If I could show you how it is to be me for a day, I’m not sure I’d want to. Not sure I’d want anyone else to feel the way I do every moment of every day, confused and cloudy and entirely ill at ease…although you might finally understand. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t understand it, and find the same old tried and true explanations for why I seem to hold such promise, but can’t deliver. Talks a good game but cannot lead, or drive for results. Can’t quite hold on for the win, get across the victory line. Maybe you’d do what everyone else has done over the years, find some expert analysis of 100, or a million, other people who are nothing like me but frustrate you in a similar fashion. Maybe you’d die what they’ve all done, write me off as a flash in the pan, a fraud, a ne’er do well and basically a non-conformist who simply refuses to get into line.
Like a lot of other folks, you might choose the easy route to dealing with me, which is to not deal with me. If you have any kind of relative or systemic power over me, you would probably decide I am simply not up to par and can’t perform adequately. There are ten other people who would fight for the chance to conform and take their place in the system, so I’m just not worth the hassle. You were never invested in my success, only your own, so any cost-benefit analysis will support the claim that I’m just not a viable cog in the machinery.
Over the years, I’ve been a heavily battered survivor of a fight for some cause I can’t define or explain. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s the battle for my life, for what causes me to be who I am, for what differentiates me from you or anyone else. As I have explained to many people, I’ve been fighting on that level since before I got here – difficult gestation, difficult birth experience, difficult time hammering my way into the world, trauma that was not recognized as trauma (just grow a thicker skin, why don’t you?). It’s almost as if I was a few seconds too late, or too early, for my life. I’ve never felt as though I was here in the right time or the right place, and still don’t.
On hearing that, some conclude that I never felt loved, that my childhood was rough, that I never got over the pain of my grandmother’s death…or the parakeet that disappeared…or the dog that suddenly vanished. Or maybe I was just terribly spoiled by overindulgent adults and never learned time management or self-discipline. Or maybe I’m just crazy, always going off about something or someone and always quitting when I’m ahead. The general feeling is that I have squandered the great benevolence that was bestowed upon me, and I can’t refute that. Can’t refute it, but also know there’s always been something missing from that equation, because if I had everything I needed there would have been no reason to wrestle myself into bizarre and dysfunctional shapes all these years.
If that sounds like self-pity, or victim posturing, that;s up to you. It simply feels like truth to me. In that truth, there is profound grieving, profound confusion, and profound mistrust. There is also faith, that something is watching out for me, that something is not ready for me to leave here, that I have some purpose in having been here. Juxtaposing that with the experience of feeling that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time is incongruous, to say the least, but that is what faith is at its core – believing in the unbelievable, accepting that I will never understand. That is not always my happy place, but it is one of the most constant.
There are a few things I’m sure of, but so many that I question. I’m mostly sure of my gender identity, but whether I’ve always been comfortable in this body is a deeper question. I’ve never questioned that I am female in gender, never felt compelled to explore anything else. Like a lot of women who also identify as lesbian, I’m secure in knowing where my emotional and sexual attractions trend. My gender expression has always been relatively tomboy, and remains so today. I have never had much use for makeup and femme accoutrements, and have always preferred a tailored preppy look to just about anything else. I’ve never wanted to emulate Princess Diana, but appreciate Robin Robert’s and Jodie Foster far more. I’ve never believed myself to be attractive, or athletic, so prefer to maintain a backstage grunge persona. Clothes are for comfort, not for show, and I look shitty in just about anything because I am short and fat. Sue me, but this is who I am.
Regardless of any of that, I am compelled to occupy my own unique space. That’s fine. At my age, it is no longer about the call of the wild but more about internet speed and the smell of the coffee in the morning, the glimmer of empathy, and the gritty affirmation of long-term survival. We all have our shit. I have learned not to compare my insides with others’ outsides, but I do have to cock an internal eyebrow when considering whether my partnership status is entirely my choice, or the consequence of aesthetics and circumstance.
In all seriousness, though, I will run rapidly away from any social scenes or places that smell of matching, pairing, dating, and the like that I might encounter at this phase of my life. If there is a single narcissist within a 50-mile radius, they will be glued to my side in 10 seconds or less. I want nothing to do with that. I don’t understand the entire phenomenon of relationships, dating, romance, or any of the sentimental puffery that we often expect from our social circles. I don’t understand the social queues, or the rules of engagement. I never have. I understand attraction, I understand flirting on a minimalist level, but past that I am entirely incompetent. That might be amusing if it wasn’t so dangerous; everyone doesn’t come out of the scene unscathed.
People, meaning women, have enjoyed my company. We laugh, we joke, we get comfortable, we get emotionally intimate. We feel safe. Then a line in the sand is crossed, where there is no sand and some unknown lshape was laid down in total darkness, and all of a sudden there are mixed signals and the grinding of mechanical propulsion gears I did not know existed. I’m accustomed to using the brake pedal when the vehicle is moving too quickly to be safe, but the fluid seems to leak a bit when words like “love” are littering the highway. I thought that was a self-explanatory word, but it is not. For me, love implies affection and trust and some degree of loyalty and consistency. For others…not so much. I don’t think we’re exclusively dating because that word makes an appearance, but I do expect it to be used responsibly, not casually, and specifically. Don’t say “I love you” when you mean to say “I really like you and enjoy spending time with you”, or “I have fun with you, and that’s cool”. I get confused when women throw out “I love you” at the end of a phone call when they really mean “OK, see ya later”. I get confused when women toss “I love you” in my direction while they’re explaining the inadequacies of their primary romantic relationship. I get confused when I expect more than casual talk, and get told that I move too fast and come on too strong. I get confused, and I don’t like it. I get confused, and it rarely ends well.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m even saying at this point, except that I’m tired of meeting people, falling into “like” with them, only to have them start tossing mixed signals into the air like fireworks. Don’t text me at night because you don’t want to be heard talking on the phone about deep stuff, emotional stuff, vulnerable stuff. Don’t create boundaries for me that no one else has. If you want to be emotionally intimate 98% of the time with me, but can’t invite me to have a crappy cup of coffee on any random night, then go and get your rocks off elsewhere. If I’m spending the holidays alone while you’re sitting in the seat of privilege with your mask of normalcy on, that’s a problem. I suppose you can have your cake and eat it too, but I’m not Betty Crocker and I don’t do dishes.
If you’re so happy in your relationship, why are you out here messing with me? If you’re so happy with your life, why are you complaining to me about all that’s missing for you? And when the whole thing blows up, I’m the one left out in the cold while you have triage and a support team to make sure you don’t fall apart. I’m supposed to keep it all to myself, lest we put you in a bad position and make a fool out of your main squeeze. And like all other privileged assholes, you come out of the whole mess unscathed, and with no consequences. That’s not how I emerge from the battlefield of a war I never knew I was fighting. But oh yeah, life ain’t fair. Thanks for reminding me, because once again, I forgot.
I actually wrote this a few months ago, when I was buried in the angst-laden detritus of this real time whatever the fuck this is. Life? Time? Reality? It is what it is, and most of it is persistent so I’ll bring it up from the nether region and let it fly.
Things seem very twisted right now, in all the places and all the ways. I do not recognize my own country, and wonder what it will look like in five years, or even in five days. Nothing appears solid, reality seems fluid. I am feeling like I’m circling the drain once again, and this is not a comforting thought.
I wonder whether I’ll be so destitute this time net year that I will need to become unhoused. Will there be a social safety net available to me in the next year or two, or should I scrape up what few resources I have and blow it all on one last gasp of enthusiastic curiosity? Can I define myself as a writer and a musician without the brilliance of talent? Is my life working, or am I simply existing again? So many false starts, so many misconceptions, misunderstandings, misgivings. Perhaps that is what the life experience is all about – buzzing about like a fly, searching and finding attractive targets to pause, only to repeat the process again and again.
