Come, Let Me Tell You How We Live

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

The title is a riff on the Agatha Christie memoir. Hers was an account of her time on a dig in Syria in the 1930s, with her husband, archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, a twinned query: her own account of how she and her husband lived on the dig itself, what their daily lives were like; and her account of what they were able to ascertain about how the ancient people in question lived, those whose daily lives were being "dug."

I think it's time for a little excavation of my own, but one controlled by its object, not imposed invasively from without by a dominant culture that neither understands it nor cares about that fact. I think it's time for me to uncover a bit of what daily life is like here: here, on our own little bit of earth in Indian Country, in our own specific circumstances. Perhaps telling you how we live, from one day to the next, will shed a little light on a lot of things that the dominant culture (and those a part of it) really needs to learn. And perhaps it will help people understand a bit better why I so deeply resent the constant demands from the standard-bearers of that culture for money, particularly when they handle politics and governance with such venal incompetence; why I so deeply resent the "special rules for special people" attitudes  and dynamics that reward the lies of colonial behaviors at the expense of its victims; why I so deeply resent the grasping faux-victims with their hands constantly out, the same people who blame and shame others in actual dire straits and who do their level best to doom efforts on their behalf; why I so deeply resent the false prophets of the so-called "law of attraction," a twinkie colonialist lie itself, used to justify more taking by those who least deserve it at the expense of those who can least afford it.  

This is going to be a rant of a very personal nature. You've been warned. 



It's been a very difficult few months. That's not unusual; things have been difficult for many years now, as it is when you must daily wage war against multiple chronic illnesses, the sort that steal your livelihood and then your ordinary life itself. But the last four years have been novel in their methods of inflicting cruelty.

At the outset, I need to qualify everything I'm about to say with a seemingly contradictory bottom line: I love our life. I am not a materialistic sort, and never have been; having grown up mostly destitute, it really takes very little to make me happy. Our life together is the most important thing, and that I love . Our living conditions, while not easy, are something with which we've reached an accommodation: It's not as though, having lost everything, there's any way to change the fundamentals, and we've managed to make life as cozy as humanly possible. We have our each other, our animals, and despite chronic illness, we still have more health than many. If it meant leaving this place, our lives together, no amount of money would be worth it.

All that said . . . .

Look.  There's "poor," and there's poor.  For people with no real and genuine concerns about the fundamentals, well, sorry: You're not poor. So let's not deflect. Let's also not pretend to poverty while trying to discourage people from helping others.

As probably most of you know, we lost everything four years ago. Our home was literally pulled out from under us. We lost both vehicles. Everything. Oh, we fought for two solid years before it got to that point. But when venally partisan politicians deliberately trash an international economy just to damage the Black man about to succeed them (and this one, genuinely elected!), when said politicians and their congressional lackeys and their corporate owners have so stacked the legal deck that the lenders not only hold all the cards, they're allowed to set both their money and yours on fire purely to punish you or the crime of being not-rich, well, there's not much to do except eventually suck it up, face reality, and get your head around the idea that you are, indeed, losing everything. Because they like it that way. Because, as the housing lender's rep said when I asked him why they're rather take our home than work with us to save it, "Because [they] can."

He laughed when he said that.

But no matter. House gone, vehicles gone, a tiny 33-year-old tin can of an RV for a roof over our heads, an old jalopy and a '72 pick-up. That's what has replaced what's gone. And mostly, it's enough. It's a roof over our heads, shelter [mostly] from the cold and the winds and the weather, [mostly] running water; and wheels to get to and from grocery store and clinic and propane company.

But it's difficult.

I get up early — very early. The reason is two-fold: partly because it gives me a little time to get the writing done that I need to do on the Web site, in the [mostly vain] hope of making a sale, any sale, no matter how small; and partly because, with multiple autoimmune disease and constant, severe, chronic full-body pain that never goes away, once I wake up, there's no going back to sleep anyway. It hurts too much to lie there, so I get up, make coffee, and try slowly, painfully, to get started on the day.

Time was, the first thing I'd do is get in a hot shower to wake up, and to relax the muscles that have constricted horribly during sleep. Those days are long gone. Now, there's no such thing as a shower on demand. The pilot and water heater in this little tin can are not what you'd call powerful, and once hot water has run for 60 seconds, it blows out the pilot. Once the pilot blows out, the propane fumes are ghastly.  And so after Wings takes his second shower, in the evenings, the only safe things to do is go back outside and turn the pilot off. What this means is that, every morning, I must go out into the cold with a long-handled butane lighter and fight, sometimes for ten minutes and countless tries, at great expense to my arthritic and stress-injured hands, the pilot and the ancient dial and buttons to get the pilot lit. In the wind, from the wrong direction, it's impossible. And once lit, there's still no taking a shower, not for the better part of an hour; that's how long it takes to heat. Once heated, the hot water lasts less than five minutes, so only one of us can shower at a time. I light it for him first; then re-light it, do my chores, and take mine later. 

