When I was younger, much younger, in the 70s, there were all kinds of feel-good icons, quotes, songs. God is love. Have a Coke and a smile. The “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” song – the ultimate feel-good ditty. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Ah, the 70s. Colors, longer skirts, weird hair. People were just coming out of that hangover from the 60s, I think. I was still pissed that I wasn’t old enough to go to Woodstock. My whole world was falling apart in 1971, and I didn’t quite understand why everybody wanted to be smiling. Today is the first day of the rest of your life really kind of made me a little nuts.

So, I get the point – but today being the first day of the rest of my life irked me, because it was trite. It tried way too hard to be clever and was annoyingly optimistic. I saw nothing optimistic or hopeful about the rest of my life at that point. I wanted to listen to Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin and Timothy Leary. I definitely wanted to tune in, turn on, and drop out. I wanted nothing to do with what was going on around me. It just all seemed like a big pain in the arse.

Today, I refuse to believe it’s the first day of anything. It’s just today, and it is what it is. I can make it be something, or I can make it be nothing. I can start it over whenever I want to, because time is a human construct, and I don’t have to keep defining the present by how bad the past was. It’s just a revolution around the Sun, our guiding Star. The Sun does what it does, and I do what I do. I can’t control the Sun, but I can control me. Or so I’m told.

When it was the 70s, and I had no clue about how the world worked, how life worked, how anything worked. I did not have many choices, because I was a kid and totally dependent on my parents for survival, for stuff like food and shelter and clothes and teaching me how to walk through the world. Well, that last part didn’t go all that smoothly, but I survived.

I can’t say that any day I spent in the 70s was the first day of any of this, so enough with the feel-good crap. There have been many first days. There have been many final days, too. Whatever it is that I’m doing, or wherever I am in my life, I never know which day will be the final day of some part of it all. I learned yesterday that a lady I knew had died. I didn’t know she was ill, but they said it was really quick, like less than a month since she had gotten sick and then died. I was trying to remember the last time I saw her, and I couldn’t place it exactly. Whenever it was, I had no idea that would be the last time I ever saw her. I don’t guess we ever know.

Maybe when we are at the point of death with someone, I suppose we know that we’ll never see them again. When the last breath comes, the last heartbeat, we know that at least in this lifetime, we’ll never see them again. But, I’ve never had that experience, to be present when someone takes the last breath. I wonder if that changes the knowing when it’s the final time. Maybe, maybe not. I guess it depends on whether or not I believe in life after death on this plane of existence, and I do.

But, even with life after death, the whole experience of never seeing someone again would seem to be irrelevant. Would there be cognitive recognition if I was somehow to meet up with my mother again, before I died? I’m sure there would be no physical resemblance to the woman I knew, who gave birth to me. It would be her essence that survives, the spare essence of spirit that makes us who we are, deep down, beyond our consciousness and cognition. She could be he when next we meet. She could be of a different race, ethnicity. She could be 6-fee tall. She could be non-human. Wouldn’t THAT be something?

The point is, I cannot even begin to imagine how our stardust might recombine after our human bodies have decayed and returned to the Earth. My imagination is not that stellar. (see what I did there? stardust…stellar. I amaze even myself at times.) Perhaps that is what imagination really is – I don’t know so I’ll make up a fantastic story about how it might be if I knew. Some stories are better than others, I guess. Genesis is a little problematic, but babies popping out of Zeus’ forehead is pretty far out there.

Creativity, I guess, is the common thread of all progress. Some of us create fantastic imaginary worlds, that cannot possibly exist…but can they? We have always told stories, to explain what we cannot understand, to recount actual events, to revise history, to keep history alive. We are story tellers. Whether it’s the one that got away, or you should have seen the other guy, we tell stories. Recounting facts is also a story, but not particularly entertaining. We demand entertainment, I suppose.

The last President was a master story teller. There is a thin line between stories and lies, and sometimes he crossed that line in dramatic and unapologetic fashion. His story telling gave rise to story telling about his story telling, and now we are telling stories about the stories about his story telling. Entertainment. We demand to be entertained. Left alone with only what’s inside our heads, we tell stories to ourselves, and find that we need an audience. Nobody wants to have their stories bounce of the inside of the skull.

