Showing posts with label Coronavirus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coronavirus. Show all posts

1/4/21

When big deaths turn into more little deaths...

Dreams last night involved pets dying. I don't remember the details of how my cat died, but I think it was some sort of illness that wasn't properly cared for because we were focused on something else. My friends sick mouse died because even though both of us had been paying careful attention to the sleeping area and pills laid out for it in its own little space, one of us forgot to shut the door on the way out and the next time we returned to the room to check on the sick mouse, it was gone and we knew it was dead. We realized one of us had forgotten to shut the door and I admitted it was me, even though I wasn't sure.

Even though the dream focused on small animals dying, when I woke up, I kept thinking about people making too many little mistakes and quick and easy assumptions about what is or isn't safe behavior during this ongoing virus. Such as people seeming to assume that it's reasonable to spend time in person with various other family members who don't live with them and seeming to think that they know what those other family members are doing elsewhere or whether those other family members own living environments (as well as those of other friends or family members they spend time with too) are reasonably and relatively safe, even if people aren't asking each other many questions and are choosing to make decisions based on guesses, assumptions, or a bare minimum of information, because it's easier that way.

When I was a kid and had a pet teddy bear hamster, my family was visiting a relative in another state and we couldn't take my pet with us. I overstocked its cage with extra food and water and put a book on the top of the cage, so the hamster couldn't somehow sneak itself out. When my family returned home from our trip, I almost immediately went to the hamster cage and somehow my pet had gotten out anyway. We searched the home and finally found her, huddled up in the corner of a lower kitchen cabinet, dead.

8/28/20

Another one of the Juliet Cook Pandemic Portraits by Collin J Rae (August 2020) - with a pandemic rant

I think I look a bit sad in this one, which suits the month, because all month long I've been alternating between sad and upset and doubtful and excessive crying jags and angry.

And stressed and bothered by other people and bothered by myself.

And okay I've had some moments of creativity and amusement.

And heavy duty perimenopausal 20 plus hot flashes a day. (It's either perimenopausal or I'm on the brink of death or something). And this is the first month I didn't get my period at all, but felt like I had PMS almost all month long.

And I've unintentionally upset friends when I thought I was just honestly expressing myself and I've doubted my own forms of expression and I've doubted my own brain and think there must be something wrong with me.


And maybe this excessive little blathering will piss off someone else.

6/18/20

5/18/20

NEW! Three of my Museum of Impending Death poems appear in Burning House Press!

"Brimming with stark contrasts, alternating currents

between freaked out, productive, freaked out,

creative, wondering if I’m going to die from this.

If I’m going to melt down inside this ongoing vortex.

Thousands of broken wings get sucked into numbers,

spiral down, crack into the ground, vanish."


Three of my Museum of Impending Death poems are up at Burning House Press today!

https://burninghousepress.com/2020/05/18/three-poems-by-juliet-cook/

5/7/20

NEW! One of my Museum of Impending Death poems appears in Across the Social Distances!

"This gurgling invasive strain won’t let me escape.
This spooky morgue head hairdo is dragging my head down
to the bottom of the ground."
One of my Museum of Impending Death poems appears within Across the Social Distances! ðŸ–¤

4/24/20

NEW! One of my Museum of Impending Death poems lives inside The Haunted Dollhouse!

"The large black cloud looms and grows
into an impending tornado. The lights all go out."
inside one of my Museum of Impending Death poems, which is now inside The Haunted Dollhouse...

4/13/20

NEW in the Museum of Poetry - my VIRAL CONTAGION is alive!


"This character throws up
on 10 other characters, then drools slime on 20 more. 
Hidden subcutaneous missiles shoot down 100 dogs in a row.
Poisonous bugs crawl inside their mouths.
Giant poisonous bugs crawl all the way up
to the top of my ceiling then jump down
into my mouth while I'm trying to sleep."

a snippet from my VIRAL CONTAGION which is alive at the Museum of Poetry!
Thank you very much to poet/editor Michael Grover!
HERE - https://museumofpoetry1.blogspot.com/2020/05/viral-contagion-brain-drain-video-game.html

3/18/20

Different styles of expression in difficult times

I think it's wonderful for us to have people to communicate with (and even more so during this recent social isolation due to the Coronavirus), but I think we should also try our best to be aware that different people communicate differently.

With me, for example, I don't tend to instantly write back in-the moment (although sometimes I do depending on my mood, my time frame, what I am or am not in the middle of working on, and various other factors), I don't tend to be a casual chatter (although once in a great while I do), I don't text much, I don't talk on the phone much (except to about two people)...

I do enjoy ongoing, long-ish online communication with a few friends - but even that has its time limits for me, because I have a rather slow process when it comes to just about everything.

Some people are a lot faster and more sudden and more in-the-moment than me - and that is fine. We're all different and should try our best to respect each other's differences, as well as similarities.

We don't all communicate the same way or directly in-the-moment. With me it depends what mood I'm in and what I'm focusing on, because I've never been good at multi-tasking or talking to several different people at the same time or directly focusing on a bunch of different things at the same time - and if I try, I tend to get frazzled and edgy and concerned that I'm not focusing closely enough on ANYTHING.

I don't like to feel rushed or forced. I like to maintain my own pace and space.

Sometimes I'm in the mood to communicate with others. Other times, I'm in the mood to focus on nothing but reading or writing poetry. Other times, I need some quiet time and space to myself to process things my own way, on an individual level, before I focus on communicating with others again.

Partly due to the recent focus on and stress-fest related to the Coronavirus pandemic, I feel like I've recently gotten a little less productive, less focused, and more edgy - so if it takes me a little longer than usual to communicate with friends, it doesn't mean I'm rudely ignoring you. It probably means I'm trying to focus on my own process of handling things and catching up on some things I've fallen behind on and not lowering my immune system by working in too many different directions at the same time.

We all have our own process, we all have our own preferred forms of communication and expression and self-preservation - and reaching out to others and reaching out to ourselves.