pandemic 2020 day 2

March 19, 2020. This is too unusual an event in the history of planet earth not to record. covid-19 global pandemic. here in the states we first learned of the coronavirus in january 2020 through social media reports of

Li Wenliang
李文亮
Born	12 October 1985 Beizhen, Liaoning, China
Died	7 February 2020 (aged 34) Wuhan, Hubei, China
Cause of death	COVID-19
Education	Master of Medicine (MMed)
Alma mater	Wuhan University
Occupation	Ophthalmologist
Known for	Raising awareness about the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic

Li Wenliang, a doctor (ophthalmologist) and Communist Party member in the Wuhan Province of China, who had been reprimanded by Beijing on January 3rd for having expressed his beliefs in a chatroom, in efforts to warn friends and family of the existence of the virus, as he was treating people who were getting sick and dying. In many cases the virus started as fever and progressed to respiratory failure. The W.H.O. was alerted of the virus on New Year’s Eve, 2019. Ultimately covid-19 was traced back to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, though it is still unclear if this is where it originated. China and USA are now fighting over origin stories. The good doctor was telereporting to the world how he lost 5 patients in his ward on one single night. He himself became infected in early January, and by the time he himself succumbed to the virus and died, he had become a folk hero. and rightly so! people turned off their lights in 5 minute tributes, spread glitter and blew whistles to honor his memory, and shouts for freedom of speech became louder. The censors could barely keep up removing hashtags. He passed away at age 33 on February 7th. Since his death, entire cruise ships were quarantined on the west coast of our country and the first USA death from covid-19 was one of the passengers, who lived in Placer County, which borders Sacramento County where i live. There are now 200,000+ cases globally and close to 10,000 have died. The studies and projections of cases in this country are predicted to overwhelm the hospital and healthcare system, as they will outnumber beds and access to ventilators. Our president, Trump, has declared war on covid-19, and is utilizing the military and Army Corps of Engineers to try and setup field hospitals in every major city. The projected peak of infections in the USA is an estimated 45 days from now, and we will be overwhelmed. Yet Sacramento, the capital city of California, has only recommended people stay home. Schools indeed have all been closed. Martial law has not been invoked. Yet. It’s a strange time because nobody seems to know exactly what to do other than hoard supplies for long potential stretches at home, and socially distance themselves from others. In a few minutes I myself will get ready for work as usual, and drive into the office. I feel i would be better served if i were working from home, but i will do my duty and go in and support my 25+ colleagues in serving our 1,000+ clients who are mostly vulnerable populations dealing with both economic insecurity and mental illness. My hope is to keep the faith, pray to god, and otherwise listen and respond with creative intelligence to a dynamic and emergent public health crisis.

notarize the thighs (no.7)

Oversaturated with char-broil
ranch sauce and carpet sales
pitches

how would we survive
if we rented out
our heads

come knocking
first of the month

they look at us incredulous
shaking out a hook
the jingle

pay up motherfucker
you live on our land

what
did you think
this was
free

slow

Slow falls like snow. Not pelting just touching and melting. Slow is not weak or worthless or lazy or wasteful. Slow is not what they say in our fast culture USA. Slow takes the time to truly understand. Is seen and sees. Patience. The world doesn’t know what it wants.

