There are so many things running through my head at the moment, little snippets of this and that, bits of images, pixels of memories. It’s like seeing a movie fast-forwarded, two hours compressed into just a few seconds. I’m not sure why that happens, or what it means. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just some chemical surge or … shit just happens.

I do tend to overthink things at times, trying hard to make meaning out of random things pushed together. I am a chaotic thinker, I suppose. Throw everything up in the air and see how it all lands, what sticks together, what falls apart, and make meaning out of the product. Meaning is art. Art is meaningful, because it allows you to see things from another perspective, as the artist saw it in the creation.

When I see things from someone else’s perspective, what meaning is gathered does not end with the singular viewing. If the experience is deep enough, profound enough, or simply touches me significantly the meaning I derive continues for hours, days, weeks, months. There are little bits of things from quite a while ago that I remember like yesterday, and still experience the insight, the clarity, the meaning on progressively deeper levels.

Obviously, some of that progression happens for me quite a lot with incidents and experiences from my family of origin, from childhood or sometime in the past. Those are not always pleasant memories, but they shape me in some bizarre way. Consequently, I no longer want to lose those. They are part of who I am and how I am. I suppose that is as it should be.

This morning I was outside with the dog, and struck by the absolute beauty of the day. Yesterday was a bit cloudy and there were formidable storms very near. We didn’t get a downpour here, but I could fee the air pressure had dropped and the humidity had risen, so things felt a bit heavy. Today, however, there is not a cloud in the sky, and it’s a good deal cooler than yesterday. The sky is a beautiful shade of blue, and there’s a stillness to the air.

Weather forecasts until late last night called for continuous rain and storms, but Mother Nature had other ideas for today. As I said, it is gorgeous outside. So why am I disappointed? The forecast said rain and storms, but that’s not what happened. My occasionally rational mind says go with it, appreciate the beauty of the day and do something nice with it. My fatalistic mind says you can’t count on anything, people are sometimes wrong and you have to watch out for that and be cautious about who you trust.
My fatalistic mind is sometimes a pain in the ass.

Disappointment is just the intersection of my expectations with reality. It would seem to me that I shouldn’t ever be truly disappointed if I am living in the present moment, keeping my feet on the ground, not trying to revise yesterday or foretell tomorrow. In actuality, what can truly be disappointing about the present moment? Fatalistic mind says well, you can be disappointed if you are sick or suffering in some way, but rational mind says but you are not sick or suffering at this moment, so please shut up.

The sun is shining. My dog got to hook up with her boyfriend and received plenty of good loving from him. He was glad to see her, and vice versa. Moments before he came into view, she had started whining and barking, and I thought it was about some activity at the building across from the activity area. But, it was him. She has a good sense of smell, and she apparently smelled or sensed him getting closer, so she reacted before I knew what was going on. He said he heard her from a good distance away, and that made him smile.

I suppose that’s really all we’ve got – a smile in a moment of time, a snapshot that’s erased in the next second. The reality of that moment is not the reality of this one. Whatever my experiences are today will mean that I am not exactly the same person I was yesterday. The big chunks remain the same, but the amalgam varies just a bit and things are thrown together again to see what comes together and what doesn’t. I suppose every moment is the creation of a new world, the Universe is created anew every moment of every day. That only means the possibilities are infinite.

If that is the case, we are limited by our perspective and how tightly that is bound to our experience. That’s where I need the most work. My experience and my past tend to speak loudly and constantly, and I fear that limits me. That realization is where the battle rages between my rational mind and my fatalistic mind. I could more accurately label that hopeful and optimistic mind and pessimistic mind, or rational mind and irrational mind.

It’s irrational to assume the worst. Even if the worst has come of similar experience, it’s still rational to presume that what has not happened yet will be the same as similar circumstances in the past. I suppose I would need to be open to possibility again in every second, every minute. Not sure if I can switch gears quite that fast, but I will settle for daily.

I am still watching the volcano in Iceland, but also the bald eagle nest in Alaska. The eaglet is huge, but still doesn’t have all their feathers and is only just now beginning to stand and walk without falling over. Their feet are adult-sized, which is hilarious because they are so huge and resemble clown feet on a human. The feet are also bright yellow, which just makes it seem even more comical.

The thing I’ve learned about the bald eagle is the white head feathers do not come until the bird is about five years old, and the will have other dark coloring until they are about that age as well. In the wild, they can live 20-30 years without interference. Females are about a third larger than males, which also makes me giggle just a bit. They have no sense of smell to speak of, but their eyesight is the sharpest and longest of most birds. Their talons are formidable instruments of death, needle sharp and sharp-edged. I pity the rabbit or rodent that is attacked by one of these predators.

There’s a rescue and rehabilitation organization in Utah that has a lot of videos out there on YouTube, showing them capturing wounded or sick birds, rehabilitating them when possible, and then releasing them back into the wild. The rehabilitation is sometimes touch and go, but when they can be healed the birds are eager to be released. Seeing them catch air currents and lifting back into the sky is exciting, even on video. Every once in a while, though, once released they fly only a short distance and come down, remaining stationary for sometimes hours. The rehabilitator says at times, they need a minute to figure out WTF JUST HAPPENED AND WHERE THE HELL AM I?

I can relate to WTF just happened and WHERE the hell am I. Frequently, I’m searching for those answers. My innards are saying WTF just happened is in the past, and where the hell you are is right here. Hmmm. The past is the past and cannot be edited, although we do need to know what the hell happened. As long as we aren’t trying to change it or have a do-over, I guess that’s OK. I do not want to be doomed to repeat it if I forget it.

Today, I am not quite so much paralyzed by the past as I have been, but still don’t have a clear view of that wide open sky. I keep my head down too much so my vision is usually focused on my feet. That’s not a terribly profound perspective, and doesn’t lend itself to optimism. The view doesn’t change much, which is rather boring and uninspiring. Years ago, when I was moving away from home, I got very clear messages to keep my head up and look to the sky. I should focus on a return to that.

A wide open sky, particularly on a day like today with not a cloud, seems to have its own message. Why am I not flying? What is my fear? Am I afraid to soar, afraid that if I leap the net will not appear? Do I simply lack faith? I have no answer to such questions, only more questions. Asking questions is largely nonproductive at this point. I got so much to do, I ain’t got much time. (“Hold On” – Alabama Shakes)

It has always been difficult for me to articulate what it is that I want. I have little pieces of vision, but no peripheral. I have the frame of the puzzle but the inside pieces are in a jumble. Chaos. I work in chaos, and I know that’s valid. Even chaos has to have some starting point, though; perhaps I am already on the journey.

I once thought recreating myself was a bad thing, a sign of failure. I’m no longer sure about that, and have been told on a couple of occasions that recreating oneself is the sign of renaissance, of rebirth, of simply attaining more information. I want to be untethered, I think. I have always felt tied down, trapped in someone else’s matrix and design. I really don’t feel as though I have much time, although truth be told, I don’t think anyone has very much time. Anyone can fall asleep in their own bed and wake up at the bottom of a sinkhole, or under the 10 concrete floors that were once above them. Life is short. For everyone.

Sometimes I hear myself saying things out of habit, or because they seem to fit nicely into a binary of right vs. wrong, black vs. white, yes vs. no. I suppose that’s not good enough any longer, because I am shown on a daily basis that everything is full of nuance and choice. Every choice I make changes the dynamic of how I fit into the world. There is nothing static, and nothing lasts forever. This I know, but it’s not a comfortable thing.

Right this minute, I am feeling as though I would do well to make every choice an intentional one, rather than merely reactive. There are so many things out of my control, and that is a challenge for this scary human. By contrast, I want to be one of the things outside of everyone else’s control, which means that I need to be in control of myself, the master of my fate, the captain of my destiny and all that stuff. More practically, my choices should be my own, and I should know why I am making them.

I just came from a 12-step meeting, in person, and it was kind of nice. It was good to be with people with whom I share a common experience. There was a newcomer who showed up on Zoom, and she was way out in left field. She blurted out a couple of times while other people were speaking, and I muted her. The second time I muted her, I don’t think she was aware that she was muted and I could see her on the screen talking for several minutes. She disconnected, came back, then disconnected again – in more ways than electronically.

I know how it feels to be that disconnected, and never want to feel that way again. I want to be tuned in, connected to life, connected to other people. My big challenge is to stay connected to myself, stay in my body and not out in la-la land.

Life is very much like an amusement park, and I should not eat too much cotton candy or have too many caramel apples or I’ll be sick when things get exciting. We all have to keep our arms and legs inside the car until the ride comes to a complete stop. Sometimes you have to stand in line for the next ride, and the popular ride you were looking forward to is shut down. There’s still a lot to do, though, and a lot to see. Step right up.

The Former Guy (TFG) made a call to the GA Secretary of State in the days following the release of unofficial election returns in November 2020. Those reports showed TFG lost the election to extend his reign of terror by a decisive margin. He was recorded telling the Secretary that he just needed to find 11 thousand votes, that’s all, just find 11k+ votes.

That didn’t happen.

Then he tried to pressure the Vice-President into a refusal to certify the election returns when Congress reviewed them on January 6th, 2021. He refused to accept the reality that the Vice-President had no legal or Constitutional authority to do that, but he enraged a brewing mob of his supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to do…I’m not entirely sure what, but apparently to interrupt or prevent that certification from taking place.

I’m not entirely sure whether the effort to block certification of election results that affirmed the Joe Biden as President of the United States ultimately failed because of ineptitude, or providence, or resistance from police on Capitol Hill. Whatever it was, the election results were confirmed, but not for a lack of trying to do otherwise. In the minds of many, here in country and internationally, it was a shameful display of sour grapes and delusional fanaticism.

