Yes, I am still watching the volcano in Iceland. It’s not really slowing down, although there were numerous fissures at the start of the eruption, and this is the last one – Gelgingadalir. It’s sort of like a lava geyser, ejecting a fountain every few minutes from its bubbling cauldron of molten magma. When seen from above, it seems like an unmistakably feminine image, as though the Earth is giving birth, expelling some progeny from her fiery, red depths.

If that’s the case, I wonder about what is being introduced from below. The lava that is flowing, in practical terms, functions to create new crust, specifically to fill in the fissures where geologic plates are diverging. It’s a fascinating process of recycling on some gigantic scale, as above so below. The incredible volume of energy involved in greater than I am able to comprehend, and to imagine that it all sits beneath our feet continuously is fantastic.

There are volcanoes erupting all over the planet, on a daily basis. Some erupt non-stop for months, even years. Geldingadalir is expected to be actively erupting for an extended period of time, and it seems to be capturing the attention of quite a number of scientists, and ordinary geeks like me. There are live streams directly from Iceland, and those tuned in on YouTube chat with each other, all day and all night. There are numerous people hiking up the hillsides near the volcano, taking pictures, getting as close as they can to the lava flowing into the valley.

When there is a great effusion of energy, people are drawn to it like moths to a flame. Some of us are compelled to be as close to it as we can get. We need to feel the heat, be touched in some way by that energy. It feels like it’s alive, and sometimes I think we don’t feel as though we’re fully alive. There are so many opportunities to hide parts of ourselves, to not express our feelings, to not communicate honestly. So many times during any given day that we hide, and avoid, and deflect truth. We try to package unpleasant or unglamorous things more attractively, make it more palatable somehow. It seems that being so close to raw energy is unpleasant, unless it’s something in the natural world.

I find that to be an interesting circumstance – we are drawn to the raw energy, but frightened of it at the same time. If the raw energy is part of the natural world, we often have a macabre fascination with it, but it remains inexplicably attractive. We don’t understand it, we know that we can’t truly relate to it, but still it fascinates us and compels us to get closer. It happens with natural disasters, powerful animals, inanimate objects like boulders, mountains, machines. It seems that we comprehend our frailty and our smallness, but as long as it’s something outside of the human experience, we accept it with something akin to adoration.

When another human being is the source of unbridled and raw energy that seems incalculable, wild, and impossible to tame, we are fascinated, but we also tend to do our best to contain it. We are just as afraid of that as we are of getting too close to an erupting volcano. We shame people who “blow their tops”, like volcanoes, and attempt to contain them in random codes of civility, of respectability, of “normal” behavior.

People who are prone to operate at the level of unfettered raw energy have a difficult road. I speak from experience. The roiling, bubbling lava lake is inside me, and it cannot be contained, certainly not by me at times, and definitely not by anyone else. Still, many have tried and failed to put some kind of lid on an effusion of mine. This does not go well, to say the least.

When I am in an eruptive mode, it’s not always about rage, not always about grief, not always about a dark emotion. It is sometimes about excitement, about glee, about creativity. When it’s about creativity, I am definitely in the place of wanting to give birth to something, to expel something back to the Universe. This seems to be the least I can do, since I take so much from the world around me. Who are you to stop that?

I was chuckling at one of the videos from Iceland, where it was reported that the nearby town had built a “lava wall” to contain the river of lava that was creeping further and further into the valley. They had to admit that it would eventually be futile, because humans don’t generally have any viable way to contain a volcano. The wall has now been breached, and, well so it goes.

My effusion frequently meets with resistance and attempts to squelch it. When I am erupting about something, and another human being attempts to contain me, squelch me, I can only interpret that as a power play. I am being who I am, and someone else is trying to decide for me that who I am is incorrect. When I have expressed that sentiment, the would-be controller assures me that it’s only a question of my behavior, not who I am. But…but…sometimes that IS who I am. You are asking me to be less than who I am, to leave some part of me outside in order to make you more comfortable.

I am not sure I feel the need to control anyone in such a fashion these days. If I did, it would be as futile as building a wall out of dirt to contain a river of lava from a constantly erupting volcano. I correctly recognize that i do not have sufficient power to do that. More importantly, it’s really not the right thing to do. Who am I to control anyone else? When people make me uncomfortable, I find that I don’t enjoy their company over the long term, and keep my distance. They are welcome to be as obnoxious as they want to be way over there, in the distance. Best defense, no be there. (thanks, as always, Mir. Miagi).

I wonder about this issue of power, specifically on the individual level, quite a lot. As I’m contemplating that, however, I am clear that when I feel that I have no power, I’m apt to make non-productive efforts to elevate myself. I found out that male dogs raise one leg when they pee (well, some of them don’t, but most do) in order to make themselves look taller. It doesn’t really do anything for the pee stream, but dominance is a real thing. I at least want to LOOK like a bad ass even even if I’m a chihuahua.

My point is, we all react differently to feeling powerless. When someone is doing their best to control me, they will usually go to shame. I must have a neon sign over my head that says “Use Shame”. I can remember my mother using that quite a lot with me, so these days I am particularly hostile to it. I really can’t think of any reason to do that to someone, and it just seems like cheating. My response is usually rage, because I have been down that road one too many times, and I always break down and need roadside assistance when I’m there.

If something I’m doing is harming you in some way, you can say that, and I will be the first one to modify my behavior. That only applies to harm, though. Not violation of your arbitrary personal rules and codes of conduct from your childhood. Not just what you like and think is correct. I have my own codes, and when other people violate them, I usually don’t say a word unless there is real harm. If you cuss, or don’t cuss, I don’t much care. But I cuss, and I’m really not interested in your opinion about it. That’s not harm. Real harm is you cost me a job, you changed my economic status through your actions, you made it impossible for me to walk successfully through the world.

All of this controlling takes a lot of energy, and once again, it’s usually futile. I was taught that when you wrestle with a pig, the pig likes it and you get dirty. So I try very hard not to wrestle with pigs, and people who are controlling are usually pigs. They are generally socially awkward and rude, and take up more space than necessary. The consume a lot of energy and give back little. Just because someone can overpower me because they are larger (and not physically, I might add) does not mean they are due a larger degree of respect. Sometimes, quite the opposite.

In my life, I have been a pig. I have taken up more than my fair share of the available space, chewed with my mouth open, sat on people when I wanted to control the situation. I was not always a nice person. At some point, though, pig behavior stopped working for me on any level, and I was not liking it. So, I stopped doing what I was doing and now I do things very differently.

Before I got sober, I was convinced that I was going to kill someone. I would fly into violent rage episodes when I could not control situations, couldn’t make people do what I wanted them to do. The rage was so intense, I truly feared that I would lose my own self-control and do something I couldn’t reverse. There is such tremendous pain in feeling that you are out of control of your own life, and you want to do anything you can to ease it. In that hazy world of intractable discomfort, it seems that if you teach a few people a lesson you will be in control again. If you go away as well, that’s a value added benefit. That’s part of the delusion, but it’s not supposed to make sense.

Fortunately, my life took a different turn and I am not that same person. Everybody doesn’t get there, however. When the volcano is erupting in a person who has no tools to understand how to let it flow, and who believes they can simply control it, there’s a disaster soon to follow. There was a shooting in San Jose CA today that killed eight or nine people. Seems as though it was a former employee who returned, with a specific mission to inflict harm on certain people. I would imagine this is someone who still believed this was a way to control an out of control situation. The lava lake had been bubbling for a while in that shooter, and it finally spilled over. This was the only way they could see to relieve the pain of being out of control, of feeling as though everyone else had control over them.

The only person I can truly control is myself, and there are days I’m not terribly successful at that (today, I ate nearly an entire package of double-stuff Golden Oreos despite pledging to stop at four). It took me quite a while to realize that, however, so I try giving other folks a break for not being there yet.

The difference with me, though, is that I never really had systemic power. The best I could do was flatten some tires or break some wine glasses, the occasional pizza on the windshield of a car. I couldn’t manipulate public policy, or employment status. People that have such a degree of systemic power, however, can do very real damage, and they do.

I do not mean to imply that hurting someone on a non-physical, emotional level does not constitute harm in some fashion. I react more to hurt on that level than any other. But, I must distinguish between harm and hurt, between the systemic and the individual. On the individual level, it’s emotional and it’s messy and there are definitely things we shouldn’t do to each other in that arena.

On the systemic level, however, there is nothing fair in love or in war. It’s about power, and it doesn’t matter if you love me or hate me. Because it’s not just me, it’s hundreds, thousands, millions of people like me, and not like me. It’s the delusion of power given to the captains of our society by those of us who have forgotten that we’re the ones with real collective power.

I have worn myself out tonight. Not happy with the job search, not happy with the world as it is. But, nobody ever said I had to like the present circumstances. The only thing I am sure of is that something will change, and I will be in a different place in another second, another minute, another year. Getting a job would make a lot of things easier, but I’m really having a hard time settling for something I know is not to my liking. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Outgrew the t-shirt, got a larger size. No need to do that again.

