…I’m calling the doctor. No worries. I’m fine, but, after finally getting new batteries inside my blood pressure monitor, my numbers have been high for the last week or so, and I think I might need a new cocktail of pills or a variation of the ones I have. I don’t think it’s an environmental issue–but granted, in November on election night my stress levels were off the charts. Around the holidays, after a series of financial setbacks, my stress levels spiked again. Since then, I have vowed to take care of my psycho-emotional self by meditating more, drinking less, by giving myself over to reading, writing, walking the dogs, and making music. And the financial picture has also improved significantly after strategically moving things around and paying off some debt. You would think, then, that I’d be returning to normal, or at least, the normal I reached after discovering the hypertension formally about six or seven years ago and after my doctor worked with me to find the right treatment. It’s possible, even though I have tried to square myself or make peace with the political reality, that the state of the union is still managing to get under my skin and into my blood. He’s been president for two days and already the shit’s getting real–and ugly. I’m not bingeing on news, but the late night talk show guys, while they make me laugh, are giving me enough information to make me angry. I wonder if I should cut myself off altogether. But that feels like sticking my head in the sand–and I don’t want to do that. I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating: we can be informed without becoming obsessed, and we can, in our small everyday ways, take good care of our immediate circle, our families, our friends, and our communities. I know that some people are taking care by leaving social media, at least temporarily. They are doing it, I think, for both the health benefits and as a means of protest against the oligarchy.
I’ve never been on Twitter and so X is not and has never been part of my life. I rarely shop anymore on Amazon–mostly on principle. But as much as I think Zuckerberg might be the devil, I have not abandoned Facebook or Instagram, and I doubt the effectiveness, even though I appreciate and agree with the sentiment, of people abandoning these platforms in protest against Meta. I have meaningful connections there, and I use the platforms as creative tools and to inform people about my musical and writing endeavors. There’s just no meaningful or equivalent alternative, and for many of us, going completely without is not a reasonable course. I don’t like it. It is a bit of a quandary. Why aren’t their options? How hard could it be? I have no idea, zero idea, nothing, nada. So for now, I’m hanging in there and hoping my friends who are disappearing find their absence beneficial and healthful.
Tonight I will engage in the self-care embrace of culture. For Christmas, I bought my wife and I tickets to see Arooj Aftab. Over the last year I have been absolutely mesmerized by her music. Nearly impossible to pinpoint the genre; it’s some combination of jazz, pop, folk, ambient, progressive, world? I don’t know. She reaches into all of these places. Pakistani-American, Aftab typically sings in Urdu, in English only on a few tracks. Her music is rich, dense, subdued, but never boring. It’s full of harp, sometimes sitar, light percussion, acoustic guitar, piano, and her beautiful voice. I find her songs soothing, meditative, lush, and, even though I don’t understand a word, comforting. I have high expectations for tonight’s concert and the sense that it will be excellent medicine. Just what the doctor ordered.
michael jarmer 