It has occurred to me that I may be losing my mind. I’m sure many of you feel similarly, in this anxiety provoking state of relentless unknowns, peppered with nuggets of the known evils of the world. My tip off to possible crazytown? I can’t stop singing a particular song. A song one of my kids brought home from say, second grade, and taught to me. I sing it in the car, or under my breath, and possibly audible enough to passers-by, all the time.
Up, Butt, Co-co-nut. Up Your Butt with a Co…co…nut.
That’s it. That’s the whole song. It’s kind of like my mantra?
My daughter is particularly annoyed.
“Mom. Stop singing that.”
“I can’t,” I say.
“You can,” she says. This continues.
This is a form of tearing my hair out, as I can’t seem to write. Everyone is here at home, I can’t think through the haze of disaster, and most of my days are spent running around like a chicken with its head cut off. More like that one chicken that lived for, like, a year, without a head, and was shown at freakshows and such, as his owner failed to sever the brain stem and thought, gee, I’m really onto something here, with this headless chicken, and shunted it around charging money to see the freaky nubbin, until one day he forgot to feed its neck-hole with an eyedropper and it finally and mercifully died. I’m that one. I’m…animated. That’s about it. True story! Or maybe it is, the knowledge gleaned from my kids “Weird But True!” books that are lying around everywhere.
A tiny dry fart in the desert would describe the amount of words I’ve put down. I can’t shake the un-ending fog of bad news permeating everything right now, like a bad odor you can’t find the source of. Or in fact, you can, and it’s wafting upwind into Canada, and has a five-letter name and owns glitzy hotels, one of which I might have been seen flipping off during the women’s march in 2016.
Writing is my happy place, but right now it’s acting like an elusive teenager behind a locked bedroom door, blaring Metallica on full volume. I’ve almost given up.
I can see over the edge of the pit of despair; it’s all boulders and pointy rocks and lava; the sound of wailing guitar in the near distance. I’m not despairing, exactly, more like just sitting on the worn bench near the precipice of the pit, resigned, which feels somehow worse. Just me and my brain stem, hanging out. You know in the movie “Shine” where a young David Helfgott decides to take a shit in the bath even though his abusive father is getting in next? He was like, ehhh, fuck it, I’m just going to shit the bath, even if it’s bad for me in the end, because ultimately at this point I give no shits. Or just one. That’s how I’m feeling towards the almighty universe right now. Universe, you can have a random floater. I’m just going to sit here in the lukewarm water and wait for you to find it. Until then, whatever. You know? Just, whatever.
I am looking for ways to keep myself up. I do the normal things: eating and sleeping and filling the hours in between with stuff I pretend has some importance. I do that. I remind myself of all the people I know out of work and in transition to a greater unknown than not finding words. I head into the woods, to try and let the bird noises drown out the annoyingly loud inside voice that says you should have made something of yourself by now.
But… there’s one secret weapon that is helping me get though, just a little.
Comedy.
I like funny things, funny people. Its why I started the blog, to get my silly on. I especially like base jokes because I have the humour of a fourth-grade boy (jokes about bodily fluids/farts are A-OK)! I’m escaping into a world of other funny people if I can’t muster the funny myself, if I can’t write or retain anything I read…well, I might as well have a good laugh. I highly recommend the Brits, my all-time favourite people/comedians for their ability to be wacky and to give a two-fingered salute if you don’t agree with said wackiness. British accent + penis joke= HAHAHAHAHHhahahAHHAHA whoo boy! HA!
Before I go to bed, I watch a few clips, even short ones, to give myself something to laugh about. To take away the edge of dread that threatens to keep me up with its never-ending hamster wheel of doom. It helps me say: Cram it, 2020. Shove your COVID-19/death toll/race riots/fascist dictatorships/economy crashing/global warming/science denying/mask-refusing/water-level-rising/motherfucking shit-pile of bad news where the sun don’t shine.
Up…Butt…Co-Co-Nut. Sorry, now it’s in your head, isn’t it? ( If you want to go there with me, here’s an annoying cartoon version with monkeys, coconuts, and inexplicably, Abraham Lincoln, which seems justified as I think he’d agree with me right about now) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTqD7I3Dksw
Here’s my two cents: Go find the silly. The kind that has nothing to do with the idiocy and utter despair of right now. Laughter is therapy: it’s cheap, it can be easy to find, and it actually makes you feel better. Seeking It doesn’t mean you don’t know what’s happening in the real world. It means you do, and you are offering yourself a hand up out of the hole, a way to stand up and move away from the bench. Here, brain stem, relax, have an eye-dropper-full of sweet, sweet laughter. Right now, we have to do what helps, even if it annoys the shit out of our family and a few passers-by.