What I’m saying is that I want a different experience this time. It won’t be for a really long time, and I don’t want to bring home that same t-shirt. I want a different trip, a different souvenir, a different relationship to myself in a job. That shouldn’t be all that hard, but right now it is. (Of course, I’ve only been seriously looking for a month or so, but I’m still not understanding why people aren’t banging on my door to hire me, sight unseen. Don’t they know who I am???) No, fool – they don’t know who you are, so – as my mama would say – get some gumption and get off your ass and something’s going to happen.

It’s good to remember those pep talks (i.e. screaming diatribes) from my mother during times like this. I still don’t know exactly what gumption is, though, but I kind of get the point. Just do it. Stop kvetching, and just do it.

Sometimes I’m thoroughly surprised, if not stupefied, by problematic circumstances that seem to be repetitive. Everyone complains about the state of affairs, the screen door that squeaks annoyingly and causes the dog to bark, the wasps nest above the front door that’s always disturbed by normal motion of the door and results in not infrequent attacks by irate flying insects. One might question why the obvious solutions are not implemented, why the squeaky door isn’t oiled, why the insect hive isn’t eliminated.

Why indeed do we allow repetitve problems to … repeat? Perhaps in some cases we don’t have a solution. We don’t know that a WD40 is sold even at the pharmacy, that a good bug spray will deter nesting wasps. That may explain how we manage to accept the normalization of generally unacceptable circumstances, but only in some cases.

I find myself wondering why it is that we accept the intolerable as simply normal, as “that’s just the way it is”. That might be acceptable in the case of a squeaky screen door, but not in the case of things like people of a certain racial identity meeting the same fate, over and over again, in similar circumstances. When traffic stops involving Black men result in their deaths, at the hands of law enforcement officers. When those deaths seem like overkill in so many cases, when those deaths seem to involve what amounts to torture. When it seems obvious there could have been another solution to the problem that brought the victim and the officer together. When the stakes are that high, this repeated scenario would seem to be unacceptable.

But accept, we do. From times of lynching, from times of genocide before printed news, we have accepted. We have not liked it, we have cried, we have grieved, and in more recent times we have protested. But we accepted. That’s just the way it is. Even when many of us declare the unacceptability of these repeated outcomes, we still accept. What else are we to do?

When the insurrection occurred at the nation’s capitol on January 6th, many of those involved said they were fed up, they couldn’t take what they believe to be misdirection of the country any longer. They wanted their country back. They felt justified to do whatever was necessary to achieve that goal, including disrupting the democratic process, including property damage, including violence, and for some of them, including murder. Fortunately, none of the insurrectionists were able to commit actual murder, but I have no doubt some of them were more than ready to do so.

Most, not all, but most of the insurrectionists were European descended Americans. White people. There are still elected officials claiming they were peaceful, smiling and laughing with police officers, no problem. Nothing to see here. But there was most definitely something to see there. There was a bona fide effort to destroy our democracy, to disrupt the very structure of our government. Events on January 6th were just one step short of being a coup d’etat, a takeover of the sitting government. Had they perhaps been a bit more skilled, a bit less passionate, they may have succeeded.

This is significant, not only in terms of the the near cessation of our democracy, but also in terms of the manner in which government responded to them. Despite somewhat tepid warnings from agencies that monitor subversive websites and media about the propensity for a big event on that day, there was no militarized response. There was no mass of law enforcement personnel from all quarters. The officers present were not armed with large-capacity assault weapons or armored vehicles. The swelling crowd handily overpowered the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police who provided assistance, and quickly breached the building. They put the Vice-President and members of Congress in fear for their lives. This was not, and still isn’t, a laughing matter.

Contrast this with protests after the death of George Floyd last year, all over the country. Contrast this with protests in Ferguson MO after the death of Mike Brown. There were armored vehicles, tanks, assault weapons, flash-bang grenades. There was a literal army of National Guard and law enforcement officers from surrounding areas, ready to provide assistance to the Ferguson Police as necessary. Protesters reported having laser sights dance across their chests while the police officers stood on top of tanks and transport vehicles.

Most of the protests over the death of unarmed Black men ended in violence. Even as late as this afternoon, many people continue to assert that such protests, summarily defined as “Black Lives Matter and antifa” riots, were violent because the initiators resorted to violence. Most people who yell the loudest about “antifa” have no idea what “antifa” is. Everybody knows what “Black Lives Matter” is, even if their understanding is slightly incorrect.

There is evidence that some of the violence in Ferguson and other protests was havily infiltrated by far-right militias, who sought to instigate violence with the intent of implicating protesters sympathetic to the BLM movement. In a protest in Kenosha, two people were killed, not by BLM protesters, or “antifa” sympathizers. They were victims of a young white man, Kyle Rittenhouse, whose mommy drove him there to answer the call to protect property in the area. Rittenhouse, ever loyal to the status quo of the police force and militia rhetoric, brought his assault rifle and began to “patrol”. He shot two people, who fought with him because he was carrying a gun and behaving in a confrontational manner. He ran, directly into the path of oncoming police officers, with his hands raised and his rifle clearly visible. They passed him by.

If Kyle Rittenhouse had been a Black man, he would more than likely be dead now. The absurdity of the police bypassing an obvious suspect that other bystanders were pointing out as a killer is unfathomable. It was reported that some of the officers threw him a bottle of water. He was apparently known to them as a volunteer, a wanna-be junior officer, a “good guy”. Pay no attention to the gun, pay no attention to the other people pointing him out as a killer. He’s one of us, he’s a good guy.

This disparity in response is what makes reasonable people a bit nuts. Philando Castille was killed, in his car, on a traffic stop. He explained to officers there was a gun present in the car, because he had a legal carry permit. Through some kind of bizarre failure to communicate, the officer (who of course had his gun drawn from the onset of the stop) shot the man. He meant to kill him. A man who was sitting in his car, in the driver’s seat, was not handling a weapon, had alerted the officer to the presence of the weapon. A man who had two small children in the backseat of his car, and his partner in the passenger seat. Apparently, he was not a good guy.

What the HELL are we supposed to do with that? This keeps happening over, and over, and over again. I repeat: what the HELL are we supposed to do with that? Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. Just comply. Teach your children to comply, and follow the law, and they will be ok. If people would have just followed the law and complied with the officers, they would be alive right now. It’s their fault. You can’t blame the officers. That’s what the Elizaebth City NC D.A. said, when he declared the killing of Andrew Brown, Jr. a justified shooting. Nothing to see here. He should have just complied, and not tried to flee in his car so that multiple officers had no choice but to empty their magazines on him. In his car. In the driver’s seat. If he had just complied, none of it would have happened.

I wonder if none of it would have happened to Jacob Blake, who fortunately live but is now a paraplegic. He was running away from the officer. He was unarmed, and running AWAY. And he was shot seven times. In the back. Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old girl. Shot four times from behind, because she was advancing with a knife on another teenager who had been threatening her. No threat to the officer in any way, and there was no attempt to de-escalate the situation. Andrew Brown, Jr. was driving away. Daunte’ Wright was unarmed, and trying to drive away. There may be others, but this is probably as much as we can all handle right now.

We’ve been talking about racial equity, in some of the circles I frequent. That’s just dandy. I am thinking I’d rather be talking about how to prevent murder. But how, everyone asks? How can we do that? We don’t know how, everyone screams. But, I think we DO know. Maybe we are just unwilling to do what is necessary.

I happened to find an article about how all of this racial polarization was predicted a while back, during Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency. There was a commission, that studied what was going on in the country around race, and they predicted all of this. More importantly, they offered solutions. Nobody really listened. President Johnson was angry that he was affirmed for the great job he was doing around racial affairs. So, the recommendations remained muted, and things continued as they had been, White supremacy largely remained unchallenged. Blacks made gains, but there was so much more to be done.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/25/us/kerner-commission-report-predicted-racial-divide/index.html

I think right now, we have to be honest about how far we’re willing to go, how much we’re willing to do. There are some things we’re going to have to acknowledge that we’re just not willing to do. We don’t seem to be willing to share power, we don’t seem to be willing to believe that a worldview of abundance is more productive than one of scarcity, that power and profit are not zero-sum equations. We have to be willing to admit that we don’t know how to do this thing, that we don’t have all the answers, that we maybe possibly just might be wrong. Do we have the courage? Maybe.

I am a critic. A critic of many things, most notably myself. I apply a lens of critique to just about everything, because…that’s just what I do. I contend that most people do that, sizing up everything from produce at the grocery store to people in the news. It’s how our brains are wired, set up to compartmentalize and organize stimuli into manageable bits of clarity. This is not a task for the faint of heart, but we have ways of dealing with that as well.

