Strike Rumor
Thursday, July 25th, 2024 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
74F and sunny this morning, on it's way up to 80F.
Not much else to say today.
Just glad the sale will finally be closing next week.
Prowly's paper plate clean as usual today, and I left him more.
And the power would've been cut early this morning too!
But it was still on... central air still working!
And the lights were still on when I drove by it tonight on the way back from work.
So... good on me for sitting on hold with ComEd on Monday!
Roberto told me we had a union meeting in the theater today, that I totally missed!
But he said everybody voted, "no," on the current offer from GeoStaff.
I didn't know we were to that stage yet... cuz again, I'm never informed about this stuff!
But he said it looks like we may strike in August!
I hope we do!
And it would be perfectly in keeping with the craziness of my 2024!
I was thinking about my card calendar last night.
It was an old idea of mine that I revived in fall of 2022... finally working out the proper start date, of December 18th... on paper.
I started keeping track of 2023 with a boxed deck, standing on a shelf with the current card sticking out the top... and I'd mention what week it was, occasionally, in this blog.
But it wasn't until summer 2023 that I created graphical icons to pin at the top of these entries.
And still, it wasn't until December of 2023 that I made an actual, physical card calenar using binder rings and a hole punch.
What you're seeing above is an object I'd been picturing in my head since 1993, but didn't get around to making for 30 years!
And I hung it in the kitchen and started using on December 18th... first day of Ace of Spades week, and first year for this perpetual calendar...
And two days later, on December 20th, the refinance, that looked like it was just about to close, was DECLINED at the last minute!
So, in other words... this first year of that perpetual calendar I made with the intent of using the rest of my life... began with the disaster that would define my 2024!
And every single week since then... every single card... has been super-charged with drama like I've never known!
Arctic blast, foreclosure, Snoop's disappearance, legal defense drama, drama at work... plenty of drama trying to sell the house... giving Yvette away... two months of packing and storage... the move, and drama with prowly, and the closing...
There's even been political drama like we haven't seen in years!
So it would be perfectly fitting if August were about going on strike!
And if the union prevails and we get the wages we're demanding...
Then the rest of the year's gonna be about... will Kamala win the White House?.. and will I win Melody Manor back?
And if the answer to both those things is, yes?..
It really will have been the absolute craziest year of my life!
How much of a mind-fuck would it be, to be sitting in the kitchen of a totally renovated Melody Manor, on December 17th, with Prowly back... making good money at Potawatomi Valley HS, as a maintenance guy... with President Elect, Kamala Harris busy preparing to take power...
After starting this year as an elementary school janitor, making crap money, in a run-down Melody Manor, facing foreclosure, and the possibility that the entire nation was about to fall to fascism?
And that, to get from A to B, I had to part ways with all my pets, move completely out of the house, start a new job, live in a studio apartment on the 11th story of Allerton Tower... go on strike... get a mortgage... and move back into the house again?
I would treasure that card calendar the rest of my life, and never forget how it's first run went!
Hell! I'd write a novel about how it's first run went!
Just to be clear, however... I'm not saying, and do not think, that the card calendar somehow caused all of this drama to manifest.
Rather, I think something was nagging me to finally make the thing... to help me get through what was shaping up to be the craziest year of my life.
This blog began in June of 2022, when I was unemployed, broke, and looking for some kind of direction... which is also why I rubbed the wings of a Junebug just a few weeks before, in May of 2022.
Back yard field recording was free hobby... and this blog was originally meant to document those field recording experiments.
I was using Audible credits to listen to free audio books about trees, and getting all back into the wonders of nature, and the astronomical cycle of the seasons... which got me thinking about the card calendar idea.
Snoop & Prowly came along in August, in a very cosmically fated type of way, and became the impetus for me to look for a part time job... cuz I couldn't work full time, with Dad's health being so precarious.
There was a death scare in August with Dad, followed by the omen of mulberry tree falling over in September.
But by November, it seemed like things were settling down, and I was looking for a winter project, so I decided it should be to design the artwork for a tarot-like calendar card deck... which was a huge undertaking... but I thought... what else will I have to do with myself at night?
Dad broke his hip on December 2nd!.. only a week or two into that project!
And before any balloon payment, or foreclosure was on the radar... that was the calamity that began turning my life upside down!
I stubbornly struggled to keep going with the artwork for my winter project through December and January, until his death just yanked me away from the upstairs computer for good!
I spent the rest of that year camped out in the back room, using Dad's computer, and throwing myself into yard landscaping and home improvement, while trying to maintain a stable routine for the dog and the cats, and implement a plan for financial stability to keep that new life sustainable for the long run!
It was all folley, because the TODI was not valid, but I didn't know that!
And in November of 2023, after quite a lot of success with everything, and it looking like I'd close that refinance, and secure the future... I got to thinking about the card calendar again.
The artistic form of the project was still on indefinite pause, but I had kind of incorporated those little icons into the blog... and now that Christmas was in the offing, I had this idea to make a few actual card calendars to send as gifts, to some of the more pagan-leaning people in my life.
I originally wanted to buy an adjustable date stamper, red & black ink pads, a fancy hole punch, and some jumbo card decks to do it all right, and make five or six calendars, but there ended up not being enough money or time.
So I settled on just making myself a crude, unstamped one, with a Bicycle deck from Fiesta Food Mart.
And I told myself, This will be the testing draft of the calendar!.. I'll use it for a whole year and work out the kinks, if there are any.
What I can say now is that there aren't any kinks!
It does keep perfect track of the seasons, and gives you a great sense of where you are in the long-view of the year.
And it's simple design works perfectly!.. two binder rings and a nail to hang it on!
I mean, it would help to have the dates stamped on the cards for anybody who was new to it's use... but I don't need that!
