Today, it was announced that a Federal grand jury indicted all four of the former Minnesota police officers who were present at the murder of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin, of course, has already been convicted of the murder, since he took direct action to precipitate George Floyd’s death. The indictment charges all four of the officers with depriving George Floyd of his civil rights.

This is a pretty big deal. It remains a big deal that Chauvin has been convicted, despite his lawyers pledging to appeal and waging forays into finding anything possible to seek a new trial. Sentencing has not yet been pronounced, so that’s another bit of suspense in the saga of George Floyd.

The other three officers who accompanied Derek Chauvin in responding to the call that George Floyd had used a counterfeit bill to pay for goods at a convenience store are still awaiting trial on charges they failed to intervene in the excessive force restraint of the man, which led to his death. This is also a pretty big deal.

It has been exceedingly rare for law enforcement officers to face consequences such as these when a suspect dies in their custody. The nation has seen case after case of unarmed people of color killed by law enforcement personnel, or at least face death while in custody,. Up to the conviction of Derek Chauvin, all of these cases have resulted in no indictments against the officer(s), and no accountability of a system widely proven to be intentionally oppressive to marginalized communities.

Many people see the conviction of Derek Chauvin as a cause for hopefulness, that an out of control law enforcement system can be reformed, or at least held accountable. That hopefulness is tempered by a broad stroke of pragmatism, however, as community leaders note that accountability is not equivalent to justice; George Floyd cannot be made whole. His family cannot be made whole. He cannot be returned to life and the circumstances of his death cannot be erased. We all have to live with his death, and the aftermath. All of us.

The officer who killed Daunte Wright, at nearly the same time Derek Chauvin’s conviction was handed down, awaits trial. She has been charged with voluntary manslaughter, because she shot him during an arrest, claiming that she confused her handgun with her taser. She was arrested and her mug shots broadcast on mass media. This is very unusual for a police officer to be handled in this fashion, arrested very quickly, remanded until she could post bail, and now awaiting trial.

We don’t see this very often, but again, this does not return Daunte Wright to his life, to his family, or any of us to any degree of optimism or trust concerning law enforcement. We have to be firmly rooted in the reality of this scene, accepting the harsh fact that Daunte Wright will not rise from the dead, and the story of a handgun mistaken for a taser is what we have on the table.

While I agree these latest examples of what appears to be a newfound sense of accountability for law enforcement, I must realize just how new this trend is. We are only months from the overly militarized response, nationwide, to protests over George Floyd’s death. Juxtapose that with the absence of virtually ANY response, militaristic or not, to the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6th. There was…nothing. Capitol Police officers were hung out to dry, outnumbered and out strategized by a dearth of proactive response from their leadership. I wont even speculate on whether that lack of response was intentional and essentially conspiratorial, or merely incompetent. In either case, the results were disastrous.

The long line of law enforcement officers who have not been subject to accountability for death of unarmed suspects is incomprehensible. It took everyone who is outraged over this quite a while to understand how the system was able to protects itself so effectively – qualified immunity. Most people had never heard of such a thing, but after grand jury after grand jury refused to indict when the evidence seemed irrefutable – Freddie Gray, Breona Taylor, Mike Brown, Jacob Blake – everyone had no choice but to comprehend the insidiousness of systemic oppression.

When people can’t figure out why these kinds of things keep happening, only a few leaders or activists understand that punishing the individuals directly responsible is only the battle., not the war. The war is at the level of policy, state and local laws, lack of federal policy, mindset. Who ever would have known that police departments were becoming increasingly militarized, acquiring surplus military equipment and training for responding to civil unrest. We certainly didn’t know, but somebody knew. There were policies, there were laws, there were Congressional resolutions. But we didn’t know.

Putting together the bigger picture is generally not something grass-roots activists have the resources to accomplish. Down at the grass roots level, there are volunteer-driven movements, cooperatives, some non-profit silos. At the level where policy is made and money is allocated to implement those, there are professional lobbyists, government agency executives, and private sector concerns. Follow the money. It always leads to the root of the issue.

And then, of course, there’s the racism and the classism and the concerted political efforts to keep people separated. The separation has now gone farther than separation on the basis of race, or class, or culture, or religion. Now it’s separation on the basis of acceptance of truth. What some accept as truth is no longer evidence of objective data, but affinity for who transmits the data. It is a test of faith, and I don’t mean theology.

Faith in “thought leaders” is becoming the way our society moves. We’re seeing many people who define themselves as “people of faith”, meaning members of an organized Christian denomination, exhibiting faith in human leaders. Faith in the human leader is seen as a necessary pass-through to contact with the divinity. That’s not entirely new – Catholics reach God by means of the priest, or the Pope. Protestants reach God by means of the minister, or the preacher. So, now people are finding it necessary to do God’s work by means of the politician, or t least the political process.

I contend this is mostly a cop-out (pun more than likely intended). It’s the intermingling of Church and State, which our nation was specifically warned against, from its founding. But, we jumped the broom, crossed the line, and made the deal with the Devil. Literally. We can no longer get our egos out of the game, and so we desperately manipulate the political and pubic policy systems to get what we want. And we blame it on God, who I think is none too pleased.

If I believe that abortion of a pregnancy is morally wrong, and goes against the will of God, I have every right to believe that. If I believe that so strongly that I am compelled to take action to convince everyone else that abortion is wrong, I suppose I have that right as well. What I do not have the right to do is bomb abortion clinics, murder doctors and health care workers I suspect are performing abortions for willing recipients, or harass people seeking counsel and/or service regarding abortion. But people do that, and justify themselves as doing the work of God. In my estimation, they are doing the work of their own egos, but that’s my opinion.

So, a bias is at play with issues like this. In the case of abortion, it’s religious preference. If I don’t believe that abortion is morally wrong in all circumstances, and believe that God provided human beings with freedom of will, is my view nullified because someone with the opposite view screams louder? Or kills me? Or blows up my house? This is what happened during the Civil Rights Era – people who refused to allow de-segregation to be implemented, despite it being the law of the land, bombed and murdered and caused harm to people with whom they disagreed. And for what? They still lost that battle, but they are still fighting the war.

Bias is at play with everything going on today, with the way policing is practiced in this country, with the way public education is implemented, with the way basic life resources can be accessed. Why is it that some schools have books and clean lunch rooms and enough space for students, while other schools have no books, rats and raw sewage in common areas, and not enough classroom space? Why is that?

Usually, those inequities track very neatly along the lines of marginalized communities. Marginalized by race, and by class. After de-segregation white families moved out of the inner cities, and into the suburbs, leaving the inner city schools to serve mostly black and brown populations, and mostly poor populations. Working parents were less able to contribute volunteer time or money to augment what the public allocation might be, while many of the suburban schools were new, and parents had the ability to pick up the slack of the public dole.

So, when people look at those obvious signs of inequity, we have to go below the level of the individuals who make up the student body. We have to get beyond the judgement of assigning inner city parents qualities of uncaring, irresponsible, wanting something for nothing. We have to get beyond the judgement of suburban parents as more involved, and caring about whether their children learn. Neither view is absolutely true.

To properly asses why there’s a huge gap in equity, we have to look at the public policy, the municipal zoning, the neighborhoods, the age of the school buildings, building code, book contracts, teacher salaries, bus routes, tax code and municipal bonds, and other things. We have to figure out how we got to the point of having raw sewage and rats in a school. Then we have to figure out what it’s going to take to fix that. We have to do that for every failing school, without exception, and we have to accept that one size of remedy will not fit all.

The one size fits all mentality is essentially lazy, and essentially an attempt to avoid litigation. It doesn’t work. It has never worked. every situation is different, unless you want to deal with robots or machines. But in public policy, we are dealing with people – the public. Treating people who are diverse as though they are the same is a disaster waiting to happen, and come to think of it, we’re no longer waiting. It’s happening now.

We have to accept the truth. That’s the first step. And the truth is…no one human leader deserves our adoration. They may deserve our respect, our support, but not adoration. They are not our friends; we’ve never met most of them personally. This is a business arrangement, and they work for us.

Politics is a dirty, nasty game. Nobody gets out without getting their hands, or other body parts, dirty. It’s about compromise, no matter how messy that gets. Most politicians would have to admit that it’s about power, and influence, which usually brings power, or at least the illusion thereof. That’s fine, except when they ignore the will of the people who elected them. That’s not fine. But, absolute power corrupts absolutely, or something like that.

The ego is a powerful thing. It isn’t concerned with anything but itself, because the illusion – or may delusion – is that without it, we will die. Politicians, CEOs, leaders of any kind…they have tremendous egos. Without some attempt to balance the ego, with humility and some attitude of service beyond ambition, one descends into narcissism and toxic sociopathy. We’ve seen what happens when that emerges, and it’s not pleasant nor productive.

I was just listening to the news about the third most powerful leader of the GOP losing her position. She is not being replaced because she lacked conviction, or ambition, or even loyalty to party. She is being ousted because she refused to back up the status quo of rejecting truth.

This is a layer of the political game that is more frightening than any other, one that demands abandoning facts, convictions, even morals and requires winning by literally any means necessary. Saving face, bloating one’s image for maximum approval and validation, refusing to act in one’s own integrity…that is the currency of this phase of the game. The delusion that power and money are the gain of this effort is almost comical – the money is merely colored bits of paper, the property color-coded cards with arbitrary values assigned merely to further game play. Some human made up the rules of the game, and as long as everyone understands the game is for entertainment value only, there’s no harm and no foul. But take this up to the level of real people, and real lives, and real consequences and we have a problem. A big problem. We have life as we know it in this country, and maybe others.

Despite many rounds of game play, we always come to the same conclusion. There is an end, there is only so much currency, there is only so much property, there are only so many game tokens. It has to end. It has to end because this is how the game is played. We made the rules. There are winners, and there are losers. Those are our rules,.

Unfortuntely, we find that no matter the rules, Truth prevails. It can be hidden, manipulated, dressed in a tuxedo that covers bloody evidence of a crime, but it will not be denied. Truth is immutable, it is Universal law, inherent in our existence. So our game always ends the same way, with the realization that truth will not be denied. Because this is really not a game.

Sooner or later, Truth will topple even the most carefully erected house of cards, no matter how many plastic houses and hotels have been placed there. Any edifice constructed of lies will fall. No matter what. Unfortunately, it may take some time, and there will be damage while it lasts. But the shoddy construction will fall. It will fall because this is about real people, not game tokens, and real people will always try to be free. Real people will always realize that you can’t be free if you’re locked inside someone else’s game.

So, whether it’s about buying surplus military equipment for your police force, or outlawing abortions, or buying guns for every corner of your life, or saving the environment, we all have our playgrounds. We all want our way about something. That’s fine. Everybody should be able to at least try getting what they want. As long as you understand that you aren’t the only player on the field, the only person on the playground.

So, I’m feeling a little weary. Feeling like I’m the last one left in a game of killer doge ball, and there are no outs on the other team. The ball is coming, and I’ve been dodging it for a while, so I’m a bit fatigued. I’m feeling a little bit disenchanted, like maybe it was just a fairy tale that I could possibly win and live happily ever after.

I want my spark back. My soul feels too heavy. I don’t want to be weighted down by Other People’s Problems (the OPP I spoke of previously). I am NOT down with OPP, no matter how good the beat is or the excitement. And you know me. I have to move. That’s what a movement is – people moving. I want to be part of people moving. To stop climbing the mountain is to die, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

I thought I had pretty much finished up with my writing prompt on food, but maybe there’s more (as I finish my ritual Rice Krispies bars and Hostess cupcake breakfast). I covered the weird obsessions about size, and weight, that came from the women in my family. I covered the sugar obsession, nay addiction) that I have always seemed to have. I covered seeking sweetness in life as a metaphor for seeking sweetness in consumption, in digestion, in sense of taste. So, what else is there?

The only other thing I can think of is how family life involved food, and sustenance, and how we gave and received sustenance. Gaining sustenance from food was seen mostlly as a given. There were certain traditions around certain meals, like seafood on Fridays, like favorite (or hated) vegetables, like turkey and ham on Thanksgiving. There were just certain things you did.

You didn’t eat meat on a Friday because we were good Catholics, and post-Vatican II, a good Catholic did not eat meat on Friday to honor the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. OK, honestly, that never quite made sense to me, but when you received Holy Communion, the priest said “Body of Christ” as he put the host in your mouth (back in the day, they shoved the driest possible disc of some unknown manufacture onto your tongue, but these days you’re allowed to cup your hands and they drop in a much tastier bread-type morsel that you are allowed to place in your own mouth). So, it had some connection to not consuming the proverbial Body of Christ.

Regardless of theological significance, seafood on Fridays was a big deal culturally where I came from. It was an industry all of its own, and restaurants were packed with diners on Fridays. You just didn’t mess with that, no matter what religion you claimed. If you had a seafood allergy, you figured out how to eat vegetables or something that could pass muster without incurring the wrath of God and the talk of the town. You do what you have to.

Holidays were a big deal for most of us where I grew up, the big ones being traditional Christian ones – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. Thanksgiving you had ham and turkey, plus some traditional incidentals like sweet potato casserole (with pecans mixed in the sweet potatoes and little marshmallows baked on top), stuffed bell peppers, stuffed mirlitons, maybe some green bean casserole with cream of onion soup as a base, and baked onions on top.

Mamas all over town would cook for two or three days to feed everybody on the appointed day. My mama, not quite so much. She did some things, but a lot of the time my grandmother and my aunt would be bringing up the rear so that we didn’t starve entirely.