There’s a lot of discussion, debate, talk, whisper, high emotion surrounding the topic of race these days. If you are prone to consumption of mass quantities of information about this topic, be sure to bring lunch and probably dinner. There’s a lot out there, some credible, some not so much.

I went on a fishing expedition last night, on the interwebz, because I was curious about the recent news topic of critical race theory, and the vehement opposition from certain quarters. The opposition, some of which has devolved into legislation barring educators from even mentioning the topic, is so passionately activated, I wanted to understand the basis of their negative critique.

Since I only devoted a few hours to my preliminary investigation, I’ve only been exposed to a sliver of the viewpoints surrounding this issue. In short, my take on this is that opponents are feeling a bit threatened by critical race theory. Some of their resistance spreads from the usual resistance to anything that singles out Black/African American identity – we all work hard for what we have, so if Blacks want a bigger piece of the pie they should get off their lazy butts and stop using food stamps that we all pay for to buy porterhouse steaks and work like the rest of us.

The “welfare queens are living better than the average hardworking white guy” argument was born from racist politicians, like David Duke, who needed to stir up what is now referred to as TFG’s base. That strategy was derived from Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” playbook, which encouraged fabrication of mythology around race that would keep poor and lower income people at each other’s throats. I attribute that to Nixon, because that’s when it seemed to be formalized and make its way into public discourse, but tactics involved have been utilized for over 100 years.

The “Southern Strategy” is not relegated to the South, of course, and now it’s a national strategy for so-called conservatives to use whenever they feel the need. Conservatism in 2021 has become a mere buzz word to include opposition to just about anything in popular culture, and definitely anything high in public opinion. Extra points awarded for playing the race card using coded language, or by claiming affinity for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of unity but grieving that it has seemingly been abandoned in favor of violence and drugs. This is a somewhat confusing state of affairs, because there is no goal of unity, there is no goal of inclusivity. There is only a goal of financial gain, political power, and personal self aggrandizement. Noble goals, indeed.

So, one of the first things I found in my exploration of critical race theory is that critical race theory is but one of many critical theories concerning social constructs. There is race theory, women’s theory, queer theory, class theory, and others. These are all detailed analysis of particular social issues, and critique of how those circumstances arose. In offering a critique, critical theory necessarily offers solution. The emphasis is on the criticism, the declaration that something is not correct. That would certainly be the case for race.

At least one discussion that I encountered concerning critical theory in particular stated that one of the ends of such an exercise is revolution, revolutionary change. In such a revolution, there must be the goal of liberation. This particular discussion said they felt the sexual revolution was a product of critical theory of women’s rights, and it was a failure because all it did was to inject women into the existing framework of contributing to the economy. It did not simply liberate women from having no access to agency over their own bodies, it gave them access to a different form of second-class citizenship. I found that really interesting, but that’s another story I’ll have to think about in more detail later.

So, in the case of critical race theory, there would need to be the goal of revolution, when the people directly impacted rise up to demand change of status quo, to demand liberation from the existing oppressions. Well, that’s what has been happening for many, many years but the status quo has been maintained on many levels. Perhaps this is a revolution in slow motion, which is how I’ve been viewing recent events surrounding race for the past century or so. The revolution is occurring, but it’s infinitesimally slow progress. Slow, as in eventually the glaciers will all be melted. Slow as in eventually the continents will all be a single land mass again.

Regardless, it seemed to be the first hint of why there is so much opposition to critical race theory is the potential for liberation. Liberation, in the case of race in this country, would upend the social caste and social order. It would be unimaginable to have true equity on the basis of race, because some dominant culture structures would be toppled, or at least reduced, and people do not enjoy feeling as though something they possess will be taken away, or lessened.

The other thing about critical race theory is the opposition from organized Christian religion. Significant opposition from the Southern Baptist Convention has been raised, and has caused a tremendous amount of internal stress in that group. The Convention’s opposition does not validate the existing social order, cleverly enough, but does attempt to bring focus on social ills back to the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ. That argument would seem to engage members of that Convention regardless of race, and unite members on the shared acceptance that only Jesus can solve the problem of race.

Unfortunately for the Southern Baptist Convention, the elders who made the decision about their opposition to critical race theory is a small group of white men, admittedly unaffected directly by issues of race. Members of the Convention who identify as Black/African-American were incensed that no attempts was made to gain their input, or understand their perspective on the matter. So, there’s a bit of trouble my friends. Right here in River City. That’s Trouble that starts with T and rhymes with P. But, I digress.

Anyway, the religious opposition mixed with the more academic opposition to critical race theory is out of control at this point. If said theory is such a sham, it seems to be taking quite a lot of firepower to vanquish it – state legislatures are near hysteria in getting bills passed to prevent this from being taught in their schools. Oddly, though, public sentiment has coalesced around things like “it will make our children feel bad” or “those are not the true facts” and “this is more cancel culture”. One dolt of a legislator blasted out with “We built this country from nothing. There was nothing here when we got here. Nothing.”. Suffice it to say that Native Americans had some choice words for him.

While I was drilling down on critical race theory, it occurred to me that I might want to get more information on critical theory in general. It was rather enlightening, as I went down a couple of rabbit holes that brought up things like objective vs. subjective reason. Objective reason weighed heavily in the outlook of the Founding Fathers. They contradicted themselves a bit when they attempted to orient the Constitution toward “common good” rather than “personal interest”, because of course a large part of their systemic structure entirely served personal interest, but perhaps contradiction is inherent in construction of social contracts. The intersection of my rights with your rights is always a pot hole.

So, in today’s morass, it would seem that we’ve swung the pendulum away from objective reason and more toward personal interest. Away from the common good and more toward our personal objections or support for any given issue. We are not ruled by the court of public opinion, because in so many cases decisions are made by a non-majority. It’s difficult to have a representative democracy that ignores public opinion when exercising its power. Democracy is very much dependent on the notion of objective reason, but that’s not how we’re practicing it.

The last thing (actually it was one of the first things, but I am backward a lot of the time) I found really interesting about why opposition to critical race theory is so passionate concerns its origin. Critical theory is attributed more or less to Karl Marx, and demonstrates a somewhat Marxist world view that objective reason and science outweighed mythology, religion, and personal interest. Value was derived from reason, not from sentiment or loyalty to myth. This would obviously not fall in line with American religious tradition, most of which is derived from Christian worldview.

The notion of worldview is important, I believe, because it informs our goals. My worldview includes the existence of injustice, and social caste, and so my goals are more about justice and fairness and equity than about elevation of my social class or my financial position. OK, money would be good, but that’s another story entirely. My worldview, however, includes that contradiction, and I accept that we humans are rife with contradiction. I suppose I just have to acknowledge them, and do what I can to reconcile them when I can.

This preliminary investigation of critical theory, and critical race theory, is not over. Not by a longshot. There is an incredible amount of information out there, and I have only just begun to scratch the surface. I want to find out more so that when asked to discuss my position on it, I can sound like somebody with at least half of a working brain. I don’t much care about having disagreements about opinion, but I despise talking to people who don’t know why they hold a certain opinion. That’s a discussion that is a waste of my time.

And I don’t like to waste my time. Relatively speaking, I have little of it left, so it’s got to be doing something that matters in some fashion.

For some reason, I am remembering the how and why of being such a tremendous failure at relationships. I once thought it was only relations of the “small r” kind, non-romantic, non-sexual. But I am thinking it’s just about all of them – the “small r” and the “capital R” types. I am sometimes a very good friend, i have never been a very good “capital R” partner. And, more importantly, I have never chosen a good “capital R” partner.

The memories I’m having this morning aren’t just about my behavior in relationships, they are more concerned with my earliest views of the as-built rendering of my inner workings. It’s not good. It’s PTSD in small ways…I know so many people have gone through far worse trauma than I have, and that’s a point of conflict for me in dealing with it. I’m trying to own it as my own, and not in comparison to other folks’ trauma, but I am still battling with not feeling as though I have a right to be this effed up without good reason. Bleh.

The specific memory I was having this morning, from out of nowhere, was of many long months of my parents battling over superficial things which covered bigger things. My father was having an affair – he knew it, the other woman knew it, my mother knew it, and of course I knew. Just because I was there, not because anyone specifically sat me down and told me about it. I wasn’t even sure what an “affair” was, but I knew it was not a good thing.

My mother was so magnanimously enraged it was difficult to deal with her on any level. She was a gem at work, in her kind teacher incarnation, but a veritable terror at home, in her cruel, unkind parent incarnation. I never quite knew what I was going to find when I got home, but figured it wouldn’t be good and expected to have to fight.

While all of this tension about my father and “the other woman”, tension was so thick a crust you couldn’t puncture it with a sabre. This was all happening around the time I refer to as “when the world fell apart”, coinciding roughly with death of my grandmother, death of my grandfather, me leaving the familiar school of childhood and going to mostly-white private school, and me entering the hallowed ground of official adolescence. My body was doing really bizarre things, and I didn’t quite know what in the world to do about that, but that’s another story. Entirely.