So, more than six months later, TFG and his supporters are still whining about the election results. I’ve seen frightening interviews with some of these folks on television, and they state their refusal to accept President Biden as a legitimately elected President. There have been pledges to return TFG to office on March 4th, which passed uneventfully. The date has now changed to August, but rest assured they say, this is going to happen. The Emperor will be returned to the seat of his rightful power.

I don’t know whether I should write this off as the delusional ravings of people disconnected from the reality the rest of us share, or if I should take it seriously as a harbinger of continued combative response. If the latter, I am a bit uneasy, not because I believe they could succeed an a coup, but because there will be such tremendous fallout from their failure. They did fail to disrupt the mandated election certification in January, but they left behind an enormous mess.

The mess left behind by the insurrection of January 6th was not limited to feces on the floors and walls, trash in the hallways, and property damage inside the Capitol. That mess includes the final blows to the American people’s confidence in democracy, in the election process, in our ability to have fair elections. Whether true or not, these attacks have whittled away our trust in many of our elected officials, in the process of democracy, and in the rationality of our fells.

With the Supreme Court’s 6 to 3 decision that Arizona’s brutal attacks on voting rights will stand, the legacy of TFG becomes more clear. The timbre of the Supreme Court has leaned to a decidedly conservative stance, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is on life support. The initial charge to weaken the Act was the Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 was the first salvo in that effort. The case demolished the pre-clearance requirements that have been in place since 1965, requiring certain states with history of voter suppression and racial discrimination be pre-authorized to change their voting laws. This, of course, to the end of reducing voter suppression.

So, here we are – voter suppression is now an art form, and everything is fair game. No, you can’t be given water in the line to vote, or count on being allowed to do mail-in voting (even in the middle of a pandemic). Just to make sure you understand that it will not be easy to vote, attacks on the United States Postal Service in time for the 2020 Presidential election threatened to render absentee and mail-in voting entirely useless, as mail delivery was so compromised by administrative changes delivery of absentee ballots could not be guaranteed by the election deadline.

This is not even an effort that originated in TFG’s term. It’s been going on for quite a while, because there has been a concerted effort to decompose BIPoC voting blocs. This became an emphasis following the election of Barack Obama, who served not just one term but two. Because the efforts have been so intentionally damaging to BIPoC voters, it’s hard to not see this as an effort to eliminate the chances of having another Black man (or woman) in the White House. Emphasis on the White part.

This is ugly. It’s dangerous and it’s ugly, bringing out the worst in people, bringing to the surface nasty rhetoric and reactions that many of us believed had been put to rest. But here we are for an encore on blatant and overt racism, and the storm of fury from dominant culture. Threatened with the loss of privilege and a change to the current paradigm of racial infrastructure, majority culture is willing to fight to the death, and will take no prisoners.

It’s a little frightening to be alive in a Black body right now. Hearing a news network trumpet an unapologetic call for execution of tens of thousands of people who oppose the re-installation of TFG is daunting. Some may presume such things are the work of people who should not be taken seriously, but consider Ahmaud Arbery’s death. In my estimation, this was a lynching – self-appointed armed protectors of a neighborhood spotted this man jogging and peering into a house under construction. They decided, with no evidence, that he was “susupicious” and since there was a recent rash of break-ins nearby, they added 2 and 2 and came up with 7. They attempted to seize Arbery, but he fought back (a reasonable response) and wound up killing him.

There was no evidence that Ahmaud Arbery had done anything wrong, or was in any way connected to criminal activity in the area. There was no complaint made to legal law enforcement agencies about a possible intruder. This patrol effort was not deputized or verified by the legal law enforcement agencies. They were self-appointed and had a pre-determined outcome in mind. This is how Trayvon Martin died in Florida at the hands of a so-called neighborhood patrol. This is precisely the manner in which the Night Riders and the KKK went about business in days gone by. But those days have not really gone by, because here they are again.

So, evidence be damned, truth be damned. We don’t need no stinkin’ truth – it has become entirely subjective. Empirical data is devalued, logic and science are minimized, and we’re down to “yes, you did…no, i didn’t…yes, you did! no, i didn’t! ok, i’ll just kill you then.” This is an advanced society that has a third world mindset of scarcity and unresolved conflict. I know I am, but what are you?

Where do we go from here? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. This is a child’s game of rock ’em sock ’em robots, except there are real people clubbing each other over the head, shooting each other over anything from loud music to texting in a movie theater. There are real children getting caught in the cross-fire, real mothers and fathers grieving the loss of their children. Real police officers, for better or worse, wondering why they ever thought this was their dream job.

The COVID lockdown is waning, even though science tells us we should not let down our guard just yet, because of more contagious variants arriving on the scene. But there’s a wild abandon demonstrated by many people now, who are ready to burn their masks and bring back the mosh pits of arena-sized concerts. Some of my friends were worriedly observing people in retail establishments and restaurants who had no masks. That doesn’t worry me, since a large percentage of those people were never wearing masks in the first place.

We are the land of the free, home of the brave, even when it’s demonstrated that we are neither free nor brave. Freedom is not simply the lack of restriction to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. Freedom implies responsibility, and consideration of others. Freedom requires that you have at least a modicum of strategic thinking, whether it’s about how you spend your stimulus check on bling or at the casino, or about whether you walk down a deserted street in the middle of the night.

I have believed from the start of this pandemic that we are being given the opportunity to think about what we’re doing, how we’re living, the impact we cause. With nearly 8 billion people on this rock hurtling through space and time, we can’t just do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it. It’s time we considered the impact of what is done. We’re being given the opportunity to look at things like how we treat each other, and how our systems and laws harm people, and ourselves. We can see this as a reset, or we can be grateful it’s all over – even if it’s not – and we can get back to “normal”.

The bad news about getting back to “normal” is…it was never normal. It was simply regular and routine and what we had made ourselves comfortable with. The older I get, the more I’m sure that comfort is not enough. If we remain comfortable, we have little motivation to lift even a finger to change anything. Our muscles atrophy, our brains atrophy, and our morality atrophies. What good is survival when the world you create is merely comfortable, a flat line around the axis of “average”.

Humans need challenge. We need variance, we need the element of surprise. That’s rarely comfortable, but without needing to achieve, or overcome, we become lethargic. There’s no reason to try, there’s no reason to get excited, there’s no joy. Try something different, you might like it. And if you do like it, you may want to do it over and over again, tweaking it along the way just for giggles. That’s what keeps people off the streets, being involved in creating SOMETHING.

It’s a new day, we need a new way. Trite, but ultimately true. There is so much I don’t want to see now, but I must. I have to believe that all of this will be OK for us, but we don’t know what OK looks like. Does it look like a city that blows up, with thousands killed but saving millions on the other side of the planet? Or does it look like sunshine and lollipops and blue skies?

I have no idea what the future holds for me, or anyone else. Some days, I think I can’t keep going with this kind of uncertainty, when condominiums are crashing to the ground and my peers are dying and my heroes are falling from grace on the daily. But somehow, I do keep going, usually with a little help from my friends…the ones who call in the middle of the storm in my head just to say hi. The ones who are going through their own challenges but nonetheless keep suiting up and showing up, every day, even when they’re in the hospital fighting for their lives. The ones who still get angry about the current state of affairs, the current status quo and are still willing to fight. Those are the lights that show me the path forward.

Death be not proud. It doesn’t really care who or what calls it, world leader or crack addict. It’s all the same to death, and we are all the same at the end of this…naked babes in nobody’s arms, cold and frightened and hoping. There is where hope goes, I guess, to the end of our days. I don’t think we have to wait that long, but even if we do, it cannot be killed. No matter how discouraged we get, no matter how blind we become to its presence. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. That’s what I was taught. I don’t have to believe, but today I am choosing to believe. What have I got to lose?

Like a fool, I was watching CNN earlier this morning, and heard a series of unsettling stories. First, the condo building collapse in FL. Because it’s a condominium complex, the condo association is the responsible party.

As we know, an inspection was performed in 2018, citing serious damage to parts of the building, and noting the damage was continuing. The estimated repair cost was more than $9 million. Subsequently, more damage was revealed and the repair cost estimate rose to nearly $15 million.

They had just authorized work based on the second estimate, but it was too late. There is a class action complaint filed already, with at least one resident saying she had notified the condo association many times of water leaks and other anomalies that were consistent with structural damage.

Posse up, lawyers.

Second, TFG (The Former Guy) is making more noise about being returned to the White House and reinstated as President soon. Very soon. His supporters are more than convinced that he won the election last year, by 8 million votes. It was a landslide, they say. A reporter asked one of the duly convinced supporters what might happen if TFG is not reinstated. The response – “There will be a civil war, because the militias will take over.” Hmmmm.

At the urging of GOP lawmakers nationwide, states are divesting their own election boards of much of their power. THey are ceding power to the legislature, making it easier to contest and overturn elections. If the Democrats had originated this plan, the cacophony of GOP legislators scream about “State’s Rights” would be deafening. Just sayin’.

Third, four Cathoic churches were set ablaze in Canada over the past 48 hours. At least two were burned to the ground, and investigators have declared all of them to be of “suspicious” origin. It doesn’t take advance degree status to link this to the recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked children’s burial sites in the nearby area.

These unmarked graves, more than 750 of them, were the remnants of the Indian residential schools that had been opened in the late 1800s in both the United States and Canada. The schools were opened to remove indigenous children from their family homes, on what had been tribal land, to “educate” them.

The “education” of these indigenous children consisted of cultural genocide and abuse of all kinds. The Catholic Church opened the one containing the recently discovered unmarked graves, but the government was responsible for other schools of this kind. In many ways, the government and the Church allied to “better” the Native children so they could lead better (Christian, European-style) lives.

Stories from people who survived being house in these “boarding schools” describe brutal abuse, often sexual, and being forbidden to speak their native language. The hair of boys, usually long and free-flowing, was forcibly cut; this was traumatic for young boys whose hair was considered a tremendous spiritual asset in native culture.

