It is sheer insanity outside my window. Another atmospheric storm has blown in rattling the panes of this old Victorian house. I fear for the pretty stained glass windows, they are held together with ancient lead frames and a promise that they haven’t failed yet. There is always time. Last night some white claw drinking goons were partying on the street outside my bedroom window, screaming and laughing and shouting. They were not homeless. They were also not that young; just thoughtless millennials who thought that drinking on the street sounded edgy and interesting. One of them, a large male specimen with a beard that properly belonged in 2008, and overly pomaded hair, drunkenly, loudly shouted and lurched around for about 4 hours, alongside some very drunk women who were old enough to know better. Assholes. Look, when people have nowhere to go, I am reasonably thoughtful. The unhoused mostly have better manners. They do their drugs, drink their bottle and move on before they are moved. Sometimes they act up, but that is because they have lost their damn minds, whether permanently or temporarily. These assholes were dressed nicely, had a car running next to them, and were simply acting as if they were the only people in the City. They started at midnight and didn’t finish until 4am.
Usually it would irritate me, but as unwell as I am, it has really hurt me. I was woken up time and time again by their continued partying. I didn’t dare shout out the window to tell them to shut the fuck up and party in their own houses, not on the street outside my window. I prayed for a feisty crackhead to come chase them off, and considered acting the part myself, until I realized I could barely move and didn’t need the trouble. I have ‘woken up’ after interrupted sleep, feeling like hell once again, unrefreshed and absolutely at rock bottom. This rheumatoid arthritis that has attacked things other than my joints has absolutely devastated my health. I am beyond exhausted, breathless due to low platelets, and waiting on an interview that may or may not get funding for treatment that will get me on my feet again. This is not good. I can barely get out of bed and function, let alone do more. I went out yesterday for almond milk and tofu, trying to make myself move and ended up almost passing out on the street, panting and swaying by the time I got home. I really am more unwell than I can ever remember being, not counting withdrawals from this or that. This time I am not to blame for my own misery, and it pisses me off.
I am the kind of person that forces myself to get up. I still have been doing yoga every single day. I might not manage the full hour, and end up doing thirty minutes, but I do something. I never just sit on my backside doing nothing – it is not in my nature. I have been sat the fuck down by this awful autoimmune thing, and I don’t like it. I can barely stay awake part 9pm. It just is not me at all.
So I have declared war on the millennials. I hate to pit generation against generation, but really they are the most self obsessed, assholic, weak and self indulgent lot. I am pretty fond of the boomers, and think they get a bad rap, but the millennials are a different bunch. No one has ever told them no, or that not everyone is a winner, or that they need to think of others, and so we get what we had here: a total failure to empathize with the fact there were people sleeping in the apartments of the street they were partying on. Shame on them. I am too sick to even put my usual caveats on and declare it is not all of them. It probably isn’t. But until they go find another spot to drink their stupid little bubbly water mixers on, and someone else’s window to scream under, we are not friends.
I can’t even read the news without being irritated. Some child actor who peaked at 12 years old, and then only did some disneeee shite was bitching about his mother. A female hip hop artist removed the silicone from her ass and boobs in a shockingly sensible move of self preservation. The banks are collapsing like little mauled ducks in a row. Some tik tok Korean dude is the new Filthy Frank, making lo-fi skits about Asian culture. My kid thinks he is hilarious. I think it is just a bit hokey.
Hardly anything is superlative anymore. It is all ‘just ok’ and amateurish. California is still being battered by storms – I can confirm that one is true just by looking out of my window. Apparently the US is still funding war in the Ukraine in an inexplicable act of promoting war not peace, and now we are building up our submarines so we can take on China too. Whoopee doo. No thanks. War is good for the economy and bad for everyone else. It is ridiculous posturing by men and their handmaidens who see a profit in death and destruction. Whatever happened to the good and hip being pacifists? It seems like all good democrats can’t wait to get it on with the Russian Bear…and Chinese…mmm…Dragon? Panda? Panda might be the only word I know in Mandarin. I still can’t remember the Japanese word for vampire. Language doesn’t matter anymore, we seem to have devolved back to throwing sharp and hot things at each other instead of using our words like civilized human beings. And just like that it all falls down.
I like the light in the morning when there is a bad storm rolling into San Francisco. It is dim and grey and cool. The sky turns a milky bluish grey and the streets get slick with rain. I can smell the rainy mornings of storms past. Storms here, there, and everywhere. I’ve been everywhere, man…I’ve been everywhere….the rain smells different in Tokyo. It smells pungent and green and of growing things that send irritating perfumes up to the nose. I love the smell of cyprus trees in the morning. I remember grey streets in other cities on other continents. The rain slides down them as the world carries on around it. On my window seat my pot of bamboo sits silhouetted by the morning lack of sunlight, demanding water and attention. There is something about the garden that mocks me today, all growing and green and lush with my care in the cold brutal winter of ’23. I am not green or lush, I am turning into charcoal, brittle and burnt to a crisp and I have no idea how to fix it. I can fix most things, it might be an ugly fix, but this…I just don’t know how.
Outside the window San Francisco suffers in the worst case of ‘have and have nots’ that I have ever seen. The extent of the suffering is apocalyptical. I have no idea what those who can do something about it all think they are doing. The millennials make like it is new year’s eve 1999, while steps away from them people are dying in increments of neglect and horror. The only thing my beloved San Francisco with it’s failing tech industry is good for right now is a wake. Stick a fork in it people, we are done.