While my sainted mother was battling the spectre of “the other woman”, my father was dodging and weaving like a ninja, saying nothing, coming and going without a sound. It was driving my mother farther across the edge of sanity, because she knew what was going on and couldn’t stop it or even have it acknowledged. I understand all of that, even have compassion for it. What I don’t enjoy remembering, however, is how I was dragged into this very adult drama.

Towards the end of the marriage, dear mom went straight up ghetto. She had always been prone to psychological warfare with my father, taunting him with disparaging comments, belittling him, saying cruel things about his family members. He took all of that. When there was bona fide evidence of him with this other woman, he still took it. He said little or nothing, which drove my mother even more insane. I suppose it was more frustrating to have no partner in the battle, so dear old mom upped the ante.

As grateful as I am that no physical violence took place between my parents, I still learned how to do the equally damaging battle of the egos, using weapons like insult and “i am going to destroy something valuable to you”. Those were my mother’s weapons of choice, and I learned at the feet of the Master. She was a teacher, after all, so she taught me very well.

I remembered this morning about one of her favored attacks on my father, which was to cut up his suits. He was a teacher as well, and in those days, you wore a jacket, shirt and tie in the classroom. So, she knew very well that she was making it hard for him to go to work without his suit jackets and shirts, not to mention the expense of replacing those items. When they’d had notable screaming matches, he’d disappear for a few hours either to his second job or who knows where, and she’d go into his closet with pinking shears and cut up his clothes. She didn’t shred them, just cut the sleeves and the lapels so they couldn’t be worn. I would be standing right there, watching. Fortunately, she never handed me the scissors, so I can honestly say I never participated in the slasher routine, but I was part of it nonetheless.

After she’d wreaked havoc on his wardrobe several times, he brought his brother in at one point to witness the carnage. I believe they took pictures, for evidence of something we came to realize was a petition for divorce. My mother then felt threatened by the evidence, so she decided to dump it. Literally. She put all of the damaged clothing in trash bags, and she – and I – drove to some deserted place along a road notorious for illegal dumping, and threw the bags into the ditch. I honestly cannot remember if I physically tossed any of the bags, but it is very likely that I did. Then, back home we’d go. This happened on more than one occasion.

I am trying to remember how I felt during, or after, one of those episodes. I am coming up blank, so it must have been a tremendous conflict for me. I don’t remember saying much, and the memory is like a disjointed, choppy video vignette in black and white. I just remember that it happened, and looking back on it, find it nasty. Nasty to say the least, and I mean the least. When I say this was straight up ghetto, I mean exactly that. I have read untold numbers of stories about women in the housing projects, trailer parks, etc. doing this sort of thing, or throwing bleach on a philanderer’s clothes, or setting them on fire. One of my cousins went the pyromaniac route, and that guy married her not long afterward. Go figure.

This kind of behavior, and this display of volcanic rage and emotionalism, is what I learned. I cannot un-see that crap, but I haven’t remembered it in a very long time. I’m not entirely sure why I am remembering it now, either, but wonder how much of it can be unlearned. I have not destroyed anyone’s clothing or anything like that in a relationship, but I have felt that nuclear reaction of rage fueled by betrayal. I am enormously grateful that my meltdowns never went farther than insult and psychological torture, but it frightens me that it’s in there at all.

These days, when left to my own devices (and when taking my anti-depressants on schedule) my reactions to betrayal lean toward internalized hatred and externalized hostility. I haven’t manifested any of that physically – no hitting, no destruction of property. This is more like my father’s reaction, it seems – say nothing, keep your distance. In short, hide until you can escape, or until the threat goes away.

I suppose I diverge from my father’s passive-aggression because I don’t move toward satisfying my desire. He had “the other woman” (who I long-ago named “The Chihuahua” because she is a small, short brown thing with large eyes and a sassy demeanor that is prone to bark loudly for no apparent reason) to urge him on and give him respite. I don’t have that. As with most emotionally significant moments in my life, I have only myself to get through it.

My father was moving toward something. My mother was desperately trying to hold on to something that was moving away. In many ways, my rage on rejection is more like hers, but how I handle it is more like my father. I can be passive aggressive to a fault, and I can not speak to an offending party for years. I did not speak to my own father for more than 10 years after this divorce drama was over, not because he divorced my mother, but because I felt he had rejected ME. He didn’t even bother to tell me he was married to “the other woman”, who had personally attacked me during the course of the adult drama.

Being drug into adult business as a child is confusing, and you don’t know where your loyalty should be. You don’t understand the significance or consequence of what you are being asked to do, and you don’t have the skills to establish a healthy boundary for yourself. Nobody talks to kids about healthy boundaries, especially in the 70s where all this was happening. Nobody gives you any tips on what to do when your mother is cutting up your father’s clothes with shears and you’re going with her to dump the evidence. There’s not a Q&A for that, even today.

So, to add insult to injury for me, I couldn’t tell anyone about what was happening in my house. I couldn’t tell anyone that kindly school marm you know and love is a monster who runs with scissors and calls my father the dirtiest of names. I couldn’t tell anyone that I was becoming an angry and withdrawn student in school because I was being called some of the same nasty names at home, I was being summoned to do things I didn’t want to do, shouldn’t be involved in. I couldn’t tell anyone that I was being emotionally and spiritually abused by someone they believed was an icon of virtue and kindness. And there was no grandmother, or relative, in whom I was able to confide.

The cognitive disconnect for me was immense. I had already begun to feel that I was living two lives, one at school where everything was fine (it wasn’t) and my family was just like all the others (it wasn’t). But, I was also starting to understand that I was not like the other girls in my school, because I could not have cared less about stupid boys and somebody’s brother who was cute than the man in the moon. I couldn’t talk to anyone about that, either. I couldn’t explain how I felt entirely disconnected from the entire world at that point, from my parents, from my religion, from people everywhere. I felt alone in the world, and like a failure because it didn’t seem that everybody else felt that way. There was definitely something very wrong with me, inherently wrong, so no need to try.

But, try I did. I always tried, even when I had no chance of success. I went to the stupid Junior Prom with a cousin I didn’t even know. My classmates thought he was cute. I don’t think we said two words to each other the entire night, but I was there in some ridiculous formal attire and ribbons in my salon-styled hair, just like all the other girls.

But I knew, and I figured everybody knew, I wasn’t just like all the other girls. I wanted to be there, because to not be there meant I was a loser and couldn’t find anyone to go with, but I really didn’t want to be there because being there meant I was bought into a movie set, a fairy tale, a lie that I didn’t want any part of. And when the evening was over, I was going back to that same place of more disconnect that showed the world everything was fine, when I knew that it wasn’t fine at all.

My Senior Prom was much the same as the Junior Prom. I went with a guy from my parish church, I think? It doesn’t matter…I went with some guy that felt like settling, that felt like a lie. We did the whole false celebratory thing, with a corsage for me and some lapel adornment for him, and a cab ride to a fancy restaurant and then to the Prom. It was see-and-be-seen exercises. So I was seen. I don’t remember much of it, except that I was there, and I was able to put a check mark into the box that said “Attended Senior Prom”. Yay me.

Looking back on those times, it amazes me how much turmoil and literal cataclysm was going on in my life, in that house, and nobody else knew anything about it. By the time of my Senior Prom, my father had left the house and my parents were legally separated. I had a grudging pseudo-relationship with my father, sans other woman, but with heavy doses of mainly the maternal unit playing me against the paternal unit. More of me injected into an adult drama in which I had no place. I was 17 when I graduated from high school, but already had the blue print for being a dysfunctional adult.

I didn’t flag these incidents with my parents as being worthy of note, or even bad things, until long after I was out of college, into sobriety, and on my second or third therapist. I knew something was wrong, but I had downplayed the drama and the bad behavior of my parents as something everyone went through in some form. I blamed myself for being involved in it. I blamed myself for not being a good enough kid to have gotten around it. I figure that I was so incorrect I could not expect anything more. And so I didn’t.

It hasn’t been all that long ago that I learned my lack of relationship with my father wan’t something I should have solved, it was something he should have solved. It was something my mother should have made it possible to solve. I was a child, they were adults. It wasn’t my gig, it was theirs, and they didn’t show up. I am still taking that in, and still deeply regret having given my father the impression that I shared my mother’s disdain and lack of respect for him. I tried to say that to him as he was dying, and I hope that was heard.

I still regret that my father didn’t fight for me, didn’t fight for a relationship with me, no matter how badly I behaved. I was A CHILD. I deserved parents, not playmates, and bad playmates at that. i can forgive them, but I have to forgive myself for not being the better parent. That wasn’t my job, and it’s taken me a very long time to acknowledge that. I don’t believe it every day, but it’s better than it used to be.

