I tried to make this place my place

I asked for providence to smile upon me with his sweet face

Yeah but Ill tell you

My place is of the sun and this place is of the dark

And I do not feel the romance I do not catch the spark

My place is of the sun and this place is of the dark

(By grace, my sight grows stronger)

And I do not feel the romance I will not be

(And I will not be a pawn for the prince of darkness any longer)

Indigo Girls (Emily Saliers) – “Prince of Darkness”

That’s one of my favorite songs by the Indigo Girls, or anyone. I feel those lyrics, as though I could have written them myself (if only I was a talented poet). That song came out years ago, but it seems that over time it has resonated more and more with me.

I tried. I have tried to make so many places, or even people, my place, but it was not to be. I asked for providence to smile upon me, but there was only consternation. Through it all, I have never felt the romance. Ever. For a very long time, I could not catch the spark, either.

For me, the spark is the singularity of my essence, my spirit, my soul. That tiny place where all that I am intersects with everything else that is. I have spent a long time not feeling the spark of creation, the spark that marks the tiny place of connection with the Source. The place where I hope for a better place that is my place. And I do not know if I have found it, or if I have found it many times and lost it, and I grieve. We all grieve, I think.

When I cannot feel the romance or the spark, the darkness is palpable. So, I must ask myself what’s happened, what’s blocking that connection, what’s blocking that feeling of belonging and the feeling of yes, this is my place, these are my people, this a place of light. When have I felt that? Have I ever, or have I just settled for something that felt only slightly better than grieving?

I feel that I have settled. Settling is the kiss of death for a heart that yearns to give birth to something. For me, settling has meant giving up, abandoning fledgling dreams, becoming comfortable with the darkness. I do not want that to be my place. It’s someone else’s place, I think.

My pattern has been to allow other people to define my pace, to define me. I have been a pawn to so many others it’s dizzying to count them all. When I was getting sober, and even slightly before that, people would tell me that I give up my power very easily, very willingly. I didn’t understand that, and really just wanted them to be quiet because they didn’t understand how badly people were treating me. I had nothing to do with it, because I was just the victim.

I did not realize then what a willing victim I had become. Because I did not believe in myself or even that I had a right to be here, I was so grateful for anyone to give me even the slightest bit of attention, affection, time. People can smell desperation on your skin, and the predators amongst them smell blood and begin circling for the eventual kill. I thought circling meant they were still interested in little old me. Not so much.

The older I get, I continue to regret that I didn’t get some of this sooner. I feel as though I have wasted so much time. But it kept me off the streets, quite literally, all those nights when I was too angry or hurt or scared to be out and about in crowds of sharks. I was bleeding, and did not know it, but they knew it.

It has always mystified me what other people see when they encounter me. I know that some of them write me off almost immediately, based solely on aesthetics. Whatever. Some may come in for a closer look and maybe conversation, and that goes smoothly for a while, until I trample with heavy feet some social cue that I didn’t get the instructions for. Whatever. Some are politely dismissive, and I suppose that happens to some degree with just about everyone at one time or another.

In the past, the far distant past I must say, when people were dismissive and ignored me for the most part, it became a challenge. It became an obsessive game that I was compelled to win. You are going to pay attention to me, because I have the power to make that happen. Um, well, no you don’t have that power, but yes, you are making quite a fool of yourself. That pattern lasted far too long, and I lost so much of my self-respect. I also lost hope for quite a long time, and became more and more desperate.

Looking back on that pattern, which I must admit will pop up from time to time when I get my motor running, I feel very sad for that person I was. Some of that was learned helplessness, some of it was addiction, and some of it was just me. Just me, who believed I should always be that perfect, cute grandchild who didn’t have to do anything for people to love her, didn’t have to be responsible for her own messes, was given grace when she made the mess. Life was good.

That worked just fine when I was three. It doesn’t work when you’re 33 or 43 or even older. Precocious gives way to obnoxious, little princess gives way to self-centered drama queen. I was the last to know. I just kept bashing my head against brick walls and getting more and more angry that the wall was making my head hurt.

Numerous people tried to impart to me the age-old knowledge that when you bash your head against a wall, your head will hurt. To make the pain stop, stop bashing your head against the wall I didn’t get it. I couldn’t hear it. You can’t hear things like that until you are ready on some soul-deep level, and I wasn’t ready. So, I kept bashing my head against the wall.

The wall, interestingly enough, was of my own making. I presumed for a very long time the wall had been the place where my will met up with the will of other people, and it was a barrier that I could not overcome. It was their wall, and I just didn’t have the right stuff to scale it, not pretty enough, not rich enough, not thin enough, not smart enough. Whatever the key to the lock was, I didn’t have it. DOOM. I am just not enough of something, and never will be. JUST DIE. Well, let me work on that…and I did for quite a long time, in slow motion, just to make it last longer.

My understanding of my place is that I can’t make anyone else create it for me. I have to do the work to make my place. What I’ve come to learn, the hard way of course, is that my true place is not out there. I went through quite a long period of time wrestling with my identities, all of them, and coming to the conclusion there was no place in this world that had a container to fit all of me. Having that view of the world is self-defeating, and I regularly defeated myself, but still fervently wishing the world was different.

What needed to be different wasn’t out there, it was in here. I needed to be different on the inside. Inside me is the place that wasn’t my place. It was the place the darkness was preying upon, whittling it down inch by inch, molecule by molecule. I was a pawn, doing things to excoriate the very essence of who I am. I was a pawn to the other people’s version of who I am supposed to be, what I am supposed to look like, how I am supposed to behave. That’s where the power drains, that’s the horrible sucking sound I was hearing in my brain.

So, I will not be a pawn any longer. I am clear on that, but it takes practice to reclaim your place, and it takes effort. Some days it really is a struggle, because some of it is counter-intuitive. When someone asks me to do something, my natural instinct is to people-please and say yes before I’ve assessed my ability or willingness to do it. This has not worked very well for me over the years, but I have made some progress with it. I will have to work on this probably for the rest of my life, though. Some of us are just born with that switch activated, and the best thing for me to do is accept that as just apart of who I am. I can work on being aware of when it’s not in my best interest to be a people pleaser, and keep moving. Sounds simple, but just not all that easy. But, nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

It’s interesting for me to be thinking about “the spark”, and how exactly that works in my life (or doesn’t as the case may be). When I thought I felt the spark, I think I was lying. I was feeling something else, sometimes hormones, sometimes addiction, sometimes grandiosity. But it wasn’t that spark of creation, the spark that tells me I’m connected to where I come from. That’s the spark I crave.

So how do I get there, how do I get that spark? Maybe the spark is always there, but I have to clear away enough debris and flotsam of the past to feel it. That’s the prince of darkness, the detritus of my own making that I won’t clear away, the wreckage of the past that. It’s clogging the drain and blocking the purging effort, so I have to find a way to move that on down the line.

The wreckage of the past is an interesting port of call. It’s hulking and rusted and not doing anyone any good sitting there. I keep thinking it can be used for something, but I think it’s much better just hauled away. If there’s anything that can be recycled, the recycling center will figure that out. Let’s just get out the trash bags and get to steppin’.

My wreckage is made up of mistakes, hurts that came from making mistakes, all the times I rejected the writing on the wall and edited it to make an impressive diatribe on a useless topic. It was still the writing on the wall, and it still urged me to abandon ship. But I have never been one to listen to good advice, at least on the first reading. Trash. That needs to go into the trash. The entire pattern, not each singular incident or memory, but the whole pattern. That will take care of all the incidents, and hopefully make it impossible to repeat.

Of course, in reality, I cannot trash mistakes. I am not perfect, no matter what so I am going to make mistakes. What I can dispense of, however, is the impulse to be perfect and the resultant unforgiving and punishing self-flagellation that goes along with it. That’s going to take some doing, but maybe it doesn’t just disappear, maybe it’s just improvements along the say. I am not the same person I was 30 years ago, desperate for breaking down someone else’s wall, so there’s improvement to be had. I am just not sure I have ever forgiven myself for being so incredibly self-destrucive.

Forgiving myself has never been my strong point. I am still beating myself up over conversations I had when I was 12. Of course, I can’t remember my commitments on any given day, but I can remember something from 1972. But, that’s how I roll. Perhaps a reasonable goal would be to realize that I can recalibrate, reorient, reroute and stop doing that. Or at least stop doing it so often.

Forgiveness in most situations has been daunting for me, because when people have done a wrong thing, a hurtful thing, they may or not have regret about it. If they have no remorse, I don’t see any reason to forgive them. I certainly don’t see any reason to announce that I have forgiven them, or attempt to establish good and loving relations with them. I’ve found that only serves to make other people more comfortable, and it certainly does not give me any warm fuzzy feelings of contentment.

What I do hope to get from forgiveness has nothing to do with the other part in some long-ago dispute or direct action like property damage. It has to do with me being aware of what happened, and remembering how I got there. It has to do with forgiving myself with learning and doing better. It’s not old behavior if I keep doing it.

My place is of the sun. This place is of the dark, or maybe I am not ready to see. Maybe I am asleep. In either case, the operative work is “I”. What am I going to do to make this place my place? I can ask providence to smile upon me, but I still have to do the legwork.

Well, it’s the day after Congress did what I thought was impossible – the House and the Senate came together and voted to approve a Federal holiday to commemorate Juneteenth. The Senate voted unanimously in favor of it, which surprised me. Surprised is an understatement – I was in disbelief for quite a while about that, and had begun celebrating before the House vote had even been tallied.

I’m glad the bill passed. I felt like there needed to be a win, there needed to be agreement on something that was not about contentious policy issues, or trillions of dollars to bolster up people who have been knocked down by COVID, or infrastructure. This felt a bit lighter, a bit less threatening. So, yay us!

Yes, yay us. Not because I agreed with creating the holiday, and not only because it feels like a subtle high-five for race relations. It seems exciting because at least one GOP Senator withdrew his objections and changed his mind about blocking the bill, so the Senate vote was unecpectedly unanimous. To me, this is worthy of note, because if they can do it this time, they can do it for other issues. If one Senator can changes his mind, others can do it. He’s still alive, as far as I can see, so changing your mind and giving ground on an issue proves to be non-lethal.

This was about creating a Federal holiday, having a national observance of June 19th, the day the Emancipation Proclamation was fully implemented. All enslaved people were free. Well, sort of. Idealists probably thought a massive exodus of African-Americans from plantations would have been underway the next day, but that really wasn’t the case.
Where were these people supposed to go? They had no money, very few tangible assets. Everything they’d need to physically survive was largely the property of the plantation owner. They were not trained to do anything but domestic service and farm labor. They were illiterate since it had been against the law to provide educational instruction to the enslaved. More importantly, the attitudes and biases of the dominant culture had not changed, and once not under the umbrella of a landowner, they were even more vulnerable to hate crimes, denial of services and lodging, denial of access to food and water in some cases. How were they supposed to be successful at living, or contributing to society?

Some of the plantation workers chose to stay exactly where they were once advised they could leave. Perhaps there was intimidation and scary stories from the plantation owners, or maybe they had no real idea of what liberation could mean. They had no idea how big the world really was, or what they could gain. It was safer to stay in some cases.
After it was legal for Blacks to leave the plantations and lands they had served while enslaved, they saw the rise of extremist groups like the KKK. The slave codes and capturing run-away plantation property had ended. But it was perfectly acceptable for whites to stop Blacks on suspicion of theft, rape, murder. Terror became a way of life for the recently liberated people, especially if they had chosen to relocate.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not a light switch that suddenly brought about immediate equity for Blacks. Blacks did not have citizenship, so they essentially had no basic human rights. It wasn’t until passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that citizenship was granted. Until then, Blacks were in a no-man’s land of this new frontier in America’s history.

It’s not that progress has not been achieved, but oppression and resistance to that progress has also ramped up. After the Civil War ended, lynching became somewhat the weapon of choice against the imaginary army of blood thirsty and depraved Africans intent on raping and killing whites, especially white women. Many whites felt compelled to arm themselves, and banded together for protection. Citizen militias and violent ad-hoc mobs sprang up everywhere, the KKK being only one of many. This was the energy that fueled the race massacres, like Tulsa and Rosewood along with “routine” lynchings throughout the country.

Those extreme displays don’t seem to be happening any longer, or maybe they do. A group of night riders (the police department) broke into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, destroying everything in their path. She was killed by gunfire as she slept. This was a botched police action, with a search and seize warrant for Taylor’s apartment, based on suspicion of drug dealing. Because a judge agreed with the police that knocking to announce their arrival would less the chance of finding evidence in the residence, it was legal to break into the apartment with a battering ram, guns drawn, with no explanation.

It was merciful that Breonna Taylor was asleep when police broke into her residence. She never saw it coming. In all other respects, though, such an action brings up memories of vigilante groups like the KKK breaking into many a residence just like that. Does this happen to white residents? Of course it does, but not nearly so often.

A “citizen’s watch” accosted Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged and looked into a house under construction in Georgia. He “didn’t belong” there, and self-appointed watchers claimed to be carrying out a citizen’s arrest, even though they had not witnessed Arbery doing anything wrong. They attempted to wrestle him to the ground, but he understandabyl fought back, and in the tussle they shot him. He died in the street at their feet.