When the unmarked graves and burial sites were discovered, speculation arose that the presence of so many of these graves was a cover-up by the Catholic Church. Whether it was a cover-up or simply neglect doesn’t remove the absolutely heinous glint of the effort to “civilize” indigenous people, forcing incomprehensible European customs and conventions, and even language, on them without their assent.

Stripping conquered nations of their culture appears to be Page 1 of the colonial playbook. It was done to the Africans in the United States and Canad, it was done to Latin Americans who were enslaved and forced into the New World. The names of the enslaved were changed to Christian names, or names derived from European traditions. Their agency as human beings was removed entirely. To enforce this colonists utilized tools of intimidation – beatings, rape, deprivation. Hail, the conquering army?

Fourth, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough posturing, pontificating, lying, and delusion. No more. I don’t want to hear anything else about Critical Race Theory until you can demonstrate that you know what it means.

I don’t want to see any more snarky emails warning me that AOC and the radical left are corrupting children’s minds with anti-American lies. I suppose that’s happening when Hillary (remember her?) isn’t spilling and drinking their blood in the basement of a pizza parlor somewhere. I am not in the mood for hearing whining insurrectionists wanting to be released from jail.

And most of all, I have had enough of people who know better investing ANY time, energy, or thought to nonsensical conspiracy theories and the people who spread them. Just. Stop. It’s enough. We’re turning into a nation of pubescent gremlins reading their first porn with a flashlight under the covers.

If you want to look like fools, be my guest, but please – I beg of you – leave the rest of us out of this. Nobody with any sense believes TFG is coming back in August, or next March, or any time in the future before the duly elected President has completed his term. Nobody believes anything was stolen from him or you, or especially that lunatic with the horns who considers himself a shaman but cries if he has to eat non-organic food.

I’m sorry reality is so hard for people to swallow. Myself, I’ve had to swallow decades of polite racism, insulting justification for heinous treatment, and minimalization at the hands of people just like these naysayers. It’s enough.

Yesterday was the end of my UU conference, and it ended with a big bang – the closing ceremony was absolutely phenomenal. There was energy, and singing, and rapping (yes, rapping) and more singing. The music was awesome. The musicians enjoyed doing what they were doing, and they were good at it, so I enjoyed receiving that.

Here at my home congregation, we have very little diversity in music, usually Western European classical/traditional. I love classical music, but not for everything, and not for celebrating. Our music generally feels kind of lame, and muted, and restrained. One must follow all the appropriate rules, you see.

So, I have been on a high since yesterday’s musical offering, and ready to go out and do … stuff. It’s really hot here, like 90 at the moment. Anything above 75 is usually a no-go for me. I have never liked hot weather, and the older I get the more sensitive my systems are to hot weather. Thank goodness for air conditioning – you could hang meat in my apartment.

So, I never promised you a rose garden, and along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometimes. This afternoon I got rain. My psychiatrist is retiring. No warning. The office assistant called to let me know. I will most likely never see her again, and this is not acceptable.

I despise change. Once I’m n my routine, which takes a minute, I get totally discombobulated when there’s change. As much as I peach to people about getting out of their comfort zone, I suck at it. Changing a part of my support team, though, ups the ante just a bit. It’s one thing to be moving from Zoom meetings to face-to-face after 14 months of the former, but another thing to reestablish a relationship with a medical provider.

I’ll figure it out. I always do, but I’m tired of having to figure out stuff. When I have involuntary changes, totally unexpected, it rocks my world. Literally. I feel like the ground under me is not stable, my balance sucks, and I can’t make decisions. Oh, well – poor pitiful me. Oh, these boys won’t let me be…lord have mercy on me. (“Poor Pitiful Me” – Linda Ronstadt)

Anyway, that is my tale of woe for the moment. I will need to work on dealing with change, because change is the only certainty in life. Nothing stays the same, and nobody gets to opt out of change. In some respects, it seems like this is one of the issues that most affects humankind these days. Some of us are determined to reject change, and demand a return to…before. When things were good, or at least when things were comfortable, when they matched up with our expectations. Good luck with that, y’all.

I am toying with the idea that I am experiencing some cognitive decline. This does not make me happy. It began around this time of life in my mother. I will have to keep an eye on this, but if my brain deserts me, I have NOTHING. That is how I look at it. My only saving grace is that I have a few scraps of intellectual capacity. I won’t do what my mother did, though, and refuse medication. Her sister is taking the medication, and while she does exhibit symptoms of dementia, it’s not nearly as pronounced as my mother’s was.

Anyway, today is a brand new day in the bowels of Hades, where it’s unspeakably hot and where I have run out of dog treats. Running out of dog treats is a fate worse than death, particularly if you are the dog who awaits their nibbles. She is addicted to these kabob-looking things, and I swear there is a healthy does of crack cocaine in them. If she does without them for too long, she is vile and cranky and tries looking for them. So, if I know what’s good for me, and for peace in the household, I will replenish the supply of treats as frequently as necessary. She gets better health care than I do, better food than I do, and she doesn’t have to lift a paw to be productive in any way (except in the grass when her metabolic functions call for action). I want to come back in my next life as the pampered pet of somebody wealthy and reasonably sane.

I need to be creating something, starting something that unlocks the cage. Creative energy is in short supply these days, and so we keep getting the same old same old. I’m done with the same old same old.

It was hot today, and I don’t do well in extreme heat. It was hot in Alaska, and when I looked at the eagle’s live feed from Glacier Park in Juneau, they were both panting. Technically it’s not panting, it’s termoregulation, but it looks a lot like panting. Mother and baby both breathing rapidly, beaks open, nearly still.

When I ventured out a little while ago with the dog, it was still sweltering. The kind of hot where nothing moves, there is no breeze, even the sound from an airplane miles up didn’t make it down to me.

I need to be creating something. I don’t know what that might be, so I’m trying to open myself to whatever might be coming. My chest feels a bit tight, the way it sometimes feels when I’m getting ready to go on a trip or take some journey. I hope I’m right about this, and not suffering from a case of indigestion or something.

My conference finished up today. It was a virtual conference, and for some reason I was more worn out when it was over than I’ve ever been when it’s been face-to-face. We were supposed to be in Milwaukee this year, but instead everyone was in their own little corner of the universe.

The virtual offering is not the same as being in-person. There are nuances of moods and energy that you can’t get from a computer screen. Nonetheless, I got a good deal of energy from a few dynamic speakers and workshops, and I’m vibrating just a bit. I’m ready to implement some of these good ideas, ready to paint a building or build a house. I just need to drain some of the excess energy.

My mother’s birthday was Friday, so I had more than a few thoughts of her, and how I’d always enjoyed shopping for the perfect birthday present for her. She was very picky with fashions and jewelry, so I had gotten in the habit of including the sales receipt in the gift. She took back quite a lot of things, for various reasons, usually because she thought what I’d gotten was too expensive.

My mother spent a lifetime of depriving herself of pleasurable things. She saved and saved and saved, doing without a lot of things because she didn’t really need them. I attributed that to her being a child of the Great Depression. She was born in 1935, and from what I know, there were many times when they didn’t have enough of anything.

I am not a child of the Great Depression, and so I have always been a free spender, even when I had far less to work with than I do now. To my dismay, I have wasted a lot of money on things I have no use for, things that seemed like a good idea at the time, things I lost interest in soon after acquiring them. I’m not sure what to make of that, but it frustrates me a bit now because I don’t feel as though I have much of anything to show for my life.

I need to be creating something. My thoughts frequently hover over the grandiose, the attention-getting, the flashy projects. Projects that will result in…I don’t know what. Projects that will make a difference…I don’t know how. But I want to be doing something that matters.

My interests for the past several years have consisted of justice, equity, fair-play. I am nearly obsessed with justice, but I came to the conclusion a few years ago that I didn’t know what justice really is. Sometimes it seems to be retribution, other times it’s revenge, but impact is never removed. The wound is slow to heal, and no amount of pay-back will take away the pain.

I have a strong sense of fair-play, and it gets under my skin when circumstances are very apparently unfair. I hate seeing situations where it’s not possible to win, where the rules are so obviously slanted to favor other people. How in the world can I set the scales level in those situations?

Some of what I heard during the conference this past week has given me a little direction, or at least reminders. To make a big difference, you have to keep at it. You have to believe. Believe that you can make a difference, believe that your efforts will eventually add up to a difference. Faith without works is dead, so you just have to work your butt off and believe.

It’s often hard to know whether or not your work is oriented correctly, so you have to pay close attention to unintended impact. Setting out to help people without including them in the effort is simply disrespectful. I’ve been taught to ask people in dire circumstances what would help them most rather than what I want them to have. Over the years, I’ve heard many times that you have to meet people where they are, and not where you want them to be.

I try very hard to not be arrogant or haughty, but sometimes things come out of my mouth that surprise even me. Things hiding in the crevices of my consciousness, some buried resentment or hurt that I have not dealt with can result in a backhanded insult blowing past all of my filters. I hate that, because at times I’ve hurt people. More importantly, though, I have not been terribly happy with myself.

These days, I am working on living more intentionally, trying to pause before I open my mouth. It’s very hard to do that. When I’m excited, my mind and mouth run at the speed of sound. My rational mind and my discretion is several paces behind, however. This does not serve me all that well.

I’m sure there are medications and mood stabilizers that ight help me with that, slow me down just a bit. But I’m not willing to take any more medication. Right now, I’m trying to use meditation and mindfulness to keep me self-aware. The runaway mouth is a lot better than it used to be, but I still manage to stick my foot in it from time to time.

I don’t know exactly what I’m doing with all this writing and journaling. It does help me to get more clarity on the soup that’s bubbling in my cranium, but am I just avoiding doing other things? I’m not sure, but I suppose I don’t have much else to do.

