MW Rx. Laughing Through Tears and Making Reparations

This week we are determined to stay all the way alive. We refuse to be numbed. We call up the power of reparations. We channel the magic of laughing through tears.

Amy prescribes the legendary Tig Notaro set where she processes a series of brutal blows - a cancer diagnosis, c.difficile, the death of her mother - while she is right in the middle of it all. There's no ironic distance, no time to put the tragedies in focus, she is IN it. And friend, so are we. All the time. The present is a wall of fire around us. Tig manages to witness it and laugh at its absurdities while right in the fucking mess of it, and it's a spell for remembering that we do have that power: to be radiantly alive, observers and co-creators of our worlds, and to laugh AT and WITH all this as a practice of survival.

Funnily enough, Risa also brought comedy to the cauldron of the day. Karen Kilgariff's Business Situation is a prescription for solidarity in refusing to be crushed, refusing to be made meaner.