Trayvon Martin was killed walking through a Florida subdivision. The private security watchman believed Martin did not belong there, and admitted he was suspicious of the teenager who had done nothing wrong. Trayvon Martin lost his life that night because the watchman shot him, on suspicion of wrongdoing. He didn’t feel that an unfamiliar Black teenager belonged there, and was up to no good.

The list could go on for pages, but the point is that since Africans came to America, they have been suspect. They are up to no good, their intention is always to harm white people, rape the women, kill the children and the hard working property owner. Public behavior over the years since slavery was outlawed has reflected that sentiment, with stand your ground laws, resurgence of private militias, and acquisition of weapons in record numbers. In that respect, progress seems very subjective.

When I look at things like parents of Black sons giving them instructions on what to do when – not if, but when – they are stopped by the police. Again, it seems that Blacks are suspect in interactions with law enforcement whether or not there has been any wrongdoing; they just don’t “belong” in certain places. If there is wrongdoing, the immediate punishment does not fit the crime. Numerous unarmed Black men and women have been killed by police for “resisting” arrest, for not following legal commands of officers. But I wasn’t there, and neither were you, so we have only the officer’s accounting. However it happens, no unarmed person should be subject to an immediate death sentence for selling illegal cigarettes or running away to avoid arrest, or sleeping.

None of this will change with passage of the Juneteenth legislation. None of the extreme biases and distrust of dominant culture against Black-African Americans and other people of color will not suddenly be vanish. Right now, gun sales are incredibly high, and some are making their own “ghost” guns. Private militias train in the hills of many states, preparing for a civil war they believe is inevitable. Many of them believe the civil war will be a race war; even Charles Manson was attempting to bring that to fruition.

So, yes I’m happy that Juneteenth is now a Federal holiday. If nothing else, it’s a day off for Federal employees and other industries who rely on Federal operations. The Federal Reserve will likely follow suit, followed by private businesses that depend on banks for daily operations. So, it’s a big deal, and I believe it’s ultimately a good thing. But there are a few loose ends that need tying.

My biggest fear is the resistance. My fear is ALWAYS the resistance; are we prepared for that? Once again, the period following the Emancipation Proclamation saw the birth of the KKK. After Reconstruction following the Civil War, numerous commemorative monuments honoring Confederate Army war heroes were erected in public squares all over the country. This was not merely commemoration; it was a subtle message to Blacks that old times were not forgotten, so look away…look away, Dixieland.

After the election of the first Black President of the United States, there remains an onslaught of voter suppression tactics, and his tenure was marred by Congressional gridlock. He faced more opposition than any President we’ve seen in recent history. During his first State of the Union, a member of Congress shouted out “LIAR!” during his address. This was such a heinous act of disrespect that it jarred me; I can still hear it echoing in my ears. The current President is also being subjected to some of the same opposition and resistance from Congress, and resisters have frequently questioned his mental acuity, made fun of his stuttering, accused him of lowering the standards of White House employment when he insisted on hiring Blacks and People of Color for posts in his administration.

This is the resistance. The self-justified attitude that says protection from Blacks is necessary at all times, and by any means necessary. We speak of polarization of the country, but that’s true but it’s not only about politics. It’s about how different our perspectives on the same information, the same data, the same reality have become so divergent between racial populations.

When O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his wife, cheers erupted from the Black community. Shouts of “Finally!” and “Damned right!” rose up. There was a sentiment that at last, a Black person had been given a fair shot at justice, especially a Black man accused of harming a white woman

Most white people were dismayed by the verdict, and believed Simpson was not only guilty but he had gotten away with murder. They felt the legal system had failed, and there would be no justice for his dead wife and her family. In some cases, there was rage and bitterness and even violence as a result of the verdict.

The other somewhat messy issue of the Juneteenth Act is the common name that’s being passed around for this new holiday. June 19th is not “National Independence Day”. National independence has always been celebrated on July 4th, and naming Juneteenth in this way is confusing and largely inaccurate. June 19th is Juneteenth, and it should remain titled accordingly. I might be able to settle for something like “Emancipation Day”, but why not leave the descriptive name that clearly states what the date signifies. Why fix something that’s not broken?

Lastly, it will be interesting to see how other governmental agencies pony up on the new holiday. Some cities, towns, even states already have Juneteenth celebrations, with and without days off for municipal and state workers. As I mentioned previously, it will be interesting to see if the Federal Reserve follows and declares it a holiday, which would close national banks, and some major corporations. Corporations hate giving days off for just about anything, but maybe it could be a floating holiday or something (god forbid employees should get an extra day off during the year).

So, this is not the end of something, it’s the beginning of quite a bit more. We have to keep our eyes on the ultimate prize of equity and I am hoping it’s the beginning of productive dialogue about things like anti-Black prejudice and oppression, reparations, equity, and true facts about what it’s like to live Black in this country. If we’re ever going to have anything even approaching unity, everyone needs to be seen and to see others as full human beings. Politicizing race has to stop, because it doesn’t help anyone but politicians who profit from keeping us divided. Keeping the division going is why there is such an issue with Critical Race Theory. It’s a paper tiger, but it keeps people riled up and keeps the lies alive.

On June 19th, I’ll probably be reflective, maybe have a decent meal. Unless the weather is bad, I would do well to have a nice meditative walk with the dog. I will begin looking toward June 21st, which is the longest day of the year, and turn my energy outward a bit. I’ll want to get a good feel for the energy around me on the 21st. It’s been feeling very tentative lately, somewhat hesitant. I suppose we are so used to being in relative isolation that we literally don’t know how to act with other people in our space. We’ll figure it out.

We’ll figure out quit a lot of things as we progress to the second half of the annual wheel. There was an old saying – when you’re down on the wheel of life, there’s only one way to go: up. So, I welcome “up” energy, although I have to realize that going up sometimes means an uphill climb. That’s mostly OK as long as the motion is constant. Nobody does too well being stuck, least of well me.

Run. Run very fast. Don’t look back.

…stays inside. Wrapped up all nice and tight and warm, in the dark. It stays there, until it wakes you up at 3am and wants to talk. I hate that stuff. I am just beginning to sleep longer than three hours at a time (in spite of the dog’s best efforts some nights) and I do not appreciate being punted out of a sound sleep for only a field goal opportunity.

I knew immediately the source of my non-rest early this morning was my mother’s house in New Orleans. I have to sell it; I am not cut out to be a landlord. The “tenant” is not paying rent in any case, and I’m tired of trying to honor a self-imposed debt that nobody else cares about. I’m a little nervous about disclosing my plans at this point, because I don’t have homeowner’s insurance on the property, and I would not be entirely surprised if she tried to burn it down in retaliation for having her free lodging taken away. I grew up with this girl, and I know my people.

So, here I am. I managed to go back to sleep for a couple of hours, but now here I sit, wide awake. I have had one cup of coffee, which did not go all that well because the Splenda didn’t fully dissolve. I do not like coffee without sweetener. It’s kind of a hard liquid, especially the way I make it, so a sweetener softens it up a bit. Of course I could get up and go into the kitchen to correct this, but I’ comfortable now so we ain’t goin’ nowhere for a while.

I was talking with my therapist a couple of weeks ago about the whole clutter situation, and maybe even the house, and she said it would be a good idea if I worked on why it is that I do not let go of things that no longer have any use, or don’t work for me. Well, hell, lady – if I had answers for that I wouldn’t need you, now would I?

Part of the reason I don’t let go of some things is because they ight have some use, they aren’t totally expended yet, and I might not have the resources to replace them. I might need them at some point in the future, and I’ll be really upset if I tossed something that I wind up needed in another week or so. I guess the bigger issue is fearing that I can’t afford to replace things so I’d better hold on to what I’ve got.

I’d better hold on to what I’ve got, even if it’s sixteen software releases behind, even if nobody uses that whatever-it-is any longer, even if it’s something I don’t really use – like plastic containers from take-out meals or restaurant left overs. My mother used to save all those little plastic containers, hundreds of them, and she left some here. I’ve added to othe stacks, but the resident cache of them is what she started.

OK, I can understand (a little) of that, but I have no explanation of why I am holding on to old sneakers with half-worn treads and broken shoelaces. The sneakers don’t have othotics in them, having been here since well before I started getting orthotics, so they can do me no good. As I wrote that, I hear a tinny whine in the back of my right ear that says, “But…but…you never know. You might be in dire straits and really need another pair of sneakers!” Um, no.

Here’s another one. I have a VERY old Sony television set, non-digital. Yes, it works. No, I have not used it in at least ten years. It has been sitting on the floor of the bedroom for at least that long, gathering dust. It’s not one of the compact Watchman models, but it’s not a console – it’s portable. And I am going to do WHAT with this? Weeeeel, there could be an emergency and you will need a non-cable television. Plus, it will work on batteries, so you might need that one day. Oh, and remember you won this at some trade show and you paid nothing for it, so you want to hang on to that memory, don’t you? OK, I’ll put that one in the “maybe junk” category.

If I continue in this fashion, I can make a lot of decisions about de-cluttering this place, but here’s the really annoying realization: I have made decisions about what to toss and even explored why it is that I’m holding on to them, but I have not moved from this spot. I am still sitting here typing about it, so I have actually done NOTHING. Score: clutter – 1, me – 0.

I need a nap.

The issue about getting rid of things does often have to do with the possibility of not being able to replace them if I’ve made an error and find that I actually need the item later. That works for only a small percentage of the total amount of useless crap that I have, though. I am not going to need to replace those half-used spiral notebooks that I have floating around in here, or paperbacks that I have read and hated. I am not going to need to replaced dated materials, like the postcards I sent to remind people to vote LAST YEAR. I am to going to need that old shower head that I replaced at least eight years ago.

In all seriousness, it does concern me that I don’t find hopping over piles of junk, watching the dog hurdle things like that old Sony television set, the piles of stuff that came with something else that I don’t even remember. Old serial cables for computers twenty-plus years ago – they don’t make printers that use those any longer (and stop thinking you’re going to one day have antiquities museum from the technology era before cell phones and laptops). There’s something deeper that causes me to find this amount of junk comfortable.

When I’ve looked at this issue in the past, I have toyed with the idea of finding comfort in just filling up the space. If my space looks empty, it feels lonely and cold, and I don’t like feeling lonely and cold. Maybe that’s an only child thing, maybe it’s just a slightly cuckoo only child thing, maybe it’s just my thing. The main reason I’m concerned with the clutter, however, is that I fear it doesn’t allow room for new things. The energy given off by all of this old and no longer useful stuff is stale. It’s does not feel like a living space, it feels like a dying space, or at least a very low-energy space.

In my mind’s eye, I can visualize exactly how I want this place to look, with bright colors and some open spaces that can be flexible, used for a variety of activities. I want to set up a home office, and that will require that I get rid of the very old sofa in the living room. Before I can get to that sofa, though, I have to clean everything else in the room, otherwise there’s no room to move it. This is where I get really fatigued in advance of moving even a single muscle.

My living space is cluttered, my body is cluttered, my brain is cluttered, my spirit feels heavy because it is carrying so much of the clutter from the other areas. This is just silly. (That was a very spare sentence, of which I am very proud…although I have now added these unnecessary words for some unknown reason. Ultimately, I am tired of wrestling with myself. I am tired of fiddling with myself. It is exhausting.

Today it is hot, as usual for this time of year. Yes, the weather pattern has changed here just a bit, and I find the humidity is higher on average than it has been the past few years. The air is not moving, just like I am familiar with from the Gulf Coast. One of the things I’ve enjoyed in being here the most is the climate; there were always four distinct seasons here in NC. The past two or three years, though, seasons have been erratic, going from the winter cold maybe a little late snow in the fall and directly to summer. Spring was a minute, and I feel cheated because spring is always beautiful here.

Enough about me. Back to life…back to reality…back to the here and now. Seriously. A bill was unanimously approved in the U.S. Senate today, making Juneteenth a Federal holiday. I thought at first report it was on its way to the President’s desk, but the House of Representatives had yet to pass it. Apparently, they did that just a short time ago, and it’s done. June 19th will be a Federal holiday. Several states already have memorialized the day, but now it will be a day when Federal offices will be closed.

I did quite a lot of my own research on the origin of Juneteenth and the state of the nation around that time, and it took me through the origins of slavery as an institution. That was fascinating. The concept of slavery, or unpaid labor, was not a new concept for the United State, but what existed in Europe and other places on the globe as far back as Medieval times was classical slavery. The servants were bound to the land they served, and the lord of the manor. When European colonists came to the New World, they had no permanent lands, but they had brought a number of indentured servants with them. The status of indentured servants was always very different from the enslaved population that arrived later from Africa.

When Africans entered the colonies, they were brought there for the sole purpose of providing unpaid labor. Because these were colonies, and they were still in the process of divesting the indigenous people of their lands, there was little permanency. Accordingly, the enslaved Africans were bound to the colonist, and subsequently to the landowner. Because they were bound to an individual, the enslaved person became accounted for as property, or chattel, like a wagon or a farm animal. This system became known as chattel slavery, and human beings were the property of other human beings.

This “peculiar institution”, as it became known, existed solely for the purpose of providing free labor. The colonies, and then states, which depended more on agriculture for commercial products became more dependent on the labor than colonies that leaned more toward trade and industry. That became the division between North and South to a large degree, although enslaved people were utilized in all colonies.