Right now, I’m going to stop watching the news in a bit. There is a condo collapse in Dade County Florida, a place called Surfside I believe. Nine stories of the the complex just crumpled to the crowd, pancake style. Nine stories reduced to the space for probably one. People’s lives strewn all over the parking lot and the street, walls that once sheltered and contained them now open to everything. More people are missing than have been declared dead, and families of the missing are understandably beside themselves with worry and helplessness. It’s a horrid place to find yourself.

When people abruptly find themselves in the worst of situations, many dig their heels in, stand tall, and call upon some inner reserve to do battle with whatever is before them. There are times when all hope is lost, and even a miracle seems impossible. Sometimes the miracle comes, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s kind of a crap shoot.

Having seen bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to some very bad people, I do not believe that living well nets you any shield from catastrophe. I believe there are some esoteric parts of our lives here, mostly invisible to us and entirely not understood by us. Who knows how and why certain things befall people, good or bad.

There are a lot of people who put forth the idea that nothing is accidental, and that we bring to ourselves everything we experience. If we go bankrupt, there is something in us, on some esoteric level, that has called that to us. If we find the love of our lives, some hidden part of our makeup has called that as well.

For me, there is some spiritual level that I know is not settled, is not in synch with everything else about me. That chaotic and unsteady energy field is what I believe yields such erratic results in my life. I need to manifest peace and abundance deep inside to have my outsides match my insides. Or something like that.

I need to be creating something, where the sky is green and the grass is blue, where the sun is purple and the moon really is cheese. I want to be curious and see the unexpected, the unbelievable, the inexplicable. It would be a wonderful thing to see other people’s reality for a time, just to change my perspective. I want o have some of my questions answered, the ones that I don’t let on to anyone else. I want to know if this is all going to end well. Ultimately, I want to know the future, but I don’t think that’s going to work.

Desire is what fuels everything. If we didn’t want things, we’d never move. If I want to use the bathroom, I have to get up and go there. I can’t sit here and think how nice it would be to go but never move. If I want justice to exist in my reality, I can’t just talk about it and read about it or watch movies about it. I have to get up and move toward the injustice, not away from it. But I can’t sit still and get lost in my thoughts about how great it would be to have justice, while doing nothing.

I’m thinking everything is going to be all right, but as I have said many times, I don’t know what all right looks like. It could be right now, but I have expectation that it will look far more glamorous. Because I’m on the lookout for the glamorous experience, I could miss the all right place. Sometimes I truly do miss the forest for the trees.

In recovery work, and in some New Age exploration that I’ve done, I are told that everything is exactly as it should be right now. That doesn’t mean it’s all right for me, or that I have everything I want. It could mean that everything is not about me, and that in the larger picture there’s a balance of good things and not so good things. Sometimes it’s my turn to get not so good things, and someone else get the good things. Sooner or later, it all turns around. When you’re down on the wheel, you can only go upward from there.

Let’s roll the wheel, then. I’m ready. I’m ready to let it all work the way it is supposed to work, and not how I want it to work. Ready to do whatever I came here to do. Just ready to create something.

My first thoughts are that when I say yes, I’m wanting to say I’m all in. I’m willing to follow a credible leader, and not insist on being in the spotlight. I’m willing to share myself and what contributions I can make. I’m willing to stay at the table, and I’m willing to stay in the fight. I am not willing to quit.

Just from what I came up with, I can see already that saying yes involves willingness, and standing in my integrity. In these times, I don’t believe we have time nor space for grandstanding, or arrogance, or righteous indignation. I am beginning to think a real answer to the question should involve no words.

There is so much on my mind this morning. The tragedy of the condo collapse in FL reminds us all of how short life is, and how abruptly the world can change for people. It took less than 20 seconds for those building sections to all, nine floors pancaked into the space for one. In a flash, people were simply not there any longer.

I remember when something like this, on a tremendously smaller scale, happened when a man was suddenly dropped into a sinkhole. In his bed. While he was sleeping. Here one second, gone the next. Does a sudden departure impact us any more than one we are somewhat prepared for? I’m thinking maybe not, because whenever the moment comes when you are forced to accept the transition, when the reality of never seeing that person again drops to your reality like a lead weight, whenever that may be the finality of the situation is roughly the same. There really isn’t an adequate way to say goodbye.

Death is just hard. We deny, we get angry, we try bargaining, we go numb, and then we accept. There is no easy way out of that dance, and the powerful, the wealthy, and the least of us are treated equally. It may be one of the few places in our experience where there is anything approaching equity.

Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22-1/2 years for killing George Floyd. I watched a lot of the proceedings, but it was difficult because there were impact statements from Floyd’s family, and even one from Chauvin’s mother. The victim’s family, of course, wanted maximum penalty for killing their brother, father,, uncle. Chauvin’s mother, predictably, wanted everyone to see her son as something other than a racist murderer.

Chauvin’s mother said she has always believed in his innocence for the crime of murdering George Floyd, and always will. Tha’s to be understood – that’s what mothers do all the time. It was interesting, however, that she addressed not even a glance to the family of George Floyd. Not even a vague reference of being sorry the death of George Floyd had to be experienced at all.

Chauvin himself seemed nearly defiant, saying that he was looking for an appeal to set him free, and that he had no intention of apologizing. Nobody asked him to apologize. Nobody. It would have shown a bit of class and a different side of him if he had expressed some kind of regret for the whole thing. Apparently the apple did not fall far from the tree.

There were more instances of humans behaving very badly last week, including a handful of shootings and politicians who still maintain that Joe Biden is not the legitimate President of the United States. There were even more statements that reduced the insurrection of January 6th to a peaceful protest where nothing much happened at all, then everyone quietly went home. So much for reality.

I was finishing up the annual UUA General Assembly last night, with lectures by Stacey Abrams and a formerly homeless man in Florida by the name of Desmond Meade. Stacey Abrams was masterful, as usual, explaining that she is the daughter of preachers, in the Methodist denomination. She is a woman of great faith, and linked that with her activism and passion for voting rights. She talked about engaging people in the fight for voting rights, emphasizing the long held wisdom of meeting people where they are, and not where you want them to be. She also emphasized that we need to be about the business of construction, and not destruction because people want to be involved with the creation of something new. That makes sense to me. My chosen faith has been talking a lot about deconstructing white supremacy and its culture. Perhaps we should be talking about building a new world entirely. We have a song about that, too.

Abrams also spoke of servant leadership, which I have long contended is missing from most of our elected officials. Reaching to her faith, she talked about responsibility, and being of service as opposed to directing operations and wielding power. This is more what I believe politicians should be about, rather than asserting themselves as the captains of others’ destiny. I felt that she displayed a refreshing air of humility, and good will. I would love to meet her one day, and have a cup of coffee. There is a certain infectious energy that I felt when she was speaking, even though her voice was even and her body language very level and steady. But there is so much more in there. So much more.

Desmond Meade came to the table with a more personal take on activism. He is a formerly homeless man, and a returning citizen (the less harsh language used to describe those returning to society from a period of incarceration as convicts). He is a jovial mann with a twinkle in his eye, but from his story I know there is so much in him that appreciates the gravity and trajectory of his life before now.

Speaking about many who dismiss voting as useless, and their vote won’t count, and they really don’t care Meade framed that in the context of his experience as a returning citizen, prior to regaining his citizenship status. He said that kind of language was a defense, because when people would ask him about voting and his choice of candidates, it hurt that he wasn’t able to exercise that privilege. His defense was to downplay it, minimize it.
Desmond Meade also said something else that he uses as a defense against the voting nay-sayers: if your vote wasn’t important, why are so many people trying so hard to take it away from you? Alrighty then. Why indeed?

I took in all of that, and was very happy to have witnessed it all. Stacey Abrams is a really gifted speaker. Desmond Meade is a really big hearted man who has the ability to reinvent himself. We have leaders, why are we still languishing in the mire? We have stellar lights to lead us out of the wilderness, so why are we still walking in circles and not making significant progress? What is really going on with the Black community?

I suppose there is a lot to be said for generations of Black folks who’ve been beaten down by white supremacy, status quo, lack of opportunity. Many of us have suffered through having everything they produced ripped away by violent mobs just because of the color of their skin. When Barack Obama was elected President, many of those people stood up once again, believed once again. That didn’t last terribly long.

Oppression is a fact in the realities of other races, but I am not sure there is any other group identity that has been so beaten down for so long by their own countrymen. We have been living inside a civil war for many years now, one that is not visible to anyone else. I definitely think having immigrated involuntarily has more than a little to do with the particular struggles of the Black community in America. For a significant period of time, we were not considered human, but property. Other people could own us, and we had virtually no agency. That has left a psychic scar that is now generational, held in the cellular memory of most of us even today.

I have always thought we have a very steep uphill climb to greater inclusivity and new paradigms of unity. Just as we have not raised the federal minimum wage in an embarrassingly long time, we haven’t tended to our base line of identity. Who is an American? What does an American look like? What is an American entitled to? Entitlement is a fighting word, unless you’re the one who gets to cash in on it. How about we build something new that lives up to the Constitution and assures everyone they can still enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pandemic relief plans prove that it can be done, but everyone is not willing to provide relief for casualties of a war they edeny is happening.

The future is maybe next week for a lot of us right now. We can’t imagine a five-year plan. The immediacy often robs of hope and the room to expand. I am not willing for that to happen any longer. Live is to be lived and not survived. In many ways I feel as though we are on life support, breathing on our own but our hearts are maintained by artificial means. That’s the plasticity of life in this millennium.

I am supposing that injection of meaning and purpose would make our container more pliable, and more form fitting. There has always been doubt that a container existed to house me, and that may be true. But someone told me quite a long time ago that I should create my own. That still resonates like a bell for me, but having the freedom to do that is not quite as simple as it sounds.