the opening is tbd…

byo latchkey

we were…

latchkey kids. made deaf beneath

the wall of sound

of the industry

of the landscape
in the head

we played arcade games

to recover and chewed bubble

gum and drew on ourselves

with ballpoint pens

dumb kids. not stupid just

contextually thin

lacking or without sense or

the means to make

sense

hungry for relevance
starved of context

ignorant of our rights

we no longer studied our

country’s constitution

in high school

we microwaved tv dinners

and rode our bikes into the

night with duran duran baking

our heads by transistor

radio

stressed kids. the trance-like induction

of environmental stressors fill

the internal auditorium

teeming life of feelings acid-washed
a sensitive study of self
unreleased

abbreviated from an lp to an ep

the world stops when the record store is closed
the opening is tbd

you are all invited
statistics will be gathered

and fall upon us
with friends

new cokes slim jims leg warmers

byo latchkey

KatYa, 2017

ten

ten. indivisible

i breakdown, too. useless, not unlike a chevy silverado, nothin in the tank. if there’s no coffee in me by 6am, make a lawn ornament outta me. so i start early, crackin those beans through the grind, by hand sometimes, yawnin bedhead and all, spring winter summer and fall, gotta keep myself runnin and runnin along, so i can be luscious good and vitamin k for you, my love, roarin my middle age burnin fuel with that special manner makes all the millenials turn their heads, double take, slap their faces to wonder where the hell i came from? yes, i am my own sensation, out in the wild west of this great nation, one being, guarded, sentient, indivisible, under god, and irreverent to the core. last week against all odds ran my first ever ultra, just ran and ran eight hours long like a lunatic, up and down quarry road through the american river canyon, drawing poison oak for the second time in three months, so sore for three days i could hardly walk and find me thrilled through the pain… just now i saw the county job i applied for has hit processing stage, so juicy like a quarter orange shall i climb out of my navel and squeeze on to the commodity, precious life, dear god, and hopefully get around my self center and finalize my time, this life, on the carrying about in service to those less fortunate, county state country corner, with a beating heart and a backpack and a rushing spirit glancing off the darkness like light does. that’s all i want, anyway.

south china sea

If china and the usa can meet for tea
in the south china sea
what a dream this
would be

then will i know my chinese brother
who wears the knitted hat
like me

given us by our nephews
to keep warm
in the mountains

in the valleys
in the winter

a dream is only worth
making real. like the two silver hearts
i wear around my neck
on a silver chain

as my sister. in china
given us by our young nieces
replacing our hearts
from their scattered
pieces across the world

jasmine tea
in the south china sea
you and me

i give you my cup
you give me yours
and fire up our ceramics
against any twitter
polemics

arms locked at the elbows
we drink slowly

drink up. you and me
from the sunset west
looking east where she
shall rise again

red. blue and white
in the south china
sea

lighting the single candle
given us by an elder. in faith

by the bodhi
tree

no one dies

fire in the sky
women and children running
                through
                alleys
                   explosions
        reflected
     in the
         eyes

Fire in the
sky…    kids …   running

No one’s gonna
die on the
fourth
of July

black denim daisy dukes (subsidized surveillance mix)

i was out there facing you and the world. through a portal i chose. nonlinear travel into the membrane of a postmodern club. on a bright near-life evening experience out. to subdue the indoor perry mason addiction tv blues. subdue with dub and sweat and light and you. to be overcome with the light of the darkness. you night owls, you know. kinda like a blindness toward the runway descent. looking  to land. hoping to avoid catastrophe and chain reaction seated screaming affairs. i do not like to fly. not even in my dreamscapes. like some of you. unlike the rest. and somewhat casually dressed. like always. no formality, out there facing the usa big city nights, at this time in recent memory. i will tell it to you as unencumbered as possible. hope you don’t mind getting it raw like this. with or without punctuation, paragraph, or other accoutrements. i like to call it liberated. shorthand-like. abbreviated, but def not lazy. def not. no deliberations. no hesitation. pushing my speech out of the nest. opening another chapter of free thought. typed out. no hype. typed out. no ribbon. no tape. red, white,  or blue. untaped, out on the wire. out on the net. without a net. full on frontal nudity. the air, brushed aside. the moon drawing the tide. the tenses got tense. tensile. disappeared out on some plank i made for them to walk. eat shit and die, i said. they didn’t hear the verb at the end of that sentence. they will not. they won’t. and wherever words drown down the slow pull of gravity underwater, they are as inaudible as the world dipped  in hyrdrogen cannot be heard.  the air dipped in hydrogen. a nice thing. i can hear myself think. i can pause and take a drink. drink the air and its free. like i thought this post was. like i thought my thoughts were when i shared them. like i prayed and hope my life was here in the states. the country. the place i reside. the vip lily lounge pad from the dangers around me. the darkness. the dark waters. giving me the premo. the premium democratic freedom. fuck if i haven’t paid for it! this stream of life that carries me on a plush pillowtop eggcrated fuzzy boombox of elastic sound and fury. i could stand up in the madness. i could leap off the stage into it. i would feel fingertips massaging the backs of my long legs. my caboose would later tell rolling stones in the post show interview how seriously it felt touched. my black denim daisy dukes got backside bankrolled by princes and treated to marigold sugar candy and treated like queens.  Singlehandedly accelerated and driven to pole position. all my confidence safely locked up in the muscle. usa club scene. protecting my confidentiality with a simple dance step to the left ,or cut to the right. or billy jean my way down the glass lit floors. three hundred watts of white light. a couple hundred pounds of black and white heat. all the onlookers fell back with their cash in hand. struck by the collision of lady’s night in the theatre grande. Maxell tapesque wind driven back in gale force, to cock block a stalker. with a hurricane eye, to allow in an admirer. or a gentle game of verbal chess, to challenge a so-called friend. those who were there to do what i said, became visible (and quite helpful). see i just needed some help to get my truth across. needed your help to brita filter out all the fluoride and dilute toxins in the mineral water of my mind. to goldpan my fucking stream of consciousness bitch. like my friend Viva reminded me on the phone it’s alright to be a bitch. to push back against the bullshit. the whole world is helping us now. check the newswires, you’ll see. because clearly we have subsidized an nauseating affair in our nation. clearly the nsa has strapped a probe on and given us free colonoscopies, with a search warrant. it is more than kinda upsetting. we paid for it. we asked for it once, but got it forever. we did not check for the expiration date. it did not have one. a National Surveillance Archive the size of the lone star state, processing all communications everywhere. domestically and internationally. coveting my metadata and yours. digital forensics will haunt us in the future.  any and all off the cuff remarks we made over text, skype, on outlook or gmail, in our blogs, on our cellulars – is all being processed and audited and red-flagged if necessary. excavated and highlighted, in the low light of some intelligence agency analysts daily debriefing. the question mark has scythed the exclamation point. i will be lucky to make it out with my metaphors. intact. analgesic. in the half-light of the trance. the serenity of the dance. between me and my freedom of speech or silence alike. privacy never made it to the door. because she was already holed up straight squatting in the vip lounge. with the 360 degree view of the dancefloor. with the two way unclouded lead crystal glass floor downloaded and secured to the scenery. profound. delicate. profound plus. glass bubbles, built to shatter. hey, that’s autoglass. it beads. no matter. our big city club scene. over a decade into the new millenium, shines. solar panels recycle the light. shafts appear and strobe out before our very eyes. maybe we need the electric current. maybe i had to plug into the dotcom sitcom to see it. maybe it started the clock on my energy bill. may be pushing time into analytics. maybe space jammed in the eye. maybe gelatinous. to the very fibers of our being. maybe i didn’t care. maybe you do now. maybe we will tommorrow. all i know is what i think snowden knew when he short-circuited his life as his life was. by uncovering what he was made to do, the way he has.  this subsidized surveillance shit needs to end. acid drop it into the clubs and put it in white light and acid wash jeans. and surveil it.