One year, for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, there was a tray of stuffed peppers in the oven, almost done. One of my great-aunts, who was somewhat of a busybody, decided to check on them, and somehow managed to overturn the entire tray. There were crumbs and shards of bell peppers all over the floor of the oven, and that part of the meal was more or less history. My mother was none too pleased, but what can you do?

We had a small house, with a small dining area, so having all those people over to eat for a holiday was a study in tolerance, patience, and choreography. Trying to pass plates, without spilling anything, to someone who was seated almost outdoors was a feat all by itself. Thank goodness I was an only child, because siblings would have caused us to look for rented space for occasions like that.

My mother’s anxiety was usually at a manageable level, my father was in relatively good humor, and I was giddy with excitement like 10-year olds are supposed to be. Having my grandmother there was beyond all my dreams on an ordinary day, but a holiday was over the moon for me. I don’t remember anybody fighting or bickering, and I usually got quite a lot of attention.

I think my mother tried to put a little guilt about how much I was eating out there on those special occasions, but that was pretty muted and I didn’t pay much attention to it. After we’d all eaten way too much, the women folk would start the cleaning up of dishes and tableware, and the men folk (who were in the numeric minority) would retire to the living room, a beer, and the football game.

I usually wanted to be in there, with the football game. It was actually safer, because I always got in the way in the kitchen doing the clean up things, and they would just tell me to go play with something. Sometimes, I think my grandmother or somebody would go with me, but usually I was left to my own devices unless I could sneak into the man cave. Oh, well – shape of things to come I suppose.

Anyway, holiday meals were rather special, and I usually felt pretty good at those times. It was rarely the food itself, although I still hanker for sweet potato casserole with the mini-marshmallows on top from time to time. But, early on, those were great days and I looked forward to them. Christmas was the best, since my birthday was four days after that, and then it was totally ALL about me. As it should be. I’m not kidding.

Easter was fine, but it was just kind of obligatory as far as meals went. We didn’t have lamb (thank goodness) but ham was usually the big thing. I was just in it for the candy. I love white chocolate (which is really not chocolate, but whatever) and I demanded a white chocolate rabbit – solid, not hollow, thank you very much. I finally abandoned the formal Easter basket when I was about 11, but not the solid rabbit.

One Easter, I had the flu. I couldn’t go out to Easter dinner, wherever it was that year, and was stuck at home. My father brought me a huge – and I mean HUGE – solid chocolate basket from a local and favorite candy maker, that was filled with miniatures of their flagship candy. It had a stuffed rabbit on top, and it was quite a show piece. It was probably the most favorite thing my father ever did. My mother was furious, since…I was too “chubby” to be eating all of that fattening chocolate. He ignored her, and so did I. It took me days to polish that off, and I was a happy child while doing it.

So, I guess I am uncovering the roots of how big meals with people who love me constitute…happy. In a way, I guess I am continuously recreating that scenario. Perhaps that’s why having a neurotic person crash the entire vibe at lunch yesterday made me want to carve that woman’s heart out of her chest. While it was still beating. Interesting connection for me to note.

So, the whole notion of food being equivalent to warmth, and family, and safety, and everything is OK is a big deal. Maybe it’s a bigger deal than I thought. As I’ve said previously, I am more than capable of dining alone in a restaurant, or at home. It truly does not bother me to do that, and sometimes enhances the ritualization. But ideally, I get more satisfaction and happiness from dining out with a group, with people I feel are supportive of me, and who accept me. I suppose I thought all that was an only child thing, but maybe it’s a bit deeper than that.

Since I’ve lived on my own, my weight has moved up the scale, and down the scale, and then back up the scale. For a long time, I did not believe that I ate enough to facilitate my overweight status, but I was always told that I have a “slow metabolism”. Whatever. Less food, more exercise is really the only way to lose weight, and when that has worked out for me, I’ve been satisfied with the results.

The issue for me, though, is…when I have adhered to better habits, gotten more exercise, eaten more responsibly (or at least more healthy – that sounds better), I’ve not been able to maintain the change in habits. Something happens, something changes in my life, one day I wake up and just don’t want to do it any more, and then…back to the old habits. I remain convinced this is addiction. It feels like addiction. It smells like addiction. It barks like addiction. It’s annoyingly familiar, and it feels like defeat.

I don’t want to feel like defeat. Tired of that feeling of “you knew you couldn’t do this” or “why did you think it would work this time?”. I have read all the books, watched all the videos, talked to all the specialists/doctors/experts. I understand how weight gain works, how digestion and metabolism work. Yes, I understand that I have to be willing to make a change.

I am totally willing to make a change, but at some point, the willingness seems to remain but is weighed (pun fully intended) down by abject fatigue. Mental fatigue, and even phsyical fatigue. I don’t have the stamina, on any level, to keep up the routines. It feels like the ever present core nightmare is coming through – I’ve been faking things all this time, talking a good game, and now reality has caught up with me and this is what is really under here – a fraud. A fake. A loser (well, one of those can’t-lose losers, to be precise).

What is truly left is somebody who is tired and resentful that life has to be this effing hard.

I don’t really want to go through the rest of my life feeling resentful, particularly toward myself. It would not take me long to come to a place where I feel that I can’t be here, that I can’t be anywhere. Some of how and why I feel that I’m not supposed to be like this isn’t mine. The fixation on weight and size was literally taught to me, and societal dysfunction did the rest. Looking like Twiggy or Kate Moss is not normal, particularly for people with my genetic profile. It took me a long time to realize that, and to reject those images summarily.

But, the fact remains, that I’m not entirely happy with how I look and how other people judge me for how I look. Yes, yes I understand that I judge myself for it, long before anyone else has even seen me, but that self-judgement didn’t crop up just yesterday. I’m not stupid, nor blind, and I see how people react at times to what they see. And yes, yes I understand that I don’t need to worry about those people, but I’m tired of wrestling with it, tired of thinking about it, tired of being concerned with it at all.

One of these days…I’ll be comfortable in my own skin. One of these days I won’t have to worry about whether or not I’m can squeeze myself in between tightly packed tables in a restaurant without sitting in someone’s lap to get by. One of these days, I’m not going to have to worry about being so incredibly uncomfortable in a movie theater seat that I’d just rather not go at all. One of these days, I’m not going to be preoccupied with how I look walking down the street, and whether or not my over-sized t-shirt is covering my belly AND my butt. One of these days, I’m going to be able to walk into a department store and buy whatever appeals to me, from the regular sizes in the women’s department, and have it fit. One of these days.

Until then, I’m going to do what I do, and try not to be concerned with what other people think of me. I’ve been told before that what other people think of me is none of my business. So, maybe I should be more concerned with what I think of me. Right now, what I think of me is that I’m here, that I’ve got some things to do, and that some of me needs to be OK with the rest of me. I am SO not in the mood for a civil war going on inside my own body.

I am not down with OPP. Not down with other people’s problems. Tired of carrying shit that is not mine, doesn’t belong to me, not mine to be carrying. I’ve done that most of my life, and have finally come to realize fully that nobody is asking me to do that. If they are asking me to carry something of theirs, it’s not my job. They may ask, or demand, that i carry it, but I must remember that “NO” is a complete sentence, and requires no explanation, justification, or rationalization. Just. No.

Today I went out to lunch with some people, for the first time in over six months. We went to a casual restaurant, after the lunch rush, and sat outside. The outside seating was covered, and the weather was utterly gorgeous.

There was a large table seated nearby, with some shrieking, squealing, shouting women that I suspected had partaken of copious amounts of fermented fruity beverages. Fortunately, they were more or less on their way out. I noted to myself that we were all going to have to become reacquainted with being in close proximity to annoyances like that as things begin to open again, and we all begin to venture out of our caves.

Once the noisy ones had vacated, I was left to enjoy the company of my table mates. One of them is a very close friend, my confidante, someone who totally gets me. I love that woman, as much as I can love anyone.

It is not a romantic kind of passion, but I am more than aware that I love her deeply and profoundly. We can tell each other truth, and then move on. She is safe. She’s a few years younger than me, but it doesn’t see to matter a bit. Sometimes she’s the elder, and sometimes I play that role, and the interchange is seamless and effortless.

The other two members of the lunch party are friends, but nowhere even close to the level of authentic friendship that I have with the first one. They are much older women, both from Detroit I believe, and very different from me. One is a real talker, kind of know it all but in a nervous kind of way. Not so much arrogance as just uncomfortable with silence.

The other participant, however, is a little more of an expert-of-all-things, which can be annoying. What truly gets to me at times with her, though, is how deep her anxieties and control issues go. She is generally soft spoken, and seeming easy going, but there’s an irritating control issue that I seem to trigger quite often. And it’s trying my patience just a bit.

Today, after we had been seated, I threw my wallet and my keys on the table in front of me. On my keychain is a flexible plastic figure of a human hand with fingers that can be manipulated and positioned as one sees fit. Of course, because it belongs to me, I have the fingers arranged with the middle digit extended, for added charm.

I wasn’t paying any attention to it sitting there, and neither was anyone else, but she was. Apparently, it was speaking to her or something, and she decided that she didn’t like how it was positioned, because the middle finger was pointed toward her. I thought that was a stretch, but just ignored it.

Then, she reached over and moved it so that the finger was pointed more in my direction. Fine, whatever. In the meantime, the wait person had brought drinks, then returned with straws. I opened one and deposited it into my glass. Someone else opened theirs and did likewise. The other two remained unopened, and were sitting unobtrusively on the table, somewhat near my offending keys. We were all talking, and nobody was concerned with the straws. Or the keys. Or so I thought.

When the wait person came back to take our order, the anxiety laden one called him to her position at the table, loudly, and dramatically reached over to pick up the extra straws, saying dramatically, “Oh, sir! You may take these back!” OK, then. We finished up with making our order, and the guy left to do other important things, like put back those extra straws.

We’re all talking, until the anxiety laden one again heard the keys talking to her. “Can I ask you to please do something with those, please? That hand is driving me crazy! Can you put it into another shape or something?” At that point, I’d had quite enough of her, and I wasn’t at the table to manage her anxiety. There are fine medications on the market for that. Not my gig.

She persisted. I said no. Just no. I then said to her, “You always seem to have some kind of issue with something I’m doing! The other day, you were bothered on the Zoom call because I was eating a lollipop. I always seem to be doing something that disturbs you!”

“Oh, no – I didn’t have any problem with your lollipop. But you get waving it around and it was disappearing into your virtual background, and that was driving me nuts!” I didn’t see the need for a response to that, and I made no move to rearrange my keys. My true friend put the wine list over them, and I didn’t challenge that. So we moved on.

That kind of stuff really irritates me. Irritates me to a higher level than it is probably worth, I acknowledge, but it reminds me of stupid things my other used to do. Her neurosis would manufacture problems with something I was doing, or being, or saying…and the only solution was for me to change something. Because of the power dynamic there, I had no choice but to acquiesce. There was no winning at that point. I was powerless in situations like that for more years than I care to remember, and I hated it.

I wasn’t going there with a peer. When people are indulging their anxieties, neuroses, whatever and want me to change something for them to be more comfortable, it’s rarely a reciprocal thing. This woman today has an irritating habit of chewing gum, constantly. For whatever reason, I find that distracting and annoying, but you could not pay me enough money to ask her to stop chewing gum. I don’t feel as though I have that right.

Other people don’t seem to question their right to ask a person to change themselves, or their self expression, or their habits to suit them. I feel like that’s bad form, and I just grit my teeth and get through it. Worst case, I would be there for an hour or maybe ninety minutes. I have withstood worse things for that amount of time, so no big whoop. But that’s me.

I wasn’t giving into someone else’s neurosis today because I didn’t feel as though it was my job to help her feel comfortable. Don’t look at the damned keys if they irritate you so badly. Change seats with someone else if it bothers you so much. But don’t make it my problem, when I’m not doing anything to specifically cause you discomfort. What if it was my hairstyle, or hair color, or my eyeglasses, or my t-shirt? That’s not my problem to solve for someone else.

So, that has stuck with me the past couple of hours, and while I’m not mad at her or hating her, I really don’t want to repeat that experience again. You stay over there, and we’ll be nice and friendly and cordial, but let’s not get that close again. K? Love ya, mean it.

My writing prompt today asks me to consider food. My least favorite thing to discuss, actually, because…I love food. There are certain sensations that good food arouse in me that must cause my brain to light up like a Christmas tree. I’m mostly a sweet tooth on two legs. The first thing I remember stealing when I was a kid was a Milky Way bar from the grocery store. I got caught halfway through it, and the cashier told my mother. My mother asked me point blank if I did it, and I said no. Looked them both straight in the eye and said no. But, I knew I was lying.

I remember the incident very clearly. I wanted the Milky Way bar, and asked for it. I was told no. I must have been about seven, and already there was undue emphasis on my weight. My mother was more obsessed with it than was reasonable, I believe. I was “chubby”, but not having health issues or mobility issues. She was constantly looking for ways to deprive me of sweets in particular, and I was constantly looking for ways to thwart her.

When I wasn’t allowed to get the candy at the grocery store, I made myself scarce for a moment, tore into the chocolate, and gulped down a huge bite of it. The cashier discovered me as I was trying to cover it up, and so I had been caught red handed. I absolutely HAD to have that candy. Had to have it.

My mother, being the underweight little pixie that she was, always had sweets around the house. The holidays were the worst, because people would give them presents of candy boxes, cakes, what have you, and they were all over the place it seemed. My mother could have them, my father could have them, but not me. I was forbidden.

