We made appointments, answered questions, filled out all the paperwork online, got out the door Tuesday morning…and an officious Walgreens “pharmacy tech” refused our entire family the Covid vaccine we qualify for (since we haven’t been boosted since 2022). Which was upsetting in the extreme–I could not sleep the night after, heartsick and vexed. I’m hearing anecdotally that this is happening to a lot of eligible people, being refused lifesaving and disability-fighting vaccines by pharmacists using “religion” as an excuse or who seem genuinely unaware of CDC guidelines and best practices. It’s fucking maddening. Perhaps the reason vaccine uptake is “low” is because our public health infrastructure has completely failed, mostly due to business interests gutting it because they want the serf class–no matter how sick or disabled–back at the mill for exploiting.
Anyway, I’ve filed complaints and we’re making arrangements to go elsewhere. Plus, I’ll never step in another Walgreens again so long as I live. And that’s all I’ve to say about that, because most of what I’d add is unrepeatable blue words.
I don’t know how long it will last, but it looks like the Gallow & Ragged trilogy is discounted in ebook. (I wish I were alerted to these things more consistently.) The first volume, Trailer Park Fae, is $2.99 for Kindle–again, I don’t know for how long, but I thought I’d mention it.
I finished Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad and it was marvelous. She makes the Greek sing through the English and her notes are a delight. Next up is her Odyssey translation. I am smacking my lips in anticipation–after a moment spent with Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, which I first read in a Junji Ito adaptation.
I was in bed this morning with the Dazai as Boxnoggin got his cuddles, and happened across a particular passage where the protagonist talks about how, when people say, “Society won’t stand for it…” what they really mean is “I won’t stand for it.” If someone says, “Society will ostracize you,” what they really mean is, “I will ostracize you.” The force of the passage, addressing a “you” since the book’s in first person, was like a thunderclap. I had to set the book down and think about things for a bit–which Boxnoggin adored since it meant chest-skritches, always a favorite after a long night spent snoring in comfort.
Of course the protagonist is a bit tiresome, but the feeling Dazai describes of being an imposter in one’s own life, of clowning to hold back the despair, of utter alienation beginning in childhood, is extremely familiar. I sought out the book after Ito’s adaptation because of that definite, echoing familiarity–nausea in the Sartre sense, I’d call it. I’ve the urge to watch Breathless afterward, just to see if the existentialist throughlines I’m seeing hold.
It’s good to have some bandwidth for reading again; not-reading is almost as uncomfortable as not-writing. For a short awful while I was so emotionally and physically exhausted by the struggle around a certain series I couldn’t manage more than a paragraph before passing out at night; thankfully, the commitment to protecting the work (and myself) in this Year of the Real is paying off by granting me a little breathing room. Funny how that works out, ennit–when one starts enforcing one’s boundaries, one finds out rather quickly who was taking one’s kindness for weakness, and one acquires far more energy to spend on one’s own affairs.
It’s been a chopped-up sort of morning, as you can see by the separators. I’m about to begin another push to get the Sekrit Projekt past the point of no return, where its own momentum will take it over the finish line…but it’s rough, and various other considerations might intrude. The month of April’s going to hit like a freight train, since I’m rather behind, what with so much time eaten up by health concerns and struggling to get That Particular Series born. At least the stress nausea (I’m detecting a theme, and a rather unpleasant one at that) is receding bit by bit.
It’s not the end of the battle, but I can see it from here. And that is a welcome development indeed, my friends. The relief is damn near depthless.