So many questions, so much uncertainty, so few answers. I’m a Capricorn, and always want to know where I’m going before I get there, but that’s futile right now. Is that an unreasonable demand, or am I supposed to just wander until I land on some place I’m supposed to be? If so, how will I know I’m in the right place? I understand that all who wander are not lost, but right now, I am feeling decidedly lost.
If I am lost, what does being found look like? Is that a viable goal? If I am found, what does that mean? I suppose it would mean that I know more about who I am and why I am here, but that seems to be a lifetime’s work. What am I doing, what am I supposed to be doing, where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket? Life on life’s terms seems daunting right now, but perhaps that is exactly how it needs to be right now. I am exercising the atrophied muscle of self will, and it’s a painful effort. I have given up the notion that all is not lost, but where do I go from there?
Random and disconnected thoughts are the entree’ du jour, it seems. I could not sleep last night. After a couple of what amounted to 2-hour naps, I gave up and started roaming around on the interwebs. That successfully reset my brain in some way, blocking out disturbing intrusive thoughts and images. In some ways I believe I am without defense against that sort of thing, but the Spravato has been helping to keep it somewhat at bay.
I wonder where my mother is, where my grandmothers are. I wonder where I begin and end, and how do I tell the difference. I get the impression that I am so non-linear as to be nearly amorphous at times, but not without a degree of rigidity. Perhaps rigidity is what depression is really about, forming deep grooves that are still curves but entrenched nonetheless. I wonder if curvature is equivalent to formlessness and it’s up to me to develop shape and form.
I wonder if I’m too sensitive, too easily put off by mean people, people who don’t see me for who I am. Do I see me for who I am? I’m not sure. It seems like a lot of my times has been spent seeing myself as I want to be rather than who I am. That’s not a good place to be, at least not from my experience. It is what it is, but what it is doesn’t always suit me. I still don’t comprehend why bad things happen to good people, and why some of us make it and some of us don’t.
Is all of this just a crap shoot, left to chance and random probability? It feels like that at times, but that could be just a way to cope with not knowing why I am here.
Some days, it is harder than others to be me. Today, it’s more challenging than others, but I suppose there is still room for gratitude. There is also room for frustration, anger, and general pissiness. I am frustrated, angry, and more than generally pissy.
I have the flu. or some kind of respiratory unpleasantness. Since Saturday night, I have been curled up in bed, no dreams of anything like sugar plums anywhere near but a chest full of phlegm, a cough, and no appreciable energy. There is still a dog to take outside for her constituionals, and until today she was the only one who saw beyond the front door. I was running a fever at least through Monday morning, with chills and extra blankets. The heat was turned up so high I believe the walls were sweating.
Once the fever broke, mental acuity was slightly better, although in these days that is not always a blessing. I laid around yesterday like a wet dishrag, with no appetite or motivation, but the chest congestion eased a bit after I coughed up the contents of both lungs and my entire bronchia. Today, I had enough strength to drive up to the pharmacy and procure more cough suppressant and some DayQuil, plus kettle corn and Gatorade. It made the dog happy, although I forgot to stop at the pet store for more dog food. That’ another story, and will constitute tomorrow’s agenda.
This past Sunday, amidst the coughing spells, I celebrated my 37th sobriety anniversary. I felt good about that, and still consider sobriety my grandest accomplishment. I do not claim consistent emotional sobriety by any means because I am still overwhelmingly human, but I am far more responsible with tongue and pen than I was before I began this journey. Moreover, I can honestly attest to not consuming alcohol since December 7th, 1988, and that’s the truth. It’s been a long, strange trip and those words do not come close to adequate expression of the past 37 years.
When I returned from my foray into the great outdoors earlier, I noticed an email from my legal counsel’s paralegal regarding my lawsuit against the square-headed dog-faced turd of a delicensed dentist who took more than $40k from me to add dental implants for me. He knew his license was on the verge of revocation when his business manager/wife accepted payment from me, and never bothered to send notice of that or that his office had closed. The State Attorney General said there’s nothing they can do since the business is defunct, and I had to find an attorney to sue him. I did that, he never responded, and a default judgment was rendered. All of that, plus about $8 for a latte’ at Starbucks, means that now I have to find a collections attorney to get any money from the nice gentleman.
Although I knew the judgment was not equivalent to money in my bank account, I knew it was part of the process. For some reason, though, the email this afternoon from the paralegal left me strangely deflated and dejected. Perhaps it is the holidaze of December, perhaps it is the flu, perhaps it is something in the air, but I felt as though I had been punched in the gut. The paralegal’s email thanked me for my trust in the firm, and that my case with them was closed.
This former dentist is not getting away with money that was left to me by my departed mother. She worked hard for that, and I am now on a fixed income and can’t afford to have the dental work completed on my own. Will this never end? There is no mechanism anywhere that I can find that will assist me with this, without costing me even more in legal fees. I feel entirely victimized, and without any path to remediation. One side of my brain says it’s only money, while the other side of my brain says it’s only money but this bastard needs to pay.
Perhaps the larger issue is how and why I trusted this asshole. I feel like the biggest fool ever. I have met other former patients of his, so I know I am not the only person who was taken in by him, but I cannot stop trusting people. I did it again only recently with an supposed job opportunity that descended into scam territory very quickly; instead of payment they demanded my investment in bitcoin. My investment was allegedly reimbursed, with commission, but that was paid in bitcoin. Bitcoin never matches with U.S. dollars exactly, and the process to convert bitcoin to U.S. dollars was difficult and problematic. The only U.S. currency involved went one way – from me to them. Fortunately, I got out of it quickly, but not before I had forked over more than $700. What an idiot I am. Will I never learn?
I suppose my gullibility is what has gotten me really despondent. I’m out here all by myself, with no safety net, and I keep making these mistakes. I have never felt there was room for much error in my walk through life, but now I’m right on the edge. What the fuck am I doing any of this for? I have no children, no siblings, no parents, no dependents except the dog. I will leave nothing behind, have nothing to really look forward. Just a fat old woman with treatment resistant depression, arthritic back, and bad knees. I have no significant talents but am dangerously mediocre at many things. All put together, those are incredibly sparse assets.
So what now? What’s my next trick? What elese can i fuck up and lose? There’s really nothing left to speak of. I still have a roof over my head for the moment, and a 20+ year old vehicle that still runs, but all of that feels incredibly tenuous. This is not how it is supposed to be. I was obviously born into the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrg people. I missed the last the last train to the coast, the last boat across the river. A day late, many dollars short. I am willing to accept responsibility, but am seriously feeling as though the punishment is a bit too harsh for the crime of stupidity.
I want out, so Tank, I need a door. I am running as fast as I can and the agents are catching up, replicating all along the way, and I’ve got nothing. I’ve got no Trinity, no loyal sidekick, no ace in the hole. My brain is failing me, my body is failing me, my faith is low. Loyalty has been my strong suit, and it has gotten me…here. With nothing. I have no desire to discuss love, or chosen family, or benevolence. I have no desire to cut my losses, because nothing from nothing still leaves nothing, and the world is moving on without me. I will not blast myself out of this reality because I cannot be assured there will be anything else. Suicide is painless, though it brings on many changes, it is said. I do not doubt that, but is there anything better, is there anything at all? Since I don’t know the answer to that question, I will ride this out and hope the pain ends at some point.