I remember so much of my time being spent figuring out ways to get food that i wasn’t supposed to have. The funny thing was that i had enough to eat. I wasn’t starving. The entire effort was to get at the sweets, or anything I wasn’t supposed to have. It was mainly the sweets, though. I don’t remember hording leftover chicken or potatoes or anything like that. Except for one weird period when I was craving canned soup. That was just odd…I would eat it right out of the can, cold, and this was way before Chunky soups. You were supposed to add water to those concentrates, but I ate them without all that.

Anyway, it was mostly the sweets. When my great aunt and uncle in Lake Charles would let me “help” in their little grocery store, I would steal money from the register to pretend I was buying sweets on the shelf. I think they knew what I was doing after a while, and quietly told my father one day they didn’t need me to help any more. I kind of figured that’s what it was about, but of course I said nothing.

I never got an allowance, but any change I accumulated, found, stole went to buying sweets. My mother did everything she knew how to do in order to keep those away from me, but I always found a way. It was an obsession, an addiction. Looking back on it, i think it was a power struggle between she and I.

I am still a sweet freak, but it ebbs and flows. I go through phases where I am absolutely obsessed with certain sweets, and eat them in such excess that i get sick from a steady diet of whatever has struck my fancy. For a while it was bags of jelly beans…Jelly Belly, then Gimbal’s, then Russell Stover, then whatever was cheap.

Then, it was Raisinets, then Nestle’s Crunch, then Butterfinger, then Heath or Skor bars. Whenever those were 2-for-1 or 2-for-cents off, I would buy bags full of them. Right now, it’s Dum Dums and Tootsie Pops. It’s the taste. It’s all about the taste, and of course the sugar.

I have tried tracking phases like this with what’s going on in my life at that time, and near as I can figure, those obsessions are triggered by anxiety about something that is causing me stress. Right now, it’s about this finances. I still don’t know what’s happening with this ridiculous healthcare subsidy, and I still don’t know whether I have any chance with this job I’ve applied for. There’s nothing I can do about either of those issues right now, so…let’s have another lollipop and piss off some neurotic person who can’t handle it.

There is a part of me that wonders if my obsession with sweets is making up for a sweetness in life that is lacking. I have contemplated this in the past, and definitely feel as though life is not sweet for me. I have usually experienced life as hard, as difficult, as something to be endured, as something to be survived. It has never felt particularly sweet, and that is not to say that i have not had some good times, some times when things seemed to be going very well. Overall, though, it has generally made for a very tired girl who appears to be aging well past her years. I feel old, I feel worn, I feel weathered. I am tired. I am not feeling as though I will fall anytime soon, although one never knows these things. But, I’m pretty exhausted. Not sure if I have another rebirth, or recreation, in me.

So, I enjoyed my lunch today, in spite of the minor irritation with the neurotic one, and I ate heartily. It wasn’t my most favorite restaurant, but it was very tasty. I ate everything on my plate, like a good Catholic girl (because there are starving children in India). I had a hamburger, which is not something I have very often. It had mozzarella cheese and sauteed onions, and some kind of steak sauce. It came with french fries. I was fine with all that…until…

…I ordered dessert. It was an apple cobbler kind of thing, a la mode. It came with two spoons for some unknown reason, because I only needed one. It was very good. I will say the only other thing I’ve had since coming home is a couple of Dum Dums, but nothing else.

In the past, I’ve eaten past the point of being full, eaten when I’m no in the least bit hungry. So, in a way, I’m rather gratified that i didn’t find it necessary to start snacking after I’ve been home for a while. I’m still feeling rather satisfied from the meal, so haven’t felt the urge to have anything else in the savory category.

I do not eat well. I know I’m a compulsive eater, and sometimes I feel as though it’s best if I just don’t even start. For that reason, I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater. My mother was obsessed with breakfast, and she cooked grits and eggs and bacan most mornings. I ate it when it was laid out, but it was never anything I craved. I preferred to save my appetite for more substantial plates of pasta or sandwiches at lunch, and then larger portions of the same for dinner.

Coming from a city that prides itself on its food, and its seafood in particular, I could live on fried seafood. The hamburger I had today will probably be the only one I have for quite a while. I am not a huge beef eater. i will eat chicken, and sometimes lean pork, but could leave those behind as well. Seafood is my game. Most of the time, I enjoy it deep fried, but never greasy. I will eat it broiled or panne’, provided it has some interesting sauce or stuffing to accompany it. I like my food to be interesting, combining different textures and flavors.

But, back to the sweets. Dessert is essential. I always feel as though I’ve been cheated if I’ve eaten a full meal with savory spices and garlic, and have that taste left on my tongue as a reminder. I absolutely must “cleanse my palate” with a sweet thing. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a cake thing, sometimes a pie thing, sometimes a cookie-type thing. The sugar is the key. I can do with or without coffee, although I never turn it down.

I have been abstinent from alcohol and non-prescription drugs for 32.4 years as of this moment, but truth be told, I have never considered those substances to be my core addictions. Food seems to be more my issue. It’s far more difficult for me to control my food intake, to eat as “prescribed”, to refrain from overindulgence. And of course, the insidious thing about food is that you cannot abstain. You have no choice but to learn moderation, and to resist cravings, and that…doesn’t work very well for me. It never has.

I’m not sure if I will ever become a competent eater. Some days I don’t much care, although my weight does frustrate me. It has so much to do with my self-esteem, and causes me to feel like a failure. I figure 3rd graders know better how to manage their food than I, but…so be it. Right now, i’m grateful my cravings are only for lollipops and not Milky Way bars. (I noticed they had a new variety of those recently, but did not give into the urge to try it, thank goodness).

Some of my favorite meals, as I said earlier, involve fried seafood. But, I do have a penchant for Thai food, mainly some of the noodle dishes like Phad Thair, and Phad Woonsen. I could live on that on the days I wasn’t eating fried seafood…which I can’t get much of that here. I also enjoy thin crust pizza with non-tomato-sauce base, like either barbecue sauce or white/garlic sauce, and cool toppings. A restaurant here does a thin crust with “gourmet” toppings that can include asparagus, Thai-seasoned shrimp, roasted chicken, etc.

Anyhow, food is a social thing as well as a comfort thing. I suppose the social thing is also a comfort thing, so that’s two birds with one stone. I have no problem having a meal alone in a restaurant, but I am way more satisfied overall when I am with other people. Even if they are mildly annoying, like today. I still enjoyed the company, and my bestie made up for all of the neurotic one’s antics.

I’m not sure where else I need to go with dissecting my relationship with food, because I don’t think it’s a great one. I have lost tons of weight before, and gained it back. Lost it, gained it back. Right now, I’m on the gain side of the spectrum, mainly because of being on lockdown with the pandemic, but I can get back to a better place. I am starting to come out of the isolation a bit, so will probably be a little more active shortly. The dog will be overjoyed.

I’ve wrestled with food and weight my entire life. Some of that battle was given to me. As I said, my mother was more or less obsessed with my weight. She was rather obsessed with her own weight, and had been underweight most of her life, the little wench. But she projected some weirdly distorted vision of size onto me, and it was inaccurate. She was constantly talking about it, and talking about how she was going to get that weight off me, and it was going to be such a good thing. When I remember pictures of myself while that was going on, I wasn’t that big. I wasn’t some horribly obese figure who could barely walk, or was rolling from side to side when I did. I was not then, nor slender, but I was healthy. I would kill to be that size now, but I felt then exactly how I feel now. The distortion was in my head, and it was based on what I imagined other people saw. It still is.

I was having a conversation this morning with someone, and I made the comment that being an only child was cool in some ways because the good news is I have no one to answer to. The bad news is…I have no one to answer to. I do most things by myself. I was saying that often there’s nobody in my corner, especially now that my mother is gone. She asked me how would it be if I was in my own corner. I had no answer for that, mainly because I know the implication is correct – sometimes I am my own worst enemy. Sometimes I’m not in my own corner, I’m not sticking up for myself, I’m not putting myself first.

Being in my own corner. It sounds like such an absurd statement, but it has me intrigued. How do I do that? Do I even WANT to do that? Maybe I’ve been trying to hold the Universe hostage to do this my way, to hold out until I get what I want – somebody else in my corner, somebody who backs me, somebody else. Perhaps all of my futile efforts to have somebody else there – ANYbody else – have not left room for ME to be there. Maybe I have thrown in the towel.

I’m going to need to think on this for a while. I hope Dum Dums don’t go out of production anytime soon. That would be a bad thing. Mother’s Day is coming up, which is a little bit of a tender spot for me, and I’m gonna need some flavor to get through all that.

Yesterday, I was feeling as though I have been a rock. Seriously. A low-frequency vibration that is mostly static, unyielding, stationary, constant. At the start of that association, I forgot about one of my long-time memories of a song by that name – “I Am A Rock”, by Simon and Garfunkel. It sums up quite a bit of what I have felt in my life, what I am feeling even now.

So. That song came out in 1965, when I was a little tyke. I didn’t discover it until nearly twenty years later, but when I did, I felt as though it it had been channeled directly from my heart space. I totally related to the sentiment – I don’t need anybody. I have my books. Friendship causes pain.

I had those feelings decades ago, and sad to say, they remain. On some levels, I reject those sentiments, and nearly force myself to have friendships, deep friendships. But that deep feeling that friendship causes pain is still there. I suppose I am choosing to do something different.

I am still intrigued with the notion that some part of my psyche just didn’t form, that a blank space exists where healthy bonds with others can be formed. I stay away from anything or anyone that might possibly develop into a romantic notion because that spells disaster for me. I have grown totally weary of disasters; my life is not going to be a retelling of “The Poseidon Adventure” or “Titanic”. If I’m going to drown, I think I’d rather go under and be eaten by sharks, just to get it over with.

I’m told that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Not sure if I believe that entirely, but that’s irrelevant. Suffering exists. In abundance. When I have brought it on myself, I suppose I am more angry than anything else, and the suffering is doubled. Or tripled. Or exponentially increased by some power way greater than myself. So. My strategy is…best defense, no be there. Thanks, Mr. Miyagi.

All of that notwithstanding, I was a little annoyed this morning to find that some news had broken through my continued viewing of the volcano in Iceland (which is still burping out about 6.3 cubic meters of lava per second, in spectacular form). The attorneys for Derek Chauvin are requesting a new trial, because one of the jurors was filmed attending a rally where the family of George Floyd spoke, and he was wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. The horror!!!

Aside from that, the GOP is after Liz Cheney with pitchforks and torches, like they are chasing the Frankenstein monster. Let’s ignore the transgressions of Matt Gaetz, and the former President, and Ted Cruz. Let’s crucify a lone member of Congress who stood up for truth, justice, and the American way (literally). Let’s part ways with Mitt Romney, who also stood up for the truth, and boo him and vow to eject him from his position. Let’s send the message that truth is only a tool when it can do something for you. Otherwise, it’s fake news and to be avoided at all costs. Thus spoke the GOP.

These are times when I don’t understand how this country is surviving at all. Hate crimes are on the rise. There was a recent case where a crazed woman attacked an Asian American student with a hammer, and demanded she remove her mask. Not sure what her point was, and I guess she didn’t have to have one.

I suppose the notion of attacking people because you simply hate them is not new. Most reasonable people are capable of making the connection between fear and hatred, between fear and crime, but what are we going to do about it?

Currently, we have data on hundreds of hate groups in the United States, groups of people bound together by an ideology, a sentiment that designates others with certain attributes as the enemy. Not their personal enemy, but a collective enemy. They are saving the country, not just themselves. It’s their sworn duty as “patriots” to defend America.

I say that’s a convenient excuse to get your jollies under cover of organizational status. It’s like collective bargaining for white supremacists. It’s not me, John Dweeb, it’s all of us…hundreds, thousands of us. We can’t all be wrong, and this is what the nation was founded upon – patriotism. Riding through the streets waring people of enemy attack.

The problem with that is, well – one of the problems, because there are many – let’s look at the ride through the streets. First of all, there were significantly fewer people involved than now – colonial America vs. the United States of America, a few hundred thousand people vs. several million people. More to the point, the story of Paul Revere’s ride left out one of the principal characters – there was a second rider, who happened to be a Black man. We totally ignore that guy, who was no less a patriot, and no less instrumental in the story of American freedom.

Second, the political and colonial reality was, um, just a bit different back then. The fledgling nation was fighting its mother country. This was not a civil issue. This was a dispute with a foreign power. not domestic. Taxation without representation – we were second class citizens, and we didn’t like it. We’re supposed to treat each other slightly better than that, I think, but I guess that’s going to take a little work since we’re still arguing about who “we” are.

We haven’t ever figured out how to have conflict between ourselves, on large or small scale, and we don’t do all that great with the external ones, either. Let’s just pretend the problem doesn’t exist, and not talk about it, and it will go away. But it doesn’t, and it grows way larger in the dark than it ever would have if brought into the light. But that’s some basic science fact, and I forget that we don’t do science when it’s hard.

Anyway, we’re still muddling around and, in some respects, circling the drain. Like this kind of thing:

Gov. Brad Little has signed a bill that prohibits Idaho public schools, including universities, from teaching critical race theory.https://t.co/HvumyJYLow

— theGrio.com (@theGrio) May 4, 2021

This is the sort of thing I hate to see, when the ostrich does indeed go down on its front legs and bury its head. Actually, I read a little while ago that ostriches don’t actually bury their heads…because of the way they’re built, when they are foraging for edibles in the grass or the sand, they have to assume that position in order to get their beaks oriented to seize insects and invertebrates crawling around down there. The head burying thing is a myth, but hey, it works for the most part. A huge bird with a small head that is positioned lower than its nether regions is a wonderful illustration of putting one’s vulnerabilities more at risk while your sensory and cognitive attributes are hidden and out of play. Lossely translated, when your head is down that far, your butt is up in the air and fair play for predators. So, there you have it.