Katya Mills 07/13  @

blurred bits and waves by K

katyamills.com

the collective, politically-based idea factory (and the rubix cube, on wheels)

Culture! On the rise. On the thoroughfare of decline. How much a paradox, culture. Always. But why? This became the question for the intelligentsia and the intelligence community to unravel, or turn and grease and turn through slippery hands and minds and collective politically-based idea factories in all its holographic glory so to cover all possible aspects and leave no stone unturned between heaven and all hell;

touchscreens by iphone

mapped by google

imax projected

rubix cube on wheels

virtual pac-man (on miss pac-man)

codified

doublemint, latex-sprayed, triple helix, malleable, homeland security shookdown, std- proofed, double your fun, confessional-sanctioned, pope-approved, double your pleasure, avatarian recreational.  Yes. Tasty technological treats borrowed from the highest ranking military and intelligence officers’ quarters somewhere in death valley, near a secret desalination plant airlifted by drones from Dubai in the middle of the night many moons ago, just so many unknown miles from the alien docking pads to earth, drowned out by the lights and sounds of the postmodern resurrected Las Vegas metropolis. And vehemently disowned by the Administration. Yes. Tasty technological treats, tax-appropriated out the yingyang circa 2001, handled by the freshest natural born citizens with the cleanest slate records and very possibly robots or droids or blowfish poisoned, shellacqued zombies-4-freedom

USA – genotyped

anthropologically- profiled

fingerprinted and man-handled

cornea-scanned

debugged and rooted, microchip implanted, samsung manufactured, cloud-protected, supercomputer hardcopied…with an added feature of complete and unlimited playback *  of all lawfully yet non-transparently gathered fresh NSA data, mined exclusively from you and that dude who lives next door to you** until cancelled at anytime.***  Guaranteed current and fashionable (though maybe emaciated or soundbytten or heroin chic) and filtered of  all administration-branded nonsense (including the trade journal or democracy-when? kind). They performed such wizardry from their desks and satin stitched loveseats on backyard balconies jutting out of  their ivy hideouts. Or else, for those with the proper clearance who were constantly mobile, through remote desktop controls permeating clouds with passwords and repititious ID scans in the nondescript (and unsuspecting) offices of community college mudhuts across the country, or, in cases where time got crunched,  free wifi local coffeeshop hotspots created and protected easily for short periods of time across the grid. Always cloaked, though purportedly transparent. Wherever.