This is a fucked up time and place, this planet, this country, this life. Somewhere in my soul I suppose I believe this is all for a reason, but maybe it’s just absurdity. Maybe it’s simply a Divine amusement, a “let’s see what happens if you press this button” kind of moment. I know I am not the only one who has thoughts such as this, but some of my kindred are compelled to force the issue. They are compelled to rub shoulders with the Divine and try feebly to attempt control of this reality. It is laughable, because their arms are truly too short to box with any divinity, but also because they keep doing the same thing and expect different results eon after eon, century after century, lifetime after lifetime. Go ahead, let this year’s Emperor attempt to cover his ass with the bodies of the millions of unfortunates who are fodder for his ordinance. His fiddle is a golf club, and he has to cheat at the game because he possesses the skill of a gnat. And the madding crowd applauds wildly, refusing to see their hand in the pending doom.
I’m waiting this out. I’m hoping it’s over soon, hoping it’s a painless end. I’m hoping the end is the end, and not the beginning of some new, fresh hell that I have only dreamed of. My greatest wish is that leave behind no lasting damage for anyone who remains. If there is any memory of my pathetic existence, let it be short lived. If there is nothing else the Divine will do for me, let it be that. That would be merciful.
Yeah, so I am not entirely sure wtf is going on with me right now. I hope it’s just a bit of holiday blues, state if the union insanity, randomly floating melancholia. All of that sounds plausible, but I feel rather flat, blase’, too pooped to pop, deflated, out of good ideas. I’m listening to 90s music for the moment, which is full of angst but seems to be a comfortable fit. I went to the potluck-zilla at the UU Fellowship on Thanksgiving Day. It was fine. I counted nearly a dozen pies, 80% of which were apple. I had a reasonably good time, but felt more or less muted.
I was sociable, and thought I was doing a reasonable job of eating somewhat sensibly. I didn’t go back for seconds on anything, and didn’t take huge portions of what I chose to put on my plate. They did their best to label the selections, noting gluten status, common allergens, etc. it was nearly impossible to read the tags once people were moving along the conveyor belt that characterizes buffets, but what I ate was pleasing to the taste buds. Unfortunately, once down the esophagus, my stomach and/or kidney stone had a difference of opinion with some ingredients.
After I got home, I had a spectacular gastric episode, complete with effusion from both all directions. Throwing up was the worst, but there wasn’t any blood. I cannot imagine there was anything at all left in my stomach when I was done, and all I could do was stretch out on the bed and cover up because I had chills. Nothing else to do but go to sleep. I slept for 2 or 3 hours after that dramatic episode, in one of those weird, deep black holes where I wonder if I was entirely alive. I felt slightly better when I woke up, but had to represent myself in the bathroom twice more. It was mercifully over after that, and I stayed in bed until this morning,
I took it rather easy with food today, having a protein shake for breakfast and a personal-size frozen pizza for lunch. I tried to drink a bit more water, which always confounds me, but no stomach upset. After the pizza, I had a slice of the turtle pie I love so much, and it caused no unrest. Thinking back on the events of yesterday, however, I wonder if nuts were the enemy at the potluck. I remember there were nuts in a lot of the selections, and I loved that. Perhaps they didn’t return the ardor. Ugh.
Monday is December 1st, and that brings the start of my new insurance plan. I cannot believe I have a Medicare card. I don’t know what to feel about that, but my feelings about it are entirely irrelevant. I will be 65 within the next 30 days, and nothing is going to change that. In some ways I cannot believe I have survived this long, and in other ways I don’t quite know what to do with myself at this age. Some things don’t work as well as they used to work, but I’ve never taken care of my parts particularly well, so that doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is my aloneness, and lack of accomplishment.
I suppose I should consider it an accomplishment to be sober for nearly 37 years, wherein I’ve ceased to move through the world as a wrecking ball. I have still managed to hurt a few people, and not proud of that, but I would honestly say those incidents are few and far between. In the past, that was an everyday occurrence, as I remember it. Just running roughshod over people, places, things like a lawnmower. I am trying very hard to stay out of the fray, out of the social scene. I am truly without any desire to be mingling and meeting and greeting and getting my motor running over other people stumbling around in the dark with me. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, outgrew it. Enough.
I am rather lonely, but at least I know what’s in my control here in my own space. There are just certain things I have to accept, whether I like them or not. I have to accept that even though I still believe in miracles, I really don’t think I’m destined to have the love of my life in this lifetime. It’s simply too late, and I’m not sure I’m capable at this point. I’ve got my hands full trying to keep my snout above water, and my body is starting to weigh me down immeasurably. This aging this is not for the faint of heart, or for the weak minded. It is what it is, and that’s all that it is. Mine is neither special nor unique, so let’s just get on with it.
I texted my cousin yesterday to wish her a happy Thanksgiving, and that made me a bit sad. This is a first cousin, and when children we were fine. She and her sisters are my mother’s only sister’s children. I loved my aunt, just like I loved my grandmother, but there was always some kind of weird tension between my mother and just about everyone else. I was the only niece, and the only grandchild, until I was about 9. Things went a little downhill after that…I lost the throne. More importantly, life began to happen. My grandmother died. My parents divorced. My mother descended into some weird kind of high-functioning insanity and began to alienate just about everyone until it was just me and her. Maybe that was her original desire, for me to be hers and hers alone. I don’t know, but it’s hard to not have resentments about that. I always had to choose, but still feel there was really no choice at all.
On that cheery note, I do wonder exactly wtf I am supposed to do now. My mother, my father, grandparents, aunts, uncles are all gone now. What I remember as family and good times in my childhood will never be again. The distance is just too great to traverse, I have very little shared history with my relatives, and that kind of sucks. Chosen family is fine, but I grieve the connection of people I’ve known since I got here. More importantly, I do still feel there’s a line drawn with chosen family and blood family. There are just some things I’ll never rank as high as blood family with even my closest friends. It’s the American way.
Whatever. One more month of this traditional holiday period and I should be back to my usual self. Right now, I really don’t feel all that chipper about much of anything, but … whatever. I’ve given up trying to please people, trying to be perfect for people, making sure I say the right things, don’t cuss too much, remember the correct social conventions of the day. In my deepest of thoughts, I have very unpopular feelings about many issues my social circle espouses. I’m not big into the environmental movement, and don’t recycle almost out of spite. I support and will fight for transgender people, but seriously wonder if they would have the spotlight if the face of the movement was more ethnic. Just sayin’.
Right now, I’m pretty focused on equity and justice for all. Immigration is big right now, not because it’s a new issue, only because there is a sadistic and white supremacy playbook to deal with it. The lies and misinformation are staggering, and too many people believe what is being shoveled out. The fact of the matter is that people are being harmed on a daily basis by this so-called policy, and the large majority of those have done nothing wrong. As long as they can show good metrics, nobody cares. The entire effort is inhumane, but again, nobody cares. There is a blood lust evident now, and it is sickening.
I am just babbling at this point, but it feels like an accomplishment to be writing. I still have no idea what I am going to do with this one wild and precious life, and still wonder if the choice is entirely mine. That has always been my been my decision point, I suppose. Where does my choice begin, and how much can I effectively choose before I am limited by the choices of others? I am not sure there’s an answer for that, so I’ll just go on surviving until something else comes up. Ugh.
I wrote this for a presentation I made to commemorate Juneteenth. Many people are confused about exactly what is being celebrated, and how the celebration – or lack thereof – continues to shape my walk through the world, sometimes hopefully and sometimes despairingly, but never losing sight of how I am enslaved to a great many things.
First thing I want to let you know is how Juneteenth, and how repetitive patterns of racism and xenophobia have shaped the world we live in. I want to show you how those patterns have intersected with my life and made me who I am today. All of that reduced to about a 3rd grade level ‘cause that’s what I can handle.