Regardless, this bill in Iowa is the kind of nonsense that has gotten the ignoramus class out in front of the herd lately. Just deny, deny, deny and repeat the lie until it becomes indistinguishable from the truth. Human beings have short memories, particularly when the memories are unpleasant. We are very fragile, and we don’t want to feel bad, so … don’t make us feel bad. If you make us feel bad, we’ll be very, very bad things.

It would be amusing if the people who retaliate when truth hurts were 3rd graders, but they are not. They are legislators and politicians and captains of industry, and the bad things they do cause harm to a lot of people. It is more than ironic that retaliation from some of the fake news crowd results in harm to themselves, and people who look like them, but so be it. This has been going on since the days of lynching as social networking.

That occurred to me quite recently, that lynching and violence against marginalized communities were some of the first instances of social networking that we know of. People managed to communicate with each other, long before FaceBook and Twitter, through word of mouth and church bulletins. They were coming together to celebrate God’s word with some covered dishes and a picnic lunch at a lynching. What better way to underscore your faith than with a murder, in the name of God? After the body stopped twitching, it was mutilated so that body parts could be handed out as souvenirs, or relics.

This is some sick stuff. I sometimes think it horrifies us in these times because we somehow thought such macabre displays of hatred and supremacy had died several generations ago. But they have not. The descendants of those lynch mobs are still walking around with us, looking just like us, holding jobs, buying homes, going to school. I’m sure there are some who have fallen away from the fold, but there are enough who have remained that we can’t delude ourselves that time will heal all of those old wounds.

It starts with the small intolerances, with using religion as a shield for supremacy and bias. It starts with refusing to make a cake for someone you believe doesn’t live according to your religious belief, even though your religious belief says nothing about discrimination. Says nothing about punishing, or depriving, people with whom you don’t agree. The message that you are a person of faith when you discriminate on that basis came from other human beings, not from a divinity. Not from a deity, or the supposed word of a deity.

Human beings have been screwing around with the faithful over many centuries, and using religion to murder, cheat, lie, and steal. I don’t know why, in the 21st century, we’re alll up in arms about this when it’s already a part of our DNA. We’ve honed hatred and discrimination and bullying to a fine art now, and we have technology to improve it. Daily.

Forcing people into submission has never done a damned thing to progress the human race, and it is a race. It could be a race we’re losing, and don’t realize that we’ve fallen behind the front runners. In fact, the front runner may be so far ahead of us, we can’t see that, and delude ourselves into believing that we are the only competitors. So, hey y’all – watch THIS – look at us fusing atoms and making nuclear devices…that can kill people. A lot of people. Aren’t we clever?

I sometimes fancy that a divinity is banging its celestial head on some crystalline desk. Why, why, why?

But, here we are. We have been given free will, and so of course we can use it to mitigate, or negate, the free will of others. Well, that’s a fine use of a tool. It’s ungracious, to say the least. If only they’d use their powers for good, Batman. Yes, Boy Wonder…but until then, we have job security. To the Bat Cave!

So, I suppose many of us are huddled down here in the Bat Cave, and we’re getting a little antsy. Metropolis is being deluged with villains, and they are way more sophisticated than the Riddler, the Joker, and Cat Woman (although Eartha Kitt was a formidable feline in her day).

There are prophets among us who are telling us that all is not lost. Telling us that we have forgotten how to use our super powers. We’ve even forgotten that we have power. We’ve forgotten things like…the best way to make a narcissist disappear is to ignore them. A narcissist thrives on attention, and they will ramp up their game every time people express horror at their antics. Negative attentions is better than no attention, so the shocked faces do nothing but feed them.

The media created Donald Trump as a political figure, and they are going to have to acknowledge their responsibility for that at some point. He was a blow hard and a buffoon who got some attention only because of his gaudy and conspicuously consumptive lifestyle. He was the proverbial representative of the leisure class, and the media has always played well with those folks (remember Leona Helmsley? Paris Hilton?) .

When his racism began to overtake his limited reasoning, and a Black man was in the White house, he ramped up his rhetoric and the media was only too happy to oblige. They began giving him ore free publicity than he could have dreamed, and when Obama finally embarrassed him at a National Press gathering, he was ready to take his show public. And he did. The media went right along with him – the mainstream media, not even just Rupert Murdoch’s inions – and together they created a Jerry Springer political event that tore down Hillary Clinton’s campaign, with a little help from the Russians.

So, five years later, we’re cleaning up the debris from that big frat party. Five years later, we’ve added “fake news” to our lexicon and demolished alternative press. We’ve bastardized the second amendment to a simple issue of personal freedom, rather than defense of the common good, and we’ve legitimized all the “-isms” as matters of free speech. I can call you a n*gger, a dyke, a kike, a slant-eye, and angry Black woman, a f*g, or whatever else I want to because the Constitution says I can. So, screw you.

OK, people have been doing that kind of thing since before we even had a Constitution, but where it gets criminal is when law are passed to support those irregularities. The NRA lobby uses those sentiments to leverage passage of laws for bigger and bigger guns, because the Second Amendment says Americans have the right to bear arms. Let’s just ignore the whole “in order to maintain a well-regulated militia” part.

Various pieces of legislation that do not represent the best interest of all citizens, but represent the best financial contributions of “special interest groups”. The term “special interest group” became a buzzword in political circles for gay rights advocates, racial equity advocates, and advocates for the poor. It’s rarely used for the likes of the NRA, or the healthcare lobby, the oil and gas lobby, or the fossil fuel industry. Those are just economic generators and the life blood of America, not “special interests”. Special interests are bad. Very bad.

If nothing else, the political establishment is an abusive life partner for me these days. My government is not my enemy. I don’t really have a beef with my government. I have a beef with the entities that bastardize my government, and change its course, change its intent, make it hypocritical. That’s where democracy is suppose to live, but it’s dying a slow and painful death there. It’s on the ropes of the boxing ring (which is such a misnomer, since the boxing arena is a square, with corners, and not a ring, but I digress), and Mr. Sluggo is beating the day light out of it. Oooohhhh nooooooooo, Mr. Bill!

So, enough silliness, although Mr. Sluggo really is the Senate minority leader. And yeah, he’s that mean.

Politics is a nasty business. It’s influence peddling, and there’s nobody in there who can claim to be pure as the driven snow. They’ve all had to compromise, make deals, give something to get something. It’s organized disorganization – breaking down factions and power bases strategically, so you can control them. That’s what passes for power in the political environment – control. I don’t believe it’s the same thing at all. Control implies subjugation, subordination, domination. As such, there is always destructive resistance. Always.

I am feeling that we have lost something. When people speak about “the soul of the country”, we’re missing something. We’re missing our own souls, our own definition of who we are, and why we are. This battle for our own personal souls goes deep, deep down, to our very core. We speak of core values, but what exactly are those?

Our core values aren’t supposed to entail belief in other folks’ core values, but in our own. In what our experience and our consciences have proven to be true. Not in what someone else tells us that someone else told them to tell us. We aren’t supposed to believe in other people. We can love them, be loyal to them, but we shouldn’t assign them infallibility or deity-like attributes. For their part, they should pledge to walk with us, not ahead of us. I don’t know that “follower” is a title I want to have.

Being a leader is not a bad thing. It just depends on the destination. We are all leaders, but we just don’t frame our influence that way. The first insurgent who began climbing up the wall of the Capitol inspired others to do likewise, until there was a horde of people scaling the walls like the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys. That’s the way it works in groups. The energy flows downhill, like clockwork.

When I tend toward passive aggressiveness, I’m not so much leading anybody anywhere, but I’m giving permission to abdicate responsibility. That’s one of those side jaunts that leadership can take, and it’s not always effective. It’s being the braying ass in the road who sits on its haunches and won’t go. Just won’t go anywhere. When I’ve done that, it’s usually in resistance to some inequity or mistreatment, which can be valid. The problem, though, is…I make no demand. I just stop. I block the road. I stall the progress. But I have no demand to change the offending circumstance. I have to work on that.

Mr. Sluggo is alive and well these days. He takes on several forms…he looks like a rabid Congresswoman from Georgia some days, he looks like a fat-necked gnome from Kentucky on other days. He looks like a Georgia State Trooper who hauls a Georgia Congresswoman out of the Goergia State House for knocking on the Governor’s door, and he looks like the District Attorney in Pasquotank County North Carolina who won’t turn over the Andrew Brown death case to the State Attorney General. He looks like the school principal who paddled a six-year old in front of her mother, and he looks like the CEO who told a male high schooler who wore a dress to the prom that he looked ridiculous. More usually, Mr. Sluggo looks like the woman who attacked an Asisan-American student with a hammer for wearing a mask.

Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. That’s the truth, no matter what God looks like to us. We’re all of these people.

I’m still watching the volcano in Iceland. It’s very active, but is now on somewhat of a pulsing rhythm, quiet for a few minutes, then tossing its cookies high into the air in a fiery shower. Then quiet again.

To be accurate, the “quiet” of which I speak is only the absence of lava sprays above the rim of the crater. The molten magma continues to boil furiously just out of our view. It’s an incredible process, as the Earth gives us a glimpse of its mechanism, its life force, its straining to be free. Boiling rocks is not a concept to which most of us can relate; the heat and energy required to accomplish such a thing is incomprehensible to a human.

I find it utterly fascinating that such power and magnificence is regularly churning beneath my feet. It creates the gravitational pull that keeps my feet planted here, keeps everything virtually bolted down to the planet. It fascinates me that most humans walk about the dried vestiges of long ago eruptions like this, without any clue about how our seemingly solid ground has arisen. Even the most environmentally conscious of us rarely contemplate the billions of processes that must be present to keep us…here.

When I go into more spiritual and esoteric places, I rarely define myself as an environmentalist. I’m not drawn to anti-nuclear movements, or even anti-pollution activism. It’s not that I’m indifferent to those issues, but like many other movements I find a lot of the present environmentalist efforts fairly non-diverse, and fairly judgmental about how and why people don’t recycle and have their own compost heaps. There’s a class cut in the movement, and that doesn’t resonate well with me.

I do become passionate about public policy that impacts the environment, particularly with regard to poor and marginalized communities. When power plants are constructed near or in poor communities, or coal sludge is dumped in public waterways, or sewage plants are allowed to remain in disrepair and affect public waterways…those are justice issues that I follow closely. When the public water supply in a major American city is infested with lead, I pay attention. That’s environmental justice, and that is more where my attention is drawn. Flowers and fresh vegetables are just great, but if you have died from contaminants in your water, you won’t be around to enjoy that.

So. I have to split off from what is frequently fanaticism regarding “the environment”. The environment is multi-faceted in my estimation – yes, there’s air and water and soil and trees and all that. Climate change gets a somewhat mild response from me, because I tend to believe the planet is going to do what it wants to do, with or without our help. I definitely don’t think we should purposely make things any worse, when we are perfectly equipped to make them better, but I also recognize the greed and corruption associated with available solutions. Who among us can afford to purchase fresh produce in an urban living arrangement? Who among us can afford an electric car? Who has a choice about spring water, as opposed to tap water? People with disposable incomes, that’s who. Everybody doesn’t have that, so I lose patience with the more rabid environmentalists who summarily judge others’ levels of participation.

Regardless, I do grieve the absence of environmental justice throughout the world, and in this country specifically. Access to the environment on certain levels is simply not available to certain castes in our society. Most people can’t see that, but when I look at urban landscapes that are devoid of green spaces, abound in food deserts, have intentionally invariable design with no beauty, no creativity, no color…then I know there is no environmental justice there. Access to beauty and impractical things should not be relegated to those with wealth.

There is a rhythm of life, and it is muted in so many places at the moment. As I said, even this volcano in Iceland has a rhythm. The drums of indigenous people have a rhythm. Everything has a rhythm…and most of that is the heartbeat, the pulsing of the life force. When a person dies, the rhythm has ceased, the blood no longer pumps through veins, the heart no longer beats. There is silence.

Many people abhor silence. It makes them anxious. They sometimes feel as though something is just on the verge of happening, they are waiting, hovering, anticipating the occurrence of…something else. Something more. Something unknown that could be not good…or very good….we know not what. For me, it’s usually waiting in hope that I will get what I want, or an outcome favorable to me. Mostly, I am waiting for control.

When I am feeling out of control, I am usually feeling that someone or something else is in control of me, and that’s the source of the discomfort. As much as I want someone else to make certain decisions, I am usually wanting to abdicate only the responsibility and not the choice. I can own that. We humans are funny creatures like that – don’t control me, but if I make a poor choice, it’s because you didn’t control the situation and it’s your fault. We seem to want it both ways, and that’s just not happening.

I am contemplating where I want things both ways, and my track record is pretty stellar. It’s not a successful one, however – Universe 17,346,988+, Me: 0. One would think I’d learn. Maybe I do, but it’s the addict brain that says…try one more time. This time it’s gonna be golden! At least it’s entertainment value.

That part of addiction is heartbreaking, and exciting, all at the same time. The art of the game, the thrill of the chase, the razor edge of playing chicken with your life. Knowing things can just as easily end in disaster as glory, and never satisfied with either outcome. There is always another. Always. Nothing is enough, not you, not the effort, not the disaster, not the reward. Nothing.