Story telling is necessary. I get that. When we can’t tell the difference between a story and a lie, there could be a problem. A story can embellish the facts, stretch the facts, make the facts appear favorably or unfavorably, but…there is still a basis of fact. A lie has no basis in fact. If someone told us that the corona virus that causes COVID-19 does not exist, there is no factual basis. The virus does exist. If someone tells me that dogs do not exist, that is a lie because we know that dogs do exist. If someone tells me that dogs were once bipedal and had magical powers, that’s a story because…the footing of the story relies on dogs, which exist.

I enjoy a good story as much as anyone, but not when I need facts. Not when I need to know whether or not my second COVID shot is stimulating my body to produce antibodies that work against the disease. I don’t have time to be entertained, because my health is at stake. I don’t want a medical professional to answer my question about my antibody production with a story about little cartoon virus warriors sleeping on the job until awakened by the arrival of evil corona virus demons. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

The need to be constantly entertained seems to me an outcry against being left alone with…our selves. There was once a time when I couldn’t stand to be alone, with only myself for company. I wasn’t a good friend, and could not stand having nothing to interrupt my invasive and errant thoughts. It has taken me a really long time to come to a place where I can be at peace in the company of others, as well as being alone. I don’t have to run any longer.

It’s a futile attempt to run from yourself. You don’t have far to go, and you don’t get very far. I became the anti-self. I simply rejected everything I had learned, everything I knew,. I wasn’t able to say, “I don’t believe in that any more, I don’t do that any more, and here’s why.” All I could throw out was, “Eff all that! People are just trying to control me!”

Well, there’s an intellectual argument for ya. When in doubt, I always came to the same place – people are trying to control me, and I can make my own decisions. That’s very nice. Some of my best decisions got me into more trouble than anything, so left to my own devices, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. Some people are inappropriate and get totally out of bounds when dealing with me, but I can evaluate that and reject it on a case-by-case basis. I don’t need to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater in rejecting everything summarily. Live and learn.

Sometimes I feel that’s what is happening in the country today. People are fixated on the rebellion of not needing anyone, not wanting any help, being left alone. But, when the sloppy stuff hits the fan, every one of us wants help. With billions of us on this planet, there is literally no room for anyone to be “left alone”. We have no choice but to learn how to live together, no matter how much we babble on about our rights and our liberties. This most recent health crisis has shown us that, even when our denial and childish rejection of facts is all we have to contribute.

The jury is out in the Derek Chauvin case. I hope they will reach a decision soon, because people are sitting on the edges of their seats to see this end. It needs to be over. People are posturing already, with “Well, if the verdict is not <insert verdict here>, there’s gonna be trouble. This is MY country, too!” Thanks for sharing.

I don’t know where nationalism actually came from. I assume it’s just the ancient, limbic tribal instinct of territorialism…protecting the resources you will need to survive. Before industrialization, I believe, there was a slightly more natural flow to this. My village has grown up around this water source…we need that for our people to survive. We might be convinced to share it, but how can this work for all of us? If you just want to take it over, and move us out, there’s going to be a problem. OK, let’s agree that you take the south end of the lake, and we’ll take the north end, and we should be good? OK, let’s do that.

But there’s one more piece hidden under that, at least for me. Why not both groups unite and live together, sharing the water source? Why not just be, oh, um…inclusive? Everybody is a human, everybody is configured in more or less the same way, so why not just share resources and responsibilities? Well, our ways..our tribe…our people…y’all are different. Get too close, and we’ll have to fight. We want our ways to keep going, be passed on to our next generations. If you come in, we’ll lose our “heritage”, the stuff people who look like us have been doing for generations before us. We don’t want to lose that, so you stay over there. Don’t come over here.

I guess nothing much has changed there, since the earliest times. It gets rather interesting here in America, because the folks who are screaming the loudest about their heritage, and proclaiming themselves to be more American than anyone else are the folks who refuse to believe there is no such thing as a “pure” American. There are immigrants, there are indigenous people. That’s really about it. Even the formerly enslaved people were immigrants, at least in my book, they just had no choice in the matter.

I understand territorialism. It’s an animal thing. But we have no real need for it these days, and it just manifests as status quo. Greed seems to have replaced the instinct to secure the most resources in order to survive. We know we can survive, but now it’s down to who survives best, who has the most chickens, who has the biggest range. Those chickens and range areas have been replaced by Escalades, bling, mansions, and private schools. None of that ensures our survival. None.