In 1803, Congress passed an Immigration Act that banned the importation of Blacks into the United States. The irony of that in a country that was engaged in active chattel slavery notwithstanding, it was nonetheless passed. Why? Mainly because of the Haitian Revolution, which had declared Haiti a free Black nation, and any Blacks who came there were immediately free. What would it mean if large numbers of Blacks flooded into the United States and asserted they were free? Worse, what if they told enslaved people on our plantations they could be free as well?
When they banned the importation of Black people in 1803, it was a pushback against Haiti for asserting its own sovereignty. That infuriated France no end, because the new Haitian constitution also restricted white people from owning land there. They sought to put an end to the colonial European practice of building sugar plantations in Haiti, where France profited exorbitantly but Haiti…a bit less. After the revolution, Haiti decided it did not want to have a future that resembled the colonial social order in perpetuity, so it decreed that white people could not become property owners there. In addition to declaring all Black people free once they set foot on the island, colonial-minded Europeans found all of this quite problematic. The French responded by calling in Haiti’s marker for all the money that had been given to develop the sugar processing industry there. Haiti, of course, had no way of acquiring that kind of capital so they began decimating their social services and educational infrastructure in order to begin payment, and they have never recovered from that. That’s why Haiti is still one of the poorest nations on the planet. But anyway, the U.S. responded by closing its borders to Haitian immigrants because Black people were not free here, and we didn’t want free Black people telling enslaved Black people how to get out of their shackles. Pushback is real, and it goes on and on.
So let’s look at the same tactics being utilized today with respect to immigration. We have to keep these blood thirsty terroristic criminals out of our country, protect our women and children (and our stuff). They said the same thing about Blacks back in the day. These LatinX people came in here illegally and they are bringing drugs and killing our people and taking over (because a very bad former President allowed it) and we have to stop that. They are eating dogs and cats. They have to go. We don’t care where they go TO, they just have to go. Right now. Not a moment to waste.
This is pushback for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) – and for all of the asylum seekers given resident status. Further in that same vein, cuts to Medicaid that are looming now have less to do with corruption and waste than pushback for the Affordable Care Act, and the audacity of a Black man to sit in the White House. But that’s another story.
The current emphasis on an exaggerated urgency for deportation is page 4 in the white supremacist authoritarian playbook. It is nothing new. When times are tough for Americans, for whatever reason, it has to be somebody’s fault. Repeatedly, it is the fault of people of color, the not-so-original scapegoats. The film Birth Of A Nation starts off saying that everything was fine in America until the Africans came. Interesting, because the Africans didn’t exactly come here on vacation as tourists or anything, they were drug over here in chains to provide free labor for plantations. Whose fault is that?
LatinX people showed up here voluntarily, or often as desperate refugees, because 1) we all told them it is a great place to come because we are the greatest nation in the world, 2) they could live better here than in their home country, and 3) we broke our own laws on many fronts by giving them jobs under the table, paying them menial wages (as close to free labor as business owners could get away with), and not having to worry about stuff like health care. Once again, we provided the motive, the means, and the opportunity then punished the victims. Even before the nightmare of ICE, the immigration law said those without properly documented citizenship were to be immediately deported, and – as people have been screaming for years – sent back to wherever they came from. OK, but I don’t think many of them came from places like Libya, where they are now trying to deport some of the migrants. Keep in mind that the abolition of enslavement in this country does not include the incarcerated. But I digress.
After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, it only applied to those pesky and rebellious Southern states. If you were enslaved in New York, nothing changed for you. Technically, what ended the institution of chattel slavery was the 14th Amendment, which also gave citizenship to more recent generations of Blacks via the birthright citizenship provision. Fast forward to this year, when the President wants to challenge birthright citizenship in order to keep millions of immigrants from becoming citizens. If you’re a citizen, you could do horrible things like run for Congress and become a lawmaker, or worse become the governor of a state. You could have systemic power, and we can’t have that. Once again, the oppressor chooses the narrative, and it has never changed in the case of non-white immigrants. Right.
The story[GU1][GU2] of the Emancipation Proclamation, as taught to many of us back in the day, said that benevolent President Lincoln freed the slaves by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and that was a very good thing. I have no doubt that it was a very good thing, but it’s an over simplified and single story that doesn’t quite do it justice. I don’t know if Abraham Lincoln was a personal fan of chattel slavery or not, but he did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation solely for the benefit of enslaved people. He did it to enhance his efforts to rebuild the Union. It was a strategic weapon that was intended to cripple the South economically by removing their source of free labor. THAT’S ALL. There was no plan to reconcile the liberated Blacks into American society, there was no plan at that point to make them citizens, and there was no plan to make their lives any better. 40 acres and a mule rarely materialized, and sharecropping was…not all it was cracked up to be. The plan really went only as far as reconstituting the republic and doing away with the Confederacy.
The really interesting thing about the Emancipation Proclamation, though, is it only applied to the rebellious Southern states. If you were enslaved in New York, your status had not changed. By the time June 19, 1865 rolled around it was only the final implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation. That Proclamation, which I liken to an Executive Order today, did not end the institution of chattel slavery. The celebration is for the literal emancipation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in the Southern states, which was an incredible moment, but there was still much that had to be done before chattel slavery was truly behind us.
By the time Union Army General Gordon Granger set foot on Galveston Island in 1865 to advise that enslaved people were emancipated, it was 2 years after the fact. Land owners would now have to pay for the labor of those who tended the crops, picked the cotton, tended their babies, cooked their meals, shod the horses, and milked the cows. But the institutional structure of chattel slavery was unaltered, and the law had not caught up. What brought manumission to the remaining enslaved people across the country was passage of the 13th Amendment at the end of 1865. By that time, Abraham Lincoln was already dead and the Civil War had ended. It was the final exclamation point of the Emancipation Proclamation, but that’s all it was. There was more upheaval for the social order in America on its way.
Passage of the 14th Amendment is what formally ended the institution of chattel slavery, and that did not come until 1868. Enslaved people may have been liberated, but their lives were still more than torturous. Most could not read or write, still had no idea of where they really were, and had no way of acquiring capital (or even avoiding lynching and murder just for being there.) The plan was that laborers had to be paid a wage, but nobody advocated for them or held their employers accountable. Landowners graciously allowed them to stay and work on the land as they had always done, but if they received a wage it was a pittance. In some cases, the newly liberated people were charged room and board for being allowed to stay there as sharecroppers. Again, the formerly enslaved had no idea of what was fair or what was due them so they took what was offered, if it was. The South was distracted with recovering from the ravages of war, so in many cases people just kept on doing what they had been doing. Some of the newly liberated did set out to the Midwest and the Southwest, but the odds of a successful journey were not good.
So, it’s very similar to current times, when LatinX immigrants make their way down the Rio Grande and find themselves bussing tables or washing dishes in an American restaurant for $2 an hour. They have no recourse for unfair labor practices because they are undocumented, but there is also no penalty for the restaurant owner who enables the arrangement. Likewise, migrant workers who are hired by farmers to harvest crops often get menial wages, and if/when they are deported, the farmer suffers no consequence for hiring undocumented workers. They can just hire others.
What I get out of all this is that people who are not members of the dominant culture in this country – meaning not European descended American born cis-gendered heterosexual Christian people – really have not seen the desired outcome of all this Constitution amending, assassination-inducing, political hot potato tossing that’s been going on. What has been seen is pushback for every bit of progress made to change the narrative of Blacks in America. At one time, the desired outcome was called freedom.