Unfortunately at times the two were inseparable. The circus and the intelligence wrapped up trying to find meaning in it. Increasingly ineffectual… all this was made quite a bit more restless and anxiety-prone inside the collective heads of the pushing 350 million population, where the diminishing rate of return

of dopamine

of serotonin

of norepinephrine

by the heavily taxed 99% of neurotransmitters getting fucked with****, under auspices of heavy pharmaceutical rotation,  toward an approaching parallel yet still tangential moving target of drain and leaking of energies on the vertical axis of collective coping mechanism function. Which translates to something really potentially ominous on the horizon, which you and me and your mom (and the Beverley Hillbillies, too) within our greater cultural context, could not , cannot, and may never be able to afford. So Sorry! Please move aside and make room. Next?!

* for 30 days, on American taxpayer credit, to be charged $9.99 thereafter a month for continued use, if necessary or so desired

** ‘you ‘ denotes any US citizen anywhere, on or off American soil. See the Patriot Act for further reading

***in a flex plan catered to current political unrest akin to arab spring but potentially closer to home

**** just like us

by Katya Blue

k in denim by k

, 07/13  katyamills.com

rock out the red and white blues

Wanna really soak  up our red and white blues?

No ifs ands or buts?

Wanna love like you never loved before? Then we gotta take it now, as is!  Shaken and stirred, with cracks in it, explosive in the sky tonight. Even in the dry heat of Sacramento, thirty miles from where our ancestors once rushed for gold, for the freedom wealth bestows. Celebrate the land we have inherited! Ring church bells and show our true colors, all the same.  We gotta locate ourselves on the map, and rock out from the self-referential. Bass heavy; we don’t need no trouble from the treble. Rock out so hard, anyone can hear you.  Poor Canada’s getting rocked tonight on the border. Canada, overtaken with our red and white blues.  Sound waves. And the poor fish on the shelf , in the three touched seas: Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico. The salmon heading home, like we must as well, to the place of our personal and collective birth.

We can celebrate, the same, as those who came before us. We can set the precedent for what is to follow. But it has to be today, the defragmentation. Don’t put it off any longer, if you can. Just do the best you can! Impart upon our children that quality so magical and worshipped overseas, those freedoms people climb over one another and stampede and bum rush our stage for! The mosh pit of American lifestyle will not be subject to litigation! The tangible running up against ourselves is the only way for freedom. It cannot be prosecuted. It cannot be tamed! On the formerly solid now slightly cracked and bruised foundation of capital that got us here. Our foundation keeps us. But of course, it will always have cracks in it, that will be exploited by the earth when it quakes. But American freedoms, like mother nature, are a force beyond any judicial resolution. Not to punk justice. Just to represent what is true, though unfair!

We are the same, but we must honor the truth. There are great divides between us. The division of ethnicities, long since established and still enduring. The feeling we feel when we meet someone we never met, yet feel something deeper than the acquaintance. Something predisposed. Something heavy, yet intangible.  We can only be the same if we honor the truth of our differences. The native Americans, the tribes,  are always separate from us. We are not the same. Our ancestors settled the land in a predominantly violent and unsettling fashion. We cannot forget.  If we want to be free to celebrate what we have in common, we must first come at one another eye to eye, fingerprint to fingerprint. We can only connect from the longitude, the latitude, the experiential essential of confronting the divine at the crossing. Where converge the distinction of free spirits, the generosity of real attitude.

Take your punk out the trunk and display it for one another. Only then can we share our red and white blues. Something wonderful. Something source. Confrontational. Conversational. Electric! Divine. An equal sharp and undying thirst for the wild brand of freedom that pushes all boundaries out to infinity. Limitless freedom.  The kind the flying Wallendas know when they tightrope a quarter mile canyon, sanctioned by the Navajo tribe. This is the pure kind of real, definitely punk, red and white blues, we share. Where we get hot rocked by the us in the USA.

Sure, we will have our differences, we will partition and crack up and wikileak and fissure and branch arterial out to the very capillaries. But the blood returns home venously,  in the veins. Returns home to the heart that we share. The wild heart that risks everything, just to have it all. No borders can stop it. No barbed wire can hold it back. Pumping red white and blues out into the twenty-first, mother-loving, century. Meet you there. In the light. Wearing black. Painting red and blue over white.

Katya W. Mills  katyamills.com 07/13 – Daughter of the American Revolution