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 was more or less an Executive Order from the President, who proclaimed that all enslaved people were immediately free. That was a wonderful thing, except that nobody gave much attention to how exactly emancipation was supposed to work in the long run. Enslaved people had no financial assets of their own, and had never enjoyed their inherent agency. They were not free to come and go as they pleased, so had no knowledge of what existed beyond their place of residence on the farm or plantation they served. How were they to live, how were they to acquire food, how were they to participate in society? Africans were not eligible for citizenship until many years after that, with passage of the 13th Amendment, so they were legally second-class citizens.

Landowners and enslaved people were supposed to be notified of the Proclamation by visit from the military, but there was no UPS or FedEx or even US Postal Service to make overnight delivery, so the notification process dragged on for quite a while. There was also a war going on, so … mistakes were made. It wasn’t until two-1/2 years later that a Union army general arrived in Galveston Texas to formally give notice of the liberation of enslaved people. They had no idea anything had changed. The day notification was made in Galveston was June 19, 1865 – June + nineteenth = Juneteenth. Alright then.

Even after Africans became known as Blacks, and then “colored”, then Negro, then African-American there was still no equity to speak of. Segregation, miscegenation laws, denial of education and employment opportunities, denial of housing were all realities of life for Blacks in America for almost another century. There has been incredible progress, but arriving at equity remains an uphill battle. I do not know if I will see it in my lifetime.

It’s difficult to have a coherent vision of the world as I would want it to be, because I cannot even imagine a world devoid of bias. It feels as though it’s hard-wired into our DNA at this point. Perhaps some genetic engineering would be in order…but I am not sure we can be trusted to do that. Our best thinking got us here.

Here is not a horrible place, but we make it horrible by engaging in horrible behavior. We make it horrible by squandering what is good and sacred in the world, and which costs nothing. We make it horrible by assuming that everything on this planet is here for our self-aggrandizement, our comfort, our pleasure, our luxury. I believe there is everything we need here, and enough for everyone. There is really no reason that people should be starving in the streets of various nations, but we have weaponized material assets so that only a few people control them. Greed will kill us, literally and figuratively.

There is no use wondering about the soul of America, because we have none. We have an unfathomable depth, dark and still, where bright light has died. It’s what happens when ideas and dreams are strangled by the rigor of greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, and hubris. We believe we are gods, that we dictate life and death for others, just as we did when we owned other people. This is the great delusion, that we actually have power over each other. This is the biggest lie of all, that what we create will last forever. We forget that we are human.

Forgetting that we are human usually means that we forget how to be compassionate, that we have lost the ability to empathize. Being stuck in our own perspective is the real punishment for our transgressions. If we are so unhappy with our position in the Universe that we have to step on others to improve it, being trapped in place is torturous. For all practical purposes, we are tortured. Perhaps we make noisy machines that move things from place to place because they drown out the screaming in our heads. We have no peace, we have so serenity, we are troubled waters and there is no bridge. Some days, most of us would trade the sounds of silence for the constant din incessant motion. We are always moving from wherever we are to another place, and then back again, and as the old adage says, wherever we go that’s where we are.

Welcome to Fort Apache the brain. You can survive, but not in any way you’ve become accustomed to. It’s going to take every once of creativity and ingenuity and courage you’ve got to make something out of nothing, and to make nothing out of the mess that’s here. Get to work, because your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to bring light into the darkness that’s inside you. Then you can carve out a place for your spirit to rest. It’s been homeless for quite some time, and it’s weary.

There are days when that’s all I got – lord, have mercy. That phrase has always been a part of my vernacular, and where I come from people use it almost as punctuation. It’s a frequent exclamation, spontaneously uttered when one hears something shocking, in lieu of “oh, my God” or “that’s awful”. I can’t say the words are entirely empty, but at this point they are more reflex for me than anything else.

Somewhere on this planet, someone is deciding there is no hope, there is no place for them, and they are folding their tent permanently. Somewhere there is someone who is celebrating the best day of their life, with friends and family gathered around and libations flowing abundantly. Each moment is a multiverse. There are infinite amounts of events and incidents and even accidents happening simultaneously yet independently. I will never know where else in the world it’s raining at this moment.

The planet is breathing, inhaling and exhaling. Breathing in all the toxicity and horrible energy each of our multitudes of cells transact each second. Breathing out all of the abundance contained on this blue marble. Each breath millions of births and deaths, incalculable numbers of organic functions. The amount of energy transacted is incomprehensible, but the scale is reduced in discrete amounts until there is enough for a single monocellular organism to mimic the cycle.

Human beings generally cannot grasp how small and fragile we are. We can be ended by a microorganism we can’t even see, and we cannot re-create organic life after the body has ended. No one of us can create life, no matter what we believe. There is progress with animal clones, but that is mimicry of a once or currently living organism. Some of us may believe we have the power to determine the duration or cessation of life, but I truly do not believe that is true. The spirit decides, on some other non-physical level.

It is generally frightening to believe that we have no choice in the manner of our deaths, but perhaps the choice is all ours. There is a connection between some intangible part of us and the physical reality that we carry. It’s not anything comprehensible to our organic senses, and we cannot explain the workings of our minds. We can map the physical brain, and determine neurological functioning, even repair it when it has become injured or diseased. But is that where the spirit resides? Is that where faith lives? Is that where love can be found?

Neurologists and neuropsychologists have been able to show connnections between parts of the brain and behaviors. They have been able to discern that when certain parts of the brain do not develop properly things like executive functioning and impulse control are compromised or absent. They have studied the brains of serial killers and psychopaths to correlate the propensity for certain behaviors with certain aberrations of the physical brain, but there remain exceptions.

These scientific explanations for serial killers, psychopaths, sociopaths and so on ultimately explains only behavior. I would question whether or not the spirit remains intact when these aberrations are present. From what I understand about these types of people, they understand the difference between right and wrong, but choose actions that are harmful to others very consciously, and often without conscience. They are seemingly compelled to act in this fashion, which triggers me to relate those compulsions to addiction. Once again, i would question whether or not there is a choice that remains.

The spirit can become ill, just like the body. There’s a symbiotic relationship between spirit and body, and the ailing spirit can bring dis-ease to a body. There have been times in my life when I have not been in contact with my spirit. Those were the times when I lived in reactionary mode, with no time for reflection or consideration of stimulus offered. Act first, think later. It was as if the reaction was a very short short that sparked and died within the blink of an eye. There were no solutions, only decisions, and each decision had a 50-50 shot of being successful because external forces were ultimately in control.

Living in that mode of operations was exhausting. There was a lot of stress, a lot of hypervigilance, a lot of running in place. I felt out of control, powerless, and I was always angry because I felt so powerless. The entire world was beating up on me and nobody seemed to notice. Feeling very small every day, and even smaller at night. There was a dank aloneness that felt like being in a dungeon, where the walls bled water but I could not drink. Those days were the ones where I wanted to die, but did not have the courage to take the necessary action. Every night I prayed, literally prayed – to what I don’t know – to die. And every morning when I found myself awake, I was furious. If that is what prayer got me, I wanted none of it. But every day, the cycle repeated like clockwork.

A lot of that feeling has passed, I am happy to say. It wasn’t entirely depression driving that cycle, it was having no spiritual connection and drinking to compensate for it. I felt empty and was attempting to pour enough alcohol into the container to fill it. That was my solution back then. It’s not my solution now.

A part of what changed is the reconnection with my spirit. That is where the dreams live, that is where the heart lives, that is where music and writing and beauty and appreciation live. I have no other way to explain it. The circuit that goes from stimulus to response feels a lot longer, and sometimes I unplug it to contemplate how I want it to connect. Of course, this does not mean that all difficulty has been eradicated and I got everything I wanted. Not by a long shot. But I can say that I have what I need, and don’t feel as though I have to be ten steps ahead of everything and planning for a disaster every day.

So, I don’t think of things I love, joy, and my spirit being in the same place as my intellect, or my conscious brain, and I suppose that’s a good thing. Knowing me, I would probably start believing that I could improve on that construction and ruin all of it so quickly it would make my head spin until it rotated off my shoulders. Let’s have none of that. There’s enough craziness in the world right now.

I will never understand how all of this works. All I know is that when I am left to my own devices, with no connection to others and no real connection to my deepest self, I don’t fare very well. My brain takes control and begins to tell me scary stories that cause panic and irrational behavior. That’s when there’s no light and the darkness seems impenetrable and the wind is blowing and there’s no sound except my heart beating. I don’t like that place.

When I am tending to my spirit, that looks like finding beauty. That looks like gratitude. And it looks like being responsible, doing the next right things, being accountable. My spirit has to be healthy in order for me to move my feet. It’s obviously not a physical connection, but the part of me that says get up when I’m down, the part that says don’t give up, the part that says pick up the phone and call somebody…that’s what I feel is the spirit rising up to fill in the empty spaces.

When I think about people who have no conscience about harming other people, I cannot help but feel a welling of gratitude that I didn’t go down that path. I believe there was a time when I could have, when I thought the world owed me something, when I couldn’t make anything that I wanted happen, when I confused success with worth. I have always had a conscience, but there were times when it was not difficult to bypass it or ignore it. I felt as though I was crazy enough to be a mean and harmful person, but something always stopped me at the edge of never. For that, I am grateful. I have always know there are some things I might be capable of doing, but could not live with myself for having done them. Spending my entire life running away inside my own head is not what I envision as happiness.

My original question remains, though – is there still choice at the moment of taking action that ends another life. I would imagine, judging from my own experience, that if the spirit is asleep the choice is not evident. It’s just an empty spot and the brain, with all of its rationalizations and dysfunctions, takes over. It doesn’t so much make choices as it acts on compulsions, which at that point are simply chemical reactions. There’s nothing to argue about or contemplate, it’s an impulse and then action. That circuit is only a nano-second long, but that spark is a the beginning of an inferno that can’t be satisfied rationally.

I know that I have choice, and that with choice responsibility follows. That’s the way it goes. About that, I don’t have choice, it’s above my pay grade. But for everything that’s in my job description, I am clear that I have choice. Because I am clear about that, my choice is to keep getting up. I will keep getting up, and I will be responsible. I choose to be well, and I choose to be at peace.

Lord, have mercy. Your daughter is lost and alone out in the wilderness, and her spirit is weary. Lord, have mercy, whatever the Lord is and whatever mercy is. Give me the grace to be forgiven, and the courage to begin again. The prodigal daughter is home, but she does not recognize herself and does not know how to go on. Kyrie elieson. Say hello to my mother for me, and wish my father a happy birthday. I always remember his birthday because it’s Flag Day.

I saw a newspaper story about a memorial service of sorts, for a woman who drummed in a couple of West African drum circles down in NOLA. There was a video of the gathering, and it did my heart good to see people in Congo Square, one of the only places aside from church that enslaved people were allowed to congregate in the old times. They probably drummed just like what I saw on that video, celebrating a life, not mourning a death.

As I read the accompanying news article, I realized that I knew the dead woman. Her name was instantly familiar, and she dated a crazy friend of mine a million years ago. She was just someone I knew as a friend of friends. Whether I knew her or not, even in passing, her death drew some visceral response from deep in my gut. She was exactly the same age, and was a physical therapist. She was murdered, in her driveway, and it looked like a car-jacking gone wrong because her car was missing when the neighbors found her, stabbed in the chest and gone almost immediately. Such a waste.

Even though I could not say this was a personal contact of mine, but we had crossed paths at some point. New Orleans is not a big city, despite the hum of constant activity. The connection was close enough, though, to bring me back to some days more than 30 years ago. It was the year I got sober, and we were all bouncing off the walls, literally and figuratively.

The friend she dated was in the circle of lunatics I fell into, all of us trying to do this thing called sobriety, and not having a single clue about what the hell we were doing. We were in our 20s; I was 28. I was not a groovy chick at that point, but I was definitely happening in a far out way. Very far out. I had no idea who I was, and neither did anybody else, so we were OK. The elders amongst us were patient, and like all other old-timers in sobriety groups everywhere in the world, endured us believing we “had it”, and implored us to keep coming back. We did that.

I remember we all thought we had to re-invent the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, update it, make it better and more appealing to people our age. It was entirely all about us, and I was seriously going to rewrite the Big Book with contemporary language. What the hell was a “whoopie party” anyhow? We could certainly do better. I had maybe four months sober under my belt, had started making a little sense, and felt like I had mastered sobriety in record time because I was just that good.

Looking back on that makes me smile, because it’s such a typical thing for newcomers to 12-step programs. Everyone feels better after a little bit, when they begin sleeping again (as opposed to simply passing out), and believe it’s all over and you’re ready for the big time. We didn’t realize we had the emotional maturity of 12-year olds at that point, some of us still making armpit noises and laughing hysterically about using the word “do” twice in succession and proclaiming “I said do-do!” Oh, those were the days – great brilliance followed by periods of abject stupidity.

The main group I hung with in those days was a women’s group, and we took some things very seriously. Sexist language was a very grave matter, and most of us had no sense of humor about it. There was simply no reason we had to read the excerpts from AA literature exactly as written if it was sexist, dammit. God did NOT have to be “he” and we did not have to ask for “his” damned help with anything. So there.

Over the many years since those days, I still chuckle at the notions we had to re-invent wheels that were rolling along quite nicely. Every generation of people in sobriety goes through some of that, but we just knew we were the first and only innovators. These days, I don’t feel a particular need to re-invent anything, except maybe some of my core values and how I’m rolling through the world. I suppose age does bring you around to something akin to peace, if you’ve done the work to weather the storms and haul away the damage.