When I listen to addicts telling their stories, about where they come from and what happened, and what it’s like now I’m always fascinated with the very common experience of feeling not good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough, not enough on some level. Never feeling like we “get it”, never feeling like we’re in synch with the rest of the world. And we keep trying, keep feeling that if we change one thing, do one more thing, get one final thing, it will all be right and we’ll be in step with everyone else, feel like we’re …OK. But that doesn’t happen, and many people lose every thing in their lives, sometimes even life itself. Losing cars, homes, jobs, families, sometimes dragging other people to ruin with them, sometimes dying. But there’s always one more try left in us, and we have to do the recovery thing to fend that off.

The funny thing about addiction is that feeling of having one more good effort left in us never leaves. In recovery, we get to understand that we’ll never win if we try it again, but it never really leaves. It sometimes comes out in other ways, like…I’m just gonna wait until tomorrow to file that tax form that’s due tomorrow. It won’t take long…I know I can finish it before midnight. Do it now? Oh, let’s not rush or anything!

All procrastinators are not addicts, but sometimes I wonder i the roots are the same…bump things right to the edge, right to almost certain disaster, to the brink of near heart failure, but the thrill of snatching that victory from the jaws of defeat at the literal last minute is better than any drug. Those other times, however, when the victory slips away…that’s not so much fun. But there’s always a next time. Always.

Right this moment, I’m struggling to not beat myself senseless about my procrastintion and slobbiness. And…using that word “struggling” has gotten to be a little provocative for me. When you’re drowning in the ocean and the Coast Guard comes to rescue you, the rescuer will usually tell you not to struggle, or you’ll risk their life as well as your own. Just go limp and let them run the show. Most rescue situations are like that, requiring one to give up control and let someone else take the reins. We don’t much like that, but…if your life is at stake…maybe just this one time….

Some of us can’t give up control even when our lives are at stake. As I’m watching this volcano still erupting in Iceland, I remember a guy who lived in the shadow of Mt. St. Helen’s before it erupted in the 80s. He was an older guy, had been living there all his life, and it was home. He loved it, and didn’t want to leave when they ordered mandatory evacuation. He stayed – it won’t be that bad, the predictions are probably wrong, I’m not going. So he didn’t go, but really he did, because he’s dead. It was a choice. I guess he was done here.

I have always wondered at people who love something so much they’d rather die than live without it. Sometimes I feel that I have never loved anything that much, and wonder exactly what that means. I had a friend not long ago…she and her husband retired rather early, in their 50s I think, and had saved wisely in order to fulfill a lifelong dream of travel. They had begun taking trips to places they’d always wanted to go, and were excited to book a trip to Scotland. Once there, exploration of Glasgow was the goal, and so they did. Crossing a street with a roundabout, I believe, brought an unexpected end to everything. He was crossing the street, and looked in one direction for oncoming traffic, but it was coming from the opposite direction. A car hit him dead on, and he died on the scene. She was at his side, and was doing chest compressions to revive him, but he was gone. Her great regret was that she was not holding his hand when they crossed that street – they always held hands, but this one time, they were not.

My friend came back to the U.S. alone, without the love of her life, and she attempted to carry on. She lost a lot of weight, and the life seemed to have been drained from her. A pretty woman, with a quick smile, there was no joy left. After several months, she appeared to be coping, and was beginning to engage in simple activities, which gave friends hope that she was turning a corner into recovery. Until one friend got a letter in the mail, from her, instructing him to call the police to her home, because she was gone. He did that, and the police found she had taken her life with pills she hoarded from an ankle injury a few months prior.

She could not live without the man she married, her best friend, a part of her. There was nothing here for her. I have felt that way before, like there was nothing here for me, but have never had the courage – if that’s what it is – to end this life. When my friend took this action, I questioned my capacity for love, and still wonder if I have never loved anyone or anything that much. Not a place, such as an abode in the shadow of a volcano, or a person, such as one who has a part of me embedded in their soul. I just do not know the answer to that.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve never loved anyone so helplessly, so overwhelmingly. What I’ve thought was love, I’m not sure any more. When I’ve been nearly hysterical over the rejection of someone for whom I though I loved, I wonder about now. That devastating feeling of wanting to die, but not being able to do so, not having the courage to do it because I don’t know if that will kill the pain is excruciating. I am racing around inside my head while on fire and I can’t do a thing about it. I can’t make them love me back, but even if I did, I know that I am inept enough at the craft to ruin it. There is a lot of noise, a lot of screaming, a lot of darkness, and no relief. I cry in my sleep. Tears leak out at random intervals. There is no color in my line of vision.

So dramatic. But so much pain. So very much pain. I just don’t know whether that is love, or my ego being dealt a mortal wound. How dare you not love ME? I don’t know if that is relegated to what I’ve always felt in terms of romance, in terms of desire, or at least desired partnership, but it’s what I’m most accustomed to. I just don’t understand why. I suspect the ineptitude is related to the poor relationship models that I was shown as a child, but maybe it’s more than that. I also believe it’s simple mental health issues, depression, anxiety, something not even categorized yet. Whatever it is, the result is always the same – I’m not fit for human companionship.

The weird thing about all that is…I’m considered a very good friend. I will do nearly anything for a friend. I always feel there’s a line there, a boundary, that can’t be crossed. If there’s a hint of something deeper than friendship, then I’m nearly obsessed with crossing that line, but never can. And that feels like rejection. That feels like some joke the Universe is playing on me. That feels like same thing, different day. I will never have the kind of love that is returned, that I cannot live without, that I would die for.

My heart is mostly romantic, in that kind of old-fashioned way. But, there’s been little room for that. Maybe I should just learn to write about it, and create that world on pages of a story. I think I saw a “Twilight Zone” episode about that once, where a writer brought life, quite literally, to his characters. He created friends and lovers, but he was married, so when the other women were at risk of discovery, he destroyed the pages on which he’d written them to life and they disappeared. The twist of the story, though, was that his wife – who he feared would discover his literary affairs – was actually one of his creations as well. She was just a page out of his imagination, like all the others. Ultimately, he was alone.

This is how I might escape this alone thing…just write another life for myself. I’ve never considered myself a good creative writer, just expository works. I’ve always felt like developing a character and a world in which it exists is a lot of work, and I generally tire myself out and want a result way faster than is prudent for the sake of the story. But maybe it’s time for a change. I will have to give that some thought.

Perhaps I can create a world where health care is simple to acquire and taxes, racism, bias, and crime are non-existent. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. It will be a utopian thought experiment, but I’ll have to be careful not to get bored with it. That’s the problem with utopia. With nothing to complain about, or fight about, or be outraged about…things can become awfully mundane. Back to the addict brain…never satisfied. Never.

I started this on FaceBook this morning, after spitting out my coffee when I saw itch McConnell’s letter to the Department of Education about teaching “revisionist history” based on the 1619 Project. He is an evil little troll.

I just saw Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator of the 1619 Project) on CNN talking about this. She correctly reframed this issue as one of free speech – McConnell and the GOP purists want to reinforce the mythology that Pilgrims and Native Americans had a loving, reciprocal coexistence and slavery had a “good” side.

Their narrative is that America is is the greatest nation of all time, and we shouldn’t make our white people “feel bad” about the country, or themselves. So, cancel that revisionist history that makes non-white people victims of well-meaning and visionary European colonial culture – look at the good it did!

Let’s forget that generations of African-Americans and Native Americans were made to feel VERY badly about themselves, their contributions, their culture, their heritage, their aesthetics. Generations. And that continues – we are the villains of everything, we are the criminals, we are everything that’s wrong in the country. White people used recreational cocaine, which only served to usher them into tragic addictions…Black people use crack which makes them superhuman predators and desperate criminals who will kill everyone and everything for the next fix But have one white child come home from school with a furrowed brow, and let’s cancel truth and history entirely.

Once again, the stunning hypocrisy of that evil little troll Mitch McConnell and his GOP minions defies words. Cancel culture is bad, unless it’s him doing it. Revisionist history is bad, unless it’s white people doing it. Truth is good, unless it disagrees with their narrative.
This is some serious bullshit, and the pile is high and stinky, and the it’s getting higher. My only solace in the midst of this nonsense is the realization that revisionists are scared to death at this point, and holding onto status quo with everything they’ve got. They are very desperate. Very. And they are likely to do ANYTHING to hang onto life as they have known it – cheat, lie, steal, even kill.

You have to know that when more than half of the GOP is willing to profess allegiance to a disgraced former President, and believe lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election that replaced him, they are desperate. Desperate to hang on to the power they believe they have, desperate to perpetuate lies that have been eating away at our souls like cancer for all these years. Desperate to legitimize themselves, when deep down they know they are entirely illegitimate and entirely culpable for what has brought us to the brink of our own destruction.

This country will continue. It’s just a question of how, and who, we will be. Arguments like these are painful, and daunting, but they are the best chance we have of figuring that out. Until we come to some acceptance about who we are, warts and genocide and everything, we’re going to be living in fear and buying bigger and bigger guns to protect what we’ve stolen, what we’ve lied about, what we’ve cheated to acquire. We need to come clean. It will make us feel so much better, and we’ll be much more attractive.

Perhaps that is our work, to clean off the layers of muck and mire accumulated over the past 400+ years in this country. To get clean, we need to start with acknowledging that some of what we’ve done in the past is incorrect. Wrong. Not defensible. And more importantly, not repeatable.

Chattel slavery was not correct, not morally defensible, not defensible. Redeemable, but incorrect. That is the nature of growth – we do wrong things, we learn, we make amends, we don’t repeat the wrong action. Little kids know this. Doing otherwise doesn’t make us clever, doesn’t justify our later success, it makes us hypocritical.

Rationalizing a wrong action on the basis that it was necessary to ensure present success is simply bullshit. Pointing out that gains have been made in spite of wrong action, and possibly because of wrong action, can be done honestly and without aggrandizing the delinquency. Ignoring the dishonor fails to redeem the incongruity. Ignoring the dishonor fails to bring us any closer to integrity. Ignoring the dishonor increases the likelihood that it will be repeated.

Dishonor in this country is repeated over and over and over again, on a daily – sometimes hourly – basis. We are enemy combatants in the land of the free and the home of the brave, which simply means that we are at war. Constantly at war. Many people feared a second civil war might befall us in this current state of unrest, but I say it is already here. We are at each other’s throats, with disparate interpretations of everything from science to critical race theory, even when most of us don’t know what any of that means.

With the dumbing down of education over the past few decades, we have deteriorated into a nation filled with many whose opinions are derived from their heroes rather than their own informed discourse. We don’t seem to want information – that’s way too much trouble, and the source of the information could be biased, so…it’s much safer to believe someone we trust. Or think we can trust.

Over the not so long ago, I have seen many of my heroes go down in flames. O.J. Simpson, Bill Cosby, Miss Cleo. (OK, Miss Cleo wasn’t really a hero of mine, but she was an entertainer who was making a lot of money). The list of disgraced people of color seems a lot longer and a lot less forgiving than white folks who screw up. Even former President Nixon, who resigned in disgrace after Watergate, could probably have been re-elected several years later, because people “forgave” him. Hell, Roger Stone still has a tattoo of Nixon on his back (how weird is THAT?). So not only do we have some Puritanical sense of crime and punishment that is subject to bias, our forgiveness and redemption is also tainted with bias.

These days, our bias is unapologetic. Don’t bother people with civility, or they will accuse you of censorship and cancel culture and political correctness. Political correctness was only supposed to have people consider the old Rumi adage – if it kind, is it true, is it necessary – before speaking in a contentious fashion. But that has now been twisted into a political statement that somehow ends in cancel culture.

I have to admit that I really don’t quite know what “cancel culture” actually means. If it means that I get to reframe historical events with additional facts and context, I guess that’s fair. If it means that I negate your contribution, I would say that’s definitely not fair. If I point out that idyllic stories about smiling Pilgrims and happy Native Americans sharing a roasted fowl and fresh vegetables in colonial America wasn’t exactly a true image, I don’t understand how that means that I am cancelling this nation’s genesis. I am just putting a more truthful frame on the scene, but do not extract the grit and the timerity and the accompishment of the first colonists. Their politics just sucked is all.

Before my mother died, and our relationship was softening and maturing, I learned there are no absolutes when dealing with humans. Nobody I’ve encountered is absolutely benevolent and good, and nobody I’ve encountered is absolutely malicious and evil. Good and evil seem to be opposite ends of a continuum, and people fall somewhere on that oversimplified binary.

So, cancel culture presumes that moving the relative position of some historical event on that good-evil binary eradicates the event, renders it insignificant, mitigates its relevance. I reject that vehemently – if we are revisiting and reframing our history, it only means that we acknowledge its significance. If we choose to restate in less than idyllic terms, that would seem to be the most authentic form of honor. Continuing to whitewash our history, literally, to present a falsely idyllic picture is the greatest dishonor. Acknowledging our foibles, and learning from them, validates us all. This is how we all finally come to believe we all have a place in the history of this country. All of us.

People are yakking about whether the GOP will soon be history, whether the Democrats will lose control of Congress at the midterms, whether Rudy Giuliani has anything to worry about following the raid on his apartment and office. I say all of these issues, and more, are just distractions from the work that really needs to be done. We need to be about the business of figuring out who the hell we are, and where we’re trying to go. We don’t agree on any of that, and it’s getting to a critical point.

When Southern states chose to secede from the Union to begin the Civil War, most historians and political scientists agree that was an issue of the economy, and not racism. The South was enjoying a long run of agrarian abundance, and they didn’t want that to end. That reign of prosperity, of course, was largely the result of obtaining free labor from enslaved people. That’s just a fact.