So, yes, my day starts off a bit fraught. Every day. And this doesn't even include what will happen in the weeks to come, when no amount of heat-wrapping and water-running will keep the hoses (it's plastic water hoses in this thing, not metal pipes) from freezing. We've been without water for extended periods.

But, that's done. I write, as best I can around the pain (and now, around the near-daily PCS migraines, an artifact of the concussion inflicted in a freak incident with a horse a few months ago). I write in the hopes that this day will be the day we sell something, anything, that will keep food on the table and the lights on and help us pay our bills.

Bills. Once you lose everything, the bills and expenses become a black hole. Quicksand, and they suck you down further with every bill. I have two bills currently breathing down my neck, totaling just under $800. Not much for most people, certainly not for people who can simply put them on plastic. For me, it might as well be $800 million. Next week is the deadline, and no matter what we've tried, there's just been no way to squirrel away the needed amount. We've been trying for months. And all it would take would be one good sale; heaven knows he's made enough really valuable pieces in recent weeks. Normally, we'd have several holiday commissions already in the pipeline, plus several other substantial sales outright by now. But no one's buying. [And before anyone gets any ideas, no. Stay off the PayPal button. I'm not asking anybody for anything, unless it's sharing Wings's site with people who might be interested in buying beautiful (and eminently collectible) Native art. We don't expect anyone to give us anything, nor do we want that.] But this is the sort of stress I've lived with for weeks now, so if I seem a little tired of political appeals and appeals on behalf of others much more fortunately situated than we, this might have a little something to do with that.

Every day is a scramble. With my PCS, I can't drive right now without inducing a massive migraine, which means that for the time being, Wings has to run most of the errands. On top of that, we've had family issues sucking up time and inflicting no small amount of stress. And we're trying desperately to get the little portable building converted so that we can re-open the gallery here — but there's more work to be done, and more expense, including the electricity. Meanwhile, Wings is busy squeezing in fence-building to serve as a windbreak for this place, to reduce the incidence of frozen pipes, and there are a thousand and one other tasks daily.

Yesterday, I was nearly doubled over with pain. I couldn't walk entirely upright.  Doesn't matter; stuff has to get done. While he did a great deal of heavy labor, I handled mucking out both pens, feeding the dogs and chickens, wrangling the chickens in and out, raking leaves, doing laundry, sealing 2X4s for use in the windbreak fence, and . . . I don't know what all else. A ton of Web editing, the blog post, all the usual chores of feeding troops and fixing meals and clean-up in here that I do on a daily basis, shaking the rugs and vacuuming and dishes and all of the usual chores. I do it all no matter how my body is working, or not working, because it has to get done, and besides, if I don't do physical labor, my autoimmune conditions will only worsen.

But you know, it sucks. It sucks to be wearing Wings's old Wranglers to work in because I no longer have a single pair of blue jeans without holes, my last pair having caught on something sharp and ripped beyond repair a few days ago, after three solid years of wear. It sucks not to have a single bra with intact underwires. it sucks to have your eyesight deteriorate as badly as mine now has, and have only torn contacts that you MUST wear, because your astigmatism is so bad that you can't do any distance work with glasses, to have glasses more than a decade old, so scratched they're completely cloudy and with a prescription so outdated you don't dare use them for driving, to have to switch constantly between two other pairs of cheap reading glasses with or without the contacts in just to write for the Web site (or read anything at all). I learned as a child to stretch everything, to make it last long beyond anyone could ever believe I could do. But there comes a point where things quit stretching and simply snap, into a million tiny pieces.

My patience is getting to that point. So is my willingness to put up with bullshit.

So in recent weeks, as I've watched political malpractice morph into something flatly dangerous for those of us already on the margins; as I've watched my own work and contributions minimized and dismissed and finally erased, along with my identity, my very existence; as I've watched much talking shit and taking advantage, in all sorts of places and all sorts of contexts . . . my patience is gone.

All of this is the small tup of a very large iceberg. There is so much buried that I have no intention of dredging up here; hell, some of it I have no interest in revisiting anyway, because there's too much pain and too much damage there. This is only the briefest of glimpses into daily life here.

As it is, I live with great physical pain all over my body, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Yes, and every month, week, year, decade. This is not new, and I mostly manage better than most people would believe. I also live with great stress, from all quarters, and I manage that better than most, too, considering. But it all takes a toll, and right now, tonight, that toll is very high.  

/rant. No comments necessary.