Life is so very short. Things are so very insane right now. I am obsessed with thoughts of being alive right now, at this time, for some purpose. It’s maddening because I don’t quite know what that purpose is, although recently I’ve touched on the edges of a flitting aspiration. It’s very feathery, like trembling and frantic flapping of a baby bird getting the hang of what happens when you move this muscle, and this other one.

The fragile thing in my soul that keeps trying to fly is that I am the one left to tell, the one who came to tell the story of at least some of my ancestors. It’s the women in particular, my mother and her mother and my father’s mother and my father’s grandmother. My mother and her mother, my grandmother, are the only two known to me. My father’s mother died when he was still a baby, and his grandmother committed suicide when his father was a small child. Without all of them, I would not be here. That means something to me.

I always wonder about what contracts may have been established on that esoteric plane where the soul resides, what pledge I may have made to pull some meaning out of my walk on this Earth. It would distress me to leave here without having done anything that has a meaning. That sounds absurd, now that I’m writing it. What I mean is that I would be distressed if I had done nothing of what I had contracted to do in that other place, in that other time.

A lot of what I have been occupied with, in my life, seems to have no real weight. I have done some good work in sobriety, reached out a hand to a few people, have been a good friend at times. I am not discounting that, but feel that I haven’t yet hit upon THE thing I need to do that will have it all come together. I often feel as though I have a large collection of disjunctive experiences, kind of like a junk drawer with odds and ends that aren’t necessarily related. All of the contents may be useful or helpful at some point, but rarely all together. I want to figure out how to make a story that utilizes all of it. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it will be a work of art.

My inner critic is shrieking that I am being grandiose, that I am seeking recognition, or acclaim, and that is merely egotistical. The inner muse is shaking her head, and wondering who the hell keeps letting the critic speak, She asks me to explain why it’s incorrect to want something that gives me pleasure, and it would give me pleasure to share the story of these women with other people. It would do me good, and perhaps it could do good for someone else. Most importantly, I fell it’s a way to honor them, and pay my dues. I don’t expect anything free.

This is a bizarre train of thought for tonight, but I guess it’s fine. I’m a little tired, not sure if I’m quite ready for sleep, but once again I’m looking around this place and wondering how the hell it got to looking like this. I’m listening to the Indigo Girls, and Amy Ray is doing her version of “Romeo and Juliet” that I love so much. “I dream your dream for you, and now your dream is real… … now when you gonna realize it’s just that the time was wrong.”

Maybe this is what I am missing, like something I’ve lost somewhere along the way. I’m missing the dreams, missing the waking up and feeling like I can do just about anything, no matter what “they” say. I have done quite a number of things in my life just to prove people wrong, people who said there was no way I could do whatever it was. Anger is a wonderful motivator, and I’m sure that’s why I have such a great capacity for it.

I need to make sense, and there are only a few places where I feel that I make sense, where I feel even vaguely relevant. There is so much fear that goes along with being in that place, fear that I’m going to screw it up, that I am not talented or skillful enough to occupy that space. Fear that it will not last, that I will bump into the real border wall, the one that I am constantly building to keep myself safe. The one where the barbed wire points inward so that it traps me inside, and yeah I’m pretty well protected, but to what end? You don’t play, you can’t win. I know this, but I don’t want to lose my quarter (that dates me, yeah?). Do I not have enough faith in myself to believe that I can get another quarter?

That’s the real deal, then – gotta take a risk, gotta believe, gotta step outside the safe room. What good is it being safe all by yourself? This isn’t working for me all that well any more, so I’m gonna have to make a break for it. I keep going around this same traffic circle, though, just going around in a big circle and getting nowhere. So perhaps I need to take one of the exits and see where that brings me.

Earlier today, I was sitting outside with the dog. It was pretty warm, but still enjoyable. I caught sight of a hawk, high in the sky, circling and soaring the way they do. I watched it for quite a long while, marveling as I always do at the powerful wings and amazing visual acuity that characterize that species. The red tail feathers caught the sunlight, seeming to blaze like flames it seemed. The message that came to me was that I’m in the right place right now. Maybe tomorrow I should be someplace else, but right now, I’m in the right place. This comforts me, because I always wonder if I should just go back to NOLA and call this a great experiment that has come to an end. But I’m in the right place. This I know.

What brings me here? My soul brings me here. Just me, and every cell I’ve got inside me that is the result of my ancestry. I was left to tell, so tell I must. No need to rewrite anybody else’s stories, I have my own. Is that not social justice? I say it is.

I’ve had one cup of coffee, and enough sugary items to make sugar cubes eject from orifices I didn’t know I had. As I describe myself, I am a sweet tooth on two chubby legs. I bought a t-shirt a little while ago that says “Things I have working for me – resting bitch face, thick thighs, and sarcasm.” That about sums it up.

I enjoy wearing slightly provocative, if not outright rude, t-shirts. It saves a lot of time, sort of like a directional road sign. “Last exit before 100 miles before next rest stop.” Or, as I like to imagine the message – abandon hope all ye who enter here.

I have been sarcastic for most of my life, once I got the oppositional defiance in order. I have been such a creature of obligatory posture that once I found that failure to meet obligations did not result in immediate death, I rolled my eyes and raised a middle finger on each hand. I have never looked back. Sarcasm is a gift from the Universe, and I do my best to make good use of it.

Today it is gloomy, with humidity high enough to mimic a bowl of tepid soup thrown over you. It’s not just the weather – a shooting in Austin TX resulted in 13 or so injuries, and nobody knows exactly what happened or why. It’s also the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando FL, where a lone gunman with an assault weapon killed 49 people. It’s also Pride month, when LGBTQIA+ people celebrate their lives, refusing to be ashamed of their sexual orientation and ways in which they express their identities. With all the free-floating feces in the air, it’s hard to even remember to have any Pride…of anything.

Celebration and mourning, all in the same minute at times. That is the reality of these times. Our celebrations, however, feel a bit muted these days, as though we are prepared for the brevity, as though we are braced for the next reason to mourn, the next reason to be rendered speechless by the depravity of other human beings. Most of us cannot begin to comprehend the total detachment from reality and human response a person who require to calmly shoot more than 50 people in a crowded bar, while they screamed and died just inches away.

I’ve read that people capable of doing such things are usually sociopaths, and do not have the capacity to feel remorse for committing an act such as that. It’s a personality disorder, a mental health issue. I’m not quite sure if understanding the medical circumstances of such a disorder should cause me to excuse the perpetrator (they were just sick, you see) or indict the mental health system for its shortcomings. I suspect there is room for both responses, but we need to grieve first. We need to shake our fists at the sky and ask the unanswerable questions of “why?” and “how could this happen?” I don’t know if there’s ever a reason for a mass murder, or any explanation that could result in my understanding of things like this.

When something feels incomprehensible, defying any of the rules of civility and respectability, sanity and justice, I rattle it around inside myself for a long period of time. Maybe if I turn it this way…no, wait a second, let’s try THAT way…OK, what about a few inches over to the right? Nah, it’s never going to be right, never going to be understood, never going to make sense to me why all these people have been ended for seemingly no reason at all.

I am a creature of extremes. If I like something, I REALLY like it. If I hate something, I REALLY hate it. I need to own the feeling, with all its depth and nuances. I need strong representation of color and sound and emotion and personality. For instance, I despise even the concept of that beverage “Hint”. I am sure it’s a fine beverage; I have tried it at least a couple of times. I don’t like it because it is merely a “hint” of a flavor. I need the full taste, not a hint, not a breath, not a rumor of a flavor. I want to be immersed in it, having every available taste bud standing up at attention and saluting the deliciousness.

A marketer’s dream, I’m always the first in line for trying a new product. I have tremendous faith in the power of advertising; I’m a sucker for pretty packaging, clever advertising, the whole nine yards. Like a kid, I’ve got to have the new, improved thing and tear into it before I get home with it. I get disappointed quite a lot, but still I persist. My contribution to the domestic national product, I guess.

Back to this day, however, a great many people are quite shocked by some recent news of The Former Guy’s efforts to investigate high ranking members of his political opposition, and even journalists who appeared to be unflattering of him. It’s not shocking to me. Troubling, maddening, Infuriating, heinous, but not shocking. This is how he rolls, mean spirited and self-serving to the end, with no dearth of supporters to assist. Why should I be shocked to see a performance that is simply true to form?

At times, I fear that many of us are simply far too innocent in our outlook, in our expectations, in what we’ll settle for. I’ve always said that I’ve seen the worst of what people have to offer at times, so very few things shock me. At times, when I’m emotionally compromised, I am devastated to be shown those qualities in someone I care for deeply, but that’s where the child in me lives – in my heart. Otherwise, there’s not much that actually shocks me, that I cannot digest.

I suppose I operate in the vein of that old proverb about the monk (or in some versions a lady, in other versions a simple traveller) who carries a venomous snake across a river or body of water. The monk observes the snake having trouble getting across the waterway, and helps the creature in a spirit of good will and charity. Once they are safely on shore, the snake bites the monk, who recoils in shock and horror. “Why did you bite me, after I was kind to you?” cries the monk. The snake calmly replies (it is, of course a talking snake for purposes of the story), “You knew what I was before you picked me up.”, and slithers away without a backward glance.

OK, so – we knew what this guy was long before he was elected. One of his first public acts was to make fun of a disabled reporter. His supporters cheered, and things went downhill from there. During the campaign, he was equally distasteful, and yet the commercial media missed no opportunity to provide him with all the visibility he could handle. And he is a bottomless pit.

The only explanation that I find useful in explaining this sort of cognitive disconnect is to follow the money. During the campaign for President in 2016, the more shockingly The Former Guy performed, the more they covered his antics. The more mean spirited and ignorant his comments, the more coverage he got. It was, to large extent, free advertising but one hand washed the other – ratings were over the moon. The more his behavior declined from civility, the more they offered viewing of him in action and the higher their rating were elevated. His, and theirs. What’s not to love?

At this point, we can’t afford the toll on this. Many people have rejected civility in favor of “telling the truth”. There’s some false equivalence between political correctness and lying. I can agree that politically correct idioms can be used to avoid saying what needs to be said, but that can be remedied very easily. As a minister friend of mine used to say, say what you need to say and we’ll pretty it up later. I can tell someone that I find their portrayal of immigrants (as entitled scum who believe the country owes them something and who don’t pay taxes but partake of social services at high levels) to be troubling, insulting, and incorrect without having to resort to racial epithets, insults, and culturally insensitive micro-aggressions. It can be done. Everything that crosses my synapses is not worthy of entering the public square.

I despise playing social games, or adhering to some mysterious code of nonverbal signals and dog whistles that I am supposed to have learned a long time ago. I’ve been told I’m a good listener, but I can also be astoundingly aloof when I’m overly excited with my own responses. It’s not particularly effective for me, but often it’s like trying to reign in a water buffalo with a shoelace. Frequently, I just let it rip. No harm, no foul.

When there’s harm, however, I retreat so fast it will make heads spin. I err in terms of not knowing the language, not knowing the rules of the road, but I’m not typically a mean person…unless provoked, and usually over a long period of time. When I do resort to meanness, it’s to enforce boundaries and repel the enemy, not to do harm for the hell of it. I didn’t come out of the gates mean, and I don’t typically operate from that perspective.

Mean does not make a lot of sense to me, particularly when there has been no harm done. Some people are just mean, though – they came here that way, and probably exhibited those characteristics very early. When my mother got so mean and embittered after her mother died and her marriage fell apart (well, I’m not sure if her marriage had ever truly been together in the first place, but that’s another story entirely), she was responding to a great many circumstances that were outside of her control.

From my mother’s description of girlhood with her sister (and my aunt’s affirmation) she could always be mean. From her perspective, because she was so tiny and sickly, she had to defend herself as best she could. My only problem with that, however, was that it wasn’t clear that she was being attacked or had any reason to mount a defense. Who knows, but I do know there was a somewhat high-functioning mental health dysfunction at play with her, probably from very early in her life. Today, it could be diagnosed as bi-polar or possibly borderline personality disorder, but whatever it was, she had high levels of anxiety and panic most of her life. She compensated reasonably well, but sometimes her attacks came out of nowhere.

To my mother’s never ending frustration and often disgust, I let people get away with near murder in many instances. I still do. It’s not even altruism or compassion or anything intentional, just a mistrust of my own temper and my distaste for the tension of confrontation. When the tension is taut and heavy, both sides in a macabre tug of war, those are agonizing moments for me. I will walk away or cry uncle or say fine – you can have it. Whatever it is. I cannot stand that kind of tension.

Some people thrive on tension like that. Because I have a temper, and because I am not capable of having vague displays of emotion, people believe me to be more comfortable in confrontation than is true. For many years, people goaded me into confrontation because my display of anger was so…entertaining. Bleh. That was never me, but I had not other way of garnering attention or fending off the aggressors. I had two speeds – “off” and “overdrive”. The interval between was a nano-second.

These days, I would like to believe that i have a slightly longer gap between stimulus and response, but I still have my rocket-launch moments. Those are more rare than in most of my life, possibly owing to age, but more likely to the years and years of work I’ve done on unsnarling my own wiring scheme. I was never given as-built diagrams for what goes on between my ears, or in my heart, so it’s been a massive effort of tracing signals, repairing broken connections, and tagging problematic junctions.