When you have been contained in someone else’s matrix for a long time you come to realize that constitutes abuse. Spiritual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, all the abuses. When a prisoner is freed after a long period of captivity, they don’t quite know how to behave. It takes quite a while to become accustomed to moving of your own volitions rather than by someone else’s rules and restrictions. Sharing space with millions of other people does require a bit of management, but management should not eradicate agency. For some of us, that is exactly what has happened.

When the Emancipation Proclamation was finally handed down and fully rolled out to the entire country in 1863, there was nothing about it that focused on success. Not the success of the formerly enslaved people, and not the success of the new blended nation. Ending slavery was a transaction, one nail hammered in the construction of a very large house. There has yet to be anything that plans for the success of marginalized people, but everything that maintains the status quo. This isn’t going to work, and what we’re seeing now in America is evidence of it not working.

There are enough resources for every living being in this country, and on this planet. We just allocate them selfishly, and by irresponsibly. When it’s not important to the allocators whether or not a tiny country in the Middle East has what it’s residents need to survive, then it’s not important to change anything about how we’re allocating resources now. If our only goal is to ensure our own survival, even at the risk or consequence of others’ inability to survive, that is the kiss of death for us. It is a death of more than phsyical being, but of the spirit (whether we know it or not).

Doing the anti-racist work that I do, which is a drop in the bucket of what more celebrated people do, I have to have my act together before I can tell anybody anything about how we might solve this polarization around race. This is where faith without works is truly dead, and where you must walk your talk and know exactly what you’re saying. Just because something is uncomfortable and you can’t see the point in expending the energy to accommodate it doesn’t mean it’s non-viable. We have to believe, so I have to know what it is that I believe.

I suppose that I believe in saying yes. One of the ministers who spoke over the past few days at the UU General Assembly asked the question, “How do you say yes?” I am still thinking about that. How exactly do I say yes, and is it just a word? When I am asked to do something, my natural tendency is to immediately say yes, of course, no problem. On more than one occasion, I have failed in the endeavor because I didn’t have the skills or the resources to satisfy complete the task. I was not fully present when I said sure, no problem. The people-pleaser part of me answered that question, and she doesn’t have the whole picture.

When I say yes, I need to be intentional, and aware, and fully in my body when I do that. I need to pause, instead of ejaculating a stream of bright ideas, to consider exactly what I’m saying, what I’m agreeing to, and whether I can do it justice. Justice is such a multi-faceted issue, but I’m told it needs to begin with love.

If I am not invested in your success, I will probably do a shitty job of helping you out, assisting you in any way. I may also question why I am concerned with doing it in the first place. I hear quite a number of people getting hung up on “personal responsibility” and blaming the victim. They seem to care more about wrapping ethics and morality in a nice, neat package with a bow than in establishing equity, or justice, or relationships with people seeking either. I can’t live with that, because it is hollow. It often looks good on the outside, but it has no substance and can’t add weight to the scales.

It’s hard for me to contend with simply “meaning well”. Left to my own devices, I would probably let myself off the hook for many, many things and just walk on. But these days I have a conscience, and hearing people begging for their lives affects me. Seeing people existing, not living, in squalor affects me. It changes me, and sending a check doesn’t quite satisfy me. I don’t know if I have it in me to organize and achieve in the same way that Stacey Abrams does, or Barack Obama, but I’ve been told that my only real responsibility is to bring what I can contribute and use it when appropriate.

Desmond Meade told us a story, a parable of sorts, in his presentation last night. It was the story of a ham and cheese omelet. To prepare the omelet, you need eggs, maybe cheese, possibly some milk and seasoning, and of course the ham. In that scenario, a chicken contributed the eggs. A cow made the cheese and the milk possible. But the pig was in all the way to provide the ham, giving its life for that purpose. One way to look at the pig’s contribution is to see it as full commitment, but without all of the contributions there could be no omelet. *ting*

I don’t know if I’m the pig, even though I have quite a lot of well-meaning lard to contribute. Sometimes that lard is what greases the way for a coherent understanding, strategy, plan or something else to come forth. I should not discount it as a valid contribution. Quite frequently, I discount anything I am capable of doing as miniscule and without value to anyone or anything else. Looking objectively at that patter, I would say it smells like grandiosity. More humility is needed, perhaps.

However I settle into this effort to change status quo will be fine. There is more than enough work to do. The pot holes on the journey, for me, are perfection and confidence. Perfection should not be the enemy of the good, I am told. Often, we refuse to proceed until all circumstances are perfect, not 80% good or 90% good. We wait until perfection is achieved. If you are producing something for yourself, that might work if you do not want to proceed very quickly. But if you are working in concert with others for a common goal, there’s not room to pause and wait for conditions to be optimal. We have to move, and we have to move now. This is the revolution, and the alarm has already gone off. We’ve been awakened, and hit the snooze button a couple of times, and there’s no more leeway – we have to stand up now or come to terms with going back to sleep, and for some of us that is a fatal decision.

I’m doing something, whatever the hell it is. Maybe it’s just getting people to think about some things they’ve not wanted to think about, or think about things in a different way. Seeing things from someone else’s perspective can be life changing. Saying yes in a way that does not engage my ego, my opinion, or my comfort is probably more valuable than performance quality. We’re going to make mistakes, and that’s just the way of it. Regardless of the mistakes, however, we’ll be in a different place than when we started, and that’s important. We don’t have a chance of getting to the new world if we go back to sleep and wait for perfection to bonk us on the head before we stand up and move forward.

I’ve been watching the volcano in Iceland, for more than three months now. An incredible show of Mother Nature’s power and glory, faithfully releasing a flow of hot red molten lava every few minutes. It gushes haplessly down the slopes and into the valley below, then hurtles off at an incredible pace toward…I have no idea. The municipal engineers have vainly tried on at least two occasions to construct earthen berms to direct the flow away from travelled roadways, but in general it is all for nought. The lava will go where it goes, having no concern for flimsy structures from the hands of our kind.

I’m also watching a live cam of a bald eagle and her new offspring, perched in a nest way up high in Alaska’s Glacier Park. The mamma bird is attentive to her little eaglet, who is fuzzy headed and looks more like a stuffed toy than anything that could possibly be alive. The little one doesn’t quite know what to do with their wings or their feet, all of which seem fours sizes too big for such a tiny body. The daddy bird comes and goes, usually dropping off a fish or two for the family.

These are majestic and incredibly beautiful creatures, and have no needs for the names that have been ascribed for them – Liberty for the famale, Freedom for the male, and Kindness for the little one. Not sure where that last name came from, but it doesn’t matter a whit to any of the birds. They go where they go, they do what they do, and that’s all there is to it.

The interesting part about watching these big birds is there’s a non-viable egg left in the nest, but the mamma bird doesn’t know it’s non-viable. She sits on it for hours, every day, because that’s what a female bird does when there’s a egg. I had to laugh at one point when the little one got comfortable in the depression where the egg was situated, and there was a bit of a shoving match between mamma and baby. Mamma somehow manages to cover both the non-viable egg and the little one under her body somehow, because that’s what she does.

I don’t always know what I do. I find myself doing things because I have gone through the motions of contemplating and planning and setting my intent and then acting on the intent and still wind up doing something that really doesn’t serve me. I hatch a lot of non-viable eggs, it seems. Sometimes I feel as though I am sleep-walking, in a hazy almost-real world that seems to exist only inside me. Maybe I’m living between parallel realities or something. It would be just like me to be caught in the breach.

There was some hellatious building collapse in Florida earlier today. A high-rise condo complex inexplicably crumpled to the ground, in just a minute or two. Last time I checked, there were still almost a hundred people missing, and there was an intense search and rescue effort in progress. One ray of sunlight came through, however. A 10-year old boy was rescued, with barely a scratch on him. He had been sleeping, one minute he was in his bed, the next minute he’s 300 feet down, under the bed, and on top of a mountain of broken walls and dust. His mother had been in the condo with him, but they had not found her when I was tuned in.

Whatever it is that you’re doing at any given moment, sleeping or running or cussing somebody out or watching a football game on television you never know if that will be the last time you do that. I always wonder if I knew it would be the last time I was perched behind this laptop and typing on this keyboard, would I do anything differently. I have no idea, but I suppose this is why there are constant reminders to make one’s time count, no matter how mundane the task, and remain firmly rooted to the present moment.

That’s all just grand. sounds good for a motivational video script or something, but in the present moment we get distracted. Our minds race out in front of us at warp speed, and suddenly time has passed and you have no idea where it went. I suppose that’s a topic for another day, but it has always frustrated me how quickly I can lapse into la-la land without a moment’s notice. I guess as long as I don’t live attempt to live there permanently, I’ll survive.

I’m a bit uneasy tonight, having spent most of the day staring at the computer screen as I tried to do justice to this annual conference I’m attending. Zoom is tiresome for things like that, where you are invisibly shackled to the computer, in nearly a hypnotic state, staring slack-jawed at the screen where tiny shapes dance madly about. I fell asleep twice. There is only so much a person can absorb in a given block of time, only so many reports you can clap for, only so many times you can bear to hear talk about things we should be doing rather than talking about. But these are my people. Well, some of them, anyway.

There was a session earlier where random people were placed in breakout rooms to discuss something obtuse like why we had come to the conference. I wanted to say because I’m so effing bored I would have given a bat an enema just to break up the day. But I am paying them to bore me to nod off like some ancient dowager, mouth open and drooling on her t-shirt. Fortunately we are muted for most o these presentations, so they couldn’t hear me snore.

The tenets of this faith are strong for me. We are non-creedal, which is a very attractive thing for me. Like any other bunch of over privileged humans with advanced degrees, there is an over abundance of talk and tweaking of process and wordsmithing. I have been to this conference several times in person, and while it’s kind of a high to be with three or four thousand other people who you share your faith (so you don’t have to explain it), it’s also kind of a downer when you realize they’re only human, even if they do know how to navigate a meeting using Robert’s Rules of Order.

