Pope Cocksickles: A Punjabi girl commits Blasphemy
Laughter, Random thoughts, Salvador Dali, Music for the Soul
Life has been a mixture of fatigue and disbelief recently. Utterly Surreal. It is the intersection of an apparition of a face and a fruit dish on a Beach meeting the geopolitics of a child watching the birth of a new world. Somehow through the gambit of emotions and tears, there is still laughter and the singular joy of silliness. My family has been my bedrock and my children have (un?)fortunately picked up our familial propensity towards dark humor. They inspire me to get up daily and fight the good fight. Laughter is the best therapy for any ailment in my humble opinion.
The strange days of 2020 seem to be having a cognitive effect on my brain. Emotional and physical fatigue have always found me getting a severe case of the sillies. You might have experienced this phenomenon. The moment in which life becomes so absurd but your will doesn’t allow you to crumble. You have not yet processed all that has happened but you manage to laugh in the face of all of it. And why not? My response to intense pressure is always to crack jokes to cope and laugh at the clusterf%&k of it all.
The other day my kids were wondering what dessert items may be on the menu and I flippantly said, “Pope Cocksickles!”, meaning coke popsicles. My daughter’s beautiful brown eyes went wide and my son let out a shriek along with flashing his single enchanting dimple at catching his mom saying something dirty. Then the image of it all sank in and we laughed hysterically. Now pope cocksickles will forever be a family joke on a hot summer’s day that make me smile. Endorphins released, a family bonded, silly moments to cut the tension of COVID created.
If you follow anything I write you know I live in the suburbs of Portland. That in itself should say a lot about compassion and trauma fatigue. For the curious, the state is not on fire, my kids are still biking to the local Townsquare in masks to meet friends amidst the new normal of boarded-up stores downtown, nightly protests, the wall of moms, and a slew of out of towners that seem to be migrating here for residence or just to watch the shitshow. It’s a clusterf&*k indeed and several different factions, pursuing their own self-interest are exacerbating an already precarious situation. Politicians seeking political points including. No one is blameless. As a result, I’m packing up my husband and kids for the most of August, quarantining in Canada and letting my family feed and take care of us while we dry out emotionally. It’s logistically difficult and comes at a considerable financial cost but the distance from the US is needed. I really want to go home although I don’t know that anywhere feels like home anymore. That’s ok, I feel surprisingly comfortable with this new normal and know that family has my back. Perhaps, the wilderness will provide me solace as nature has never possessed the double-dealing, acrimony, and fickleness of humanity. I sometimes choose to be deliberately obtuse for the sheer rejection of conformist ideals. Really how much glaring hypocrisy can a person call out before the world employs the meme of a shrieking banshee? So, in the famous words of Forrest Gump, ‘That’s all I have to say about that.’
In a very short period of time, the world has transformed or perhaps only to those of us that see it. Its as though the fabric of reality is blurring the lines between dreams, hallucinations, and perception. What we think is reality has warped into a nonstop display of propaganda, psychological warfare, strategy, buffoonery, moral impotence to act, ego, hope, and desperation. Kind of like a Salvador Dali painting that has lasted for months and potentially years. Seductive, a little dark, and disturbing but reflecting the human condition in an abstract way. I cannot look away at the truth of it. Whether ‘this’ is political theater, posturing, or a blatant power play, the latent tension created will ripple out for a long time. Stability is to be cultivated, even the appearance of stability is important in times like these. Just like so much in life, interconnected systems don’t follow models predictably, neither does human behavior, including my own.
For example, my dreams have been intense and almost hallucinogenic of late, as though someone dropped psychedelics in my coffee. They tend to manifest my concerns, unprocessed thoughts and hopes. More than anything it’s music I hear along with the French language which I haven’t studied since high school and am not fully proficient in. There’s is something comforting in it though. I’m not sure what it means to dream in another language. I’ve only ever dreamed in English, Punjabi and now French. Along with these dreams, there is still a soundtrack for my psychedelic jaunts into other dimensions of existence. Music triggers the memories of entangled arms and legs, the loss of first loves, profound longing, and the enticing scent of summer sweat.
Three songs permeate my mind lately as though I’m grasping in the dark for some long persistent memory to ground me. Neko Case’s Hold on, hold on, Sheryl Crow’s, The Difficult Kind and a newly minted discovery, Miley Cyrus singing I Would Die for You. That kind of folk, witchy, earthy quality has an allure for me right now. It’s calming, ethereal, and grounding. Man do I miss live music.
All hail artists with souls so deep, rich, and nuanced. Without the power of art, in all its glorious forms, to mark me in the most emotionally empowering ways, I would be a much more superficial version of the person I am today. For that my soul eternally thanks you.
In the immortal words of Sheryl Crow which still have profound meaning to me twenty years later:
Tell it to me slow, tell me with your eyes
If anyone should know how to let it slide
I swear I can see you, coming up the drive
And there ain’t nothing like regret, to remind you you’re alive
If you could only see
What love has made of me
Then I’d no longer be in your mind the difficult kind
’Cause babe I’ve changed
Oh, ball-breaking moon and ridiculing stars
Oh, the older I get, the closer you are
Don’t you got somewhere, that you need me
Instead of hanging here making a fool of me
For those Canadians reading this, Bonnie Henry, I’m a big fan! Please do not slash our tires or vandalize our car with Oregon plates. The umbrella of solidarity should know no borders. The reality, unfortunately, seems to be a very different animal.
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Go forth, Break Bread: Summer food should nourish you. Live well and love often. The world is in dire need of it.
