New Politics – Kathy Nida

What am I going to do today? I’m not going to lesson plan. I’m not going to update my school webpage. I’m not going to desperately run over to school to prep a lab for tomorrow or to check supplies, and then run around to a bunch of stores to find materials and pay for them with my own money. I’m not going to spend two hours grading papers or inputting grades online. I’m not going to check parent or admin emails and try to figure out who can play what sport or how to manage that many meetings in one day AND have time to call student parents (my goal for next year…more phone calls, fewer useless meetings). Sundays are never days of rest for teachers. We run errands for the week, prepare for the week, often don’t sleep Sunday night because we’re worried about the week.

I don’t have to do any of that today. I still need to grocery shop. Still need to manage some stuff, bill paying, schedule for the week (which includes at least one hike, maybe two, plus some trips to the gym). Yeah, the car has to go in (again), I have a couple of doctor’s appointments, and I have to prepare a powerpoint for an art group I’m in, plus organize some long-ignored posts to the Facebook page for at least one of those groups. I can do all of that.

I did manage to get off my butt yesterday and go to the quilt store for bindings. I found two that I’m debating, although this afternoon, I am leaning towards the green.

This camera…those are all much darker than they are here. The two pieces on the left are vying for the position of background of the next quilt, which I will be starting soon. Hopefully I’ll get the binding machine-sewn on tonight, and then I can do hand-sewing whenever, and start tracing the next one…because it needs to be done in…four weeks, max. I can do that. Maybe. I certainly don’t have school in the way.

Yesterday afternoon and into the night, I was at a music festival, the Dirty Parts Festival put on by a radio station I don’t usually listen to, but that plays a lot of music that’s similar. So I knew three of the bands and a song of one of the other bands. It was nice to listen to music all day, and to people watch, because I do a lot of that…it was hot out there, so a fan made sense, and she wasn’t the only one who had one…

Although the lace kinda confused me for a moment, because we were on rodeo grounds and it just seemed incongruous.

There were lots of tattoos, and I would have taken many more pictures of those if it didn’t seem difficult to do so without people noticing that I wasn’t taking pictures of the BANDS, but of them…

This is Panic Is Perfect, which I’d never heard of, but they had some suitably hyper guys jumping around and making music.

Then In the Valley Below, which had some nice duets, belting it out. I was impressed by the female’s apparent lack of sweat.

Plus she used a bunch of chains as a musical instrument. Can’t argue with that.

On the right is Steve West, who has been a local radio DJ for a million years (since 1983)…I think he’s beaten cancer and is about a million years old, but did Resurrection Sunday, a radio show, for years, music from my childhood. Apparently, he does the same sort of thing on his current radio station. But yes, I took a photo of him because it made me smile to see him still standing…

This is Waters, a fun and bouncy band of young musicians who say they’re from San Francisco, but largely hail from Norway, hence the Eurowear.

So I stared at this tattoo for a long time. Was Brittany born on 2-4-91? Was Brittany the woman sitting next to him, with her own set of newer tattoos that I never got a clear photo of? Was Brittany dead? I will never know.

These guys were a little strange to have on a rodeo arena…Saint Motel…very big-bandy sound and kinda goofy.

And this lace vest…I was annoyed that the skull had no lower jaw…that’s probably why it looks so pissed off. Plus…lace.

So the guy on the left didn’t look 21 at all, but had the ID check bracelet. The dear young thing to the right? Stretch marks already on her lower back, plus the mom in me really wanted to either pull up the purple shirt to cover the bra because it looked so damn stupid, or to tell her to leave off the bra (which was a common refrain in my old-lady head all night…why all you people wear bras when you’re wearing such flimsy clothing? Your nips are covered. Who cares?). So yeah. And then he gave her half his beer. And his little brother was on the other side of her.

Proof that we’re old…all the really drunken kids with the ID check bracelets on? None of them looked 21.

Here’s the whole crowd for the Saint Motel set…two stages…and in the distance, a fire starting and getting put out within 90 minutes, no structures damaged. It is fire season here…way too hot and dry. We’ve had at least three in the area in the last 5 days.

We missed seeing the entire Big Data set for food (there’s something wrong if it takes 45 minutes to get food and 30 seconds to get beer)…but they sounded underwhelming. Then again, I only know one song. Lots of electronic though.

Then finally some of the music I came for…this is the Kongos…they are 4 brothers from South Africa and they had a lot of energy on stage, plus an accordion. I don’t know why there are 5 people on stage, but I’m gonna bet the really tall guy on the right is the Not-Kongos brother. Plus they brought a tiny rapping midget out for one song, which was fun…OK, he was probably my height…not really a midget.

The tattoo…wish I had a better picture, but the bra? Again…there are better ways to get that look (says fashion maven Nida…Not).

Kettle corn was very popular. Everyone had some but us. We had Wachos. No really. Nachos made with waffle fries. You can’t say no to that.

And New Politics, who were disappointing. Lots of tracks playing behind that no one was actually playing. Euro band…but they had lots of energy and noise and the crowd loved them. I could have done without the lights…they were just distracting.

Yes, I’m old, but lights shouldn’t annoy. They should add to the show.

Anyway, I had a good time. It was nice to go out and feel the weather change from really hot and sweaty to even coldish and people watch and listen to lots of music and move around to that. I didn’t even have a weird patch of sunburn where I forgot to put sunscreen, so such a success! No really.