Humans get full of themselves, and I speak from experience. We are creatures of ego, and we mean well. Whenever I hear that offered as an excuse for something that bombed, my response is always, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Take the shot. Fail again. Fail better. Some of us think we should never fail, because if we had planned better, or thought it through better or implemented better, we wouldn’t have failed. At which point I laugh hysterically and point out they have fallen victim to the same kinds of Calvinistic idioms they felt they had risen so far above.

Sometimes you take the shot, you fail. You do a post-mortem to find out what happened. Maybe that’s successful, maybe not. So, try again. Fail again. Fail better. Now, truth be told, I understand that. It resonates, it sings inside me, I get it. But. When do you call it quits? When do you say it’s not worth your while to keep making an effort on something that just for all the world seems to be an non-viable egg. It’s not going to hatch, no matter how long you sit on it. It is an ex-egg, something didn’t go quite right, and it’s done. When do you stop hoping that if you just sit on it a little longer, maybe change positions a little, maybe roll it over and cushion it a little better it will right itself and hatch?

I never know when to quit. I’m mostly not a quitter, but this last job I had, I quit. I gave up. The system was too inflexible and they had decided I was dragging them down with my poor performance. They couldn’t understand, nor did they care to understand, that I had given up. I was done. I had nothing else to give, and it just didn’t matter any longer. I didn’t quit my life, though. But, it has taken me a long while to recuperate from that toxicity.

Volcanos do what they do, eagles do what they do, and I do what I do. My heart does what it does, goes where it pleases, hides when it needs to. I chastise myself when I develop an attachment to people I know are treating me badly, or just not interested in the kind of friendship I enjoy. Sometimes I keep trying, and that’s when I talk to myself and question why in the hell I keep doing that. I just don’t know.

Today, I felt very disconnected from myself. That’s such an odd feeling to have. It’s like having one of those vague itches that you just can’t scratch. Something’s missing, but I’m not quite sure what it is. I’m shying away from meeting new people, don’t want to interact with people I don’t know these days. There was a woman on one of the breakout sessions today, though, I couldn’t help but notice. The attraction was so strong I thought I might go through the screen. She was in Rochester or something, I believe. Very nice woman, seemed very intelligent and savvy. What was pulling me, however, was none of that. It was that she looked so much like my mother it was frightening. It wasn’t a totally unpleasant experience, but I found myself babbling nonsensically like a child as the conversation went on. That was an unexpected bonus for today.

So, now I’m babbling again. I suppose I’m pretty tired. It wasn’t a bad day outside, when I was able to venture out. We had another cold front come through, meaning the high today was 85 instead of 90. Wow. Better get out the hoodies and gloves. Meanwhile, the West Coast is experiencing what I call nuclear fusion heat, and they have drought. We have drought, too, except that it’s drought of originality and compassion, not so mucht eh water supply.

Some days, I don’t know why I bother. Before I got sober, I was so miserable and whipped that I seriously prayed to not wake up the next morning. When I did wake up, I was pissed as hell. I was getting to that point again, just a few weeks ago, but I think I’m past that hump now. Brain chemistry is a strange and frightening thing. The more they know about it, the more they realize they don’t know. I have bene fooling with my brain for most of my life, and somedays I have to stand on one leg and face North-North-East in order to get my head on straight. It just be that way sometimes. Like sometimes you get a fish dropped in your nest, other days its a bunch of berries and a dead chipmunk. Just keep moving.

Life can be such a crap shoot at times. When I leave my apartment and travel to some other place, if I speed up to run this yellow light did I set a sequence of things in motion that caused somebody else to get creamed at the end of the block? One never knows, but I am just demented enough to worry about such things.

Right this minute, I’m aware that all of this babbling, and the earlier babbling with the woman who looked like my mother, is all because I’m scared. I need a job to make me a little less scared, but even that won’t eradicate all of the fear. I think I was born with fear, and to some extent, it’s just a part of who I am. Fear that people I love are going to abandon me, and guess what? They do. But I’m still here, I just don’t understand why. Apparently, I’m not supposed to understand why, but that really sucks.

If I could have anything in the Universe that I wanted, anything that could make me happier than I have ever been, I don’t even know what that is. There has been so much deprivation I don’t know quite what it would feel like to have everything I wanted, or at least to have more than what I just needed. I suppose there is some part of me that feels like having that desire for excess is immoral, or on the wrong side of acceptable and respectable. I don’t feel respectable. I have never felt respectable. Maybe that’s more than what it’s cracked up to be.

Dignity? Nah – I have done things I said I never would,. Class? Definitely not – I know which fork to use for salad, but the rest of the finishing school etiquette is pretty lost on me. Truthful? Getting there. Back in the day, I lied about everything, even things I didn”t need to lie about. I had trouble remembering what I’d told to who. Honor? Maybe. I try to keep my promises, and I don’t make very many any more, just in case I might not be able to keep them. Self-activated? Sadly – no. I’m still activated and motivated by other peoples’ definition and me and what I should be doing. People say I’m strong, but as I said earlier, I just don’t know when to stop. That’s not really being strong, it’s just being clueless.

At the UU soiree this week, the President of the Association made a comment that has stuck with me – how do you say yes? That is going to take a lot of thought and reflection. It occurred to me that I know how to say nom although I probably don’t say it enough. People pleasers rarely do. But how exactly do I say yes? I’ve gotta think on this for a minute.

Don’t mind me. I’m just over here, trying to heal and taking care of my own business, so don’t pay any attention to me. Seriously. Unless you want to pay the rent, or the power bill, or the water bill, or the internet bill, or the vet bill, or buy groceries just hush.

I am indeed muttering and gesturing obscurely today, following defeat of the For The People Act last night. The proposed legislation didn’t actually fail in a vote, only the debate on the Act failed. It was a filibuster, so 60 votes were needed to move forward with debate leading to a vote. But the debate was killed, so the bill is essentially dead.

This is politics, and I understand that but this is hypocritcal demonic politics. Aside from the normal partisan shenanigans, the most frustrating part of this action is the stance of the minority party. They have taken the position of opposing anything President Biden favors, just because. Their specific opposition to the For The People Act was that it was totally non-partisan, and that it amounted to one party taking over the election process nationwide. States rights!!! Yeah, advance to the rear and I’ll meet you back in 1957. This is the Southern Strategy all over again. This time it was effective, and they killed the effort for election reform.

Sad part about this is that now the wholly partisan effort to restrict voter engagement and take control of election boards away from the states can move forward unbridled. The hypocrisy of this is staggering, and makes my head swim. Again, this is an old playbook, but since its inception nobody has been able to effectively counter it. Except the election cycle that put a Black man in the White House. The efforts to suppress voter empowerment ramped up significantly after that, and now it’s on steroids.

The Obama election was apparently SO traumatic for the conservative right wing of the voting populace that making sure that was a one-time aberration is driving everything else they do. If it wasn’t so dangerous it would be funny. This is the issue that has brought them all together, in lockstep, behind a narcissistic, sociopathic, and delusional Svengali of the public distrust. It fascinates me how much of their messages dance on the line of obvious and overt racism and denial of same. Is it worth all that energy?

Apparently it is worth all that, because they are passing voter-suppression bills nationwide like they were coming off an assembly line. The language of the legislation is boiler plate, and the whole effort resembles something in The Matrix rather than something in present time. Cookie-cutter, one size fits all – the legislative stencil set. Very sad.

I was reading something last night, could have been Twitter, and someone asked the question about how people could be compelled to vote against their own self-interests. My response was that’s not new, and it’s been happening all along when racism plunked itself right in the middle of the dominant culture. It’s the elephant in all of the living rooms, but let’s not talk about it. OK let’s not talk about it but didn’t I understand from your minister that your double-wide is in bad shape and you don’t have the money but take heart, because at least you’re not Black? Isn’t that the bottom line – it can always be worse, but at least you’re not Black?

That’s the mortar holding all of these people together and voting against what’s good for them. It’s the racism, stupid. That’s how people can give a thumbs-up to expanding MedicAid because the narrative justifying that has become focused on whether immmigrants and lazy Black people will get benefits that YOUR tax dollars pay for. Ignore the fact that non-legal immigrants get $0 in social services benefits, and those on long-term visas or work permits often have wages withheld for taxes.

Some people believe that all we have to do is stop talking about slavery, and move on with things, and everything will be fine. Um, how do you figure? It’s not old and outdated behavior if you’re still doing the same thing in the present. I don’t particularly want to talk about slavery, either – it was brutal and horrific and goes well beyond my comprehension and moral sensibility. I’m not looking for more discussion on that, in particular, but I do want the acknowledgement and the agreement that it was nothing good. When people, especially from majority culture, minimalize that period in our history enrages me. There was no good side to slavery. If that is what it took to build what we have in this country today, then let’s talk about reparations. The relationship is in need of repair. Let’s talk about how that’s gonna look.

Sometimes I wonder if we are all speaking the same language here. And no, I’m not speaking of immigrants from another country with another first language. I’m talking about today, conversations between people who are not part of their families’ first generation born here in the United States. When I talk with other people of color, sometimes I struggle to be understood. Of course that could just be how I speak, being from New Orleans and everything. We do talk a little funny down there, at least the townies do. I also talk fast, so it’s not uncommon for half of my conersation with another person to be peppered with “Huh?” and “Can you say that again?” and “Would you please just slow down???” I talk faster when I am engaged and enjoying a debate or argument with someone.

Anyway, racism is a powerful motivator, and a powerful chunk of our infrastructure. Most of us are not even aware of how much of the where and how we stand today is based on racism and disparate treatment of racial and ethnic minorities, and it’s painful to find out that we don’t know, and even more painful to find out the truth. We are dancing on the edge of all of it, wanting desperately to maintain our comfort with traditions of the past but wanting to move into the new millennium with something akin to confidence. I’m not sure we can do both.