Perhaps greed has re-wired us to the point that we cannot survive on our own resources any longer. When the lights went out in New Orleans after Katrina, and there was no sewerage, people reverted to some kind of primal state. Shooting guns, sexual assaults, robbery, burglary. Even when reacting to unavailability of everyday things like grocery stores, clothing stores, and restaurants people had no other plan than to restore those immediate depots. Some engaged in looting, taking the opportunity of no law enforcement to steal the big-screen television they’d always wanted. Most, however, rifled through grocery stores and places that stored food in order to provide sustenance for themselves and others.

As I remember all of this unfolding, it occurred to me that no matter how far from everyday survival these people got, they had a tremendous amount of faith. Stealing a big-screen television when you’re standing in water up to your knees implies that you have confidence there will be power once again so that you can enjoy your new acquisition. Stealing a Cadillac sedan implies that you believe standing water will soon recede, and you will be able to drive your luxury vehicle on city streets once again. Somehow, we all knew that it was going to be hard, and it was going to take a while, but we’d be back to “normal” once again. This was not going to kill us.

When people have that sort of grudging faith in an oppressive system, I have to believe they do not understand the links between that new Cadillac, or that new big-screen television, and the condition of their lives that have made it impossible to acquire those items by legal means. The are not connecting the loss of their homes and even loved ones to the systems that abandoned them in a drowning city, the systems that have kept them in the lower echelon of the socio-economic caste. Homes worth upward of a half-million dollars in the French Quarter and the Garden District remained in tact. Homes in the Lakeview area, which is a fairly solid white middle class to upper middle-class area fell victim to some of the drainage system failure, and there was heavy damage in that part of town. In many ways, that was an anomaly.

It’s been this way in New Orleans for a long time. On paper, it makes sense – the areas of town, except for Lakeview, that remained largely undamaged sit on naturally higher ground than the Ninth Ward, and Gentilly, New Orleans East, and the Seventh Ward. All of those areas endured very heavy damage. All of those areas were basically flood plain areas, where poor and Black people have always been forced to settle in order to buy their own homes. The storm had no bias, but the architecture of the socio-economic strata in the city had plenty of inherent bias.

New Orleans is not the only place that can demonstrate inequities like this. Nearly every state in the Union has reserved choice real estate and greater access to resources for its dominant culture residents. Even to this day. The systems are now building on themselves, as generational wealth ensures that a next generation of the privileged will maintain their relative position within the class structure. They will inherit the same choice real estate and greater access to resources their ancestors had. If your parents didn’t have that status, chances are good that you won’t, either.

Nobody has any answers. There are no solutions brewing out in the wilderness, no burning bush to mark a spot where a solution will be made evident. There is only us. Flawed humans with a propensity for greed and violence, and a persistent need for drama and entertainment. I have no doubt this won’t last forever. I have faith that we’ll be in very different circumstances sooner rather than later. We’ll get to enjoy that stolen big-screen television if we can just avoid dropping it into the standing water, and refrain from being heartbroken when we realize that prized booty is obsolete.

We can’t get back to normal. It was never normal. Having people living a 5-minute walk from each other but separated by millions of dollars is not normal. It is usual. It is the ordinary routine of things. But it is not normal. We sleep in the day and work at night, and we couldn’t grow our own food if Mother Nature came down herself and held our hand on the plow. We’re in between who we used to be and who we are going to be, and that is a shaky place to be, because we don’t quite know who we want to be. I believe there are forces at work who DO know what they want us to be. That’s not a good thing. It should be up to us, but so many of us have laid down in the poppy fields (figuratively and quite literally – the opioid crisis is a real thing) and gone to sleep.

Who DO we want to be? Do we just want to be comfortable? Not have to worry about anything, not have to clean up behind ourselves, not have any responsibility for, well…anything? That’s not the real world. That’s not going to happen. If we really do want that life, we can just stop working and invite another world power in to take over. Let’s just hang it up, right now. You can’t have it both ways – getting what you want and having no responsibility for the acquisition of it. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might get what you need. (thanks to Mick Jagger and the Stones)

I don’t know quite why this was a ditty that I remember from early childhood. Maybe it was something teachers used as we learned to write, or read, or something. It is amazing what sticks in a child’s mind for more than half a century and then bubbles to the surface, unbidden, at the strangest of times. Perhaps these sorts of occurrences signal a need to revisit times of less stress, times of less complexity, times of unintentioned intention. Yeah, I said that – unintentioned intention,. also known as want.