Particularly after I got sober, I have never been afraid to explore my emotional and mental health. I did believe that I was irredeemably crazy for quite a while, and even wondered aloud if I was a multiple personality. These days, I am pretty comfortable with the diagnosis of self-sabotaging human being, prone to internalizing terrible awful really bad things. I accept that. I’m told it’s all fixable, although I may go to my grave (or the crematorium, I can’t decide which) without completing the repairs.

When I was about eight, I had decided that I was never going to have children. I believe I’ve written about this before, but I saw a Marcus Welby, M.D. episode where a woman was screaming in agony while in labor with her child. I could not understand why anyone would be willing – happily choose, even – to be in such pain. I had a visceral response to that, and decided there was no way in the world that was going to be my experience. That proved to be true, because I truly never had the urge for motherhood. Never. When I got older, in my twenties I believe, I was fond of explaining to people who asked about that some feelings that felt a bit more honest. I articulated very clearly that I did not feel that I was a fit candidate for motherhood, that I was screwed up, my m other was screwed up, and there were enough screwed up people in the world without me contributing any more. That was true for me. Plus I just never really had that surge of maternal hormones or whatever it is to motivate any other response.

Things worked out the way they were supposed to, I’m sure, although I’ve felt guilty for a long time about not giving my mother that status as grandmother and matriarch that I believe she wanted. But that wasn’t me. Her sister got that, and I think she was secretly envious of that, and that it drove some of her bitterness. I just couldn’t be someone other than who I was, even if who I was presented as a mystery to even me.

When I observe people behaving so very badly, harming so many other people as they bulldoze through life, I understand how that can happen. It happens when the only thing you can see is the back of your eyelids, the only thing you can feel is the hole in your own soul. A hole in your sole is like the black holes described in astronomical videos and literature, space that is so dark and formless but yet massive, so gravitationally forceful that even light cannot escape it. It is never satisfied, and if other cosmological bodies venture too close, they will be unceremoniously absorbed. It’s thought our galaxy has an enormous black hole at its core, propelling the motion of everything else for millions of light years beyond it.

The thing about black holes, though, is they start with light. A star that dies in an effusion of light, a pulsar shooting intense light rhythmically into the void. After the light fades, the entire mass of the once light-emitting body is compressed to a dense point that is a minute fraction of the original, a singularity. A singularity will bend things around itself, because everything outside of itself is fair game to satisfy its needs.

I have known people like that, or at least it feels like that. Singularities, people unto only themselves. People so dark and formless but still magnetic, still drawing in all manner of resources to them, only to consume them entirely. In some mental health discussion, they may be called emotional vampires, or sociopaths, or narcissists. I don’t much care at this point, but I am a magnet for any and all of those specimens who take more than what they give, and will consume me without even a burp of satisfaction.

Because I know this about myself, I try very hard to recognize the signals that people like this may give off, but often they do not emit any sign of their true nature. As one of my medical providers says, they are very good at what they do. Well, that’s nice. I just need them to do it somewhere else, as far away from me as possible, because this little star has had enough. When I encounter people who think a little too much of themselves, who brag about their accomplishments (with or without good cause), who are self-absorbed to the point of being thoroughly unaware there are other people outside of their peripheral vision…I want a big red alarm bell to sound loudly and a transporter beam that whisks them away to activate. But there are a lot of them. A lot.

So, when I see people who are so empty and miserable that all they can do is suck the life out of everyone else, I feel sad. I feel as though I have been that empty, and that miserable, and I harmed people. The stakes were just not that high for my sphere of influence as they are for executive level political figures. But still, I understand how it works. What I don’t understand, though, is how so many people are loyal to that infinite darkness.

The darkness can be enlightened, but a person would be required to see their own darkness, and want to do something different. I wanted to do something different. I can’t say that it’s all done now and I have been summarily enlightened, but that downward spiral of anti-light is no longer rotating. There’s a bit of distance between me and that energy of nothingness, and that’s where the light comes in.

Hell is the place you’re trapped inside your own skin with yourself, and you don’t like yourself. There’s not escape without something being changed, and you’re stuck there. It’s a horrible place to be, because you feel as though who and what you are is being eaten alive, one bit at a time. You are always bleeding and in pain. That’s a most horrible way to live, because there is no substance, no drug, no medical remedy that will relieve that pain. The only solution I could find was to admit that I couldn’t put the fire out from inside the house. It was going to take a village and plenty of water.

There are still a couple of glowing embers that can reignite when the ground gets too dry and the water level drops. I can usually fix that, if I’m paying attentions. When I smell something burning, I’m in trouble and I’m going to have to work pretty fast and hard to quell the flames. In recovery, we say there is a simple solution for complicated people. I am a complicated person, because I’m still hacking my way through the dednse rain forest that hides my heart. Self-protection is everything, but the wall keeps things in as well as out.

I wish it would rain or something. The humidity is crushing, and it feels like a storm is close. I would love a good thunderstorm right about now, with a lot of noise and lightning and blinding rain. I feel like Mother Nature needs to release some of her pent up energy, so bring it on. I have to go out for a short time later, so I hope it’s either over by then or doesn’t start until after I’m back home. Cheeky little bitch, ain’t I? Yeah, that’s me. But a black hole I am not.

There’s some advertisement that’s been running quite a lot on the airwaves lately, featuring a Rod Stewart song, cleverly titled “Ooh La La”.

I wish I knew then what I know now…when I was younger…when I was stronger. Yeah, that might have changed quite a few things. But I wonder if that’s really true. Would I have given up those days of drunken cluelessness for years of resignation to inevitability? Would I want to trad the arrogance and ineptitude of youth if I knew this was the outcome, no matter what I did then?

Perhaps that’s fatalistic, maybe pessimistic. I don’t identify as a predeterminist, but maybe in my younger years that was my worldview – what does it matter, it’s going to be whatever it’s going to be. That’s a lot of how I thought, which proved to be quite convenient when avoiding responsibility and accountability for crazy stuff I was doing. Funny how we have that all neatly worked out sometimes.

If I could have changed anything, how would I choose? Would I choose to have my grandmother remain alive longer, seeing me through adolescence and young adulthood? Would the innocent love have remained as I evolved into more troubling, but necessary, patterns of thought and behavior? I have long maintained that I needed every one of those twists and turns on the path to be who I am today, but would that have turned out differently had she remained alive? Would I have made different choices to please her, or would I have been rejected by her for standing my ground? I don’t like to contemplate those options, because I would be a very different person than I am now, for better or worse I don’t know.

Life doesn’t come with a customized user guide, nor does it give you hyperlinks to time-saving shortcuts. It’s hit and miss, trial and error, if you get a bad result from something just don’t do that again. Or, do it again, until you get tired of having bad results. Simple, but not easy.

Sometimes we have helpers along the way, sometimes our karma dictates that we should do it ourselves. I hate that part, but it has done well by me. I don’t get things the nice, easy way…as Tina Turner says in the monologue leading into her version of “Proud Mary”. I have to do things nice, and rough – backward and the hard way. Maybe that serves to have me remember those lessons, since they caused pain. I don’t notice the tap on the shoulder from the Universe, warning me to change my route, slow down or speed up, or worse pull over to check the map. I require the painful strike against the skull with the proverbial 2×4 block of wood, wielded with the force of a divinity. When that gets old, then I change something. Works every time.

So, yeah, if I knew then what I know now, chances are good I would not have done anything differently. No matter how many times I say now that if I had only known…if I could have known the consequences…if I had only had more wisdom, more strength, more courage, more whatever. But in all honesty, I probably would not have changed many things because I didn’t have the tools to deal with those outcomes.

I will say that I do wish I had stood up for myself a bit sooner, but…I didn’t think I had anything for which to stand up. Other people have always had my help in treating me badly, because I treated myself far worse than anyone else could. I am not sure where all that comes from, but it’s mine and I wear it well. “But I ain’t forgettin’ that you were once mine, but I blew it without even tryin’, now I’m eatin’ my heart out tryin’ to get back to you.” (Thanks again, Rod Steward – “You Wear It Well”)

Truth be told, I don’t know that I wear it well. But I wear it like I wear it, and that’s the facts Jack. I did blow it, maybe without trying, but quite possibly with significant effort. Self-sabotage is a silent and deadly destructor of dreams, ambitions, and well-being. But I know I am in the company of a long and distinguished list of my fellows who claim that identity as well. Self-saboteur, at your service.

Whenever that stops working for me, I will be relieved, but I’m not sure it ever will. That’s not a cop-out, it’s a reality…every part of me is now dependent in some respects to that internal conflict dynamic. It fuels my insights, it fuels how I look at the world, it fuels the volcanic effusion of whatever it is that IS me. That burning tension inside me is what propels me, and causes me to self-propel rather than be pushed along by the ambient flow of others.

Give and take. Light and dark. Movement and stillness. Paradoxes are the way of the Universe, I suppose. Sometimes I want to give, sometimes I want to take. Sometimes I want the light, and other times I need to be a sloth in the darkness. Sometimes I want to move, and other times I need to be still. For me, I suppose part of the tension involves discernment – when is one extreme too much, when is another not enough? One day at a time, grasshopper. One day at a time.

Of course, I hate that answer, because I am a consistently impatient human. But that, too, is part of the deal, and I can either accept that as reality or beat my head against a rigid and unyielding wall that will never yield. My choice. The latter tends to result in a painful ache in the cranium, as they say – I go insane in the membrane. If nothing else, I accept that is unproductive, and painful.

I suppose that what I wish now is not so much that I knew then what I know now, but that what I know now sparked me to more effective solutions, made more of a difference deep down, and more importantly – harms no one (including myself). It’s one thing to take action that doesn’t work, or is harmful and produces negative results. It’s quite another thing to keep doing that, over and over and over.

Patience. Tolerance. Nice words, often the first to be omitted from the recipe for good living. Don’t have any in the cabinet, couldn’t find any at the grocery store…insert excuse. I am thinking, however, that without those my recipe will be lacking. It will be lacking, and possibly remain incomplete, missing something in taste and consistency. I can stir it forever, and it will still be a bit lacking.

So. It’s fine, well, and good to be contemplating such things on a Friday morning when my dog is the only other living being in my orbit. Like the old joke says…I have not insulted anyone, have not spoken harshly to anyone, have not had bad thoughts or done anything wrong today…which is great…but in a few minutes I am going to have to get out of bed and go out into the world, and all bets are off.

Some days I have thought to encase myself in viable armor before leaving my enclave to face the onslaught. Perhaps everyone does something similar, so when we encounter each other we are more like soldiers on the battlefield than fellow humans walking diverse paths that intersect and cross and run parallel. Maybe I will work on going out without my armor, without my helmet and spear, and see how that goes. I may keep the shield for a bit, but truth be told, it seems awfully heavy these days.

Onward, forward, and up – as long as we are not going backward or down. Although, come to think of it, backward is not always bad, especially if you get a do-over of something that was problematic the first time you went through. There are also notable sites to be appreciated below the surface of things, so down should be discounted entirely.

I am just going to go, and more will be revealed. At least that’s what I hear.

I need to be ok with the alone time. It’s necessary.

I believe my iPhone has left me. Pack up its face-ID functionality and jumped ship. It no longer recognizes me, no longer sees me as a trusted friend. I have become persona non grata, an ex-friend. What did I do? Can we talk about this? You can’t just abandon me (yes, even my iPhone knows that I have abandonment issues) with no explanation, no warning.

When electronic things stop working, I do what every good wanna-be geek does these days, and knocked on the door of YouTube. Sure enough, there was a plethora of articles about what happens when your face recognition function lays down on the job. It seems to be something called the “dot projector” that has failed, probably a teeny tiny little cable inside. According to more than one DIY article I found, the dot projector cannot be fixed.

So. The facial recognition feature is not working on my iPhone. This means that when I “wake” the phone, I will have to input my passcode to unlock it. With the facial recognition working, which it did for many months, the phone saw my beautiful face and unlocked automatically. The phone works in every other way, including the unlikely occasion that I might make or receive an actual phone call. As opposed to taking pictures, playing music, or using some app. This is a first-world problem fo’ sho’. Of course this is wreaking havoc with my perfectionism, and I am trying very hard not to have it preoccupy me for the entire day. The only thing I will indulge is checking to see when I purchased the bloody device so that if a warranty remains valid, I will order a new phone. If not, I will input the passcode, as I had to do with every other phone I’ve owned since the dawn of wireless phone plans.

But…the dang phone should work! All of its features and pieces and parts should work. Dammit.

I am in a bit of a snarky mood this morning, regardless of my iPhone malfunction. Yesterday, the news was all a-flutter talking about how the Vice-President had made some “awkward” comments on an interview lately. I was interested to see what that involved, si I sat up and paid attention to story. She was being interviewed by Lester Holt, who is a long-time news anchor on one of the major networks (CBS, I think), and he was asking her about why she’d not been to visit the U.S. Southern border, despite making strong comments directed to immigrants to “not come” to the U.S. . When Lester Holt challenged her with, “But you have not been there.” – not once, but twice – Harris seemed to become somewhat annoyed. She replied, curtly, “I haven’t been to Europe, either.” Possibly to cover the tightness in her voice, the Vice-President chuckled rather sardonically. “I don’t know where you’re trying to go with this,” she told Holt.