When I was eight years old, I declared to everyone present that I was never having children. I had been watching “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and some woman was having a baby, and screaming in agony during the process. Of course, this was a television show, but I associated childhood with pain, and childbirth with agony, so none of that for me. The adults laughed it off as some cute and precocious utterance, but I knew it was true for me. My mother in particular said I’d change my mind. She’s still waiting for that to happen. I’m not.

I can’t forget, or ignore, all of that psycho-drama that helped imprint my psyche for having relationships, for playing nice, for being unhappy as a way of life. I’d like to believe that I’m working on it, that I’m improving on it, and in many ways I believe that’s true. I also believe that I will leave this life with a large part of those feelings intact. Hopefully, I will no longer act on them in negative ways, as I sadly admit that I have done in the past.

Some of my more new-agey esoterically oriented friends have told me in the past that we choose our parents long before we are born into human form. OK, that’s just dandy. I can see that. But my big question is…what the FUCK was I thinking when I made those choices? What am I supposed to get out of this, other than some pain that I can say I’ve not let flatten me, the knowledge that people can look entirely normal but be batshit crazy anyway? I understand things are not always as they seem, that you never know what the hell is going on in someone’s life when they’re out of your sight. I understand there is just a lot I don’t know, way more than I do know, and that’s just the way it is.

Today, I am studiously ignoring my congregations, which is doing some bureaucratic exercise in governance. I did what I was asked to do – gave them an annual report on my social justice committee’s activities. So, I’m done. I don’t really give a two shits or a damn what they do right now because they are part of the large number of people in the country who are just desperate to get back to “normal”, which means the status quo of pre-pandemic. I’m not interested in that, because it was never “normal”. Not interested in rebuilding anything, because we’re just rebuilding damaged systems and structures. Tear ’em all down, build new from the ground up. That’s what I’m looking for.

Earlier, I responded on FaceBook to someone who’d posted something about trauma that I found interesting:

I found that interesting because it summed up how my life has been informed by trauma, no matter how much I downplay it, no matter how much I minimalize it. It was traumatic. It has an effect on how I roll. That’s just how it goes, and trying to make it seem like less than what it is doesn’t help me. I’m sure there are many who have worse trauma, but comparison gets me nowhere. This was trauma. There are many traumas more or less damaging, but this one is mine. And that’s all that matters.

My writing prompt sent me toward family gatherings. I’m not quite sure where I’m supposed to go with that. It was really just the three of us for the most part, more often than not one of us was missing, leaving only two.

My father was missing a good bit, due to his work schedule. When I was little, I wished my mother was missing some of the time. I think I was missing all of the time, because what showed up in my child’s body was a three-dimensional image of other folks’ expectations and conditions.

When I recount that, I feel as though I am disloyal to what I know was love from my grandmother, my aunt, and the best my parents could offer. What I am feeling, though, is that I wasn’t ever who I was, only who they all believed I should be. In many ways, that’s all I was concerned with, the “should be” part of my existence. I should be obedient, I should be good, I should be quiet.

Maybe that’s not fair to them, I don’t know. But the seemingly unending discussions about my weight, and my “baby fat”, and my “sassiness” cause me to wonder about their expectations. I don’t remember them insisting on being fair, and kind but remember vividly the lectures about not talking back, not playing with boys so much, not eating so much. I suppose my insecurity came from somewhere, and I’d put money on that messaging as the source.

I had my own notions, even as a little kid, about what was fun and what felt good and what felt right. All kids do, I suppose. I don’t remember being especially mean, even then, but I was more or less a leader, I took charge of my play group most of the time. Let’s go here. Let’s go over there. No, that’s stupid, let’s do THIS. I don’t quite know where that went, that uncompromising self-confidence that requires no second thought, no rationalization, no explanation. Thought –> speech –> action.

I remember one day, a bunch of us decided to go exploring in a nearby cemetery. It wasn’t my idea, but it was fine with me. We had quite a lot of energy about doing that, and we couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8, if that. So, we chugged down the street, past the high school, and came to our intended destination. It was an old graveyard, with crumbling masonry vaults and tomb stones. To my childish perception, molded by television shows and scary movies, it was near ancient, and there were unseen figures watching as we made our way through the place.

I remember thinking it was dark, but in fact our visit most definitely in daylight hours because we weren’t allowed to be out after dark. But, the mind of a child blotted out the light, and created its own landscape. It was a dark and desolate night there were probably bats, and a cold wind….

All I remember is walking down the rows of vaults, and graves, looking at the dates on the tombstones. Many of them were in very poor condition, but we could make out the dates on some…Died 1909. Died 1899. Died 1937. So on we went, just looking, marveling at how anything could be that old. Not quite associating the names and dates with real people, or with death.

Suddenly, we came upon a dilapidated vault, with much of its structure in crumbles. The decay had left it open, nearly inviting. We kids didn’t need an invitation, so we peered inside. I pushed forward just a bit to get a better view, and my eyes locked on a coffin that had seen better days. It was fascinating, in that chilling and scary way they talk about in the vampire movies, where you’re too scared to look the scene full on, and too scared to look away. I was transfixed, and rooted to the spot.

There, in the ruined vault, amidst the remnants of a coffin, were bones. I am pretty sure they were human bones, but I was eight, so what did I know? In my eight-year old mind at that moment, though, they were human bones. Very still, just laying there amidst dust and debris of a tomb that had failed.

I guess we all saw that at the same time, because the next thing I remember was the whole bunch of us running as fast as we could out of that cemetery, back down the street, intent on getting as far away from those bones as we could, as fast as we could. We got to somebody’s house, somebody’s yard, and came to a breathless stop. Nobody spoke. Intent on catching our breath, we each had our own separate thoughts about where we’d been and what we’d seen. After a while, it seemed to be way past time for going home, even though we didn’t know what time it was. And so we did.

So, another day of exploration complete, I did what one does in the afternoon or early evening, and soon it was time for dinner. We were at my grandmother’s house, and my father was in town for the weekend. We sat down to eat, and I don’t remember too much about that in particular, but it seemed like an ordinary affair.

After dinner, dishes washed, conversation around the table went on for a while. I amused myself with a book or a puzzle or something, and then it was time for bed. My parents were having an argument about who slept where…my mother decided that my father should get the bed, since he was tired from his drive there, and she would sleep on the sofa bed in the den. Somehow, they decided I should also sleep in the bed. Which meant that I would sleep with my father. Whatever.

By the time we all went to bed, my grandmother and great aunt in other rooms, my mother in the den, I was sleepy. But when the lights went out, and the room was dark, I was immediately and inexplicably petrified. All I could see was those bones in that coffin at the cemetery, and figure whoever that had been was coming to get me. For what, I don’t know, but they were coming. To do what, I don’t know, but they were coming. I got as close to my father’s back as I could get, holding on the shirt he was wearing, trying to fit my knees into the backs of his. He squirmed. He changed position, but still I clung to him. In a few minutes, he turned on the light, and got up from the bed. He said not a word.

I was left shivering and trembling in the bed alone, still looking for those disembodied bones to come striding through the door, and then my mother came in. She didn’t say anything, just turned off the light and got into bed. I was a little confused about what happened to my father, but I was too scared to talk. I repeated the same routine as I had with him, though, clinging to her, trembling, holding on, not saying a word but my terror spoke for itself.

Somehow, I slept that night, and when I woke up the next morning, I was really happy that I wasn’t dead, hauled off to hell by some angry bunch of reconstituted bones. The morning routine went on as usual, breakfast was made, coffee was drunk. I was still feeling very uneasy, but not quite so bad as the night before. I felt queasy, but not overwhelmingly so.

My grandmother came in, and had noticed my father sleeping in the den the night before, and wondered aloud why my parents had changed their carefully negotiated plan from the night before. My mother laughingly explained my night terrors, and that my father had gotten up because he just didn’t feel comfortable sleeping all cuddled up like that with a little girl, so he decided to give up the prize of the bed and revert to the sofa-bed in the den. My grandmother chuckled, poking me on the shoulder, and they both laughed, and that was that.

It’s a strange memory to have at this point. I’ve had it for a really long time, with the main emphasis being on the part where my father leaves me alone in the bed. I’m not sure quite what to make of that. On the one hand, I’m glad he was uncomfortable with sharing a bed with a little girl, but on the other hand, I was his daughter and there was such a huge distance between us.

Maybe the more important part of that memory, for me at least, is the abandonment. I understand he was motivated by a noble impulse, but this was seemingly prophetic of a later time, when he did really abandon me. He left the house we all shared, left his marriage, and left me. I can’t say that he should have remained in the marriage, because it was definitely not a good place to be, but…he saved himself, and left me. When he got out of bed that night, he didn’t take me with him to trade places with my mother, he took only himself, made things more comfortable for himself and not me. I suppose that’s what I do hold him accountable for – he left me there to deal with her, every time. Left me there.