My biggest frustration is the hypocrisy, but I suppose I should give those folks a break. If you’ve had privilege all your days, and somebody comes along and says you have to share, you would probably see that as a loss. We all see power as a zero-sum issue – we all want 100% of the available power, and if we have to disperse our share we don’t have 100% any longer, so that’s a loss. It’s like me being an only child – I never had to answer to anybody, share anything, be fair to anyone else. My role was very static – what little agency one has as a child belonged to me alone. When my cousins were born, I was about nine, and I did have some issues about why my grandmother’s attention wasn’t focused solely on me. So, I kind of get it. Kind of.

What is missing in the zero-sum view of this is that power is infinite. If I was called on to share my time with my grandmother, she had a different block of time for me. Sharing her with my cousins didn’t take anything from me if I could have just seen there could be enough for all of us. But I was nine.

If adults cannot understand there’s enough for everyone, we probably haven’t progressed very far from the perspective of a nine-year old. We are entrenched in a perspective of scarcity, where there’s only enough worms for the early birds, for the go-getters and the aggressors and the highly motivated in the crowd. If I believe there is enough for everyone, whether it’s in terms of resources or access to resources or skills or money or whatever, I am less likely to resist someone who wants other folks to have power of their own.

One of the first things I learned in the arena of social justice was that power over iothers is not sustainable. We are all in that world view right now, where people have power over us, and others control our access to necessary resources. That usually makes for a burning fuse, waiting for ignition. And we have plenty of incendiaries. Instead of power over others, it is better to aim for power WITH other. Allies and co-conspirators are far more sustainable than competitors.

To progress to collaborative power in alliance and solidarity with others, we have to begin from the baseline of equity. Superiority on any level will crash the whole thing, and that’s why there is so much conflict and so much insistence on success. To the victor go the spoils is an idiom of war, and we do not need to be at war with each other. Wars generally began as conflict over finite resources, but if we know we’ll have what we need, what do we need with fighting each other?

Success is highly overrated, and highly subjective. I heard a podcast from Brene’ Brown a while ago that dissected the concept of success. She was interviewing a professor, an engaging woman who had done a lot of work marrying creativity to more technical pursuits. She submitted her opinion that success was not equivalent to master, and was a win-lose proposition based on subjectivity. Her concept was that mastery was the better measure of acuity and positive results. With mastery, you have tried again and again, sometimes winning sometimes not, but you have learned every time. Try again, fail again, fail better. (Cornel West uses that one a lot.)

The risk taking may be the necessary element in achieving mastery. Every time we put ourselves out there, with a chance of success as well as failure, we are taking a risk. If we never change anything, we don’t have to keep taking a risk. We sit on our laurels and the spoils of war, and we are stuck there. I suppose that is why so many of us find ourselves at middle age wondering what the hell we’re doing here and why. That more or less explains the sports cars and the bad ideas you see from people at 60 – it’s the need to re-create yourself and take a risk, by whatever means necessary. Aging is not for sissies (and I have a book with that exact title to prove it.).

If I perceive of myself as better than everyone else, I’m separated from my source energy, and I’m separated from everyone else. If I have even an ounce of humility, I have a chance of being in community, of being in relationship with other people. Recovery has taught me, often by beating me with the proverbial two-by-four of reality, that humility is not about being humble and groveling. It’s about accepting the reality of who I am and where I am and that I’m not less than anyone else, nor more than anyone else. I am right where I am supposed to be. And yes, that’s annoying.

Come down off your throne and leave your body alone…somebody must change. That’s one of my favorite songs, by Steve Winwood – “Can’t Find My Way Home”. It says quite a lot of what I am feeling these days, like I can’t find my way home. Somebody holds the key, and somebody must change. This is an acoustic version, but I like acoustic guitar things a lot.

This is a weird thing I wrote, from out of nowhere.

Talking To Myself

I can’t pretend that I am not here, but I want to.  There’s evidence to prove that I’m here, and sometimes that’s all I have to convince myself – the dog gets fed, the bills get paid, food disappears and is replenished.  Somebody must be doing that.  And I don’t see anyone else here.

So I must be here.  It’s just that I don’t see me.  It enrages me when other people don’t see me, so what am I supposed to do with being invisible to myself?

I try hard not to look into mirrors.  Always have.  I am afraid of what I will see.  I know that I won’t like what I see. It is painful to look at my face, and I avert my eyes as much as I can. It is painful to see.

To see the rest of my overweight and bloated body is agonizing, like when I saw old pictures of the Elephant Man, so grossly misshapen and disfigured.  It was too hard to see that.  It is too hard to see me, and I want to smash all the mirrors into dust so there is nothing left that can reflect my image.

These days, in this age of Zoom and video meetings, I cannot escape seeing my face coming back at me from the postage stamp thumbnail on the screen. I don’t much like that, but rarely participate in online meetings without my video on because meeting hosts usually require it.  But if I’m there for an hour, it’s an hour of scrutinizing my face when I speak, noting every blemish and the sagging jowls and vague double chin.  I silently criticize my reactions to other people speaking – I look stupid, I look pissed. Smile you fool or you’ll look like a third-rate action figure.  What does your hair seem to be doing?  Your teeth are a mess, especially since you lost that tooth on your bridge.  Nobody wants to see that.

Oh, for the love of…hellooooo? It’s me.  Well, it’s you but it’s me in you.  Whatever but let me jump in here for a minute to ask…what the hell, Ann?  You have always hated the sound of your voice and the image of your face.  What the hell?  Where did that come from?  When did that start?

I remember when it started, and it has to do with my mother, and I don’t want to go there right now.  It’s not safe to go there right now.  I have been there far too often in the past few weeks, so…no. 

So what the hell are you going to do about it, huh? 

I don’t know. 

You had better know, because that’s what she told you, remember?  That you were always going to screw up and never amount to anything.  Don’t you remember?

Of course, I remember.  I always remember that, and I always knew she would win.  Always.

So, that’s it then?  That’s the best you can do?  Hmm.  Maybe she was right.

I don’t know.  Maybe.  But maybe not.  I sometimes think I can do something, and sometimes not.  It goes back and forth in my head, and it makes me so tired.  Why can’t I just…be?

Silly girl.  You CAN just be, but you know you are not satisfied with just being.  A rock is just being.  You want to be doing something, something big, something noticeable.  You want to be visible.  That’s why you’re always mouthing off about SOMETHING.

Well, I guess.  But I’m so tired, and this is very hard, and now I’m here all by myself.  She’s gone, he’s gone, they’re all gone and it’s just me now.  Left holding the bag.  I’m lonely and scared, and I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know if I can do this.

You do know what to do, you’ve just forgotten.  I know you can’t see well because of the pain. But I’m here to tell you that you have everything you need, so use what you have.  Take your best shot, girl – how does that old saying go…shoot for the moon and you’ll land amongst the stars?  Don’t you remember?

I think so.  I guess so.

Listen, and I’m serious here…nobody gives a shit what you look like.  They give a shit about the inside part they can’t even see, the part that says you want to do something, the part that makes them feel like they can do something.  The part that is the cockroach of love!  Nobody worth anything wants perfection from you.  Got it?  Don’t forget it this time.  Your life is depending on it, you know?

Oh, my god – I remember the cockroach of love!   You can’t kill a damned cockroach – you think you smashed them into oblivion, and they just get up and walk away with half their legs.  But, yeah, I know.  I sometimes don’t want to have a life.  Sometimes I want to not wake up in the morning and just be what I feel like most of the time, like nothing.

OK, now you’re pissing me off a little.  If that was an option you wouldn’t be talking with me right now.  So I would advise you to get that out of your head, because you and I both know you don’t want to do that. 

I guess.  But when does the pain go away?  It never stops, and I don’t even know where it comes from, but it’s like that volcano eruption in Iceland…tons and tons and tons of lava pouring out of it.  Coming up from way down deep and just gushing out, rushing out, going who knows where.  It’s boiling, red and hot and angry, somehow looking the way I feel when the bad stuff is coming out of me. 

When the volcano is done, it will be done.  When you’re done, you will be done, but you know you’re not done.  You’ll know when.  There’s no rhyme or reason to it, so just relax and enjoy the ride.

I guess. 

You say I guess a lot.

Yeah, I do, when I don’t know what else to say.

Well, listen I’m pretty tired now, so why don’t you relax and take it easy for a bit.  Then sleep.  Sleep a good sleep and know that you are safe and everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be right now, even if it seems like it’s all screwed up.  Trust me on this?

Well, I guess. *snicker*

Lord.  You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?

Yeah, I do know that.  Sorry.

Don’t ever apologize to me.  Ever.  Just do what you do, be who you be, and don’t bend over.

Don’t bend over?  I’m not in prison or nothin’…what is that supposed to mean?

When you bend, the people who don’t want you to win see it as a sign of weakness or submission, and they will ride your back and hurt you even more.  See?

Hmm.  Got it, I think.  I might need a refresher pep talk another day, though….

That’s fine.  Trust me to be here, and I’ll be here. 

OK.  I guess.

THAT does it!  Good night!!!

Good night.  Sleep tight.

** ** **
I do need to sleep.  I do need to talk to myself more.  It will be OK, I just don’t know what OK looks like. 

A group of Catholic bishops are considering the denial of Communion to President Biden. They are displeased with Biden’s “support” for abortion. I don’t actuallly think Biden ever said he supported abortion, but supported the right of a pregnant woman to choose what happens to her body. That’s a bit different from a stance of supporting abortion,, promoting abortion, urging women to have abortions. That would be “pro-abortion” to me, but I’m kind of simple, it seems.