Oh. My. God. You would have sworn she had taken a shit right there on camera. The pundits went nuts with this, claiming that even the White House staff was startled, surprised, confused by the interview response. There was talk of her needing to be better prepared for questions like that, and what she SHOULD have said, and how she COULD have handled things better. Hmmm.

I wasn’t confused by her answer, and didn’t see it as inadequate. The interviewer was trying to slap her hand a bit pointing out that she had told a foreign nation not to allow immigrants to attempt entering the U.S. – “don’t come,” she said. The implication, however, was that she was not allowed to reject the immigrants because she had not been to personally visit their country. I’m not sure where that rule came from, but she wasn’t having any of it, hence the sarcastic “but I haven’t been to Europe, either” rejoinder.

The interchange between the VP and Lester Holt is inconsequential to me, and news interviewers have always tried tripping up politicians and public figures on their responses. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the amount of attention paid to this post-interview, and the judgement that she had screwed up. I’m not sure exactly what she had screwed up, but last time I checked, she was the VP and these critics were news folk. Those occupations are not equivalent.

She did what she was sent there to do – tell immigrants not to come here. There have already been snide remarks about the exhausting number of immigrants crossing the Southern border because the Biden-Harris administration has been tacitly welcoming, as opposed to TFG (The Former Guy). So, what do people want – she came right out in front and said, clearly and unambiguously, “don’t come”. She went on to make the point that we can’t just look at the numbers of people who are trying to enter the U.S. without looking at why they are so desperate t o risk their lives and their children’s lives to come. So please explain to me where her comments were “awkward” or “inadequate”.

So. There. Moment of snarkiness has passed, I think. I’m now listening to some RNC Congressional drone going on and on about support for TFG. This fine gentleman is African-American, so of course he must represent and defend and and all Black people who may support TFG. I don’t care much for this guy, for his position, or what he has to say. I don’t have much respect for his erudite and effusive responses. But he was correct that he can support who and whatever he wants to support…that’s America. That’s democracy. So, there’s no rule that says Black people cannot support TFG. He’s not the only person of color that is carrying the torch for the previous administration, so go figure. Just because I don’t agree with him or the others is of little significance.

Our right, as people of color, to self-differentiate should not be confusing to anyone. When Ronald Reagan was running for his second term in the 80s, I was annoyed to discover there were GLBT folks who supported him. The country was in the middle of the AIDS crisis, and hundreds of thousands of gay men had died before Reagan even used the words HIV or AIDS in public commentary. He could not be counted as a supporter of the CDC as they raced to figure out what the heck was going on with this disease. Anthony Fauci was a part of this effort, back when he had far less grey hair. I sometimes wonder if that legacy secretly caused so much of the previous administration’s resistance toward him.

Regardless of all this, it’s all just more examples of implicit – and explicit – biases at work. I am not arguing for softening criticism of public officials just because I like them, or because it’s a woman, or in some cases a person of color. They are still accountable to the public for what they do on our behalf, and I understand that. But let’s stick to the facts, please, and refrain from being the tone police and the “coulda shoulda woulda” agents of status quo. Kamala Harris had never said “don’t come” there would have been an outcry for her failure to say it. She did say it, and now there’s an outcry that well, she said it, but…but…she’s never been there. Huh?

How about that iPhone? I wonder if I can find some other way to repair that myself…there’s got to be a way…will go and search YouTube and the interwebz for more info later. But how could that just all of a sudden stop working? Hmmmmm….

Anyway, my hyperactive bladder is a tiny bit less hyper but remains active, which I think is a good thing. Kidneys still working, no infection, no pain. Seems like I will live to fight another day. Better than not having facial recognition on your iPhone, I suppose.

So, thinking more about my initial entry point, of the criticism leveled at VP Harris. People are comfortable with perfectionism. Collectively, we have little tolerance for mistakes. When I worked in a corporate environment, I felt entirely traumatized by the need to be perfect, the need to not deviate significantly from the “performance standard”. When I protested that perfectionism was expected, they countered with systemic responses that pointed out how I was the only one having a problem with the standards, and how there was a lot of leeway between achieving a perfect score and the minimum required for employment, but big ole me couldn’t even make the minimum. Gee, Ann – what’s going on with YOU? You were doing well before now…what’s changed?

Oh, let’s see…mother died. She’s been living within the boundaries of my life for nearly five years now, no big deal. Got a few health issues going on, which I’ve told everyone about, but…hey, nothing to write home about. What’s up with y’all?

There is no sympathy, empathy, compassion, or understanding. What have you done for me lately? This is business, you seem like a great person, too bad you’re having a hard time…we’ll miss you. Yeah, I’ll bet they did miss me. I didn’t play the game correctly, because as I’ve said before, this wasn’t a game to me. It was a game to them, like Monopoly or Life – roll the dice, move the prescribed number of spaces, take your chances. Sometimes you don’t collect the $200 when you pass GO, but don’t worry, you’ve got another chance coming up so keep going.

Yeah, keep going. Pray that you don’t land on property you don’t own and owe a ton of rent, because since the last time you’ve been there they’ve improved it and put up a hotel. They’ve also managed to buy up Park Place, and they’re starting to put houses on that one already. So not only do you not have $200 from the last time you passed GO, you also have to walk the line as you go around the board this time, no matter how well you’d been doing before these last couple of rounds.

That’s a game. Monopoly, and Life are board games where the money is different colors and your identity is something ridiculously small and culturally neutral and doesn’t affect anyone. But that’s not how real life works, and you can be penalized in a variety of ways that means you don’t collect your $200 for passing GO. You may not pass GO at all. You may be stuck in jail, and have rolls that put you back in jail or on someone else’s property that demands a high rental fee…which you can’t pay. The Game of Life requires you to move backward at various points, depending on the outcome of your dice roll.

Games. Games people play. There was a song about that, in the 70s I think.

Oh the games people play now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean

Never meaning what they say, never saying what they mean. I suppose this is where the arguments against political correctness began, accusing people of never saying what they mean in favor of political correctness.

Some of that is probably true, but my version of political correctness is only to do no harm. I was just watching a video on someone who is diagnosed with Turner Syndrome, which is a chromosal irregularity. It affects females by eliminating, in part or whole, the X-chromosome as the fetus develops. Some of the symptoms include wide spaced eyes that turn down on the side closest to the ears, short stature, ovarian failure, wide spaced breasts. The subject of the video spoke very candidly about sexual identity and even addiction. Pronouns were discussed, and the subject indicated a preference for “they/them” rather than “she/her” even though many would describe her in feminine terms. They also identified as having addictive personality traits, with a history of substance abuse. The substance abuse was not caused or impacted by Turner Syndrome, but drugs and alcoholo offered coping mechanisms for the extreme psychological and emotional discomfort the condition inspires. Dysphoria is a real thing, and in the case of Turner Syndrome folks, it’s not so much identification with a different gender but feeling as though they have no gender at all, or at least it’s fluid.

I have never been gender dysphoric, so I cannot truly relate to that. I can, however, relate to not feeling as though you belong in your own skin, as though you don’t know exactly who you are or how others experience you. If addressing someone with pronouns that feel more comfortable to them is what makes them feel a little more comfortable in their skin, I don’t call that political correctness. I call that respect and compassion. It costs me nothing, and harms nothing. Why would I have any problem with doing that?

But ice again, we are collectively far more comfortable with conformity and perfectionism than with diversity and self-differentiation. Conformity, following the rules, having nothing outside the confines of a predetermined area (like the bell-shaped curve). If we know how far things might go, and the range is predetermined (either artificially or naturally) then we can be very smart and maintain control of all the … dots, data points, people if that’s what we’re measuring. Control. That’s where a lot of our navigational efforts lead, to control. One definition of control is: the power to influence or direct people’s behavior or the course of events.

And there’s that word again – power. We all crave it, because when we don’t have it, we control nothing, and that’s just not comfortable. Most animals want to be free, no matter how good their life situations might be. I’m not sure, but humans may be the only animals with an element of judgement about the conditions of freedom. Sometimes the judgement is rooted in practical considerations, like trying to adjudicate median behavioral standards for millions of people. Sometimes, however, they are merely implicit bias rendered by systems created from implicit bias that exact biased outcomes. The biased outcome is where social movements begin.

An aside…there is a poltergeist in this apartment. A few minutes ago, I was looking for my baseball cap, the pale green one that I’ve been wearing lately. I could not find it ANYWHERE, despite looking for it EVERYWHERE. I went to usual places and unusual places. I began to insert false memories about what I had probably done with it when I took it off yesterday. Nothing. So, I gave up and found another baseball cap, a blue denim-looking one, and smacked that on top of my unruly mane. That was about 45 minutes ago, and I’ve been sitting here writing during that time.

I just moved a bag on the bed, one that has been sitting here but I could swear had been jostled slightly in my previous search for the cap, and there…looking innocent and nonplussed…was the pale green baseball cap. It was not there earlier. I looked there, and it was not there. I feel there is some gremlin of a spirit laughing hysterically right about now, maybe a whole army of them, chortling at watching me run around looking for the damned thing. Little shits.

So, back to power. I suppose the issue of power is constant in the human condition. If you have it, you want more of it. If you don’t have it, you definitely want more of it. In general, however, I still feel that power is an illusion. Nobody can force another person to do anything they don’t want to do, without cheating a little bit. You can probably get compliance with your orders if you introduce some other leverage to tilt the scale – threaten their lives, have other people involved to force the outcome you desire. In the end, however, if the “victim” doesn’t cooperate, you get nothing. The victim may not have a viable choice, but they still have a choice in whether or not they comply with what you’re demanding.

Sometimes I wonder how much sense of choice I could maintain if faced with a life-defining situation. If threatened with a gun or knife wielded by a perpetrator who demanded compliance, would I have do what they demanded to save my life? If faced with a likely rape, would I surrender to save my life? If another person was threatened, would I sacrifice, or at least risk, my life to spare theirs? I would love to believe that I would make the correct and noble choices in all of those scenarios, that I could enact a scene from a television drama or novel and tell a robber or rapist to go ahead and shoot me because I will never comply with their demands. I would love to believe that, but I’m really not quite sure.

In the moment of crisis, most of us are going to do whatever is necessary to preserve our lives. We are going to act in our own best interest, as the limbic brain takes over and preaches a nonverbal mantra of survival. The rational mind is taking a back seat to the entire scene at that moment, and many people describe being literally paralyzed with fear. Until you have been in that situation, you cannot judge it. I’ve heard that if you are in a life-threatening situation, you do what you feel like you have to do, including surrender. If you manage to survive that experience, whatever you did was the absolute right thing because you are still alive.

I suppose my irrational sense of romance, or idealism, or something keeps me in a state of wonder about how I might fare in a life-threatening situation. Wondering if when put to the test, I would have any measure of courage or bravery or intuition that might cause me to do the noble thing, or even the smartest thing. There have been times when I spoke out, knowing that I put myself at risk of at least verbal pushback. There have been other times, perhaps even more often, when I have shied away from the confrontation. I struggle with accepting that as a self-preservation mechanism, or cowardice. I don’t like the cowardice answer.

Sometimes I do believe I’m a coward, swallowing what I might want to say because I know I’m going to be received badly, negatively, that response may be adversarial. A lot of people believe that I enjoy adversarial interaction, and I do not. In a direct confrontation, I sometimes do not process quickly enough to respond effectively, and that is very frustrating. I generally berate myself as being a coward and not capable of standing my ground, and that beat down is a gift that keeps on giving. I can rehash and replay the interaction days, weeks, years later where my responses are ideal.

And there’s the control issue again. If people would just act right, I wouldn’t have to get all belligerent and stuff. But I can’t make them act right anymore than I can make them act wrong. When the confrontation is raging, I think I just check out. See ya! I don’t know exactly where that comes from, but I suspect it has something to do with some battles that raged in my family of origin. Being forced to back down as a child is still with me, and I always backed down…because I was a child. I was a child who was up against a foe who was larger than life, meaner than any monster under my bed, in control of aspects of my life that I could not do without…like food and water and clothes. What if she withheld any of that because I wouldn’t back down? I was too afraid to find out.

I suppose I feel that I am too easily manipulated, too quick to retreat from a confrontation about a matter of principle, far too speedy at making determinations that everyone else has power that exceeds my own. It’s always been like that. Sometimes I believe it’s true, that I have no appreciable power in any system on the face of the Earth. Every once in a while, though, I come away clean.

There was a question in my Beloved Conversations course that I was supposed to direct to my critical friend, confidante in the learning. The question for them was “When have you seen me demonstrate that I was free?” That one really seemed important. My critical friend’s answer was not a total surprise to me, but I was surprised that anyone else could see it in me. Her answer was that when I am confident and prepared and sure of my subject matter or content, I seem free of fear. I am not worried about negative pushback, or resistance, or difficult questions. That’s how I feel, in general – when I”m feeling competent, I am not afraid. It does not occur to me that trash talk or resistance will affect me appreciably.

A lot of the occasions when I feel that degree of confidence in my competence, I feel that I am in the company of friends and people who are invested in my success, or at least not dedicated to my failure. I draw on their belief in me, their love for me, their confidence in me. When that element is not present, I will frequently become bogged down in my own doubts. I don’t understand what that’s about, but I wish it wasn’t a reality.