So much for family gatherings. They weren’t all that complex, but it’s interesting that’s the one that came to mind first when I considered the writing prompt. Perhaps this is really the root of the absolutely irrational response I have when I feel that I have been abandoned, left in favor of something more pleasant or desirable. I literally come out of my body when that happens. Totally out of it. Maybe that’s where the dissociation started as well. Origin, source, beginning…I’d like to get on with the continuing, the living. I feel like I’m done figuring out where I came from.

“If I listened long enough to you, I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true…knowing that you lied…straight-faced while I cried…still I look to find a reason to believe.”

Those lyrics always spoke to me, spoke to me about betrayal, about the reality of people knowing they lied, and looked at me ‘straight-faced, while I cried’. Still…I looked to find a reason to believe.

This explains so much of what is going on in the country right now, how more than a few people continue to deny the violence of the January 6th events at the U.S. Capitol, how so many continue to believe TFG (The Former Guy) was cheated out of re-election, that current guy (a.k.a. The President) is illegitimate. That Black Lives Matter = antifa = ruination of the country. Still looking to find a reason to believe.

I have been dismayed, disheartened, but strangely resigned to hearing more than one elected official claim the insurrection was merely a peaceful protest, that video and eye-witness accounts of violence are false. They lie. Straight-faced while police officers were screaming in agony while crowds beat them, tased them, hurled invectives toward them. They lied, and still many look to find a reason to believe.

Because I cannot understand this propensity to deny truth, when it has been unequivocally proven, when there is valid evidence proving otherwise, I am going back in my own history for times I looked to find a reason to believe. When I could see the evidence, but still wanted to believe that someone would not be so cruel, would not knowingly lie while seeing the harm done. When I believed that if I just listened long enough, I would find a reason to believe.

For me, this has translated to some of the darkest times in my life, when the feeling of betrayal dominated my every thought and brought me closer than anything to bringing it all to an end. The pain was tremendous, brought me to my knees, powerless to make it stop, even more powerless to change the source of the displeasure. Powerless. Not a pleasant realization. How can I not have any power? I have a driver’s license and a check book, credit cards, the power to participate in society, no way can I be powerless.

But indeed I was powerless, because the reality of the human condition is that I cannot control any other person. I may be able to influence them, convince them to use their power in a way that agrees with me, that coincides with my best interest, but in reality I cannot “make” them do anything. They decide.

Until I realized that, and conversely that nobody can “make” me do anything, I felt like a victim. I felt that life was a joke, and I was the butt of it. There was a parody of the inspirational “Desiderata” years ago called “Deteriorata”. It said:

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

This I believed. The Universe was laughing behind my back, and everyone else knew but me. Everyone.

Believing that everyone was in on the joke caused me to be angry at everyone and everything, caused me to fight rules and regulations and status quo in any and all cases. Just because I could. The rage and the fight allowed me to feel alive, feel that I had some power, no matter how futile the battle. The feeling of being alive, rather than maddeningly numb, was everything. It was the desperation of a dying woman, struggling to keep her nose above the rising waves.

So, I believe that i understand some of what these insurrectionists, and the political base that continues to support TRG (by any means necessary). I’m sure there are folks in that mix who are merely cruel and convinced of their own superiority, but I would contend they are in the minority. The larger demographic is in pain, feeling powerless, feeling like the Universe is laughing behind their back.

A while back, I started to realize that everyone is raised with certain expectations of how life is going to turn out. Work hard, don’t get into any trouble, do the right thing, drink your milk to make strong bones. If you do all that, you’ll grow up strong and get a job and get married, have your own home and be a respected member of society. You’ll have your own children and they will have grandparents and life will be good. Just work hard. Don’t get into trouble. You’ll be rewarded.

For so many people that’s not what happens. Some of us have always known that. But for some others of us, that’s what has been happening for quite a long time, for many generations. Why would you not expect that to happen for you? When you see that it’s not happening, after you’ve followed the rules and doing what they told you to do, how could you not be at least slightly irritable? How could you not feel that something has been unfairly taken from you?

The issue gets more complicated when everyone has to admit the reason some are feeling they are being robbed of their just due is systemic. The systems that gave you reason to believe these were the rules, that if you complied you’d be rewarded. The systems you’ve believed in all your life, that you believed were the guard rails of civil society and our nation. The systems that provide those rewards you were promised. Now you want to tell us those are racist, and false, and damaging to some other people, and … and…we played by the rules??? WTF?

So, I get the sheer emotionalism of all this. That’s not supposed to make sense. Emotions are not rational, and no amount of empirical data is going to suddenly deflate those feelings of betrayal. No amount of logic is going to remove the reason to believe. For every day that circumstances prove things are not reverting to “normal”, to the expectation that was set long ago, there is more desperation. There is more flailing, more struggling, more kicking and screaming. But still, the water is rising.

If you’re drowning, and someone comes along with a rope and a life preserver, you grasp at them frantically, with all the strength you have left. The “rescuer” is presenting to you a chance for survival, and that’s all you can think about. Survival. If they are the only possibility of survival that you can see, you’ll comply with their orders. If they tell you they are you only hope, and you see nothing on the contrary, you’ll believe them. If they tell you they understand your plight, and your terror, you’ll believe them. If they tell you anyone else who comes along is not going to help you, you’ll believe them.

When you are safely on the shore, or at least able to propel yourself there, you are grateful, relieved, angry at the circumstances that nearly caused you to drown. And sometimes…you feel indebted to your rescuer. You never want to feel so desperate and powerless again. You will do whatever the rescuer tells you in the future, because you trust them implicitly – they saved you from that horrid feeling of hopelessness. You will follow them anywhere.

This is what binds people to TFG, I believe. They do not ever want to feel powerless, and hopeless, like everything they were taught to expect in their lives is a lie. If he’s the only one who understands that, well, they will put all their eggs in his basket without realizing there’s a false bottom there. Many of the eggs drop down to a chute that leads to his private stash. What remains visible is for “the common good” but look out, because unless you produce more eggs, the common good will be underfunded. So, pick up the pace, you barnyard foul.

However one chooses to look at racial inequity, I contextualize it with the proven notion of the economy moving primarily by brokerage of labor. Somewhere, somebody is physically toiling to produce something that someone else can sell, or trade, and that’s what constitutes movement. That’s why there was a Civil War, not over the morality or ethics of slavery, not over the cruelty of it, but over the economic and industrial complex of relegating humans to property status, for purposes of producing domestic product. The notion that certain people have still not been elevated to the status of full human is what fuels the police complex, which is the same old slave patrol of yesteryear, which continues to serve the purpose of cheap or free labor to produce a product that someone else can sell for a financial profit.

Given all that, I remain somewhat mystified by the level of heartlessness, cruelty, depravity still present in efforts to ensure compliance with this social paradigm. Why is it necessary to drag a man across paved roadway by his feet, when he is already restrained? Why is it necessary to shock a restrained man with a taser, repeatedly, other than to assert base dominance? Why is it necessary to kneel on a restrained man’s neck other than to assert control? None of those responses is necessary for the enforcement of any law, or for protection of any person or property.

So, why the meanness? Why the depravity? Back to feeling that you’ve had something precious stolen from you, something you were told all your life was yours. Something you were led to believe was promised, and you need only follow certain rules to receive it. But now, that is no longer true, and you are left with only your anger, and rage, to cope with the confusion of this. If you have a level of responsibility and authority in the system, you just might find yourself blaming some folks for all of this. It has to be someone’s fault. And someone needs to pay for your discomfort.

The notion of placing blame seems to be a human instinct. If something negative befalls you, and you don’t believe you caused it, it has to be someone else’s fault. Look at that person over there, doing the same thing you just got nailed for, and they are walking away without consequences. It’s THEIR fault. They have caused all of this, and they should pay. Next person you see that looks like them is going to get it. And frequently, that is exactly the case.

I don’t know how, or if, we can overcome that instinctual need to shift blame, to explain the unexplainable. This is where mythology comes from, attempts to explain what we cannot understand. We couldn’t quite understand the seasons, so a myth was conceived that explained winter and summer as the result of a dark underworld figure kidnapping a beautiful maiden, whose mother happened to be a goddess. When all was said and done, the maiden was returned to the land above the ground, but only partially, so while she remained a captive of the underworld, the sun doesn’t shine. When she is above ground, the desolation of winter gives way to spring flowers and blooms. Simple. All explained now.

Perhaps racism has created a mythology about non-white people that is exactly that simple. Black people are demons, animals, uncivilized. They are super predators, and crack heads, and can’t be trusted with anything. Indigenous people are demons, animals, uncivilized. They are drug addicts, alcoholics, and don’t want to work because they are lazy. Asian people are demons, animals, uncivilized. They eat live animals and do some unChristian kind of magic on people with plants and potions. Only white people are civilized and close in temperament and attributes to the Creator, so…white people good, colored people bad. Simple.