That's similar to hand clocks without numbers, actually.
People who really know how to read hand clocks don't need the numbers, but the rest of us would like to see them, just to make sure!
2024's been a good test year, because it was a leap year, and, in the US, every leap year is also an election year.
The leap year part of it means that I started out flipping the card every Monday, but then had to remember to let the Jack of Spades hang for an extra day, and then switch to flipping on Tuesdays.
But that wasn't hard to do.
If you have one on the wall in your kitchen, you kinda look forward to that weekly flip!
It's this little ritualistic thing you rememeber... Oh!.. It's almost midnight on Monday night!.. gotta flip the calendar!
Or, Oh!.. I forgot to flip the calendar last night, but it's Tuesday now! Gotta flip it!
Other nights you just look at it and think how it's not gonna need to be flipped at all for three more days.
But as that goes along, over the weeks and months... you do really get this sense of where you are in the slow-moving, big picture of the year!
It was always black Spades for the longest time, but now we're into red Hearts, and next week is the 7 of hearts!... that's mid-spring!
I gotta step up the game, before summer hit's me!
Back at the start of May, when it was still Hearts, I was thinking, I need to be moving by 2 of Clubs!
And I did move in 2 of Clubs week!.. but that calendar helped me make those hard calls to stay on track... like taking the studio, instead of holding out for something else that might not come along... or calling Mr Taylor back, and signing with him when I did.
I also now have these memories etched into my brain of... better days in early spring, when Yvette was still around, and I was still at Cloud... being associated with red Hearts hanging in the kitchen.
As for the election year aspect... well, that's where I really think a card calendar helps out!
Everybody I know has been freaking out since January about the election, and about Trump becoming a dictator, and the living nighmare that would unleash on the world.
And I was like, Nah!.. that shit doesn't start to mean anything until we're into Diamonds!.. that is way too far off to worry about now!
And I was right!.. because halfway thorugh Clubs, that game's completely changed!
The card calendar gives you a very palpable sense of how long a season really is!
13 weeks!
A whole lot can change in 13 weeks!
And it also shows you how the astronomical seasons... really do align with big societal shifts throughout the year.
Why am I endlessly painting shit in a mostly empty building right now?
Because we're in Clubs!
It's summer!
And we're not even halfway through it!
Don't start thinking about any change on that front until you're seeing court cards!
But even then... that ace of Diamonds is still three weeks away!
And that'll only be the start of another... loooong season!
Thinking in terms of weeks and seasons really is a lot more helpful than thinking in terms of months.
The mindset is like, Okay, I'm in this week of the season, so I have seven days to make progress on this or that, to stay on track!
And then over the course of those seven days, hopefully three of them are ones where you hit your marks!.. and if you do... that was a successful week!
If you don't quite?.. well, there are 13 weeks in the season, so there's still plenty of time to adjust, and recover!
Yes there are the very real monthly bills to deal with, and nobody can escape... first of the month!
But we're all trained to cope with the Gregorian calendar, from childhood.
It is the most accurate calendar ever devised... and my card calendar does rely on it, as well!
But it does have archaic roots in lunar calendars, which is why we have 12 months... because the moon does roughly 12 lunations in a year.... and that does suck, because that's the only reason we have to pay rent twelve times a year?
Like, why can't rent be quarterly?
There's no reason why you have to magically pay more money to hold on to your home, every 30 or 31 days!
And there's also no reason why you can't get paid every week!
Still, my point is that the card calendar does break your brain out of that framework.
You still have to live within that framework... but you don't have to be a mental prisoner of it.
The framework of the card calendar... being so much more in synch with the Earth's orbit, and therefore the seasons and the actual course of the socio-economic, culturo-political, year... does actually help you navigate the Gregorian framework, over the course of a year... while it also helps you think and plan ahead for years to come!
The Gregorian calendar is really bad about... making the current year all there is, and the whole of reality... and then erasing everybody's brains on January 1st, and doing it again.
It's not a perpetual calendar.
You have to get a new one every year.
Each one has a different number... which becomes it's name, and identity.
The card calendar, however, is perpetual.
Yes, you do have to pay attention to the Gregorian calendar to keep it that way... because you have to start it on December 18th, and you have to watch the Jack of Spades every leap year, and make sure you have the Joker out for only the single day of December 17th.
But if you do that... it is perpetual, which means you can use the same one forever, and get that real sense of... this cycle is but one of many to come. And I can get so much done in one... so what can I do in two, or three?
Okay!.. let's wrap this up!
I was saying how I believe that, essentially, the cosmos was nagging me to make myself a card calendar, because it foresaw... that 2024 was gonna be a real shitstorm!
I would need the card calendar to navigate 2024.
But the worlds first card calendar, ever to physically exist and be used for a year... also needed a guy like me... living through a year like this... to give it true, magical life!
The origin of the card deck as we know it, is a mystery.
Why it can work as a perpetual calendar?.. also a mystery.
For it's entire history, the playing deck has been... just this thing that humans kind of developed subconsciously... that just vibes with the cosmos on multiple levels.
The current, western version of it, which is the one which works so well as a perpetual calendar... is the result of innovations that the french made to it... when it was already pretty ancient.
But they didn't have any intention of it being used as a calendar.
It was all subconscious.
What I'm doing with it now?.. is just another intuitive twist.
But now that I'm using it that way... it goes into the collective unconscious, which makes it more likely it'll be used this way again.
If I have a hand in that, then it won't be for profit... i've decided.
I just think it's a cool use of the deck that a certain demographic would love, if they were turned on to it.
So if I can do that... with a free set of instructions, or whatever... that catches on in some cult fashion... then certainly I will.
But if I can't...
Well, I think just my having done it will make it easier for the next mind to arrive at the same thing.
Collective unconscious, and all of that.
I dunno!
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