So here I come. Still sitting in the back of bus, still having to use the back door or colored entrance to some places. The Civil Rights era was ramping up, but I was little and what did I know? I was raised with rules like this:
THE CLOSER YOU ARE TO WHITE, THE CLOSER YOU ARE TO RIGHT BUT IF YOU BLACK, GET BACK.
DON’T DRAW ATTENTION TO YOURSELF. YOU’LL BE SINGLED OUT LATER AND IT WON’T BE FOR ANYTHING GOOD.
My birth certificate says “Negro” – that’s how old I am – and where I come from the State would do genealogical research FOR you to find out if there was any Negro blood flowing through your veins; one drop was enough, and you were assigned the race THEY said. No passin’ allowed, or as we called it passe’ blanc. What they put on your birth certificate used to be “colored”, and for a little while it was “Mulatto”, but all the same, if you weren’t white, you knew that before you were potty trained. And you understood there were certain rules for you and certain rules for white people and they didn’t always match up. I am more than any of that, but I didn’t learn until much later that the oppressor always gets to choose the narrative.
The narrative of a single story, from a single perspective, is limiting and frequently inaccurate. It is not the first time America has tried to codify what it means to be an American, what an American looks like, and what an American talks like.
Years ago, when I was attending the launch of Black Lives of UU at GA, we were broken into small groups to discuss several questions. One of the questions was “Are we free?” I was in a group of Black UUs, mostly women, and we huddled together to talk about this issue of freedom. I, brilliant mind that I am, said authoritatively (ok, pompously), well of course we are free. There’s the 13th Amendment, and the 14th, and even the 15th that have established our freedom. Other women in the group, however, were not so sure, and most of them said they did not feel as though freedom had come to pass. More than one sai\d we have just changed the face of the “Master” but we are still not truly free. We can sit at the front of the bus, but there are still a number of places we are not free to go,, certain opportunities not afforded us. We are not really free to show our full selves without constant judgement of how far we stray from the so-called normalcy of the dominant culture..
Reflecting on this later, I remembered being a new hire of Wachovia in Columbia SC. It was 1998, and the Confederate flag was still perched atop the State House in Columbia (they didn’t put that in my relo packet). My new manager was showing me some of the sights of the city as we came back from lunch one day. Driving down I26, he pointed out the exit for the zoo (which is a very nice one) and a few other attractions I might want to check out. Then he pointed to a particular exit, and turned to look at me directly (even though he was driving) and said, “I’m just letting you know they still have Klan meetings back in there, and sometimes cross burnings, so I’m just telling you that you probably don’t want to go exploring back there on your own.”
Then I remembered growing up in New Orleans, where everybody in my neighborhood knew there were certain places you were not welcome, certain places that could be hazardous to your health, and you knew better than to push it. In 1971, I went to a private school where there were 64 girls in my 6th grade class, and only 7 of us were Black. I honestly don’t remember any Latina students there at all. Regardless, it made me step in very hesitantly at 11, to this place where people didn’t laugh loudly or talk loudly like I was used to, and they had *maids* to pick up after us. I heard more than my fair share of ignorant comments, got called the n-word a few times, wasn’t invited to a number of parties, so I started to get the picture. But I had no idea how to respond or take that in. It was 1971…and school integration was still a fairly new thing. Even the good Ursuline sisters messed up from time to time…there was one very old nun who used to stroll confusedly around the carport, where parents retrieved their children at day’s end, and regularly muttered “Oh, look – the Negroes are even driving big cars now!”
So yeah, there are still places where I don’t feel “free” to go. Places that still cost. I went to that new school, which academically was a better place than where I was, but I gave up a place in my community. My neighborhood grew up and had shared experiences without me. I was now having shared experiences with people very different from me, and that was disconcerting because there were some parts missing, namely the shared experience of a common socioeconomic experience. To this day, some overlook what my birth certificate says and where I grew up, as if they can just erase parts of my identity and say “But you’re not like…them.”
When you rotate in predominantly white circles, you can lose a lot of your individuality; you often represent your entire race, you are often called to speak for people who can very well speak for themselves. For instance, we may be told that we are not free to wear natural hair styles, that it is not professional or appropriate. We maybe told that loud and boisterous behavior is threatening. We maybe told that using vernacular you have used your entire life is judged racist and disquieting for members of the majority culture. We may be called upon to explain the behavior of others, or to educate. There is n more time for that…ask Ahmaud Arbery how free he was to go jogging on a public street in Georgia. Ask Sandra Bland how free she was to step out of her car after a traffic stop. Ask Tamir Rice how free he was to play with a toy gun at the playground. But we can’t ask these people if any of the rules have changed because they are all dead, unarmed victims of armed law enforcement action, victims of a single story that informs a police officer of what a threat to life looks like.
So what exactly is freedom? Maybe that’s what all of us well-meaning people need to figure out, and make sure we are not perpetuating the status quo because it’s easier, safer, and less confrontational. The next step is to make sure we are leveraging our privilege by not merely being non-racists but pushing ourselves to be anti-racists. I know that I cannot change the heart, or the mind, or the perception of those who do not see things as I do. What I can do, however, is stand in my integrity to say this is not the world I want to live in, this is not how I live my faith, this is not how I am supposed to treat people when I affirm their inherent worth and dignity. Sometimes I fail, but I have to at least make the effort to be accountable for that.
We’ve come a long way in this Fellowship, and that truly is a great and wonderful thing. Anti-racism may be work that is not ever complete, because it’s a lifelong process of unlearning and growing, and making new paths where there were none before. It’s a process of acknowledging that we here today have certain privilege – for me, I am American-born and college-educated (believe it or not). I can leverage that as I walk in the world by using those advantages to make a way toward level ground.
There are many intersections of my identity groups, so learning about the inherent privilege and access to power there is the key to me becoming whole. I am not there yet, and the journey to get there is really uncomfortable. I get my feelings hurt, I stumble and fall, say stupid things, mistrust people, and forget that people can change. I don’t remember where I came from. But for better or worse, I keep coming back to try again. I was told the key to having a long relationship is that you just don’t leave.
So, I’m still standing, and so are you. Where do we go from here? I believe that…if…we are ready to screw up repeatedly and start again, if we are really committed to the vision of building a beloved community. If we are unwavering and unafraid to stay here, and to let the light from our ancestors shine. If we do all of that, that work is what’s going to make us whole let us love the hell out of this crazy, mixed-up, imperfect, chaotic, and sometimes cruel world.
I hope I’ve opened a small window into how it is to be me, walking in this world. How it is to be a perfectly flawed person of color trying to figure out how to turn on the lights. For all of us doing this very hard work of reconciling with ourselves and each other, I say, celebrate the small victories where you can. Be generous with your joy, because joy is itself an act of resistance to the unacceptable. Don’t ever let the unacceptable become normal. ‘Cause the clock is ticking and ain’t nobody got time for all that other mess.
My $.02 for today, which is worth a negative $.087 if you factor in current inflation rates…
Yes, now they’ve come for the weather service, and the oceanic and atmospheric administration. They’re always coming for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Somewhere in there, they came for FEMA. Going after FEMA and setting it up to fail didn’t start with the Texas floods…think back to Hurricane Katrina – “you’ve done a helluva job, Brownie.” This all looks like money-grabbig politics, but I contend it is also about population control. There are larger and larger outlays of money for the social safety net because the society has gotten larger.
So, in the eyes of capitalist oligarchs, one way to keep the profit margin up is to reduce the size of the society. That’s been tried before, and it’s failed every time because it’s not that we don’t want the population as a whole to decrease, we just don’t want it to decrease by eliminating white people, or fat people, or mentally ill people, or any kind of imperfect people. If those people cannot reproduce, because they are dead from things like measles and overdose, death in childbirth, or mass shooting well, that’s two or more birds with one stone.