It just seems like we have, collectively, become so dumbed down that simple mythological lore such as this is effective. In many cases, it is effective, and white nationalists in particular decry any effort to impart true stories of the colonization and settlement of this nation. They refuse to admit that only by means of genocide did Europeans take permanent root in the New World, and refuse to admit – as George Carlin spoke in “Dogma” in his role as the Archbishop when questioned about historical Catholic conquests and conflicts, – “Alright, mistakes was made.” Indeed. Mistakes was made.

Mistakes is still being made. Even more to the point, in these times of instant video documentation, nearly instantaneous news relay, we still deny the actual evidence of those mistakes. We can look our neighbors in the eye, straight-faced while they cry, and still…look to find a reason to believe. Still. Just as when Emmett Till was viewed in his casket, brutally beaten to an unrecognizable pulp, there were still people who denied. Denied that good Christian men could have, would have, done that. Denied that whistling at a white woman could be justification for such a heinous attack. Denied that an all-white jury could possibly have acquitted guilty perpetrators.

Denial is a powerful thing. The old joke is “Denial is not a river in Egypt.” It may not be a body of water, but it’s an incredible excuse for not doing the right thing. It’s now part of the bedrock of our nation, of our society, and allegedly our civilization. Do civilized people allow a 14-year old boy to be beaten to death, for any reason? Do civilized people cheer for public hangings of people who have done nothing wrong? Do civilized people turn their heads when someone is being mistreated, manhandled, raped, killed? We’ve seen our civilized fellow citizens do this and more. We’ve also seen them join in on the abuse, to amplify the suffering, to prolong the death.

That’s not civilized behavior, at least not in my book. That’s depravity, plain and simple. I do not honor nor respect that. Neither should anyone else. There’s no justification or rationalization for cruelty. None whatsoever. There are, unfortunately, punishments and consequences, but even these are not for the enjoyment of the enforcement authority. Even in the case of a penal system execution (which I have MANY problems with, mainly because it’s inequitably applied), the punishment is not intended to cause pain or be “cruel or unusual”. We have codified the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment from our national contract, but it is alive and well under the radar of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The problem with rendering oneself as equivalent to the Supreme Divinity is this – you are responsible. If you are God, you may get more than your fair share of honor, glory, and praise but you will also get more than your fair share of blame for war, pestilence, poverty, suffering. A divinity can probably handle that, but a human cannot. A divinity has greater foresight and infinite resources, We do not. Humans cannot plan interrelationships or consequences any better than we can plan the hurricane season. It’s not all up to us, no matter how great and might we perceive of ourselves to be.

From everything I’ve seen in my years on this Earth, left to our own devices we can screw up a wet dream. Because we can’t see very far down the road, we’ll take the first turn promising even unknown respite. Our need to escape is immediate, because we don’t handle our discomfort very well. Sometimes, the first turn proves effective, at least for a while, but more often it does not. We can’t seem to understand that life is not a straight line, and turns are more likely curves and more curves and rounded arcs of a circle that connect to other circles. We’re not always going to know what’s around every change of course.

The not knowing. That’s our work. Continuing the journey without being sure where exactly we may wind up. Tossing the best laid plans up in the air when nothing seems to be working, and going it alone, on faith. Knowing that mistakes will not be the end of the world, but intentional actions for the wrong reasons will. Knowing that we can’t know some things, and that not knowing is not a death sentence. Bringing ourselves to be human, without pretense and without delusion about what that means. Coming to the table of communion with others, staying there even when you’re still hungry, and blaming no one for your rumbling stomach.

Blame is highly overrated, and it changes nothing. If I am still in need, that doesn’t change because I find out where to place blame for not having what I need. It may cause me to feel better, temporarily, but I’m still in need. I’m still hungry. I’m still thirsty. And I still don’t know what to do about any of that.

I continue to struggle with recent events – mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, anti-Asian hate crimes, voter suppression campaigns in 43 states, hauling a Black female legislator out of the Georgia State House in handcuffs. This is a mental collage that is dark, and chaotic, and heavy. This is not what I want as the backdrop for my days. This is not what I want as the backdrop for anyone’s days. What can I do?

I am tired of talking about all of this stuff, tired of reading books, tired of watching videos, tired of writing letters and filling out petitions. But what else is there at this point? Short of insurrection, short of lawlessness, what else is there? The radical right is forming militias, arming themselves, stockpiling weapons and canned goods, building shelters. That’s not my gig, and I’m not willing to be defined by fear. I’m not willing to be defined by hate, although some of my resistance is about anger. Anger is a wonderful motivator, actually, but I can’t stay there forever (at least not without changing the emoticon for even a short while).

So, again, I ask…what can I do? I want to say that I can live intentionally, practicing and demonstrating the values, the change, I want to see. OK, that’s great, but I feel as though I am digging an escape tunnel with a plastic spork. Is frustration and fatigue valid justification for resignation? In my mind, I think not, but in my body…in my heart…I am not so sure. Hope is hard. And I am tired.

So, yet again…what can I do? I really have no answers, although my linear-tending mind wants to come up with multi-level plan that engages many resources and has many goals but essentially does…nothing. Legislation, nor speech, nor books nor films nor empirical data will change the minds of others. This I know. Singing peace songs, old and new, will not change the minds of others. Those may coalesce the energy of like-minded people, but I don’t need to change their minds – we are all singing in the same choir. Standing in my integrity is essential, but, in truth, that seems largely ineffective when the status quo has no motivation toward integrity.

I have always heard that when you are lost in the forest, stay still and someone will find you. Hmmm. That may be true sometimes, but there are other times when it hasn’t worked out quite so neatly. The story doesn’t always have a happy ending, there is not always a tearful and grateful reunion with the lost. Further, there is not always someone looking for the lost…if you were invisible beforehand, and disappear, your loss is not apparent.

In so many ways, we are lost, and in so many ways there is no one looking for us. There is no one looking for an America that many of us have never dreamed, and we are searching for that dream. During the Civil Rights era, there was a dream eloquently articulated, and it sustained the movement toward equality, equity, fairness, compassion. Those who resisted that dream had to do everything they could to kill it, and they killed the messenger, the prophet, the voice of what could be. The subsequent onslaught of their attempts to kill that dream continue even today, as of this writing. That battle is waged in the halls of many State Houses, the nation’s Capitol, and corporate board rooms. The effort is massive, and concerted. The dreamers are scattered, fragmented, and disheartened.

Those of us who can must still take heart in the original dream, keep our eyes on the prize. That doesn’t mean invariable loyalty to the original words, but it does mean allegiance to the root of the dream – the original, albeity short-sighted – promise of the country: that we are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and happiness can be debated later in the context of utilitarianism). However one chooses to interpret that, it seems we cannot move very far from the obvious intent of that sentiment – the common good. Not the common death, or the common evil, or the common want. The common good.

In order to secure the common good, you have to assume there is a contract between all of us toward that end. That involves unpleasant things like paying taxes, like military service, like voluntary limitations on certain of our rights and liberties. Nowhere in the Bill of Rights or the U.S. Constitution does it say that we’re entitled to do whatever we want to do (no matter how many of those words begin with a w). That’s not Constitutional law, that’s natural law – organic life forms want to be free, and usually they will accomplish that by whatever means are necessary. When sentient life forms are sharing a finite space, we’ve got to find some way to manage our circumstances, to avoid stepping all over each other, to share space. Ultimately, that is government.

It’s government, until…it ceases to govern and begins to oppress. Then what? We’re supposed to be a representative republic, so we elect people who share our views and will grow and develop the governmental systems that we support. When that doesn’t happen, there’s a problem, and that’s where we are now – we have a problem. A failure to communicate. We’re low on dilythium crystals, and the matter and the anti-matter are gonna mix and go boom. The boom is not far away. The ground is welling, there are earthquake clusters, the wildlife is beginning to stampede. There are vents, where steam escapes, but we all know there is a smoldering, bubbling, boiling lake of molten rock rising from below the surface. And once it gets to a certain point, it will erupt and nothing will hold it. Nothing.

Can we ever achieve peace? Maybe not entirely, because we are humans, formed out of the dust of the massive effusion that created the planets. We are explosive by nature, I believe. I’m not entirely sure where the conquering urge comes from, but I know that it winds up being counter-productive in the long run. Perhaps we’re not supposed to make sense, only make more energy. That’s probably way above my pay grade.

Regardless, I am wondering if I should be about the goal of peace, of living in harmony, but simply about the goal of living? Living is not as easy as it sounds. Our physical bodies are under siege from all manner of toxins, visible and invisible. Our inner spirits are likewise under siege from various threats, deniable and undeniable. Poison can take the form of tangible substances, but also the spoken word, rhetoric, other amorphous and intangible sources. Those sources are things like racism, homophobia, sexism and other biases stemming from the irrational root causes of hatred, inadequacy, fear. On some levels, there is no defense against those once they have taken root. Those are true viral infections, always changing form, always mutating, nearly impossible to destroy entirely. Perhaps the only real way to overcome is by outlasting, by refusing to succumb, by surviving at all.