Equating the South with the promulgation of slavery. and a fight to maintain that institution, is not really that simple. There was slavery in the North East. and throughout the original colonies. As new states were added, there was debate about whether they would define themselves as “free” states or “slave” states. New York utilized the work of enslaved people to build the incredible gateway to the world that we know today. There is no doubt about that, and no effort to distance the city or the state from that historical truth.

What I noticed about New York when I visited there, is the number of memorials to the places where enslaved people were bought and sold, places the Middle Passage ended, and places where the Underground Railroad wove its way from below the Mason-Dixon line. I don’t quite understand how and why abolitionist society took root in New England, because the institution of slavery had also taken root on the same ground. There is literally no way to cancel either side of that equation and wind up with anything less than the sum of it all.

Ever since the World Health Organization declared that white people would be in a numeric minority on the planet by 2025, I feel that I’ve seen an upswing in racism, white supremacy, and nostalgia here in the United States. That’s going on in other nations as well, although I can’t vouch for the virility of those sentiments. I was somewhat taken by the amount of specifically pro-Trump protestors in European nations during the George Floyd protest, however. That’s still a bit startling. But, I digress.

I would imagine that when a person gets a medical diagnosis of terminal disease, with a prognosis of a shortened life span, they naturally begin the grieving process. Anger, denial, bargaining…wrestling…fighting…and finally, acceptance. Peace. Not agreement, but calm out of the storm, like the eye of a hurricane. Some people I’ve observed seem to expand, grow into that acceptance that life is, at the very least, going to be unlike anything they’ve ever known.

Perhaps the dominant culture here in America is merely attempting to cycle through stages of grieving. Life as we have know it is changing, and for some people, change is a fearful proposition. When there is change, brought about by an external force, we feel the least amount of control, the least amount of certainty, the least amount of security. We are angry, enraged, because we are terrified. We feel that we are dying, that we will cease to be in any form. The unknown is bearing down on us, and we have no solutions, we can’t relieve the discomfort no matter what we do. Nothing seems to be working, and we keep trying to make the old things work again.

I suppose I should deal with my own feelings of grief concerning this next leg of our shared journey as a nation, a collection of dissimilar appetites and customs and beliefs and loyalties. I grieve the ease and comfort of childhood, when nearly all of my decisions were made for me, when I had little responsibility for any outcome. But, as I remember those times more honestly, I was frequently resentful and surging against what I felt were chains that bound me to someone else’s expectations and experiences. Once again, there are no absolutes – you have to seek balance on some level, or relinquish the breadth and the exhilaration of the complete experience. We have to ebb and flow along the spectrum of control and abandon, life and death, joy and grief, good and evil. Without one pole, the other becomes meaningless and simply an unanchored point amongst millions of others. We cannot gain a sense of orientation, sense of purpose, or focus from that.

So, I suppose we are seeking our level. The earthquakes have rung the planet like a bell, and the tidal waves are rushing back toward shore as a tsunami, ready to wash away our pitiful efforts at permanence. We can, and will, build again. Hopefully, we’ll build again with much improvement, if not in permanency but in our expectation of fallibility impermanence. If we play our cards right, we’ll have a bit more humility about what it means to be human, and what it means to be imperfect, and what it means to really live.

I am thinking. Thinking about what I have robbed myself of, what parts of myself I have allowed to die. What i have not fed and watered, cared for, nurtured. One of my providers talks a lot about re-parenting myself, and my resistance to that amounts to…how can I re-parent myself in a healthy fashion when I have no frame of reference for that, no example, no model?

There are a great many things I’ve learned on my own, ferreted out the information or relied on my instincts or my intuition. I frequently come up with the correct answer, a viable solution, sometimes a creative solution but cannot validate the results, at least not to the satisfaction of others.

I wonder how much the satisfaction of others should govern the value of my product. As I am seeking to establish myself, recreate myself, in a different iteration now how much should I rely on external validation? How much should I care about whether others affirm the quality of whatever I produce?

As I ask those questions, I am necessarily brought to a focal point at which I do not wish to arrive. It’s the point of financial interest, income, survival. I don’t want to be there. I have never wanted to be there, but here I am.

I have been a little disconnected, or at least discombobulated (one of my favorite words), today. It’s mainly because I am fretting just a bit over financial issues, and that makes me vaguely resentful. I should not have to produce a poverty level income to prove that I need assistance to pay for health insurance. In that case, the system requires me to settle for, or stomach, any employment that will satisfy a number on a chart. That’s not helpful.

Systems have no personality, no grey areas, no compassion. They are not human, they are policies and data and words on pieces of paper. Humans who administer those systems, however, are imbued with things like discretion and judgement and discernment. Unfortunately, because we are a litigious society, most administrators find themselves adhering to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. No grey areas, and we can’t be sued. That’s also not helpful.

Anybody can sue anybody else. That doesn’t mean that a suit will be successful, but it ccan be filed. I find that to be a pain in the proverbial arse. Like calling the police for non-violent stuff, having the ability to do a thing doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t quite know why I am fretting about any of this in the first place, because it will be OK. This I know. It may not be fair, or make any kind of sense, but it will be OK. I will get a damned job. I would prefer it be something I can actually do, something that I can live with ethically, but at this point, who knows. I am used to settling, and this is for a good cause.

While I am sitting here, in my enclave of clutter, I feel a bit like Jo in Little Women, alone in her garret and creating another world, where things were very different from the one she had. The world I want is definitely a far cry from the one I have at the moment, although I’m grateful for this one. Things could be so much worse for me right now, and I am truly grateful they are not.

I sometimes listen to speakers who talk about self-empowerment, and self-activation. How to manifest your desires. These are not the kooky ones that want to sell you their CD package of how to make a million bucks selling real estate, or buying into a pyramid scheme. These are more about focusing your energy, becoming self-actualized. I don’t spend money on this, but there are free newsletters and old YouTube videos that can be motivating. New age meets channeling and mysticism.

The premise of some of this is…you have the power within to manifest what it is that you desire. What have you forgotten about how to do that? OK, that sounds pretty simple, right? Weeeeel, I get the point, and can’t say I don’t agree that I have probably forgotten any number of things about how to propel myself toward what I want. I have been more than frustrated, for quite a long while, with not being able to get what I want.

My issue, however, is that when it comes to things like a job, or money, or material things…I can see how focusing positive energy, gratitude, and so on could make a difference. When it comes to things like terminal disease, or dementia, it seems more complicated to me.

I have a kind of flickering resonance with the notion that on some esoteric level, we choose everything. It’s not supposed to make cognitive sense, or even seem like positive outcome, but somewhere along the line, we choose. I have heard that everything that happens in our lives is somehow the answer to a prayer. That’s hard to swallow when the experience is painful, or even tragic, but…there’s a note that reverberates somewhere in me, however faintly, in response to that.

Who is to say that somewhere, somehow, I didn’t “pray” to learn how to be more self-aware, believe more in myself, understand loss, understand loneliness? Perhaps what I am experiencing, no matter how painful and unpleasant, enable my spirit to grow in ways I could not consciously effect. Perhaps.

Who is to say that somewhere, somehow, there’s not a force that has consciously determined what is going to happen for me, and this is all pre-ordained? Well, I say that’s not the case. That sympathetic chime doesn’t ring for me when I consider that all of my outcomes are set, and my efforts are more or less a waste of my time. That doesn’t work for me. It just doesn’t feel right.

I’ve been told many times that we choose our parents, in some other reality or plane of existence, and we choose those scenarios based on what is necessary for us to learn, or do, or achieve, or something. My initial response to that has always been if that’s true, what the fuck was I thinking? Can this be re-negotiated?

In all seriousness, though, I think I’ve been around here before. I don’t have the kind of deja vu that people with past life experiences describe, but there are just certain things I know before I have any reason to know. I definitely feel that on some level, writing is one of those things. Sometimes I feel as though it is someone else who is writing through me, if that makes any sense. Then, of course, there are those other times when I feel like there’s nobody driving the train and I’m just vomiting on paper. But that’s another story entirely.

Regardless of all that, I do really wonder how much my disconnection, and feeling that I am wanting things I can’t manaifest, is the result of having forgotten how to nurture my spirit, how to actualize my purpose. If that’s true, I guess I am not convinced that any amount of meditation and self-awareness is going to correct it.

I see things in the world that I want to change, but I know that changing them is not really my gig. I’m not powerful enough to wave a wand and manifest world peace, end poverty, and drop 60 pounds by tomorrow at noon. Can I simply employ positive thinking and *poof* problem solved? I’m thinking not.

When it comes to personal manifestation, though, maybe there is something to be said for changing one’s vibration. One of the speakers I listen to is Abraham, who is a non-physical collective channeled by a nice lady named Esther Hicks. Not sure about this channeling business, but some of what she says resonates with me. She (via Abraham) talks a lot about things having to do with believing in the outcome you’re after, and putting yourself into the emotional response of already having it. That seems to make some kind of sense to me.

Unfortunately, this model of manifestation is easier said than done. The issue of maintaining a state of gratitude is not new to me; I learned it in recovery. I was told early on that a grateful alcoholic will not drink, and that it is essential to maintain an “attitude of gratitude” if you want sobriety to be maintained. When people are discouraged, or encountering a setback, others in the program will advise them to write a gratitude list to remind themselves of how all is not lost, there is much to be grateful for. Quite often, the exercise will indeed change a mood, or at least provide a bit of a lift.

So, this business of talking myself into a different state of mind is not new, but talking myself into manifestation is a little more expansive. I’m just not sure if I don’t believe well enough, if I don’t have enough faith in myself, or if this is simply the self-manifestation I’ve brought to myself. I could drive myself insane, I suppose, if I’m not already there…doing the same thing, expecting different results?

Maybe not this time. I am diligently attempting to do some things very differently right now. It’s a bit disconcerting…there’s that discombobulation sensation again…but I’m deviating from my norms quite a bit. I’m embracing a new identity for myself, one that doesn’t involve being a mediocre technical professional who indulges in the mental masturbation of manipulating inconsequential minutia. I thought for quite a long time that I could not do without that, but I am beginning to recognize that I hadn’t become well acquainted with myself enough to be comfortable in my own skin. I feel like that’s changed a bit, so it’s fine if I don’t have the minutia to keep me company.

I’m realizing now that the minutia was mental clutter. Filling up the space, because it was kind of lonely in here. Parts of me had vacated, and I was just filling up the empty spaces and letting squatters take up space rent-free. I kind of want my space back now, because I want to expand a bit. Redecorate. Buy some permanent furniture, have friends over for coffee.

So, I guess that’s what’s up right now. I want to turn a corner, tired of being on this linear path for so long. By habit, I’ve always turned right. The conservative direction, the cautious way, tentative. Maybe this time I’ll turn left, and see what’s up around this corner. It might take a little getting used to, but I suppose I have nothing to lose. Nothing at all.

Right about now, I’m feeling a bit…disconnected. I’m checking into the live feed from the Iceland volcano, which has been erupting for more than a month now. The lava has been shooting up more than 8k feet (2500m) every few minutes, and cameras have an eye on possible new vents and even new fissures. The last time an eruption was noted for this site was more than six thousand years ago, I believe.

The power of the Earth fascinates me, stimulates awe and wonder in me. The amount of energy required to propel molten rock more than a mile into the sky, and maintain a boiling lake of lava, for more than a month is incomprehensible.

The pressure that has been accruing beneath the Earth’s surface, and continues to be expressed, is the result of more energy than any human can possibly manifest. When humans are described as powerful, it seems amusing when compared to this. This is our most tragic flaw, I believe – the delusion that we are ultimately powerful. That we command our environment. That we have control over what is not our creation. That we are not gods.

I sometimes believe that all of the unrest on this planet informs the natural turbulence seen in things like this volcano. Or perhaps it is the other way around. Regardless, I believe the planet’s turmoil is directly related to our human condition. Both are continually varied, living, not static. Each time we attempt to “get back to normal”, something erupts. There is no normal; things change.

Since there is no normal, we must admit that we are continually making shifts to return to comfort, rather than normalcy. This distinction seems to elude us, and we plod oafishly, heavily, toward the past.

I do a lot of work in my community of faith, which happens to be Unitarian Universalism. We’re an interesting bunch, but theologically and spiritually it’s a good fit for me. Its a non-dogmatic (well, at least formally non-dogmatic) and non-credal faith, based on convenant. There is no requirement that one profess theological loyalty to any historical or formal dogma, and that’s my point of connection with the faith.

But, as with any group of mere humans trying to get through life on this planet, we have…issues. Unitarian Universalism (UU, for short) has been around in its current form since the early 1960s. The Unitarians have been around as a faith for a long time; likewise, the Universalists. Both are minority faiths, and the movements merged to form Unitarian-Universalism as we know it today. It’s still a minority faith, and a lot of people confuse us with the Unity Temple or some cult that has apocalyptic tendencies.

UUs are mostly European-descended, and there are congregations all over the world. One of the more striking characteristics of UU theology is congregational polity, which give each congregation the right – and the responsibility – to choose its own governance and relationships. Consequently, each congregation is apt to have its own flavor, its own relationship with the larger community, its own focus. This attribute, in and of itself, drives most non-UUs a bit nuts.

Without a central theological dogma, and creed, most people cannot understand what binds us together, where our faith is directed. Weeeel, sometimes – despite our advanced academic degrees and credentials – we have difficulty articulating what it is that we actually believe. We can mumble about our guiding Principles, and our history of civil and human rights activism, and our place in the panorama of religion historically, but frequently our explanations return blank stares from questioners.