This has never been about politics; it’s about power and control. It’s about the last person standing. Ever since the WHO said that white people would be a numeric minority by 2045, slow-motion genocide across the globe has become the “new world order.” The cradle of all civilization (Africa) has been stricken and, and for a while had the pole position in new and emergent killer viruses (e.g. Ebola, Hemorrhagic Fever). Ground Zero for more recent pandemics has now shifted to Asia, the most populated region on the planet., and now we have corona viruses and HIV. The only one that MIGHT have started in the U.S. was the Spanish Flu, but there is still a bit of disagreement about that.
Regardless, the capacity to inflict suffering is new. For a minute, I thought maybe the level of cruelty and sadism was new, but it’s not. What kind of sadistic and twisted minds could think up and implement a system to transport people as cargo, in the bowels of ships, and justify the whole thing by dehumanizing the subjects of the transport? The same sick and twisted minds who devised a macabre accounting system that designated enslaved people as property that was equivalent to 3/5 of a person. The same minds that could develop an involuntary breeding practice for enslaved people to produce enslaved children, who were then cruelly ripped from their mothers’ arms to be sold as livestock. That would be the same sadistic and twisted minds who dehumanize immigrants on a daily basis, lose immigrant children in the system, and house children in cages without their parents.
We get to see the results of our staggering capacity to inflict suffering in full color, live, in real-time. And still, we are giddily enthralled by our ability to make ourselves comfortable, even at the expense of others. I would like to believe there will be a reckoning, but I don’t know that. At this moment, the forces of deceit and guile, the lure of greed and control, appear to be winning. We come to the serpent again and again, lusting after a different apple that brings forth a different outcome but alas, we are bound to ego and power, two sides of the coin of illusion. We are addicted to the notion that we are in control of all circumstances, but we are merely chained to the mouth of the volcano that cannot contain the expanse of our darkness. Some believe we are returning to the beginning, others say we are moving toward the end. None of us know of what we speak, and that itself is the darkness.
Perhaps the light can only be seen when it is allowed to blaze freely, flow unbridled, unrestricted by creatures who deny their limitations. Sentience, including free will, is not a contract but a covenant, neither payment nor gratuity. It is without beginning or end, unless we choose otherwise. To manifest cruelty and suffering is to choose otherwise.
So, here’s the thing. I am realizing just how high-maintenance I really am. Had an incredible time speaking at the UU service last week. It went very well, and I actually got a standing ovation when I was done. Then I came home. That was so exciting I needed a nap a couple of hours later.
Got the new laptop yesterday. Had some good trouble with making sure all my apps were in good working order, which I did (Zoom was the most difficult of all) and then watched some reels on Facebook and thought about the great and wonderful things I should do now that I have this new device. Then I needed a nap, and then I cruised the interwebs for a while.
I am most sincerely very grateful for being able to acquire a new laptop. Technically, I could have managed with the old one for a bit longer, but finances were not going to get any better going forward so carpe diem. Or something like that. I will set my sights on doing something benevolent for someone or something else to underscore my gratitude. But the anticlimax is real.
I was having a fairly good time writing that paper that I presented at the Fellowship, and was happy that it came off well and people seemed to appreciate it. They gave me a standing ovation, which stunned me. I really didn’t know quite how to take that in. But then it was just over and…I went home. My usual posse of potential lunch partners was not there, so after a few more pats on the back…I came home as usual. No big whoop, no residual joy, just…back to the ordinary. Bleh. High maintenance.
Today, it’s hot. Not as hot as yesterday, but still hot. Yesterday and the day before were like crematorium hot…the kind of hot where your hair can melt off your head and you are sweating in parts of your body that you never knew you had. Life, what a beautiful choice.
Yesterday was also my mother’s birthday. June 25, 1935 she bounced in here and stirred up all kinds of stuff for the next 82, almost 83, years. I wonder where she has gone, whether she still has the same ideas about how the world works and how to relate to people. I tell people frequently that I learned how to have relationships from crazy people. Neither one of my parents was particularly healthy about relationships on any level. A lot of co-dependence and avoidance and neglect. Oy vey.
But here I am, and it is what it is. I feel as though I have learned a few things, and feel as though I have initiated some major change in my life. I am not the same person I was in high school and college, not the same delusional, angry, confused child in an adult body that was a mystery. On some levels it is still a mystery, but that’s OK. I don’t really hate the hand I was dealt any longer, but it still frustrates me that so many people commit infractions, sins if you will, identical to mine and have no consequences. I always have consequences. Is that karma, or some unpaid debt from another lifetime? If so, have I made any progress toward restitution?
I suppose the answer to questions like that is not for me to know at this point, but if I did know… how would that make anything different? Would I suddenly comprehend what the next right step is, or inexplicably have boundaries and know how to have a healthy relationship? I suppose it would not be that easy, and entertaining such an incredible vision is simply fantasy. Maybe not even a good fantasy.
Anyhow, if I had any sense, I would do a couple of things today. One is to ake an appointment with the vet for the psycho dog. She has to be due for many things at this point, and she’s been scratching at her left ear and shaking her head a lot. That usually means mites, which is a drage but easy to fix. She got her lovins from Mr. Tom earlier, so I guess she’s happy.
The President is taking credit for brokering the cease-fire between Israel and Iran. Good job, ace, although you probably caused Iran to even be feared as a nuclear threat. Obama had gotten Iran to sign onto a pact that said they could not enrich uranium, which is a key requisite for building nuclear weapons. The agreement had been in place for several years, and seemed to be working. Until the orange rains came.
The brilliant stable genius tore up that agreement and tossed it into a trash can, mainly on the basis of his hatred or Obama. So, what’s a good middle-Eastern country with an agenda of destroying Israel to do except…start collecting and enriching uranium. This military strike on Iran targeted all three of their nuclear facilities, and nobody knows for sure whether those facilities were destroyed entirely or not. According to orange explanations, everything was obliterated, and the potential for nuclear development in Iran has been eradicated. According to actual facts, there was likely heavy damage to the facilities, but they could be repaired in a reasonable amount of time.
But here’s the big thing. The uranium is gone. Credible sources believe the Iranians received advance notice of the “surprise” attack and secretly moved it all to some unknown location. That would give them a reservation for future development, plus I hear they have some homies in the area who might lend a hand. We’lljust have to watch and wait.
The only reason this whole Iran pseudo-crisis arose is because SOMEBODY needed a distraction from the catastrophe that is otherwise known as his administration. Neither he nor any of his so-called cabinet can find their butts with both hands and a high-powered flashlight, so I’m not holding my breath that any of this will end well. His much-touted ceasefire between the two nations did not hold for even 12 hours. So, again, the only thing accomplished was a distraction for those of us over here. Thanks, Beav, but you’re still gonna have to explain all that when Mom gets home.
OK, now I’m hungry. I should have something in here to eat. One of my choices is frozen pizza, which I have recently learned is mega-bad for autoimmune diseases. I was really starting to enjoy those, too. From what I read, I don’t have to eliminate them all together from my diet, but use only sparingly. We’ll see about that. So, awaaaaaaaay I go, to save the day and make the world safe for those of us who walk a little bit on the dark side.
I slept reasonably well last night, so as usual I woke up with my brain fully engaged in thoughts, wonderings, musings, etc. I reflected particularly on a conversation I had with one of the PAs on my care team (yeah, it’s a full team, quite a few people now) about faith. It began as mostly an intellectual discussion between two liberal arts type people (she wa a philosophy major) and ended only when the next patient arrived.