When I was a kid, there were rules, guidelines, rituals. I took most of those as suggestions, like speed limit signs. But I digress. You learned early on, though, that some rules got you closer to what you wanted. Annoying as rule following could be, you kept your eye on the prize and you got a little closer and a little closer until *ding* you grabbed the brass ring (or in my case, the piece of cake, the candy bar, the meal). The reward was usually what you expected, so you came away from the experience with satisfaction.

As I have grown older, things have gotten a lot more complicated, and the expectation is farther removed from the reward. If I follow all the rules, and expect to receive a certain outcome but don’t, that becomes a problem. First time it happens, you shrug it off. When it becomes a pattern, you are likely to become exponentially dissatisfied, even bitter. This experience isn’t ever going to produce what I want, so why bother? Multiplied by millions of people, that can translate to a nation that demonstrates not only disunity, but disarray – rules are either nonexistent or inconsistent, and consequences are luck of the draw in some cases.

This doesn’t match up well with the Universal law, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction, where there are polarities that repel and attract every time, not just sometimes. Where mixing the matter and the anti-matter will make everything go *BOOM* whenever it happens. Not just sometimes.

We have taken to thriving on conditional responses, and that just doesn’t work. If Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun to a protest, but was given a pass by law enforcement because they knew him, because he looked like a good kid, because he was white…then every teenager who brings a gun to a protest has to be given that same pass. But that’s not what happens.

When selective enforcement of the laws we have becomes the norm, we all begin to trust the process a little less. We all being to disrespect it a little more. We all begin to make up our own rules – I can bring a gun to the Capitol Building and bypass the metal detectors, because I’m a U.S. Congressman and I can be trusted to do that, and who the hell do you think you are telling me otherwise? Now, Ilhan Oman, she’s different – you should strip search her because you know how “those people” are.

This. Is. Bullshit. This is about getting what I want – emphasis on the “I” – and I got mine, I hope you got yours. There is no rallying for the common good; we can’t even agree on what the common good might be. We’ve all – ALL – seen too many instances of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” allowing thieves, grifters, murders to escape the seemingly infinite web of rules and regulations that bind the common people.

When you’re fighting to survive, on even the most basic level, fighting to put food on the table (or the paper bag, or the styrofoam tray) and the rules aren’t working for you, you’re going to do whatever is necessary. Full stop. When it’s a movie, like “Fargo”, it’s merely amusing. When it’s real life, like post-natural disaster aftermath, it can get you killed. We’re all clear on that.

After Hurricane Katrina, when I was watching the news coverage of the aftermath of the storm, reporters were flabberghasted to find that the New Orleans French Quarter was mostly intact. There was no power anywhere, and no water or sewer, but there was very little property damage in buildings mostly constructed in the 1800s. They were going to need few window screens and maybe some panes of glass, a couple of roof shingles, but the structures had weathered the storm very well.

Some of that was due to construction standards of the late 18th and 19th centuries in that area – high ceilings, masonry and brick inner walls, shotgun house design. In the oldest parts of the city, things were pretty close together, so wind damage was mitigated.

The trajectory of the hurricane also didn’t put the French Quarter or the Business District at high risk for water damage. Those areas are closer to the Mississippi River, rather than Lake Pontchartrain, and are naturally a little higher than land out towards the Lake. My mother’s house was closer to the Lake, and a foot below sea level. That house suffered little wind damage, but the flooding was catastrophic. The French Quarter likewise suffered little wind damage, but there was virtually no flooding.

When I was growing up there, a hurricane heading up the mouth of the River was considered the worst possible scenario. That’s not what Katrina did, however – she didn’t come up the River, she swept up the Lake side of the city, which is lower ground. Once the levees failed, it was all over. The Lake, trying to empty out into the Gul of Mexico, backed up to the water table, met the soggy land and overtopped the levees, and the rest is history. Thousands of people dead, hundreds of thousands of homes lost, entire lifetimes of history and work and memories…gone.