My reasons for gravitating toward a faith like UU are simple, really. I am attracted to the freedom of a living tradition, one that is not rooted in conformity and obedience. Over my lifetime, I have been attracted to many spiritual traditions, and even religions. I was raised Catholic, but always wondered about other faith traditions. I was always convinced there was something beyond my comprehension to explain how we came to be, where everything we know came from, why things happen as they do.

Since as far back as I can remember, I have been convinced that nobody is wrong about how they explain all of that. There are many images of divinity, of powers beyond our comprehension, and I don’t believe any of them are “wrong”. Something we don’t understand created all of what we know, and whether that is a conscious and sentient power is irrelevant. The fact is that we are here, and we don’t quite know how that happened.

As I mentioned, UUs have guiding principles, rather than creed. Our principles attempt to nail down some core values that guide us responsibly through life, and walk us through how we fit into the larger world. There are UU Christians, UU pagans, UU Buddhists, UU atheists. Most folks can’t quite understand how that works, but since we’re not credal, it works very well, at least for a non-conformist like myself.

Rallying around guiding principles and broader values is a great and wonderful thing, but…we still have issues. We’re still humans, dang it. Because we’re humans, we screw up. Because we’re a mostly white, European-descended, highly educated, and mostly middle- to upper middle class bunch of individualistic, non-conforming, and idealistic bunch we screw up in new and creative ways. But we try. And we keep trying. And sometimes we do good stuff.

One of the bits of UU history that attracted me is their documented social justice activism. Unitarians and Universalists were deeply embedded in the abolitionist community in the United States, acting valiantly in support of anti-slavery and slave liberation efforts. UUs were very active in the U.S. Civil Rights Era, marching and protesting and doing acts of civil disobedience. Two UUs were murdered (Rev. James Reeb and congregant Viola Liuzzo) during the effort, and continue to be cited in the public square by modern civil rights and Black liberation leaders. That meant something to me. That meant “deeds not creeds”, as we frequently say. It meant “faith without works is dead”.

What the civil rights history of the UU movement has also meant to me is…walk your talk. Pretty words are just that – pretty words. What have you done for me lately? Sitting home and talking about the best political candidates, and the morally correct policy to support, is just talk. If you go out and vote, and become informed about policies before you do, that’s action. If you tell other people about voting, and how to vote, and talk about why you support or oppose a policy proposal, that’s one step farther. If you make it possible for even more people to vote and become informed, that goes even farther. If you throw your money into the pond to support candidates and policies that uphold your values, we’re just about golden. If you run for office, or become involved in boards and commisssions that fashion policy, you might be just about there.

UUs also frustrate the living hell out of me, down to the roots of my hair follicles. The idealism can translate into a paralysis by analysis. Just as my 12-step recovery program has always taught, there is no one too stupid to succeed in recovery, but there are many who are too smart to “get” it. UUs are similar, because some of us are way too smart to “get” it. We are privileged people, by skin color and/or education credentials, and we’ve been largely sheltered by those circumstances. We have a tendency to believe that we are the smartest people in the room, and that we have the best answer for any problem that needs a solution. We charge to the rescue, with all sincerity, but often little authenticity or humility.

Lack of humility is one of my larger complaints about UUs who believe they are ready to go into ethnic communities and teach them how to “fix” things. Um, no. Sit the eff down and don’t say anything. Listen to people who are directly impacted by the situations you’re wanting to “correct”. Don’t do what generations before you have done, and strip the culture from people you don’t understand because they are simply different from you, and in the name of “improvement” and “progress”. Having a Ph.D. in music does not make you the best musician on the planet, so recognize raw talent as valid, and not in need of conformist improvement. Every budding Louis Armstrong does not need to go to college to learn music theory.

My hope is that we’re learning, myself included. There are some UUs who will never come around. Some who truly believe that white guys are victims of political correctness and blamed for everything that is wrong in the world. Just like in the larger community, I don’t waste my time with that. I have shit to do, and I’m not going to change the mind of someone who is already on that page. Carry on, dude…and have a great day.

What I’m more concerned with these days is connecting the dots on how implicit bias, and what we were ALL taught a long time ago has gotten us…here. I was taught white supremacy the same as white people were taught it – we didn’t have the vocabulary to name it what it was. It was just “normal”. Like being right-handed is “normal” . Like being heterosexual is “normal”. We didn’t question it. We went along with the program, because the gap between what we expected ideally and what we got was not as enormous as it is today.

I need people to understand how where you go on your summer vacation every year is not the way everyone else lives. Some of us don’t get a summer vacation. Understand that how you’re glad to be back at work after being out with the flu for a week is like salt in a wound for someone who doesn’t get paid sick leave on their job, and had to go to work with a fever and body aches because they couldn’t afford to lose the money. Understand that parents working two and sometimes three jobs still cannot afford money for their kids’ field trips, or sports equipment, or books.

I need people to understand that not everybody lives as they live, that how they live is a privilege, an advantage, and not a right or even “normal”. I understand that you worked for everything you have, but some of us work just as hard, if not harder, and can’t even reach up to scrape the gum off the heel of your shoe. More importantly, I need them to understand the system of advantages they encountered is not equivalent that encountered by other people who have different racial and ethnic identities. I need people to have some idea how what they take for granted is luxury to some others, so don’t schedule every aspect of community life around having evenings, or weekends, as non-work hours. Some folks are working every day, and often more than eight hours a day. Don’t judge parents’ lack of attendance at parent-teacher conferences as lack of interest.

For all of the frustrations involved with being a person of color navigating a predominantly white and Euro-Centric community of faith, for all of the head banging and foot stomping I do throughout the year, I continue to believe that UUism constitutes the best chance of building a community for me. I am never going to be capable of conforming to a creed, or memorizing some dogma that is policed by authority figures. I am not willing to give up my optimism that my childhood beliefs are somehow true, that many paths to the unknown are valid, and that no one religion of belief structure is more correct than another. I refuse to believe that any human has the right answer.

The frustrations I encounter being a person of color in this mostly white world are daunting at times. There is white supremacy culture, as there is just about anywhere else in this country with a significant complement of white people. I have been made invisible, been silenced, been ignored, been passed over, been shouted down. When I come close to some waypoint on the journey to decision-making authority, they change the rules. This is not new, and not even original. Even so, it’s disappointing that people who talk a good game about racial equity cannot see how they contribute to the status quo. They do not see my experiences racially tinged at all, and therein lies the issue. I have no choice but to see it that way, and perhaps they have no choice but to see it otherwise. Either way, it’s about race.

For all those reasons, UUism still contains more hope for me, and resonates closer to my core than anything else I’ve explored. It’s not simply a religion – it’s a belief structure that does not jump over my individualism on its way to the Divine, or Great Mystery, or what ever I want to call it today. There’s a casualness about how I present in my Fellowship, but the casualness does not extend to my belief or my agency. They get that, and that’s important to me.

I have told many people in the UU faith that one of the reason I stay, despite the frustration and, unfortunately, those times I feel invisible and silenced, is what constitutes faith. It’s the faith that at some point we’ll get it. At some point, the promise of those principles we have accepted as guidance will be true. At some point, we’ll be the change we want to see in the world and all that stuff. I believe that will happen, and for me, that’s the essence of faith.

This faith, this movement, still talks about its mistakes, its missteps, its screw ups…and that can make all the difference in how we grow and evolve as people of faith. We’re not perfect. My personal spirituality has expanded beyond my wildest dreams since becoming involved in the UU faith, because I have not choice but to question. That’s been my way of moving through the world since as long as I can remember, but here in this faith I’m surrounded by others who are also questioning. That never happened before I became involved here. That’s what community means to me.

I enjoy history, and find some comfort in exploring and comparing ancient religions and traditions. But I am more rewarded by a living tradition like UUism, that examines and questions itself about even its most fundamental underpinnings. Our principles are just that – principles. Not creed. There have been seven of them since long before I got there, and now we are contemplating the addition of an eighth. Nothing is etched in stone, literally or figuratively. That’s what living means to me.

So, on I go. I probably don’t practice UUism like many other folks, but they tell me I’m still part of the crew. I am not the same person, in the spiritual sense, as I was when I first showed up in this congregation more than 20 years ago. I’m not the same person I was yesterday, if I want to be honest about it. Spirituality is not a question box on a spreadsheet with an expected response of Y or N. It goes much farther than that for me, and it always has. This is the place that agrees with me about that.

Back to where I started, though…I am feeling disconnected today. I haven’t gone anywhere today, didn’t even tune into the Zoom broadcast of my congregation or any congregation. Nothing they scheduled for today interested me in the least, and as per some of my earlier comments, I feel as though I’ve been excluded from a couple of things and silenced about a couple of other things. I’m not losing sleep over it, though, but really didn’t have the energy to put on a smiley face this morning, even on Zoom.

Fact is, I’m doing what I need to be doing, there and other places. I definitely want to move beyond working for change in just this congregation…they are who they are. They don’t represent the entire UU movement, or faith, so as I said earlier, I don’t need to waste my time trying to change anyone’s mind. Their “normal” is not MY “normal”, but they are welcome to it.

I will say, however, that if “normal” is the goal for everything we do, especially during these times, we’re not going to be relevant very long. That’s up to them. Just like it’s up to the nation at large to figure out whether comfort and traditional status quo is worth digging in your heels to avoid change of any kind. If we’re trying to elevate ourselves, that would imply an uphill climb. If you stop climbing, and stop on an incline, you’re moving backward. It’s just that simple.

This stuff is not easy, and the stakes are high. If we stop climbing, we’re going to be deposited back in the quicksand at ground level, and we are going to be stuck. I don’t want to be stuck. I want to be shot out of the caldera we’re in, like a volcanic eruption. Shot up to the sky, and on falling back to Earth having benefit that one, glorious, blazing moment of flight, when you can see forever. Have to keep on going, up, up, up. Standing still is not an option, doing nothing is not an option. Falling down is not a choice, but it happens…not getting up is not an option. Many of us are tired, but still on our feet, and still climbing out of that hole we’re in

So, my writing prompt has to do with…fun. What is fun for me, and what have I done lately that is fun. Oh, yippee.

I can be inordinately silly, and love to be laughing and silly with a group of people. I definitely feel more energized when I’m amongst a group of friends, and we are making each other laugh about even serious things. I get some of that from my mother, I think. She was always making herself and me laugh about all kinds of things, even when they were not supposed to be funny.

I hesitate to say that I enjoy “making” people laugh. Truly, I cannot make anybody do anything, or feel anything. But when I am being silly and poking fun at even serious things, some people find that humorous, and they laugh. I enjoy that.

Laughing is always fun for me, although sometimes I cannot do it. When I can’t laugh, that’s grounds for concern. I’ve only been unable to laugh on a few occasions, thank goodness, but those were the darkest of days. There was no light, no air, and I was hermetically sealed in a vacuum somewhere deep within the Twilight Zone.

Inside that vacuum is not a good place to be. It’s my estimation of existence, which is not equivalent to life. Existence is devoid of emotion, or any sensory call and response, and dearth of choice or motivation for voluntary activity. Existence would seem to be a dearth of choice, sentience, variation. Absence of connection to anything else, or to anything save immediate survival. The porch light is on, but there’s nobody home and we’re not sure what the purpose of the light might be.

Being an only child, without a lot of friends or other kids around, I suppose I learned toa muse myself with mostly cerebral interests. My mother slept a lot, owing to depression I suppose, but I remember she’d take me outside when I was little. There’s a piture I remember of me in a stroller, outside, and I’m leaning over the side of the contraption and looking at the wheels. My mother said that was my preferred focal point when she took me for a stroll, watching the wheels go round and round. She found that curious, and tried to urge me to look at the trees or the houses or something aside from the stroller, but I was always fixated on the mechanism. It was the mechanism of going. She talked about that for many years, because she thought it was just kind of weird. Oh, well.

There was a school fair once, when I was still a little tyke, and there was food and a ferris wheel on the school grounds, and games, and more food. The best part. My mother was doing something out there, and I had ride tickets, and wanted to ride the ferris wheel. I got in the line, and when it was my turn, I got into the car, and it took off. I was happy to see things from up high, and wasn’t thinking much about anything, but I remember I was enjoying the sensation that I imagined was like flying. All of a sudden, there was a commotion below, and I heard my mother’s voice and my name was called. She was down on the ground, screaming her head off.

My mother was mostly afraid of heights. She could never drive across bridges, which cut off large parts of a city below sea level. She was down beneath the Ferris wheel screaming because I was high up at the top of the arc, and projecting her fear onto me. She was demanding they stop the ride to bring me down, which made no sense because if the ride stopped I would be stuck at the highest point. And I wasn’t having a problem with that. I wasn’t afraid, but she was afraid.

The operators brought me down, and my mother was placated. I was a little confused, because I knew that I had not been afraid to be up there, but her fear caused me to question myself about whether I was actually afraid or maybe should have been. But down I was, on the ground, and there was no more screaming or panic, so that must be good. Right? That must be good. Right.

I have always liked a view from high up. Even all the way back then. My mother, as I said, was always afraid of heights. She was also leery of going too fast. I, on the other hand, enjoyed driving at high rates of speed, even when going over a high bridge. I don’t have a big issue with other folks’ phobias, although my mother made her phobia everyone else’s. She demanded to control how fast I drove because she was afraid of going too fast. That became the source of many a skirmish, if not full on combat.

So, it’s fun to be up high, and enjoy a scenic view. That’s one of the reasons I chose to move here to North Carolina. Once I had seen the Smoky Mountains on an impromtu camping trip many years ago, I was hooked. The mountains have long been a source of spiritual connection, resonance, fascination. When driving down the Blue Ridge Parkway or some state highway, with mountains on all sides, makes me feel embraced by nature. In the spring, snow melts at higher elevations and water rushes off the sides of the rocks at lower elevations – you can just fill a cup or thermos on the spot.