We got into an intense discussion about the definition of faith, at least one’s personal faith. I offered several personal examples and experiences that I believed demonstrated faith, as did she. We batted that around for a bit, and she would come back each time with the question, “What does that have to do with faith?” I suppose that is a very good question for me, particularly in these times when bedrock institutions and historical accounts seem to fail.
I suppose, for me, what anything has to do with faith is answered by my definition of faith. We speak of faith “in” something – I have faith in the Constitution, I have faith in democracy, I have faith in medical science. When I take a deeper look at such things, however, I think what I’m saying is that I have “belief” in those things, that I accept their reality. I believe the Constitution is a real physical document authored by those we consider Founding Fathers, I believe that democracy is a logically and morally oriented system of governance, I believe that my heart is located on the top pleft side of my body, and that when my body dies it stops beating. I belileve those things intellectually, because I have seen what I believe is evidence of their existence. Faith, however, may be a bit deeper than existential fact.
I believe we are on a planet in a solar system that orbits a central star, in regular intervals. When morning comes,, the light returns, and I believe that is true based on my experience. But do I have faith that everything is in order way up there, that a benevolent force will see to it that the solar system will function tomorrow much as it did today? Do I have faith that some things I cannot see or feel personally will continue to be true from day to day, whether I understand them intellectually or not? Yes, to both of those things.. Do I have faith that joy comes in the morning, as many people say, based on religious belief? I’m not so sure about that, and so I cannot claim to have faith in that statement.
So what does that have to do about anything? Believing there is good intent behind a repetitive occurrence that I can neither prove nor disprove intellectually involves my heart and spirit more than my brain. Accordingly, that puts me into another realm of choice about truth, about loyalty, about interdependent relationships, and on and on and on. That’s where it gets uncomfortable. If light does not return tomorrow, do I presume there has been a catastrophe in the solar system or that a divinity has withdrawn its benevolence? In what do I actually have faith, astronomy or divine intervention? And what does it matter?
I suppose it matters because we are hard wired to depend on that which we can see and prove, as well as things we cannot see and prove, to provide an explanation for how things work here, or even why they don’t work. Technically gravity is but a theory, as is electricity, but no one among us is willing to jump from a great height to disprove the theory of gravity. All of us expect devices and machines to work when they are plugged in to a source of something we cannot see or hear that has been generated from a physical device that we can neither see nor hear. We take it on good authority, and experience, that both theories are proven.
It becomes irrelevant whether I believe in the theory of electricity or not when I do not pay my power bill. That’s because I have learned to have faith in the contract I have with the power company, from a long history of relationship, and believe they will provide electricity to me if I hold up my end of the bargain. But every once in a while, something goes wrong. I have paid the bill, I have maintained a healthy connection to the electrical grid, but I have no power. I may have faith in the contract, but do I have faith in the other party? If they fail to hold up their end of the bargain repeatedly, I will lose faith in them. I will probably become discontent, and want to seek other sources of power. In our society, there are usually few choices for total replacement of an electrical provider, so I become more discontent and angry and question the provider’s intentions, their ability to do the job, and so on. What are they doing with the money I have paid to them, if the system continues to fail? So, the belief and/or faith in the theory of electricity does not matter at this point, but my faith in turning on the lights has been challenged, interrupted, mitigated. That’s the interrelationship part.
Bad things happen to good people. All people do not agree with each other. People feel strongly about their beliefs, and ultimately in the objects of their faith. That’s where the emotionalism comes in, I suppose. If the power doesn’t come on when I plug in my coffee maker, and the bill is paid, and there are no inclement conditions that might cause a failure in the power grid I do not lose faith in the theory of electricity, or the movement of electrons along conductive media. I lose faith in the middle part of the equation – the power company, or maybe the coffee maker itself. I’m not angry about how electricity works, and usually don’t understand the nature of that. But I am angry with the power company, or the coffee maker, for a perceived failure to do its job, failure to provide to me what I need. My faith in them has collapsed.
When faith collapses, or is severely threatened, it feels dark and lonely. It feels as though I am lost in the middle of nowhere, without assistance. At that point, I am afraid. What if the power does not return? Will I be able to function? Will my refrigerated goods spoil at room temperature? Will I die in the heat or cold without ventilation? How will things continue so that I can live? And that’s when I figure I’ll have to fight, because there is no good answer to any of those questions, and I don’t know how to survive if there is no power, literally and figuratively.
So, faith apparently is necessary to keep me “plugged in” to something greater than myself, something I can neither see nor describe, but know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is essential for me to survive. I also know that if others disagree with my position on that, and find they can survive without being plugged in to the grid, so be it. Some of us want to force everyone into a condition of conformity with their objects of faith, but we’re defiantly snarky little beings and resist efforts to make us do anything, no matter how practical or beneficial it is. Again, so be it. That’s who we are, for better or worse.
My body is a physical thing, and there are people who possess great knowledge of the physical workings of it. When I don’t know how to maintain working bodily systems, I go to medical professionals for help. They give me the benefit of their mastery of medical realities, and we proceed to analyze, accept, and possibly change based on a full complement of diverse bits of information. If I have no faith in medical science, nothing a professional medical person says to me will have any effect, because I have no faith in the source of their expertise. My heart is not convinced, and I’m not connected to intellectual belief or disbelief.
So, the question of what anything I experience, or believe, has to do with faith is not a simple one to answer but… I believe it’s a necessary question to contemplate. I have faith that my contemplation will yield clarity about my connection to my self, and to things outside my self. That’s not supposed to make sense, I don’t think, but I’m plugged into it and it works for me.
So, here we are again, one click lower down on the scale than before in a way. I’m broke again, and one of my solutions may be gone soon; Social Security is on the chopping block at the Capitol. Bleh. I am not sure what they imagine people will do without subsidies. We will not go into a disintegration chamber at the end of the street, without no human intervention and not a trace of the corporeal remaining. That would seem far too easy, but if we can automate everything else, I suppose automated death has already been conceptualized.
People have become so desensitized these days. We’re jaded and cynical because we’ve been lied to and betrayed so many times. Speaking for myself, I don’t know what or who to believe, and find it likely that no absolute truth will ever spring forth from the mouth of human kind. There are Universal truths, I suppose, but those are nothing any of us came up with. This current situation here on Earth is entirely of our own doing, and somewhere along the line we’re gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do.
So how am I going to survive as my health begins to decline, as I age and can do less and less without assistance? When the current federal administration was sworn in, my first thought was to leave the country. After brief consideration, I found that to be an untenable possibility. I’m not in any kind of shape to be engage in a major move to a foreign country where I’d have to establish citizenship, possibly learn a new language, find a medical care team, and so on. Maybe 30 years ago that would be the option hands down, but not at this point.
So where do broke old people go when there’s no social safety net? I don’t believe that place has been invented just yet, which is a terrifying realization. But I still believe in miracles, and I have to believe that something will come about that will make it possible to continue until it’s time to transition to some other experience.
Having those realizations causes me to wonder what I’m doing any of this for, this effort to heal, to recover, to learn. My default response answers quickly that no reason exists to make all of this struggle and effort mean anything. My embryonic alternative persona argues that we don’t know that for sure, that it is not necessary to understand the hows and whys of being here. I suppose the latest depression treatment has made some kind of difference, because I am more than willing to argue that point. Previously, I would have decided there was no hope for anything beneficial to come from this stage of my existence.
