My zone is flooded, how's your zone?

Everyone copes with stress in their own way. For example, one of my family members is writing Substack newsletters identifying and excoriating the lunatics, while another has unplugged from all media. One of my friends is sending out mass hair-on-fire emails urging us to rise up and do something. Another friend is choosing one action they can take to "make things better." 

I've subscribed to multiple Substacks and YouTube channels, adding my puny clicks to help balance the media landscape. I doubt if we liberals will ever catch up to the Foxies but we can try, one scream at a time. I originally subscribed because my hair was on fire. After a while, my hair fell out, and now I congratulate myself on helping the brave liberal media pundits grow their subscriber lists. 

I have given up trying to read or watch everything. The clickbait headlines aren't fooling me anymore. I know it's how media gets our attention these days—even NPR is doing it. Sometimes I sigh, roll my eyes, and take the bait. I'm usually disappointed. Mostly, I just ignore it all. I guess that means I've unplugged my eyeballs but not unplugged from the technology. Hm.

Lately, I'm just selecting everything in my inbox and pressing delete. I can't keep up. I'm not going to fret if I miss something. Head-exploding emails are a lot like waves in the ocean. It won't be long before another one detonates in my inbox. I've taken to watching the highlights. Why listen to anything in real time when other people have done all the emotional labor of chewing, swallowing, and upchucking the news of the day? I don't have the energy to paddle through the muck. 

People say it's not good to isolate, especially in times of stress. I'm not so sure, if the people around you are losing their sh*t when some new catastrophe floods their inboxes. I personally think it might be healthy to avoid people whose hair is smoking. You can usually spot them. They are the ones sending you mass emails exhorting you to do something.

I'm taking the Zen approach, striving for unattachment to particular outcomes. I admit, it hasn't been easy. At first, I was running around like Chicken Little proclaiming the sky is falling. Then I found out the sky might really be falling, not tomorrow, but possibly in my lifetime, and then I realized, I can do nothing to deflect an asteroid. Similarly, I can't by myself move the baby planet nucleus that currently occupies the center of reality into a dementia care facility where it belongs. 

Together, we can do a lot, though. Humans are jerks but we are definitely resourceful. If we can nudge an asteroid into a new orbit, we can certainly nudge an assh*le out of the Oval Office. This is not hard to grasp. The part that requires master Zen skills is the realization that there is a raft of crazies floating in the hazmat zone around that termite-ridden desk. These nutjobs cannot easily be nudged off their paths, on account of they are mean haters who are terrified of losing something they think they have or not getting something they are sure they want. 

This means it is critical to vote early and often. Assuming we still live in a democracy. 

I take heart in remembering that conspiracies fall apart eventually, because humans are pathetic self-centered terrified idiots who are genetically programmed to look out only for themselves. Sooner or later, their quest for power (aka safety) will cause them to eat each other the way caged gerbils eat their young. The way ancient civilizations cut and burned the forests that sustained them. The way ice skaters take crowbars to the kneecaps of competitors. The way the citizens of the winning team tear down their city's signal lights and bash in store windows. I could go on.  

I could whine and say, it's not me, it's those guys over there, the haters, the ones who wish I would die, or at least, cease to exist, so they could get on with whatever they plan to do when their world is finally white enough. When all the grass is in a museum, when anything colorful is behind bars in a zoo or other secure facility. When they have all the money. Although, what they think they are going to spend it on when there's no one left to make the crap they want to buy is probably not on their radar. 

No, it's not me, it's not my fault, but I'm part of the human collective, therefore, I am part of the problem. I drive a fossil-fuel burning car, I buy stuff from big box stores, I want the easy path to the cash and prizes the American dream promised me when I was in art school. 

Therefore, it is me. And you. It's all of us. The outcome we get we deserve. 

The news of the day

If I weren't a rabid user of the internet, I could almost forget the outside world exists as I sit here in palm-tree infested Scottsdale, watching flickers fight with finches over the peanuts and thinking the hardest thing I've done so far today is skimming leaves off the glistening blue pool. This week has been blessedly critter-free, no drowned geckos, no screaming crickets, no roof rat body parts desiccating in the gravel yard. 

Besides being designated pool boy, one of my daily tasks is walking Maddie before it gets too hot to breathe. Getting her into the little red harness is a production requiring patience and a pungent treat, but eventually we get dressed, we shake off our morning blear, and we head out into the neighborhood. I'm trying out different routes to keep things fresh for both of us. I think Maddie appreciates it. I'm hoping we can both work off a few ounces before the dogsitting gig is over. I don't want the homeowner to come home to a fat dog. 

Like me, Maddie is an avid consumer of the news. I can't detect or interpret the news Maddie reads. Well, if there's a stain on a fire hydrant, I can assume someone, probably many someones, have left their contribution to the news of the day. But there are many news tidbits I'm not able to see or smell. Maddie brings them to my attention, but she doesn't read them aloud to me. I can only guess their contents by how strong she pulls on the leash.

Some articles rate only a cursory sniff. Some spots inspire a comment from Maddie, especially the ones on fake grass lawns. Sometimes she has to do that thing that dogs do with their back legs after they poop. I like to think she's rating the artificial lawn but I don't really know. 

The very best news articles demand quivering attention, a yank on the leash, and if she can get away with it, a roll in the stinky wet grass. That's apparently the right way to really understand what's happening in the world. Roll in it. I catch her up short multiple times per walk: "There will be no rolling!" She shrugs and moves on. She's testing me. I'm a pushover, most of the time, but I don't want to have to figure out how to wash a smelly dog. Ugh.

After we get back from the sniff walk, it's time for a nap. For Maddie, anyway. I go out and skim the pool. Last night we had some wind. I didn't hear a thing, but the evidence now mars the pristine surface. Leaves clump and swirl. The bigger ones have sunk to the bottom and require special effort to capture. Pool water depths are deceiving, and my eyes aren't great to begin with. I jab at them with the long-handled net and discover they are a foot away from where I jabbed. Eventually I lift them into the air and deposit them into the over-sized plastic planter that serves as a receptacle for dead leaves, dried up flowers, and general patio detritus. 

I keep the air conditioner set at 81°F. Sometimes it seems warm in here. When it's over 110°F outside, the AC really gets cranking, and then the house feels cold. Maddie gets cold, too. From time to time, she demands to be let out onto the patio, where she beelines for the hottest patch of sunlit patio she can find and sprawls on the pavement while I pant in the dry hot shade and wonder how anyone can live in this forsaken patch of desert. 

Speaking of forsaken, I've realized there is no place in the entire state of Arizona that would be comfortable for me, with the possible exception of the Verde Valley. All of Arizona is either too hot or too high, or both. This is a state of extremes. Right now, monsoon rains have been hammering both Tucson and Flagstaff. Here in central Arizona, I am in the tenuous eye of the weather storm. I look at the NWS forecasts frequently, and the little photos show nothing but thunderstorms, day after day, north and south of me. I'm really glad I'm here and not living in the undercover parking lot at the Tucson mall. Tucson had some small tornadoes and frequent bouts of torrential rain. Not hospitable for unhoused people, even ones lucky enough to have a little home on wheels. 

I'm lucky that I will soon be free to escape this extreme weather. Being a nomad means you can chase 75 to 80°F, wherever it might be. I could go anywhere, but lately, I've had a hankering to return to Oregon. Some small towns at the southern end of the Willamette Valley have caught my eye. The only way to know if they might someday be home is to go and find out. I'll stay in Arizona through November, I think, so I can vote here, but as soon as I can, I'm gone.