Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

What kind of a world have we created?

I walk past a house on my street every day -- impressed in the sidewalk in front of that house is a date -- 1912. That is less than 100 years ago, but I can imagine it very well.

It's a time when cars are a novelty. Computers are nonexistent. Television is nonexistent and radio is only a distant dream in the future. Only a few people have telephone, and a very lucky few have excellent plumbing. Imagine if getting hot water automatically was an extravagant luxury enjoyed mostly by the rich! That is 1912. 1912 is when ladies wear corsets and cannot vote. They can only hold jobs with great difficulty and stress, but most ladies are also taken care of by husbands, fathers or brothers. They don't work, but they don't NEED to work in order to eat.

Try to imagine this stuff. It wasn't that long ago, and the world was a VERY different place.

Women wore skirts that went down to their ankles or below. They wore gloves, corsets, hats in public. Try to imagine no TV, no radio, no electric, but chancy gas-powered light and heat. Imagine reading a novel by Bulwer-Lytton by gas-powered lamps, as your evening entertainment. You'd have the major event of the week about right. Imagine not taking a shower every day, but instead taking a plunge in heated water once a week -- no deodorants available to make you smell decent in between times.

What a WEIRD world! -- and yet that's the world our grandparents survived.

They knew that others would care for them. They knew that they could depend on some things that had been happening in their families for hundreds of years. They might not always have enough to eat, but they knew they would be loved. They might not always be amused, but whatever happened, there would be at least three generations together sharing the burden.

Now what? I could be born in 1912, but in 2005 my children and grandchildren have relegated me to a nursing home. What's a nursing home? It's a place with 100s of old people like me who've been separated from their families and paid off to be out of the world and out of sight. Some of them don't have bowel control. Some don't have mental control or memory. Some have everything, but most are lacking some essential function. Essential functions lost or retained, ALL of these people are lacking love. They are lacking identity and respect. They lack FAMILY.

WHY?

What has happened?

Why don't we give a damn about other human beings any more? Our parents, our grandparents ... we just fuck them off, "Here's a nursing home for you. Here's a place where you can go and eat, and just survive." You ought to be thanking me for this. Why don't these people MEAN anything to us?

I'm just struck dumb by the people who raised me. They are just shoving their parents into a corner and hoping they DIE. It makes me SICK. I have a great aunt, nearly 100 years old. She was born before the date on the sidewalk -- before 1912. Where is her family? Where are the people she should count on to make her life worth living for a few more years? Jesus Christ.

Are we like this? Are we so hateful that we could let our own kind, caring, loving parents die like rats in a trap, without giving them the love they gave us?


Are we so fucked up?


WHY? Why is it like this?

Please tell me it is time for the Plague --whatever Plague -- to come and wipe us out. I am sick of us. If we can't take care of ourselves, then who else can be safe in our world? No one. No species. No one.

there was a time old people were left in fields to die by themselves

Brilliant knip.

I hear you Abcryst...I can relate very well to what you are feeling. That rush of "what the fuck, how did this happen" feeling. I know it well.

What strikes me is that we have unlearned very well, how to take care of, or feel care for, each other. Perhaps we have to, just to survive ourselves. Even so, it's an overwhelming insight. It's not something that goes down easy once you really feel it like I sense you have here. And that's the other thing. Many just never feel it.
They may very well be the lucky ones.
What the fuck????????????

But regardless of all that, I hear you, and I care.
Very much.
I also really dig that you wrote it and posted it here.

Deep breath........
H

Trouble is, I shouldn't post here when I'm drunk. I use the eff word too much, I get too emotional, and I don't always remember what I wrote the next morning.

We live in a world with PLENTY of everything, but, it seems, very little love.

I would be so bewildered if I was my great aunt. I wouldn't know what to make of this "nursing home" custom, and the corresponding isolation from familiar people and events. It seems pretty horrible. At a time in your life when there's very little you can do without assistance, you're shunted off to be cared for by strangers. At a time when making friends with anyone is a major challenge, and maybe not even possible because of your drifting memory, you're sent to live with a group of people who are equally socially and mentally handicapped. This is a time in one's life when the comfort of the familiar is very important. Feeling loved is more important than ever. And yet, it seems, we punish people for getting old, and living long productive, worthwhile lives by locking them in these prisons, far away from everything they need to be happy in their declining years.

