Bootleg Raw: Of Souls and Sorrows

Since returning from Boston, I have received every morning a harried phone call from Mom documenting my Grandmother’s decline. She has another infection, she has fallen, she has blacked out and isn’t certain what transpired. Each time the conversation ends, this morning I gave Mom some half assed advice that she treated like a sliver of brilliance because she too is stressed out, I think that there are countless other middle aged Americans getting these same phone calls. After all we are a nation of traveling and middle class aspiring wanderers and consumers dancing the ultimate unicorn shuffle thinking that we matter as individuals that we should be out achieving and growing and living in districts with good schools in suburbs with no trees or working OT to send the kiddies to private school and telling ourselves the money is worth it so somebody will recognize our offspring in their specialness and all of this is often done hours away from our parents who live in a small towns with no jobs/declining post industrial city with no jobs/NAFTAized regions with no jobs and the only people we know who stayed behind have no jobs or low paying jobs with no benefits who are dully caring for their parents while trying to talk their own kids out joining the service because their own options are limited. And really. They can go to college and become teachers and scientists and get plowed under by debt and live in a studio apartment after graduation with six other roommates because they pay more in rent than Mom and Dad do for the mortgage.

This is America. We have choices. We can just amble on down the road of personal responsibility and free market solutions and buy lottery tickets or hope to hit the big one at the local casino where everybody says: that buffet is really great. Really, I know somebody who won 80,000 or my neighbor’s cousin’s aunt does.

And each time I get the phone call I try to remember how much vacation time I have. Not much. Because I took a vacation this year. Stayed in America because Europe was too pricey and I am not keen on those charming third world countries where they put you on a compound to create the illusion of an  local economy. Then I berate myself for even taking a vacation, who can even afford to take one now? Who even gets paid vacation? That search is starting to take on Holy Grail like proportions for the average working American. Yeah. We will give you a job and the best that you can hope for is that we won’t humiliate you too too often and we will let you train your replacement. Deal?

My girlfriend who has been at her job in Canada two years gets twice as much paid vacation as I, at my job almost ten. But those Canadians pay high taxes. I hear they all want to come here but they won’t work cheap like those other immigrants…. you know the nice ones who enjoy and value hard work for slavery wages.

Never mind that half the people I work with are doing it sleep deprived because their husbands can’t figure out how to change a diaper without a phone consult or pass on the fascinating information that the baby is crying again or they are dragging their asses to work with chronic injuries and illness, having exhausted sick time long ago. Or working overtime because hubby got laid off or injured and it turns out that food costs money. And the political candidates in this election want donations from ordinary people?

They should be showing up, doing their stump speeches and offering to fill everybody’s tanks or buy a bag of groceries for those who can stomach the sheer screaming inane nothingness that emits.

I laugh hard when I see shows about medical errors and how shocking they are. I think, wow you mean there aren’t more than that. The people taking care of you are people, they get orders from shell shocked residents who have been working 24 hours and have to present a paper in the morning. I keep hearing we have the best medical system in the world and I actually work at a world class institution with good working conditions. My best guess is the health care crisis will be solved when we all just fall over and die. That is a personal choice, right? A free market solution. So is genocide and we tolerate that quite nicely provided it happens to the foreign people. Americans seem to think they are worth more than others. My guess: so do Canadians and the rest of the west.

Americans are making calculations every single day. About survival. The American dream has been reduced to hoping retirement doesn’t happen in a wet cardboard box out on the street. The only consolation: if it happens to you and I we will have plenty of company. Maybe the revolution will get launched out of wet soggy cardboard boxes. If you’re breathing, it is never too late.

They say gold is a good investment. They say it is hard to digest though and chewing leather without teeth takes some patience.

Yes. Everything is personal to me. Probably because I am a person. And so are you. Funny how that works.

Five phone calls in two hours. I think we have it sorted out for now.