Many of us contend that mere survival is not enough, that survival is not equivalent to living, to thriving, to have a high quality of life. In certain contexts, perhaps that is true. Or perhaps our perspective is focused on creature comforts and goods and conspicuous consumption. Perhaps we have lost sight of how to enjoy the simpler things? Perhaps we have become addicted to ur consumer lifestyles, the ease of artificial means to interact with the natural world, the real world. We can’t enjoy the hot weather season without air-conditioners in certain parts of the planet, we can’t enjoy sustenance without refrigeration and utensils. I’m not arguing for a return to primitivism, just pointing out that we have a lot of conditions for what we define as living these days.

It’s not been a bad day. Went to my meditation group this morning, and it was very special. I usually have a good time with this group, but this morning it seemed to go deeper than usual, and a couple of the people who sometimes bring me too much into my head weren’t there. The group present this morning was the kinder, gentler section.

One of the people who attended this morning is someone I like quite a lot, a very gentle and insightful Japanese-American woman who I’ve known for a while. She lost her husband more than five years ago and still bleeds over that loss. He was her best friend, and his death was entirely unexpected and moved very quickly. She misses him terribly, and has articulated her loneliness on many occasions, and that she feels anchorless, alone. Unsure of her direction, why she’s here. I’ve always understood her and felt that we shared a kindred spirit that is deep and reflective and filled with awe and wonder of the Universe.

This morning, as we reflected on our meditations, I shared that I had been journeying more into my own story than my ancestors’ stories, which is not usually what happens when I meditate with that group. It was not a bad thing at all, and I felt more grounded. I felt that I was somehow doing something worthwhile in the world, and that’s an unusual feeling. I usually feel that I haven’t done anything at all, that I’m a waste of organic material, that I’ve been a failure in slow motion. So, it was nice to be in touch with feelings of having some purpose, having something to show for my time here, even if I have no tangible history of where I come from.

I am still watching this volcano in Iceland, and marveling over the enormous and unfathomable power the Earth yields in that one spot. The volcano is still actively spraying fountains of lava, nearly two months after the eruption began. Molten rocks, caustic gases, all coming up from deep beneath the surface, and straining to escape. The Earth quite literally expels this material, hotter than is comprehensible for a human, and throws it up into the sky. It doesn’t run out of energy, or material. That fascinates me no end.

That reorganization of the Earth’s substance is not an unusual thing. From what I understand, most of Iceland is volcanic, because it’s located on the rift between two tectonic plates that are moving apart. As those plates move, the Earth fills the void in between with magma and lava. to make the new crust. The process, of course, happens in slow motion to us, but it’s at exactly the right time for a planet.

How this all relates to my meditation experience is that I suppose parts of my psyche are reorganizing, moving about, and my core is regenerating itself. The parts of me that have been entirely convinced I am somehow incorrect and have nothing to offer, those parts are moving. They are moving away from the heart of me, and the material that is filling that void is molten hot, passionate, on fire. It’s ebbing and flowing and seeking its level. This is the new part of me that will persist, despite the losses, despite the mistakes, despite the stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time.

So, not too long ago, I had the feeling that I was supposed to be birthing something. Perhaps this is it. What I am supposed to be birthing is myself. I was telling the group that for one of the only times in meditation, I had not felt the urgency to connect with ancestors. This time, it was about me, and my experience. My friend in the group said she felt that we share a deep level of similar experiences and that sometimes I speak what she is feeling. I told her I felt that perhaps we are twin children of different mothers, and she agreed. Nobody found that statement amusing, and I didn’t say it to be funny.

The feeling from this morning is still with me, even though I am still stressing over money and still not having a job. I was thinking about the damned job earlier, and still feel that it what I want, what I am capable of doing, and would be exactly what I need. I’m trying very hard to keep my optimism high, but it’s now been over a month since I sent my resume’. Another friend of mine said, when I told her about this wait, that it’s par for the course with this employer. She’s had experience with them in the past and knows many people who have worked there, so I shouldn’t take such a delay as evidence that I won’t get the job.

I suppose my attachment to getting this job is proof that I am operating from a different place right now, because my normal defeatist mechanism is still firing, but it’s very much muted. I am hoping it’s firing blanks, and not sabotaging my efforts. I can see myself doing this job, and see myself being happy with the job, and a paycheck, and health benefits. I can see myself in the role, and I can see myself being successful. That’s not my usual response to things like this.

I’ve also applied for an online job, and have the same circumstances with that as well – waiting on a response to my application and writing ‘test’. Even if I get the other job, I still want this one because it’s very flexible. You take as much work as you can handle, and it’s entirely online. I don’t think it pays any stellar amount, but even if it’s just enough to put gas in my truck and buy the dog food, that’s a good thing. It’s only been about a week since I submitted that application, and they said it might take up to 30 days, so we wait.

In reflecting on that legacy of always feeling as though I’m in the wrong place, always feeling as though I’m wrong in some way, always feeling like everybody else but I have gotten the instructions. I will never go back to working in an office again, will never go back to working in a regimented environment that I have to be obedient to some faceless process that rewards only upper management for my work. I can never again hold my tongue, until I’ve almost bitten it in half, when there are things going on that are unfair and wrong and inequitable. Never again. I will survive without having to hack off a pound of flesh out of my own hide.

As I am vowing not to return to what amounts to an abusive, brain-draining environment, I feel as though I am making a choice to cultivate my spirit, my soul. Forming this new crust, this new solidity in my psyche is the difference between the non-living that i’ve been doing, that survival dance, and living…thriving…having a chance of joy. Joy is not a given, even if I feel somewhat happy about something in the moment. That’s not necessarily joy.

Happiness, for me, is often the lack of misery, the state of not being unhappy. That’s just dandy, but it feels soft, impermanent, tenuous. It feels as though I’m still waiting for some confirmation before I take a step, and I really don’t have time for that any longer. I need to feel sure of myself, definite, competent. I’ve always been attracted to competent people, so if I’m going to be attracted to myself I need to be competent. And who is more of an expert of me than…me?

There’s a certain point in my journey where I just get tired of fussing with myself. This is one of those times. I want to be a human being rather than a human doing, a human thinking, a human analyzing and pontificating and thinking about being. I want to go back to making noise for the hell of it, wearing bright colors because I can, being wide open just because. I am tired of apologizing for being who and how I am, and I refuse to do it any longer. If you want to witness the volcanic eruption, that’s great, but it’s going to get hot and you need to watch out for falling lava bullets. Don’t complain if you get too close and get burned.

One of the infinite number of committees at my Fellowship sent me an email, saying they didn’t have the annual report for the justice committee that I lead. Oh, dear. I hurriedly dashed off a couple of pages to them, and not without some deliberate reflection and consideration. I am not prone to lie on reports like that, although I am not opposed to putting forth content in the most favorable light possible. So, I began tallying up everything my committee had done last year, and something interesting happened.

After I had been writing for more than a page about our accomplishments for 2020, it suddenly occurred to me that I had done quite a lot. Most of the accomplishments listed were things I’d initiated, and many of them were solo efforts. This is not the way I normally conceive of my efforts, and until I had gotten this stuff in a document, I was still believing I’d done absolutely nothing. My self-perception is quite a bit askew, I suppose.

I’ve reflected previously about the old concept I was taught, about waiting for bestowal of gifts from “above”, usually in response to prayer or living well. I’m questioning that concept these days, though, and realizing that certain “blessings” may come from beneath my feet, or from the ends of my fingers, from all around me. That early concept I had about what comes from “above” is that childhood Christian model of waiting for Divine Providence. When I operated in that modality, I always felt as though I was being judge (and I was) for how well I was following the creed, the Faith, the Gospels. How good I was. How well I followed the rules. My problem was that I felt entirely disconnected from those rules, so I was just about the business of compliance and not faith. I was doing what someone told me were the right things only because I feared punishment if I failed to comply. Actually, not IF, but WHEN. I always felt that I had something to hide, something I’d done wrong and didn’t want anyone to discover. I spent a great deal of my energy making sure I wasn’t discovered, that truth wasn’t discovered, that my faults weren’t discovered. So much energy wasted on trying to hide the fact that I am human.

I’m waiting. I don’t wait well, because I have too much time on my hands and begin telling myself very scary stories. This has to be a turning point, because I say it’s a turning point. I am not going backward, but I’m going forward at a different angle. I’m still headed away from where I’ve been, from what I’ve been in the past, and still moving to a new reality that’s more than what I’ve ever imagined, but very much what I’ve always dreamed. As I tell people when a catastrophe has occurred, it will be OK. We just don’t know what OK looks like. And so it goes.