So, today is Thursday, one more day until the weekend. It looks to be raining outside, but I still have to wrestle the canine outside for her morning constitutional. I will mention here that I have still been a bit preoccupied by the iPhone face recognition problem, so I shut the who thing down, power off, made it play dead. It crossed my mind that one of the golden rules of IT is when something isn’t doin’ right, turn it off and turn it back on. That clears up all kinds of errors that seemed insurmountable. I actually forgot that I had done that for the better part of an hour. When I remembered that it was powered off, I figured I should go ahead and power it up, just in case I had a call from someone offering me the dream job of all time.

When I got the phone all powered up, I thought I should see if the facial recognition issue had been somehow miraculously resolved. To my amazement, it worked just fine. I was able to scan my face successfully, and that was saved to the phone with no problem. It’s working flawlessly.

So, when in doubt, don’t panic and don’t ever attempt to make an electronic device think like you do. Also, don’t overthink and demand immediate resolution. Had I proceeded with attempting to make the hack fix I first saw on YouTube, I would have probably ruined the device entirely. So…just leave things alone. There was no rush in this case, so I had no reason to manifest a sense of extreme emergency. When that time comes, I hope it’s an urgency for something a bit more impactful than facial recognition on my iPhone.

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. (“Me and Bobby McGee” – Kris Kristofferson).

That’s one of the first definitions of freedom I remember learning, a million years ago. Nothing left to lose is a state of freedom, a place of abandon and throwing caution to the wind. When there are things of value to lose, we are more cautious, more risk averse, more bound to the possibility of loss. When there’s nothing left, when everything has been lost or taken, we sigh and go for it. That’s the attraction of bucket lists, and last wish organizations. That’s the sentiment of “smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

Money, in particular, does not buy freedom for anyone. I have to remember that, since I tend to feel that my life would at least be easier if I had a great deal of money. People who have a lot of money, however, are always preoccupied with protecting it, preventing someone else from taking it. People without money are preoccupied with getting it, often by any means necessary. I wonder at the prospect of a utopian existence where there is no money, and quickly conclude that we’d find some other commodity with which to create a caste system to separate the haves from the have-nots. I am thinking the competition and one-upmanship is hard-wired in us now, and I don’t want to work that hard.

Having more assets than another person really only makes us a bit nuts. There was a story book my mother had in her library, while she was still teaching, that involved a futuristic society of humans doing an archaeological exploration of our times. The erstwhile investigators found things like rubber drain stoppers, the kind with little chains attached, and somehow thought they were ancient and precious jewelry. They began wearing these as fashion accessories. The book was supposed to be somewhat humorous, pointing out how even our future selves become distracted by the lure of something that singles us out as unique, something no one else has. We all want to be special in some way.

In our times, it seems that money or talent, which can be enmeshed in our capitalistic scheme, is frequently the source of uniqueness. In recovery, we are taught to disengage from the belief we are “terminally unique” and find ways to identify with other people who share similar tales of living with addiction. They may not resemble us, but there is more alike about us than what is different, and we can generally all relate to experiencing a “bottom”, when there was nothing else to lose. Coming into a program of recovery gives many people freedom because of exactly that – there is nothing more to lose.

Sometimes, I wonder if that’s ever absolutely true, that a point in life exists where there really is nothing further to lose. If I have lost all my money, I can still lose my life. If I have lost my life, I suppose I can still lose my soul. If I lose my soul, I’m not sure what happens then…perhaps I get thrown into a soul recycling bin and emerge reconstituted as another soul. Regardless, my point is there does not seem to be an absolute and final end to loss in our cognition. At least that’s my vision for the moment.

Freedom. Our country has quite a lot to say about freedom, and I am not sure any of us really know what it means. We frequently refer to freedom as a condition where we are not under the control of a governmental regime, or any person. The condition in which we can do whatever we want whenever we want and however we want. Well, kinda… we don’t enjoy seeing the inherent limitations in our rights, and we don’t much enjoy freedom that demands responsibility where our rights intersect with another’s rights. If I don’t want to wear a mask, the government cannot force me to do so, right? Weeeeel, I would contend that refusing to wear the mask is a decided action, just like wearing one. If your action to not wear the mask harms me by improving the chance of me contracting disease, then I say you are required to wear it.

These days, we are locked in mortal combat over whose science is correct, whether you absolutely positively know FOR SURE that your will not contract or spread disease while not wearing a mask. By the time we’re done arguing about all of that, we’ll both find ourselves quite dead from old age. Despite the gravity of these arguments, we sometimes more resemble 4-year olds tussling over toys on the playground than (hopefully) rational adults trying to live responsibly. I actually saw a news report earlier today where a physician testified before the Ohio State legislature that COVID vaccines had a metallic element that would make a metal object stick to a vaccinated person’s skin. Seriously.

Lately, I’ve not felt particularly free because there is so much weighing on me. That weight is, of course, not a physical weight but far more intangible. When I feel “bogged down”, it’s not that I am traveling in a bog and slowed by the weight of the briny water. Nonetheless, I feel heavy, I feel troubled, I feel overwhelmed by my feelings. Constitutional liberties have no bearing on emotional response, which may or not be short termed. I am dealing with quite an esoteric level of freedom.

Free your mind. That was a battle cry in the 70s, I believe. Free your mind and the rest will follow. “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.” (Bob Marley – “Redemption Songs”) Indeed, none but ourselves can free our minds…and some of us do not conceive of our minds as imprisoned. We rage against the machines of tyranny, mass media and consumerism and the sex industry, only to look to deities for solace. The deities, however, are in some cases are appropriated by those very machines.

I have to ask myself to look at the mental slavery that binds me. For me, right this moment, I am enslaved by my own expectations, my perfectionism, my utter and complete refusal to forgive myself. Over the years, I’ve softened my stance on looking at the mistakes of my past, but there’s still a piece of me that wonders how I could possibly have been that stupid. There’s an even bigger part of me that despises my cowardice and lack of integrity. I suppose part of the change over the past few years, however, is there’s a small voice inside that has begun to speak of grace. Not always amazing, but definitely ringing like a bell.

What can save a wretch like me? I would imagine my salvation would be concerned with abandoning past routines, past ways of being. I feel that I am not the same person I used to be, even though who I used to be often makes me cringe. I don’t do things I used to do, and if salvation is to continue shining its light of new life on me, then I have to maintain abstinence from the old ways. Frustratingly, some days I’m better at it than others, but my eye is still on the prize. My hope is that I won’t ever have to repeat that old behavior again, never have the weight of that negative energy to shackle me.

When I was not a nice person, it felt as though I was literally shackled to the ground. I could not make any progress, could not jump for joy, could not rise above gutter level with my thoughts or my deeds. That was definitely not freedom, and I felt bound to everything that was not in my best interest. Pain is inherent in the human condition, but I am not sure misery is a given. I was miserable, because I was in pain but allowed the pain to define me and transform me into something other than who I am. I kept saying that I had nothing else to lose, but in actuality I had a lot more that could have been lost and I knew it. I just didn’t know how to get out of the pain, so I was frozen in it, living the disappointments and disillusionments and failures every minute of the day.

These days, I’m in some pain, but I’ve broken through enough of that old monumental discomfort to understand that I am just a person in pain, like many others, rather than pain with a driver’s license and a debit card. Operating with pain that is bottled up and ready to explode at all times does not go well. A million years ago, it seems, it would feel so explosive that I was compelled to make sure my head was still attached to my body. There are some things a person can say or do in a rage, or a blinding emotional storm, that cannot be reversed, can’t be taken back. Some harm cannot be undone, and some who are harmed cannot be made whole. Best defense – no be there. (Thanks again, Mr. Miagi.)

Our scope of vision is truly short. Contemplating 50 years for a human can be an entire lifetime, and so we often fight tooth and nail to ensure our comfort for only the next 50 hours. Some of the people from our past fought to the death for racial segregation, and long were people who fought in Crusades to make Christianity the dominant religion world-wide. I have no doubt these people truly believed there was a tremendous sense of urgency to “save their world”, even if that meant its destruction. They could not see into the future to be assured that desegregation was not going to destroy the country, or that diverse religions would not destroy the world. They could not see how their resistance protracted the fight, elevated the losses, and caused other issues that we’re still trying to resolve. But, we are free to fight, we are free to destroy our world.

Short of perfecting time travel, I am not sure there’s any solution for that. I would like to believe that more visionary thinkers would be helpful, but you can’t exactly manufacture visionaries. It seems like the sense of urgency is culpable to a certain extent, so perhaps mindfulness would be of some value. Nah, too new agey. So…how in the world do we collectively refrain from imploding, from some kind of self-destruction that will deprive us all of the life we’re seeking? How do we rest, somewhat assured, that where we are is just fine?

I would imagine that animals of prey are constantly scanning their surroundings for more…prey. It seems that most of them are responding to hunger signals from their bodies, so when hungry, eat. Even my psycho dog will stop eating when she is full. Unless she is hungry there is no foraging in the apartment for things to consume. She will, however, eat things that spark her curiosity but make her quite ill. I’m told that domestic cats will also eat when they’re hungry. Neither they nor dogs will hoard food, saving it for later. Humans do that.

So the hoarding behavior seems to bring up the abundance vs. scarcity mindset. Operating from the scarcity mindset, we are forced to hoard power, resources, and access to resources. Of course we hoard this stuff, because we’re not sure there will be enough for us. The prospect of scarcity frightens us, and we succumb to our fears, believing our survival is threatened. We make a lot of allowances for that, believing certain actions should be excused when taken within a frame being afrid to lose your life. As we’ve seen, this is problematic.

As much as I hate to admit it, changing our world view is not going to be a simple thing. We seem to be a little confused about what constitutes our world view. On the one hand, we seem to believe that we are a truly great nation that is compassionate and comes to the aid of others when necessary. We have seen our nation as a benevolent world leader that interacts with other nations equitably and fairly. Within our country, we believe that we take care of our citizens, and have the best possible ways of adjudicating conflicts amongst us. Saying otherwise is often grounds for a physical altercation, particularly if alcoholo is involved.

What I see is that the world view of the average American depends on their individual experience. What each person sees a nd experiences frequently depends on socio-economic class – race, ethnicity, income, sexual orientation. Our social contracts are frequently abandoned when crime intersects with dominant culture on any of those parts of our society. Murder someone, and there are consequences codified in our legal infrastructure. Murder a police officer, and the stakes appear to be escalated. Murder a sympathetic victim, and the stakes are elevated. The suspect frequently deserves whatever physical consequence is spontaneously rendered at the scene, regardless of what the enforcement code says.

More to the point, lenience is granted the enforcement authority to unilaterally discern risk, and consequence. Since the enforcer’s life is frequently at risk, this seems reasonable, until we begin to see patterns of behavior and outcomes. That’s where we find ourselves with the crisis state of law enforcement and communities of color, particularly Black communities. There has to be a better way to explain the disproportionate pattern of unarmed Black men being killed at the hands of law enforcement officers than “they should have complied.” There can be no argument with documented cases that have been made public where the subject complied, and was shot and killed regardless. In some cases, even where the subject did not fully comply but was physically incapacitated by multiple officers, and still died after being shot.

The most notorious case of recent times, of course, is George Floyd in Minnestota. The police responded to a complaint that Floyd had attempted to pay for a store purchase with a counterfeit $20 bill. If true, that was an obvious violation of the law. The police saw fit to detain him, then arrest him. When they attempted to place him in the patrol car for transport to jail, he resisted, saying that he was claustrophobic and was freaking out over being closed up in the back seat of the vehicle. That was the nature of his resistance. He was unarmed; he struggled and attempted to pull away from the officers. For that, he merited all four officers sitting on him while he was face down and handcuffed on the street, and one of them chose to continue applying his knee to the side of Floyd’s neck in the interest of subduing him. Ultimately, the problem of George Floyd resisting arrest was moot, because he was dead. For a lot of us, it seemed that the penalty for a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis that day was death. Who gets to decide that? On that day, the responding officers decided.

Scarcity. Short sightedness. I’m a police officer, with a gun, in the company of seeral of my fellow officers, and the suspect I’m trying to arrest is not cooperating. He’s a big guy. I might not be able to restrain him effectively. He’s a big guy. I’d better recall what my training handbook said about things like this. Oh, I remember – the training guide said suspect goes face down, handcuffed behind the back, and if there’s still any resistance, kneel with a knee placed at the throat to cause trouble with their breathing. OK, so that’s what I did. Where’s the problem?

We clearly the problem in the case of George Floyd – the restraint went on far too long, and because the suspect was face and belly down, it deprived him of air way too long. If I’m the officer, and believe this is going to go on forever and that I might not be able to win the battle, I’m going to pull out all the stops on this effort to keep him in check. And I’m going to believe that my department is going to back me up. This guy is not going to get up. And he didn’t.

Initial pronouncements on the George Floyd case were prone to show sympathy to the officer eventually convicted for his murder. The officer was in fear for his life, and the suspect refused to comply. Ultimately, that argument bore no fruit, but it was available to offset other factors regarding the officer’s intent and even planning in this case. What I see, though, is not a sense of abundance from the officer, where he believes he has everything necessary to succeed, to maintain control of his wellbeing. He went into overdrive, literally overkill. He succeeded for that day, but ultimately, the outcome was anything but successful.