The Pope didn’t weigh in on the matter, saying (correctly, I might add) that bigger issues are in front of them. The Vatican has said recently that the sacrament is not a reward, and should not be used as a political weapon. Well, yeah. It shouldn’t be. But the Catholic Church’s history chronicles many instances of their political intervention in matters of state, and not only in the United States. People who analyze these sorts of things point out that issues like this, where the Church takes internal action against a politician, would seem to be of more concern to the issue of separation of church and state than a matter of faith and adherence to dogma.

I would imagine the Catholic Church, in particular, would have to admit they are not infallible and not unblemished on moral grounds. The sex scandal of recent years should leave no argument there, as victims continue to come forward and there has been a steady stream of recompense. So, let he who has no sin throw the first stone…but in the matter of Joe Biden, the Church has thrown the first stone, which is of course a small boulder.

The Catholic Church in America has long been considered among the most conservative in the Church’s footprint. I like Pope Francis, he seems to have very positive and accepting energy. But he is the Pope, and his job is to preside over the flock and promote the faith. I have been disappointed with him for not taking or at least voicing his support for women becoming clergy. He has elevated the opinions and regard for nuns in the faith, which is long overdue and very much necessary. But elevating women to the star chamber, well…no.

I kind of don’t understand what the objection is for women as priests. There are women as deacons, and they are allowed to serve Communion outside of the Church, in convalescence homes, nursing homes, and for invalids at home. The leap to women performing the ritual of the Mass shouldn’t be a far jump, in my opinion, unless you’re operating from a baseline of misogyny.

So, when an institution as large and influential as the Catholic Church considers action such as denying Communion to a politician, it will mean something to billions of practicing Catholics. They may be inclined to look negatively on Joe Biden, and his political party. Many people for whom this is an important issue probably have Joe Biden at the bottom of their approval ratings. They may be inclined to vote for an opposing candidate, and that’s the heart of why this touches on separation of church and state.

The issue of abortion is always sticky, and it’s always hard to balance dogma against gender equity. Regardless of that, I cannot see any other way to look at the push from Bishops to deny the President Communion as inherently political. But, this has happened before, and that’s just how it goes. At least this time it’s not tacit support of the Holocaust that is on the table.

The notion of fighting for what you think is right is natural to us. I like Jolly Ranchers better than Haribo Gummies, and if you don’t, it’s my dudty to bring you over to the Jolly Rancher side. OK, I can handle that. It’s annoying that such an inconsequential issue would be worthy of more than 15 seconds of conversation, but more benign issues than candy have sparked wars.

Why is it that I need to convince you of my opinion or support about something, whether it’s faith or candy or political policy? It’s something hard-wired in us, and it seems as though self-differentiation is so lonely that we don’t want to possibly stand alone. That seems to be a character issue – always choose the winning side, not necessarily the correct side. For me, that seems to point back to our incessant quest for power. Power over another. Power to get our way. Power to be a winner. Winning is important to us. We have to be top of the heap, even if the heap is the number of deaths from COVID. Yay, us!

So all of that notwithstanding, there were a few more happenings that I took note of recently. This debate – or argument (there’s a difference) – about critical race theory is raging. There are governors and other politicians who are taking steps to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. Their justification is critical race theory is essentially racist in its content, and harmful to children. Plus, it will make the kids feel badly about themselves, so…. no critical race theory for us.

Legislation to ban critical race theory is moving across the country rapidly, like the fast-moving lava from the volcano that is erupting in Iceland. This is unfortunate, in my opinion, because if we are going to have this “reckoning” and move from this point of stasis about the status quo, we need something that provides guide rails to do that work. Critical race theory could be those guide rails, keeping things in context so that we don’t lose sight of the reason this needs to be done in the first place.

I don’t think any elementary, middle, or high school teacher in the United States will be introducing a lesson on critical race theory in their classes. Critical race theory is a high brow, post collegiate level academic theorem and not suitable for pre-college students. Nobody is going to be offering an exam with discussion questions on this rather pithy philosophical and legal subject matter. What they SHOULD do is use the tenets of critical race theory to guide the teacher in presenting true history, not idealism and false historicla references.

It is amazing what most of us have not been taught. It doesn’t matter what color you might be, but we are ignorant of quite a lot of things. When the 1921 Tulsa OK race massacre was in the news. the majority of comments I saw and people I spoke with found themselves stupified by hot knowing about this before now. I was among those who didn’t know a great many things about American history, and I’m eternally grateful to have found out. I don’t see how broadening my understanding of how we got here translates to an unpatriotic stance.

But, here we are, on the battleground that is critiical race theory. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, because like Pope Francis, I think we have bigger issues on the table. immigration, health care, gun control, police reform, jobs, little stuff like that. So, why in the world is critical race theory getting people to dance around in their boxing gloves, dodging and weaving and looking to knockout the opposition?

I contend this is a contrived distraction. The biggest issue this nation is dealing with is voter suppression and election reform. Those bills are circulating all over country, but they seem more hazy in our vision. I believe that’s because just about everyone can see that suppressing the Black voting block will be favorable to electing candidates of one party over another. Some, however, don’t connect the dots between making it illegal to provide water to voters standing in a long waiting line in GA with the January 6th insurrection. There’s a definite connection.

This is not the first time the nation has sought to suppress the votes of Black people and people of color. Obviously, after the right to vote for all citizens became law, there was resistance. The resistance is about power, or what we call power. The way our governance structure operates, if you want to have a pothole fixed on your street or a ball park built in your town, you need political power. To get that, we are supposed to elect the representatives on the ground who will use their influence to get the desired prize. These days, however, the process seems to get stuck when elected representatives have their own agendas and make only casual reference to the will of their constituency. That’s not a good thing.

Politicians who seek to follow their own agendas, or the agendas of major institutional donors is the kiss of death for the republic. Democracy cannot exist without having one vote equivalent to one voice, and of course the election process must be trustworthy. Personally, I think our only hesitancy to accept the current process as valid is because our thoughts have been poisoned by the nay sayers and conspiracy theories, not to mention extremists who have their own agenda for “getting THEIR country back”. All of this spells non-inclusion of everyone, on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and somewhat to gender (particularly non-binary women and Black or brown women). This is where the extreme traditionalists converge, and it looks an awful lot like the racism and anti-Black prejudice stances of earlier times.

The effort to confer superior status on people of European descent in this country has been going on since the first pilgrims landed on our shores. In so many ways, we know no other way. Africans who accompanied those early settlers were definitely not equal in status to indentured servants of European descent, so the rules of engagement were set from the first days of settling the New World. We don’t really have any experience with a healthy citizenship here, but we know better. We can see what the scourge of second-class citizenship does, how it erodes our integrity, how it is contradictory to values we espouse.

It’s easy to see double standards today, in many places in our society and our institutions. The governing boards of many American corporations bear little demographic resemblance to the rest of the nation, with few Blacks, Indigenous or People of Color. When Colin Kaepernick knelt when the National Anthem was played during football games, even the former President rejected the action as peaceable dissent. When rioters stormed the nation’s Capitol, breaking windows, damaging property, injuring police officers even the President at the time responded they were patriots, people who loved their country. Colin Kaepernick was not a patriot, he hated America, and he should be fired according to that same President. That’s not simply a matter of perception, because nobody in their right mind can reduce the insurrection to the level of a peaceful protest.

There’s no easy or quick answer to any of this, but unless we arrest the process now and prevent it from getting worse, it is doomed to be worse. Much worse. I do not want to see fighting in our streets between Americans who believe only one concept of how our country should look is plausible. We will all be the losers if that happens, and we’re very close to it right now, at least that’s my opinion. There is no shortage of passion on either side of what this country should be and what it should look like.

Part of why we’re so raucously agitated right now, I believe, is that we’re basically still tribal in our world view. We don’t realize that, but it’s easily seen at any sports competition, where the audience is polarized between those who want Team A to win, and those who want Team B to win. There’s no middle ground, and they can’t both win. So, especially in American football, everybody beat the crap out of the opposition and capture their goal. Whoever is still standing at the end of the prescribed competitive period and who has captured the goal more times wins. Period. Now on to the next one.

Unfortunately, when humans are competing for tangible resources, financial and otherwise it’s not that simple. Money is frequently the root cause of all of this in these times. Even in the simplicity of sports, the mot frequent winner is financially rewarded for their efforts. In the competition between nations, we’re all competing against each other for the prize of lucrative trade options, even more lucrative product delivery like sugar, cigars, cars, electronic devices, and medication. There is big money in those niches, but also the physical survival of millions of people. That’s where it gets scary.

Sometimes I wish for the Big Storm to descend and wipe out our modern contrivances. Bring us back to the understanding that we all need each other to survive, and no one of us can manipulate resources so they have more than a fair share. Let us remember how to write with a pencil and paper, and figure out who the hell we are. We can do that, but everybody has to be willing, and we can’t quit because it gets too hard or nothing’s changing after 30 days. We have to be in it for the long haul.

Volcanoes erupt and spew lava out in the nearby valleys. Tropical storms, cyclones, and hurricanes can demolish entire towns in minutes. The wind gets riled up and starts rotating and a massive tornado crashes through lives and what they’ve built in a flash. And we rebuild. There’s a small town in Louisiana that’s almost at the tip of the boot, and they get washed out repeatedly by hurricane storm surge and flooding. They have rebuilt so many times I can’t even count, but every hurricane season, they vow to rebuild again if they are hit by a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. We toss around the word resilience for repeated efforts like this, and some question the wisdom and the practicality of rebuilding over and over and over again.

So, why do people rebuild after natural disasters, or even an arson that was intentional set? Why do people fight their way back from the brink of death to as much of their previous life as possible? What is it about this place, about us, that makes it unimaginable to be without it? I believe we are ultimately tied to each other with a spiritual bond we cannot comprehend. We are re-enacting the same routines and rituals over and over and over again, because that is what we do. We rebuild what has been destroyed as many times as it takes, because we don’t know any other way. The faces change, the names change, different geographic locations, but it’s the same human struggle for a place to call home.