My great aunt worked hard to support her family. She taught at a school for the blind, survived a difficult marriage and divorce, made sure her sons went to college (one is a doctor, the other has a master's degree in something, and the third, I don't know), and in her later years she wrote a book that was QUITE successful (went through about nine editions) and researched the family genealogy, tracing it all the way back to the Mayflower.

All that she did should have earned her a better ending.

What is going on here?

Maybe, come to think of it, it's not the WORLD that's the problem. Maybe it's MY FAMILY that's the problem. Unfortunately that wouldn't surprise me.

large sigh


before we long for the good old days too much, we have to realize it isn't yesterday we're pining for, it's our own notion of walden pond

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a world that does not use enough of those....

abcrystcats wrote:We live in a world with PLENTY of everything, but, it seems, very little love.

Speak for yourself.

This does not describe my world.

I realise that my world is a reflection of me.

The more love I give, the more I recieve.

It is fucking beautiful!

Rat Bag

Here's a poem I wrote in 2000. I took notes while a friend of mine who was in a nursing home talked to me on the phone. I documented what she said with this piece.

nursing home


the night crew and day crew are arguing about
who's going to give me my pill
and i'm living like a dog
and i'm on the toilet and they've fallen asleep in the hall
and if i fall, i'll break my neck and be a parapalegic

i might as well be dead

i need their hands to transfer me
from the toilet to the bed
and the other day, they took me
for some tests
and i couldn't pick up my feet
but they didn't notice
and i fell by the car

a lot depends on my legs and
they give out on me
but i'd rather walk than be blind
and the problem is also my heart
if i use the nitroglycerin
it makes my eyes bleed

so, they're asleep in the hall, right?
and there i am on the toilet and
they don't know i'm calling
and so i have to crawl to my bed
and i'm afraid i'm losing my mind

if i fall and have an angina attack
i'll just die there
while they're snoring in the hallway

everything's gone wrong here
everybody's so mean

and imagine,
my daughter hasn't spoken to me
for ten years
and all that time
i worked around the clock as a nurse
and wore that uniform and spent
a hundred thousand dollars on her
just so she could be a model and dance
and now she screens her phone calls
and won't answer my calls
so i stopped calling

my brother's busy with social engagements
and i have so much pain,
i can't even think

plus, did you know?
they charge you for a lot of things
you don't get
my brother makes lots of money
but he wouldn't give me a nickel
he wouldn't even take my cat
i had to put her to sleep
i would have tripped over her

they own you here

they moved my husband upstairs
to a different room
he'll be ninety-six next month,
did you know that?
but you know what they did the other day?
they mixed up our meds
and he got the pain meds
and i got his prostate meds
and we could have both died here
and nothing is documented
correctly
i was a nurse for thirty-five years
and i can read these charts

this is insane
if i keep crying
my eyes will bleed again

last month i paid it
but it was wrong
nine thousand dollars!
nine thousand dollars for just one
month of hell

my meds alone
are seven hundred thirty dollars
a month
my income is only three thousand
everything we saved is almost gone
it's killing me
if i stop paying
maybe they'll just let me die

maybe they'll just let me die

i can read the bills
i can read the charts
but who do i tell it's wrong?
they deny it
some people here can't even
see any more

why do they call it a nursing home?
this is no home
and the nurses are sleeping
in the hallway


doreen peri, 6/11/2000

I live with my mother because she cannot live alone and i assist her with all i can .She is not doing well and always worries about me .She me today that maybe i should put her in a home ..a "home".No way- I won't do that (i pray i never have to do that )i want to keep her here in her own home. I use to work in places like that and saw things i could'nt stand ...terrible ...i hate that .When my grandmother was very old and sick the doctor put her in one for a while to get better ,it was a terrible place.He would not release her ,so my mother took a gun and with the help of family removed my grandmother from there and took her home. I dread the day i am that old and sick and feeble ...