I don’t think America is a bad country. I love this country. I do feel, however, that at the grass roots we’ve forgotten the extreme abundance that our country offers. There is no reason for people to be hungry here, because there could be enough food supply for everyone. If the allocation scheme for food production, however, serves only the capitalistic objectives of corporate profit and favoritism, that skews the formula. The same is true for pharmaceuticals and health care. Because many of us believe there’s not enough for all, however, we’re plunged into this nearly feral worldview of scarcity, grabbing whatever we can get, and in many cases, by any means necessary, because it will be gone soon. We saw this with toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic – people were impulse buying huge quantities of the supply because they were panicking over the prospect of a year-long quarantine with no way to acquire more supplies.

If it had not been so sad, the toilet paper crisis would have been funny. But that panic is what happens to world leaders, police officers on the street, destitute people seeing no way out. They will fight to meet their own needs, with little thought to anyone else. Selfish? Yes, by definition, but I prefer to see it more as panic. Everybody doesn’t have half their life spent in therapy like I do. Maybe instead of AFDC and WIC, the government should issue subsidized psychotherapy visits. We have some issues.

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I have always disliked Monday. The weekend over, it’s back to routine and
schedules and for me, getting up early and forcing my body to conform to a
schedule it didn’t conform to without a protest. Yesterday, I woke up after a
few hours sleep and was convinced it was Monday morning. In reality, it was
early evening. I was thoroughly disoriented for over an hour until I realized
my error. A year ago, I got up, got dressed in a rush thinking I was late for
work, and raced to my office thinking it was Monday, when in fact it was Sunday
morning. I spent quite a few minutes sitting in my car wondering where the rest
of everybody else had been hidden. I literally wondered if a bomb had gone off.

Suffice it to say that I am not a morning person, never have been a morning
person, have no desire to become a morning person. Lately, I’ve been writing
mostly in the morning, but it’s morning on my terms, after a bit of lounging in
bed, visiting the bathroom at a leisurely pace, making and drinking coffee,
then copious interwebz surfing. Goofy routine, but it’s mine and I own it
proudly. The dog acquiesces with a treat and some cuddle time.

I just ran across an AP story on a police shooting of a Black man in Hawaii.
It’s an odd set of circumstances, where this seemingly responsible and
non-problematic husband and father of two from South Africa wandered into someone’s
home, took off his shoes, then engages in a physical confrontation with
responding police officers. Nobody understands what motivated this man to show
up at someone’s home, become aggressive, and wind up dead. His wife, who is
white, says they had moved from Denver to Hawaii, where she was born and
raised, believing it would be a better place to raise their biracial children.
She also said Hawaii is not devoid of racial bias; Blacks are a tiny percentage
of the population. This challenges many views of Hawaii as a paradise of
multiculturalism, essentially peaceful and handling difference in exemplary
fashion. Nobody knows exactly what happened with this man’s killing, and police
have not been entirely transparent, so we’ll see. However it went, it’s very
sad and shows that even paradise is not immune to the shadows of bias and
racism.

Lately, my thoughts are turning to joy and happiness, and what constitutes
either for me. Today, I am supposed to have a telehealth physical therapy
visit, which is always an interesting experience. The visits are with students
of a local university that has a physical therapy degree program, which makes
it free to me. They have a regime for me to follow, customized for my symptoms,
and they lead me through a series of stretches and exercises in my
kitchen…which I find hilariously funny. After that, I’m going to a late lunch
with my bestie, and we’re set to discuss some of my Beloved Conversations
course, and whatever else strikes us. I am really looking forward to that.

I wonder if I am simply spending way too much time alone. It doesn’t bother me
to be alone. I feel as though I have always been alone…the only child thing
and all that. In general, it doesn’t bother me, although I enjoy having the
option to choose aloneness vs. togetherness. Frequently, after I’ve had
togetherness, I am stressed and rehashing snippets of conversation and what I
should have said. This does not constitute happiness or joy for me. I suppose
the older I get, the more I crave smaller group, or one-on-one, interaction.
Even then, I often feel as though something was missing, and I’m not entirely
sure what that’s about.

Maybe I’d better identify what brings joy, what
causes me to be happy. I know that music brings me a great deal of joy and
happiness. Listening to good acoustic guitar players and singer-songwriter
types usually makes me feel warm inside. I’m not aware of very many venues for
that sort of thing, but maybe I should intentionally seek that out. I don’t see
very many public opportunities for that but will keep looking.

I love great conversation, and debate. There are opportunities for that, but I
often find that it doesn’t go on as long as I’d like because, well, people have
their own lives. Maybe that’s what FaceBook is for, I don’t know. What I do
know is I don’t find a lot of effortless conviviality, which makes me wonder if
perhaps effort should be made, if the effort should be more intentional.

I have never been one who finds talking about my hobbies interesting, My
hobbies are interesting to me because it’s they are entirely about my
experience with the endeavor, and I am not sure how to share that with anyone
else. Sometimes, those of us who share a particular hobby gain some enjoyment
from having that individual experience collectively, if that makes any sense to
experience individualism collectively. Seems a bit contradictory. But, I’ve
enjoyed playing guitar in pop-up jam sessions. Those seem to include
combinations of soloing and group endeavors to satisfy me and give me some of
that warm feeling.

I commented yesterday on how much sheer joy I had presenting my essay and
reflections on my friend’s contribution to our spiritual community, and to my
personal growth. I enjoyed that because I enjoyed writing it, and equally
enjoyed presenting it. Honestly, it wasn’t the act of presentation, but enjoyed
just as much – if not more – sharing that in performance mode with a receptive
audience. I loved that people enjoyed it, loved that my friend enjoyed it. And
yes, in all honesty, I enjoyed being the center of attention for those few
minutes, not for any other reason than I felt I was sharing something good that
I had done, and that was gratifying. When I feel that I’ve created something of
value, something well crafted, and it is well received, I love that feeling.
Absolutely love it.

When I’ve done solo musical performance, I’ve not been as comfortable as when
I’ve created and presented an essay that I felt was a good product. My musical
performance is always tempered with doubt that I’m not a good enough singer or
guitarist to present anything original or different from anybody else’s
offering. I’m not convinced that is entirely egotistical, because I (hope) that
I’m an honest judge of my abilities. If anything, I’m hard on myself and feel
that I write better than I sing and play music as a soloist. I can hold my own
in a combo and truly enjoy that even more than soloing. The prize is the
audience response, and if that’s not there, what’s the point?

It’s really interesting how much response from others can mold our behavior,
our performance as it were. It’s very clear with children, as they usually mold
themselves to please their parents and understand without words what is
expected of them. There’s a delicate balance in that, however, because if
parents press forward too much of their own expectations on a child, things get
goofy very quickly. Expecting a child to behave like an autonomous adult before
they have the reason or the physical and mental development, can be harmful.
Like other beings of humanness, their instinct to be free will outweigh all
else, and they will spend all their energy rebelling against nothing in
particular but everything in general.

I suppose expecting anything out of anybody is counter-productive. What people
can produce has to be willingly offered or the product suffers. If someone had
forced me to produce yesterday’s essay about my friend’s 20th work anniversary,
it would not have had the outpouring of affection and love that I felt, and
that seemed to come across to the audience in those words. I wanted them to
feel what I felt, and some reported they did. I cannot put a price on that,
cannot find anything more rewarding. It was somewhat of a high for several
hours, and that is probably why I slept so deeply that I had no idea where I
was when I woke.

Here I must say that knowing my feelings about these sorts of writing productions
makes me a bit nervous about seeking employment in writing. I don’t want to
have to do it. I had similar thoughts about music when I was in college, opting
not to major in music even though it would have been a sure shot for me and
would not have gotten in the way of my drinking commitments (and believe me, I
was committed to drinking at that point). I did not want to be forced to do
something I enjoyed so much. So, I didn’t major in that, and wonder to this day
if that was a good choice.

The issue I have with the formal study of something that comes somewhat
naturally to me is that it will be such a formalized endeavor, with
measurements and degrees of correctness and evaluations of conformity that it
will ruin the fun of it. It will become work, become a job, and where is the
fun in that? Some days I don’t play, other days that’s all I do. I want to be
able to keep that flexibility. On the flip side, however, I wonder if I missed
the opportunity to simply become a better musician, with even more enjoyment of
the product. I don’t know. Perhaps I am just far too undisciplined to ever
succeed at taming an inner passion.

I feel somewhat the same about writing. I don’t consider myself a stellar
writer, by any means, but I enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed it, even when I hated
the urge to do self-examination and write about it. I’ve always loved words,
always enjoyed words and the manipulation of words and the infinite number of
combinations one can employ from the same 26 characters of the alphabet (at
least in the English language – I have no frame of reference for any others). I
find that fascinating, that some people cannot write an intelligent sentence,
cannot seem to communicate a thought in writing, while others can produce great
dramatic works, novels, poetry.

Sometimes I wonder if shutting myself off from the world with only a keyboard
and a sometimes uncooperative canine is a way to hide. I hide really well
because I generally presume that nobody wants to see me, has no reason to see
me. Sometimes I don’t want to see myself. I have never been particularly fond
of the way I look, the way my hair does weird stuff on only one side of my
head, the way it curls on the crown and gets flat out nappy in the front. The
way my knees are too fat they can’t knock together when I walk, descending onto
these stalks of legs that seem entirely unwilling to carry the full burden of
the excess weight I have always seemed to have. But…this is what I’ve got,
and I would do well to accept it. It’s not a given that I can walk, and play
the guitar, tinkle the ivories, play the flute, drive an automobile, open
doors, go pretty much wherever I want. None of that is a given, and when I
doubt myself, I find it a good thing to be grateful for all of that.

I had a friend who had advanced Multiple Sclerosis and had only one hand that
worked. She could move her head, smile, and talk, but as she put it, she could
not wipe her own butt. A catheter helped with some of the body functions, and a
wheelchair gave her a little bit of autonomy, but she could not drive. Most
importantly, she was a gifted artist, and creating art was no longer possible
for her. She had some respiratory issues from the MS, and oxygen was available
in her residence. Even with a wheelchair, there were some places she could not
go. Someone had to drive her everywhere, in a van that was specially outfitted
for accommodating the wheelchair, but some places were simply inaccessible. She
was also in constant pain, she related and had some very good drugs to help
with that. The drugs, however, checked her out and if she wanted to interact
with people, it was best she didn’t take them. I cannot even imagine living in
that fashion.

My friend – Anita was her name – passed away a couple of years ago. The MS had
finally depressed involuntary functions enough that her body failed, and she
was gone. From what I understand, it was rather peaceful; she went to sleep and
fell into a coma, and then just stopped. Finally. Stopped. She had told me that
she had been ready to go for quite a while but literally couldn’t seem to die.
But she was tired of living that way, tired of being in pain, tired of feeling
trapped (quite literally). So, when she died, I was relieved for her. I miss
her, but I am a big believer that everybody who crosses my path does so for a
reason, so I want to be intentional about honoring what she brought to me. Some
of that is keeping up with your art, so that’s what I’m trying to do while I am
able. Who knows if something will befall that makes it impossible to do it any
longer.

So, recalling my friend Anita still encompasses the subject of joy, because I
got to see what happens when there is a dearth of joy. I sometimes wonder if
the joy had left her before the MS attacked, or after. MS is an autoimmune
disease, meaning that some part of her immune system had begun to turn on the
protein sheath that covers nerves in her brain and spinal column, the central
nervous system. I have always wondered if a disease like that visits a body
when there is some kind of spiritual conflict, some kind of mind-body-spirit
disconnect or imbalance. That sounds quite simplistic, but it has always been a
wondering for me. I believe quite firmly that our bodies often manifest what
goes on in our spirits and our brains, and if those don’t synch we have
dis-ease. Literal malfunctions of ease on an esoteric level.

Whether any of that is ultimately correct or not, I do not want to make it seem
that disease or physical dysfunction is our “fault” or that we have
done our lives “wrong”. Not sure I can make the disease a punishment,
although it seems that way sometimes. If it’s a punishment, what do we make of
infants with brain cancer, or born without certain necessary organs? If it’s a
punishment, what of murderers and rapists who are healthy as oxen and suffer
not even allergic reactions? Of course, I have no answer for that, and that’s
why I shudder away from considering disease or physical challenges as
punishment. I suppose I cannot imagine a Universe so inherently cruel that
mistakes are not allowed. I do, however, believe that we can punish ourselves,
and perhaps that’s how the mind-body-spirit connection becomes out of synch in
some of us. But, that’s just me.

Perhaps that is enough contemplation for this morning. I have a meditation
group in about 90 minutes, and a little critter at the foot of this bed is
going to have a morning constitutional alarm sound any second now. She’s really
in charge of this whole operation; I’m allowed to pay the rent and live here,
only when there are sufficient quantities of treats. I will never be able to
figure out how dogs of any size instinctually sleep diagonally on a rectangular
or square bed. In the middle. Without fail. I have to sometimes wrestle with
her just to stretch out my legs at night.

Today is overcast, a bit cloudy, kind of like my mood. I would do well to do a
bit of job searching today, for posterity’s sake. Something will happen,
eventually. Eventual is so annoying…eventually, the glaciers will melt. That
will eventually be a nightmare, so I despise talk of eventuality.