones we put up.
This year means sacrificing some of the trappings, but as I said elsewhere this morning, the light is still there. We hang onto that.
Meanwhile, I am so far behind.
I have NOTHING to show for this week so far. Not a single sale. No work, no visible results, even though I'm putting in 18-hour days and doing mostly without sleep. And I'm' still running the Twitter hashtag trying to help folks who are at risk of losing everything now get what they need. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped, but I've got to get that up now for Christmas eve, because whatever it takes, indeed. I have no patience with colonial standards of "charity" and "giving" and the respectability politics inherent in them, nor do I have any patience with the colonizing and colonized mentalities of those who continue to perpetuate them, leaving folks to die.
And all the other stresses, of course, are all still here. This has been such a ghastly year, and this winter's going to be very, very bad for our peoples. It's bad enough for us; we've only made four sales total this holiday season, and given that Christmas is Friday, I'm guessing that's it for the year. But it's been a lot worse for a lot of other folks in our community here. And so on top of the donations we've been making at least weekly, whether to our community health center's matching funds campaign last month or direct donations to individuals, we've been giving out of every sale we make, quite literally. We bought and had delivered the firewood yesterday; we sold my old jalopy at a fabulous loss to a young man who desperately needs a vehicle (it was a jalopy, but a really well-maintained and well-running one, with new tires, battery, and front end, including axle, rods, and joints, and we sold it for a third of what we could've gotten, because he could afford that); we gave away a substantial number of items from our half-hog share; and today, we gave the last of our cash donations to an elder who needed help. Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind; there are others. None of this is to make us out to be saints of any sort, because we're about as far from it as it gets, and unlike some folks, we have never pretended otherwise. My point is that, in this world? With circumstances as bad as they are? People die if we don't help. So, yeah, only four sales, and we're down to our last dollars, so to speak, but we have food, shelter, warmth, and now I'm going to be able to do my work properly. So there really isn't a choice. No, we don't get a tax deduction for any of it. I'd rather give directly to people who need than ever get a deduction for charitable giving ever again in my life. Because if you had any doubt? It's BAD here. We're the lucky ones. And with that kind of good fortune comes responsibility.
But as I said, it's been a day, and I am so far beyond exhausted right now I'm faintly delirious. We have to go the post office and the crating company today, and I will still have to run tonight's numbers, finish laundry, make dinner, do a bunch of other things. So the rest is cut-and-paste, but if you take one thing from it? Please share our links. If you're in the market for gifts, consider Wings's work. It's what keeps us alive, but we always make sure that whatever we bring in, we send out to help others beyond ourselves.
Meanwhile, people continue to leave us at an alarming rate; a new record last Thursday of 48 officially-reported deaths state-wide due to COVID-19. But the ski resorts are open and the tourists are here, and the governor continues to talk about reopening the state. Unfortunately, we are not expecting things to improve over the winter, vaccine or no. Nothing rushed like this is ever reliable, and we already know better than to take something that already has so many reports of serious adverse reactions. There's also the question of whether it actually works over the long term, and people are already behaving as though it's a magic bullet that means no one needs to mask or distance, and we're being flooded both with tourists and with jackass locals who won't do the minimum to keep from killing us. And prices continue to skyrocket, and an artificial scarcity remains the order of the day.
Meanwhile, the need to bring in a bunch more sales this week and the next two to avoid us being thoroughly screwed going into 2021 hasn't changed. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I bring in a significant number of sales over the next week and a half. And I'm still tired. Tired from this stupid shingles vax reaction. Tired from the stresses of this year. Tired in ways no one will ever understand. "Can't hold your own head up because the physical fatigue is too much" tired. I don't care about any of the rest of it. Yeah, our craven and cowardly governor is willing to let us all die. Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference, but I still have to keep us alive, and other folks, too. So:
And this will sound selfish, but I've spent the whole year working to help other folks survive in the face of some very ugly [and wholly unnecessary] odds, and last week, I hit the fucking wall. I'm going to do my work, I'm going to chase sales to keep us alive, and whatever else we can do to help those we can. That's it. Because the country, the state, their so-called leadership? They're willing to let us die. I am not lifting a finger, much less wasting a cent, on the politicians who think we're sacrifices on the altar of their pursuit of what they misname "power."
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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