I’m reading these books:
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
No One is Talking About This: A Novel by Patricia Lockwood
Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism and Treason by Gina Frangello
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The first book is a re-read, the second, the second thing I’ve read by her, a kind of crazy, stimulating writer with whom I might be slightly obsessed, the third written by a favorite contemporary author who, I think, writes the best sex I’ve ever read by a female writer. I guess that means she writes the best sex of any author I can think of, at least right now, although James Salter comes to mind, too. Frangello’s memoir has also sparked a fracas on Facehooker (as my friend Rebecca aptly calls it) — women canceling other women for good and bad reasons but ultimately a lot of virtue signaling on both sides, in my opinion. Hey, what do I know? Nothing. I know nothing. I even used the phrase virtue signaling, which I loathe.
I’m knitting an afghan. The colors are: mustard, beige, pink, white, and dusty cedar. I haven’t knit in probably fifteen years, but it’s just like riding a bicycle or sex, if we want to carry through a theme, here. Stay tuned — for the afghan.
I grew incensed today reading just the title of an article: “Vaccine Refusal Will Come at a Cost — For All of Us” and this subtitle: “People who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine will have higher health-care costs. The rest of us will foot the bill.” I’m not going to link the article because I don’t want to feel the cold wind of it on my face again. I’d venture to say that the tone of those two sentences and that article pretty much sum up what I hate most about this terrible country: its subtle brilliance at appealing to the most primitive of fears which is money and scarcity. Vaccines as transactions. I got The Vaccine so I wouldn’t get The Covid or spread The Covid. I most definitely didn’t get the vaccine to save people money in the future. I’m not of the mind to justify this, either, with whatever gets people vaccinated, or money talks. I wanted to tell the writer of this article to eat crow. If I rambled a bit, I could lead you down the path of the cost of Onfi, the benzodiazepine that Sophie’s hooked on. The tiny little print on the label says $1,237.00. We’re only allowed a 23-day supply. Sophie’s primary insurance, Blue Shit of California pays the bulk of that $1,237.00 Lundbeck (or do they? as that might just be the contracted rate for CVS to charge us if we had no insurance?) and the state of California the rest but in the decade-plus that Sophie’s been taking it, I’ve paid $150 cash for it when I got it from a pharmacy in London through a pharmacy in New York when it wasn’t approved by the FDA, and then when it was approved for use in #terribleAmerica, $500 as a co-pay and then $450 with a coupon provided by the pharmaceutical company, and then $0 from a non-profit, subsidized by the same pharmaceutical company, then $85 and why am I telling you this? I just saw your head fly by. Something about healthcare, I think, and the transactional nature of everything. How it’s all fucking rigged. Did you know that it’s cheaper to pay us caregivers of our disabled children into adulthood in our homes than it is to place them in institutions? We are paid minimum wage (negotiated by a union) — close to $15.00 an hour — as opposed to around $200,000 the government would have to shell out with your — I mean, our — tax money. I’m just stating facts here. I’m not complaining. I’m grateful for this generosity, to tell you the truth. You can read about it on The National Council of Disability page, here. What I rage about is useless, in the end, because it’s the nature of capitalism, of our for-profit healthcare system, of our country, forever and ever, amen.
In other news, the hummingbird is still there, sitting on her nest right outside of Sophie’s window. The branches sway, sometimes vigorously, and I can’t imagine how that seemingly fragile conglomeration of twigs and greens and fluff from the silk floss tree will stay on that particular branch with that tiny, tiny bird protecting those tiny, tiny, tiny eggs, and the other day I thought a couple of nasty crows were talking about her, making some sort of plan. They squawked around, flapping their oily wings and gnashing their beaks, talking transactions and then mated right in front of me and the hummingbird, probably deciding that an infinitesimally small morsel of bone and feather and shell was titillating but ultimately not worth the effort. What do I know, though? Nothing. I know nothing.
Your clarity. The beautiful way you make your points even when you do not specifically articulate them.
I love how you write. I admire it. I envy it.
Elizabeth, you make me want to do better. Sometimes I even do.
Peace.
You know nothing, which means you know everything. And how you write it, too!