Other things I count as fun are playing music, with a few other people, running through familiar songs that everybody knows, having a “jam” session. Doing that is as much about the music as it is about the comradery with other musicians. I suppose it’s not unlike pickup basketball games at playgrounds, just playing for the hell of it. There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from the solidarity of like minds, a gratification that has nothing to do with winning or losing. Just the art of the craft.

Yesterday, as I was contemplating fun, the writing prompt urged me to look up fun things to do nearby, so I did. I found walking things…at places I have never visited. I plan to visit at least one of the places I found later today or tomorrow. One of them is a walking trail around a lake within city limits, and I investigated how to get there. It’s a long trail, about 7-8 miles, so I am a little concerned about making it that far, but nobody said I had to make the whole loop. Sometimes I confuse fun with accomplishment, or success of some kind.

I wound up taking the dog out earlier, and walked for a about 2-1/2 miles. The weather was nice. I enjoyed it. It was an easy time, and I felt good for having done it, and yes, I felt as though I had succeeded. I’m wondering if that fills the bill of fun. I enjoyed it for sure, but didn’t have that rush of feel-good joy that I get from things like group outings, or riding the ferris wheel. Maybe the key to what is fun is enjoyment with a group, or at least someone else? I don’t know, but the dog seemed happy about the walk.

There aren’t very many things that I look forward to at this point. I have some pleasure at the regular Zoom chats, 12-step meetings, webinars. I feel a certain sense of satisfaction after doing things like that, so maybe I’m on to something about feeling more a sense of fun when I am engaged in group activity. I do a lot of things by myself. A lot. It rarely occurs to me to call someone else to come along, not because I don’t have anyone that I could invite, but because it just doesn’t occur to me. Only child kind of thing, I guess.

When I was a drinking woman, I hung at the bars. I am not a dancer, so it wasn’t about wanting to hear good dancing music. I still went there alone, sometimes ran into people I knew, old friends, new friends (after a few drinks, just about everybody is a friend). I enjoyed watching people watching people. I was a spectator, and I suppose that is all that I felt I could be.

It seems that I am always a spectator, even when I’m in the middle of things. Always on the outside of the arena, always detached and standing apart in some way. I don’t quite know why that is, but seems like it’s been that way for a long time. I suppose I’ve always had a bit of social anxiety, and drinking was a quick way to apply some social grease so the square peg could fit easily into the round hole. Fitting in was never comfortable, though, and I never felt as though it was where I was supposed to be.

I will need to give a bit more thought to having fun, and what I consider fun. I suppose in my somewhat austere outlook that includes obligation and practicality, fun is a gratuitous exercise that arouses maximum enjoyment. Maximum enjoyment for no other purpose but…to enjoy. Not to achieve mastery, or accomplish a goal, or complete a task. Simply to experience the pleasure of something that brings joy. I’ll get right on that.

Believe it or not, right this moment, I have a live video stream playing while I’m writing this. The stream is coming from Iceland, and captures an active volcanic eruption. The eruption began over over a month ago, and it’s still quite a healthy expulsion of red-hot molten lava, propelled high into the air and then back again, pooling and flowing down the mountain side and into the nearby valleys. I enjoy watching it, for some odd reason. It’s nearly incomprehensible to me that temperatures that hot can exist, and pressure so great can be expelled to hurl huge amounts of molten rock into the air. And for such a long interval of time. That is amazing to me. I’m not quite sure if watching that fits the definition of fun, but watching it is bringing me joy.

Possibly unrelated to any of this contemplation of fun, pleasure, joy…or maybe at the heart of it…I was re-watching “28 Days” with Sandra Bullock earlier. I like that movie. It’s the story of a party girl, who really doesn’t have much of a care in the world, who drinks too much and winds up ruining her sister’s wedding, crashing a limousine into a house, and being sentenced to a rehab center in order to avoid jail. She finds out a lot about herself while in rehab, in spite of herself, and that’s common of recovery journeys (whether in rehab or not).

I’ve seen that movie at least a half-dozen times, but for some reason, I always have emotion around her reunion with her sister. After her rehab roommate overdoses, Sandra Bullock’s character undergoes some deep transformation, and she realizes everything is not about maximum enjoyment. She and her sister come to a place where they finally see each other as doing the best they can, and sharing common history of being raised by an alcoholic mother. I was most emotional when Sandra Bullock says, “I’m sorry I’ve amde it so impossible for you to love me.” Her sister responds, tearfully, “You make it impossible for me NOT to love you.”

I suppose that is where I want to get with someone, somewhere, that it’s impossible for them to not love me, that it’s impossible for me to screw up too much to forsake the love. I have to believe that’s still possible, but feel like such a fool continuing to believe it. I always look for it, always hopeful, always sure there’s still a prize in the Cracker Jack box even after it’s been opened by others and half the treat is gone. Always still believing. I can’t seem to kill it, and sometimes I really want to. What’s love got to do with it, anyhow…what’s love but a second hand emotion…who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? Anybody? Anybody???

Not feeling it today. Not feeling as though I can do this life thing. I’m not suicidal or anything dramatic like that, but feeling like – one more time – everybody else got the game guide, but I must have missed it somewhere along the line. I don’t know quite which move to make next.

Called the ACA people back. I keep getting the same letter from them, saying verify income. I had to look and see how they wanted me to do that, since I have no income, and read that I should subit my 2020 income tax return. So, I did that, noting the irony of filing an income tax return when I have no income. But, I did it, uploaded it. End of story.

Um, no. Same letter keeps coming back – verify income. So, I uploaded the damned tax return again. *beep**beep* Same letter. Verify income.

So, I called them. To my surprise, a very short wait for a representative. The nice lady a couple of days ago explained that my healthcare.gov application contained an income figure that did not match what was on my income tax return. I explained that I had been told to submit an estimate of what I expected when I was able to be hired for a new job. That’s what was on the application, so they now expected that amount to be reflected on my tax filing. Um, no…I am still unemployed.

No problem, said the nice lady. Just upload that explanation, and they will put that in your file and get back to you. Is there anything else I can help you with? Thanks, no – I can do that, and will do it right now. So I did.

In a newfound spirit of follow-through, I decided to check on things again today, so I called back. The representative I spoke with was also very nice, very helpful, but she may as well have shot me. With a gun. Multiple times, ensuring that I had died.

She said that if I did not meet the estimate, which is what the subsidy was based on, I would have to pay back the amount of the subsidy. That was for last year. If I did not resolve that, they would remove the subsidy for this year, and I would have to pay the full amount of the policy premium out of pocket.

There was a high-pitched ringing sound in my ears, and I think a fly buzzed nearby…and there was some hammering going on, for the gallows, I assume…or maybe just a coffin. I made some kind of sound, and she asked me to repeat. I squeaked out that I would not be able to pay that premium, which is $935 or so monthly. Sounding genuinely apologetic, nice lady said that my explanation letter was still in process, but I could ask for an extension. *gulp*

I asked how in the heck I was supposed to pay back money that I had asked for because…I didn’t have any money. She asked me how I was living, and I said I am living from savings, which is true. It’s what my mother left for me when she died, and if I have to spend it in triple time, I will be living under the bridge in no time flat. I assume the nice lady was nodding in that customer service kind of way, but she had no advice, other than to advise me that I would need to make an income of at least $12,400 a year (poverty level) to qualify for the Affordable Care Act subsidy.

So. Let me get this straight. I have to have an income to get help paying for health care because I don’t have any income? Yup, pretty much. And where exactly was that in the application instructions? Oh, it should be in there somewhere. I said can I just contribute the poverty level from my savings, as though it was income? Interesting question, but probably not.

OK, then. I’m done. This probably means my income tax return was totally erroneous, which I suspected, but I don’t know. At this point, I am not sure I even care, except that I need to do what I need to do in order to keep insurance. And I am not willing to have that effort involve becoming destitute. Not gonna happen.

I’m not feeling much like doing much of anything right now, but I am going to go back to looking for a job online at a feverish and frantic pace. At this point, it really doesn’t matter what the eff it is, because nobody gives a damn if I’m happy with it or not, just bring in a paycheck so another ledger book, another spreadsheet, can have every cell filled. Just play the game.

I don’t want to play any damned games. My life is not a game, Health care is not a game. It might be a little less pressure if I could procure the necessary services at some vaguely reasonable rate, but that’s not the case. One month’s prescriptions would put me into collections, two months and I probably could not pay rent, or put gas in my 20-year old truck. So, WTF America?

I had already applied for the job I really want, but I may not have the luxury of waiting on them to get their act together and meditate on all the resume’ submissions. I may have to take whatever I can get, probably something generic like customer service, so I can give people the kind of abysmal news that I just got. I can’t wait.

In all seriousness, as flummoxed and generally disgusted that I am at the moment, I still understand, and appreciate, the choices I have. I understand that I have choices a lot of other people in the same position don’t have. In reality, this is a speed bump. It’s a hard bump that may require me to replace my oil pan and/or get a wheel alignment, but it’s not going to kill me. It just feels that way.

Listening to the news this morning, I find that i have absolutely no sympathy for the likes of Congressional members who are wringing their hands over how they’ll vote on the Presidents initiatives, as presented in his joint session of Congress night before last. You S.O.B.s know what’s needed, and please don’t insult my intelligence attempting to convince me that you’re seriously considering any of that with an open mind. Do the right damned thing, and not what floats your personal boat. You know the difference.

Listening to the machinations of perverts and grifters offering ridiculous explanations and excuses for their illegal, immoral, unethical, stupid behavior is even more nauseating than usual. “We thought the girl was 19, but she turned out to be only 17. ” “I didn’t take money from a Ukranian oligarch just for myself, it was for my job as the President’s private attorney. I did nothing wrong…except that I forgot to file the right paperwork on that. ONE TIME!” “We paid women for sex all the time. Everybody knew that.” Sickening.

These f*ckers get to carry on all this crap, some of it with taxpayer money, all of it against the inherent etchics and dignity of their offices, and this is the first consequence they have seen. This has been going on for years, and years, and right now their only consequence is may – MAYBE – embarrassment. For some of them, even that is not the case. After you’ve been on international television with shoe polish dripping down the side of your face I guess everything else is gravy.

I can descend a lot lower, and I don’t want to. I’m not entirely sure where the hell I am at this point…am I supposed to just hang it up and get a parking spot under the bridge? Am I supposed to do what I always do and pull a rabbit outta my hat and tell Bullwinkle to watch? Am I supposed to lower my standards, lower and lower, to abandon my aspiration to do something meaningful and worthwhile for the rest o my productive lifespan? OK, maybe that’s a little overdone…but I am prone to the dramatic.

In all seriousness, I am feeling somewhat defeated. I was just beginning to feel as though I could make it, that something was going to break through just around the next curve. Now, I’m not at all convinced of that. I won’t die, I know that, but I’m kind of tired of having the dream die…only to have life breathed into it time after time, like a deflated balloon that is re-inflated out of some obligation to optimism, to hope. Tired of that, and the skin of the vessel is growing thin. It may give way after one more push.

I am going through all of this for some reason, I just don’t know what that might be. When I say things like that, some of my friends say there really isn’t a reason, things just happen and there usually isn’t a reason. Reason might be the wrong word, but I can’t think of any one thing in my past that I could do without and still be right here, right now, typing this diatribe.

Time moves too slowly if you’re waiting for something, and too fast if you already have it. I suppose if you don’t know whether you’re waiting for “it”, whatever “it” might be, time just sort of perches atop your head, like a personal rain cloud that is just waiting to precipitate. You always know it’s there, and it blocks the light, and makes things rather cool on your surface.

But, as Credence Clearwater Revival said in a song once…have you ever seen the rain, comin’ down on a sunny day. I have. Sometimes it’s quite a profound thing, when the sub breaks through the clouds at just the right angle and the raindrops release a thousand miniscule rainbows in a descending curtain of shimmering color, each one a sparkling precipice of a dream. At least that’s how I see it.

Today, it’s sunny outside. The only rain is happening inside my head, dousing my hopes and my inspiration and my dreams for a better tomorrow. I know this too, shall pass. I’ve been taught that for a good many years. Change is the only thing we can count on. Yeah, I get all that.

Sometimes, however, it just doesn’t feel all that good. Sometimes, it’s a big deal to just get out of bed and do responsible things like go to the bathroom and roll over. I think that’s OK some days, but I really do not want to invite all the other unbidden and unwanted dark thoughts into my space today. I’m wrestling a little with the ones I’ve loved and, not so much lost, but wouldn’t sing with me, wouldn’t walk with me, wouldn’t be with me. When I love people, it’s pretty much a forever kind of thing, no matter how shitty I act around them or whether I am even civil to them. They have no idea what’s going on in my head, or my heart, and that’s a good thing. That wall of disdain is the only thing I have to protect me, and without it, I just might cease to be.

So, Affordable Care Act, IRS, all you job search engines…bring it on. I feel like I got slapped down this afternoon, but I’ll be on my feet again in a bit. It’s going to take a lot more than generic bureaucracy and bad public policy to kill me. Many have tried and failed, and still…here I am. Rock you like a hurricane.

That last bit was…frightening. I don’t even know who sang that god-awful song “Rock You Like A Hurricane”, but it is ubiquitously a heavy metal downer, at least in my book. It must be time for a nap, before I de-evolve into bad music of the 80s, which would be most unfortunate.