It’s such a joy to feel all of work just slough off and plop onto the floor, a blob of gelatinous stress and overwork, just quivering there on the floor. This summer? Art, music, food, hikes, sleep, writing. Yes, I need to make money too. I’m not forgetting that. But I’m putting it mostly out of my head for a week. Really need a break people. I can breathe in deep right now and not feel work pressing up against my chest. That’s good. Need to hold on to that.

No, I’m all still tied up in knots inside my head, still lost in some depressoid space that doesn’t seem to want to release me from its clutches. I just get tired of announcing, Oh Hey! I’m still depressed! I still cry! Everything still sucks! It gets old. I want to shed that skin…it’s Spring, I want to run free among the wildflowers like a child. Or something. I don’t know how to shed years of sad though. They just cling to you like a small snot-nosed child.

I went over to the ex’s to find my scrapbook pages (don’t even ask…just know that it involved the girlchild)…and I sat there listening to all the stuff I needed to deal with while the three of them ate dinner, directed by girlchild, cooked by my ex. Then I came home and cooked my pitiful dinner by myself.

Oh shit. So this is my life? That wasn’t good. I went to the gym, though, and I’m reading a really good book (although it’s one that brings me to the brink of tears almost every time I open it)…so I try to think of the good, to think of the positive, and I still drive away from his house with the damn scrapbook pages that I needed for some quilt thing, and I’m crying. Not a little, but a lot. This is a life? It’s an incredibly painful one.

Boychild got his financial award statement from University of California. I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended. They gave him a good chunk of money (assuming he goes there, which he probably won’t), but they gave it to him because I am “significantly low income.” Their words. I’m a teacher. A public-school teacher. With a Master’s degree…who’s been teaching for over 12 years. And I’m “significantly low income.” Should I be offended? Or relieved? I wonder how many years post-divorce before I stop living paycheck to paycheck. Not this year, for sure. I guess I am relieved. Saddened, but relieved. Now let the private schools feel the same way.

I’ve been reading what people in my past have been saying. What does it mean when people who were significant in your life make no sense to you? Is that a good thing? And yet people LIKE it on Facebook. I can’t parse the words.

I still don’t know who I am.

Art rejections. Sigh. Discouraged by them. Numerous. Doesn’t help the mood. Seriously, there’s no point in entering shows right now. I can just expect a rejection. It’s been a few months of that. And I keep making stuff, hoping that it’s not a permanent thing, that the stuff I’m making will get in somewhere. REJECT. We don’t want your art. It sucks.

The girlchild and I joke that every time I leave school, this song is on the radio…

And every time, it makes me cry. I wish I were young again and everything felt possible. OR…I am moving to Iceland soon (it could happen).

Bear trap on ankle. I remember writing this. I feel like depression is a bear trap on my ankle. It grabs it as I’m running away, trying to get away, strips the flesh down to the bone, breaks the bone, hurts like a bitch, doesn’t let go, no way to get it off.

In meditation, there is the concept of blue sky. Blue sky is always there, if you put your head up above the clouds, the blue sky is always there, even when you can’t see it. Mr. Meditation says that contentness is like that…it is always there, like the blue sky. What stops us from experiencing it? He tells me to notice the resistance and let go of it. Then there’s nothing but blue sky. Mr. Meditation has been smoking the wacky weed again. Seriously. He also wants me to put this happy pinpoint of light and warmth that spreads from the center of the chest outwards. It doesn’t work on me at all. The black vultures chomp at the pinpoint and snuff it out. I can put it on OTHER people though. I’m supposed to pick a person I respect…I have plenty of those. A person I care about. Right now? There are two. I gave birth to both of them. I can’t think beyond them. Then this week, I am supposed to pick someone outside those two realms, someone I know but don’t really care about. That’s harder. What’s interesting is that I can inflict the happiness, the warmth, the exploding pinpoint of light on ALL of them…all of them except myself.

So yeah. Meditation = crying at the moment. Hate that place.

Realized that the disruption in my life that was the surgery was messing with mood. Girlchild went back to school today and is doing much better. She was very tired when she got home, napped for like 2 hours, but she was AT school. This is a plus.

But I have been neglecting my art mind, and that is what might be causing all this emotional dippage. Or something. Fuck knows.

So I am up late again tonight. I’ve been good about going to sleep earlier, but the casualty is making art. And then I think, what’s the fucking point of making the art if you aren’t going to get into the shows with the new stuff? Fuck. I can’t think that way. I just HAVE to make the art. There’s no choice about that.

I’m reading this right now…

along with other things. It’s appropriate. I feel unlovable.

Underneath it is a birthday card from my ex, quoting Pablo Picasso (was never called an asshole)…

And the happy book from my mom. Not getting to the happy.

So tonight. I cut out fabric pieces. Because I needed to.

And it won’t make me happy. But. I don’t know what will.

Did I show you the scissors that were found in my driveway?

We don’t know where they came from. Is it a donation? Or some sort of religious icon left there? No one knows. People are now driving past my driveway and throwing scissors at it. Seriously. These aren’t mine.

Plus there’s Midnight. She sits behind me as I cut out fabric.

Someone should sit there.

Tag: New Politics

No Patches of Weird Sunburn…

Blue Sky