Many years ago, a lot of people who were prone to search out esoteric teachings said that we came here for a reason at this time, that we came into existence deliberately at this specific time. Some of them said people who incarnated to be present now are very brave souls, but I am cynical about that. I have to consider the larger group of souls here at this time, and not just the heroic or visionary ones. I have to remember there are some very dark souls here at this point, and they are here for a reason as well.
I haven’t always wanted to be wherever it is that I found myself. That’s been a more or less constant thing. When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now that I’m older, I want to be much younger. That’s not unique, but of course it’s a big deal when it’s happening to me. Perhaps selfishness and self-centeredness are the only constants, but then again, I’ve had long periods of not putting myself first and not being self absorbed quite enough.
Looking back on things, I see no shape or form of me that has definition. I have more in common with Silly Putty, which adapts and takes on the characteristics of whatever inane thing it is pressed on. Truthfully, I feel as though I have a bit more definition now than I’ve ever had, but I’m still beginning my journey from a formidable distance behind the starting gate. Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be.
Maybe everything going on at this moment is exactly as it is supposed to be, but does that not assume that predetermination is afoot? I’m not sure about that at all, and have thought more that we are al building this plane while flying it. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain, but that works for fictional lands and not terra firma. The little man behind the curtain is not all that little, and he’s got bombs and guns and weapons of mass destruction. There is no good witch to offer salvation from the minions of the underworld, and we don’t get out of here alive. I just am hard pressed to find a point in any of it.
Maybe I’m not supposed to find a point. Maybe I’m not supposed to be completely happy with any of this. Maybe by the time I’m no longer able to live autonomously, there will be an app for removing myself from the narrative. That sounds way more honorable than checking out, offing myself, or giving up. I’m not going to do any of those things because I have no guarantee that any such actions would stop the pain, the confusion, the indecision. So, I’ll remain here until the next episode, or until the mothership arrives and takes me to some other place.
I feel as though I’ve been in this angst-ridden place of being not quite here or there, not quite alive but definitely not dead. I never really wanted to be a head atop a body that only existed to move it around, but I suppose that’s what I am now. That’s not actually a complaint, just a realization. For all the struggling and tumult of my younger years, I accomplished little of what I set out to do. Come to think of it, I may have never known what it was that I set out to do, other than have my family approve of me. I did what my mother saw as success, and stopped there. I guess I didn’t really conceive of any other place for myself except the place she saw me in.
I hate having these kinds of conversations with myself. My mother and father did very good things for me, especially getting me here. When I remember what was missing, however, I feel ungrateful, and spoiled. I have been told more times than I care to remember that I should forgive, because they were doing the best they could do. That may be true, or maybe not. I don’t know what was the best they could do.
Did I do the best that I could do? Most assuredly not. It’s not that I want a do-over, because all the money in the world could not seduce me into reliving those years when I didn’t know who the hell I was, but knew that I didn’t really want to find out. I had already decided that I was already damned, so the rest was all gravy. That happened very early on, in my recollection of things. At 8, I was already desperate to survive on my own terms and made choices that were a bit sketchy even then, but I stopped just short of turning into a fugitive or a runaway. I’m sure my finest hours back then were no longer cute, no longer precocious, but what did I know? I had only need and more need, and did not understand why I had to teach myself what I needed to know in order to actually survive.
I suppose I am still teaching myself what I need to know in order to survive, but now I have a driver’s license and a debit card so it’s a little different. But I still feel somewhat trapped in a reality that I did and did not choose, that I hate but am grateful for. What the hell is that all about? More will be revealed, I am told, but let’s bring it on – time grows short!
Lately, I am finding it very hard to be enthusiastic about environmental issues. I can’’t muster up the pom-poms for Earth Day or recycling or sustainable crops. Those issues seem far overshadowed by the reality of people being snatched off the streets by immigration enforcement thugs. These people are being literally disappeared, taken forcibly to unknown destinations with no ability to communicate with family or employers, probably unsure of where they’ve been taken. This is unconstitutional, and undemocratic, and the chief executive of the country doesn’t care. He is totally focused on demonizing immigrants, even those who landed here legally.
It’s difficult to watch this, difficult to hear about it. It’s frightening to know this is happening, and to be sure that if they can do it to these people they can do it to anyone. The law becomes irrelevant and totally meaningless. They are now disregarding the orders of judges who commanded them to suspend their deportation activities. They are paying Venezuela to accept people, some with no criminal record and objects of dubious misinformation that branded them as gang members, into a horrific prison that is overcrowded and notorious for torture and abysmal treatment of those incarcerated.
This is all revolting, because we should be better than this. But we’re not. We are no better than those we decreed were barbaric and had no respect for human rights, like the Taliban or people who kidnapped and beheaded foreigners for reasons of…well just because. Some of those killed have stuck with me, like Margaret Hassan, a British aid worker married to a middle-Easterner. She was kidnapped out of the blue one day, and held in a Taliban camp. She was forced to record videos that begged for payment of absurd amounts to save her life. One day, the news came that she had been killed, sent out of a tent blindfolded and shot by a sniper. I cannot forget her tear-stained face begging for her life, begging for her country to do whatever was demanded to secure her release. And she was not the first, nor the last.
The absurdity of all of this galls me. What did it change to murder a woman who had not engaged in hostility toward anyone, who was aiding innocent victims of war and occupation. What good did it do to behead journalists and foreign contractors? These are acts of depravity as far as I am concerned, and they have won no victories, no concessions, no change in policy, no peace. These are the false assertions of power by the powerless. These are the tantrums of those who have no voice, but try very hard to convince the rest of the world that they are in supreme control. Captains of their fate, masters of no one. Tragedy on all the fronts.
I cannot speak for the Taliban or the Iraqis or any middle-Eastern people, but I can speak for America. As the self-proclaimed greatest nation on the face of the Earth, we should damned well be above barbarism and cruelty. We should damned well be about the business of living by example, telling everyone there’s another way to further our enterprises than to un-alive and disappear those who have no power. We have crumpled enlightenment and thrown it in the face of the Divine. Some of us truly believe that our actions are entirely justified simply because we are who we say we are. I contend that we don’t know who the hell we are.
I was mentioning to someone earlier today that I have to remember that all of this insanity IS the revolution. It’s the labor pains before giving birth a new age, to the new way, what those of us who grew up in the 60s learned was the Age of Aquarius. People laughed at that, and by the turn of the new millennium most had discarded those colorful anthems as the result of smoking too much really good dope. We turned away from the vision of peace and love and harmony and understanding, only to let the images of the Viet Nam war become our dominant vision. We’ve been fighting a war on our own streets ever since, and we are now the aging offspring of generations who only know how to be at war. War against poverty, war against drugs, war against gangs, war against our own creations. I don’t think we’re supposed to know the why of all that, but we ARE supposed to know right from wrong. We ARE supposed to know this dominance game isn’t sustainable, and that it doesn’t get us anywhere. We ARE supposed to know how to quell our hypocrisy.
Winning the war is always short-lived, but we’ve never learned how to return to center. Perhaps we never will, but I would like to believe something else. I would like to have faith in humanity, in the promise of good, in creativity. We are only as good as what we can create, not in what we can do over and over expecting different results. I want to believe in us, in the collective heart of the world. I don’t believe in the promise of conquest and linear absolutism. There are gray areas, and infinite ways for each of us to make our way to Truth.
I hope we get it. I hope we get it before we destroy ourselves. The clock is ticking, and it’s counting down the minutes until the bomb blows. We might be able to avert the explosion if we can realize that we are living in abundance, and not scarcity. We’ll just have to see, but at some point we’re all going to wake up dead because nobody gets out of here alive. Maybe that’s when the work really begins. Saddle up, we ride at dawn.
The Sound Hole 