New Orleans has had hundreds of severe storms since it was founded. Katrina was nothing new. Nothing to get bitter over, because Mother Nature is who she is, and generally sprinkles her disasters across a wide range of recipients. But people ARE bitter over Katrina, because every level of government failed them. Mandatory evacuation orders were a little later. The drainage and levee systems were discovered to have been neglected. There were people left behind, with no shelter and no provisions. The cleanup ignored residents who had stayed behind and needed work, in favor of a no-bid contract that hired temporary-visa immigrants from outside the city. In general, New Orleanians felt abandoned. And they were.

They had followed the rules. They had insurance, for the most part, but discovered after the storm – when they most needed it – their policies would not cover “acts of God”. Like flooding from hurricanes. To cover that, and have your repairs paid for, you had to have bought federal flood insurance, and many people could not afford that. So, their houses became large pyramids of timber, twigs, wood planks, and broken glass.

But they had followed the rules. And the rules got them…next to nothing in many cases. All of that to say that it’s no wonder a population who has experienced this kind of catastrophe sees no reason to participate in the electoral process. Did they not elect representation that was supposed to look out for them, protect them from the “small print”, make their lives better, or at least keep them going? So who cares about voting? It doesn’t do one bit of good. Rules followed, expectations not met, game over.

When I first moved here to NC, I was amazed to find everyone so polite, no matter their skin color or ethnicity. There is a very low murder rate. Not a lot of road rage, at least not inside the city limits. My initial explanation for that is that everyone gets more of what they expect when they play the game. There are some wide class gaps here, but even the lower levels of that caste understand the rules of the game, and get pretty much what they expected. Not what they wanted, and not that it’s believed to be a fair game, but there’s an acceptance of that reality so the outcome is consistent with what is expected.

Since I’ve been here a while, though, I’ve started to see at least some of the well-hidden dissatisfaction, well hidden in the politeness. There’s a lot of charity that goes on in the churches; food pantries and clothes pantries and meal distribution. Charity makes me a little crazy, though, because it’s a never-ending cycle that sometimes breeds dependence if there’s not attention paid to why there’s a need for the charity. If someone has no clothes, and no food, I feel that it’s incumbent on everyone who has clothes and food to ask why these people have none. Throwing somebody a couple of dollars at the street corner doesn’t solve their problem, and you’ll probably see them back at the same corner tomorrow.

Charity is necessary, but solutions for poverty can’t stop there. When it’s cold outside, giving people a warm meal, a warm shelter, a warm garment is compassionate, and the right thing to do. In the meantime, however, we should be discerning more permanent solutions, like how to create jobs, or sustainable resources. Urban farming, perhaps, could solve a bit of the hunger crisis. Curbing the waste in restaurants and groceries might do likewise – instead of discarding day-old bread, or … something. And we need something.

So, in answer to my initial question – how now, brown cow? I would first like to say that I am not a cow, brown or otherwise, but..that is not the point. How, now? Loosely translated…how the eff are we going to create something new, that fulfills the promise we’ve all been waiting for? We can’t keep doing this same crap and expect different results, whether we follow all the rules or not.

It takes about nine months to birth a human baby. Not 400 years. We’ve had a long time to get this right, but we still have only big bellies and a lot of water retention to show for all that time. I’m still willing to believe this has been a national gestation period, but I think we’re in labor now. There’s a new country trying to be born, and we’re not letting it make its way down the birth canal. The fetus is pushing on us, wanting to be born, and people are stopping it. Some of us are trying to kill it, abort it. And they say they are pro-life. Interesting.

As long as we keep trying to stop development of this new life, of this new nation, we’re going to have all kinds of problems. It’s like trying to keep a lid on a pressure cooker. At some point it’s going to blow, and then all hell is going to break loose. Maybe that’s what is happening now – all hell is breaking loose because some folks have been trying to stop the natural flow of things. They really can’t stop it, but…they’ve got things pretty stuck. They are holding on to the status quo with all the strength they’ve got, but even they know that won’t be enough. The change is going to come, and they can go kicking and screaming if necessary, but things are going to change.

I’ve been saying for a while now that souls are trying to get off this planet in record numbers. They are practically leap-frogging over each other to get to the door. They have seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and know there is more suffering that will come because people are trying to block the inevitable. I guess I should have some compassion for those status-quo mongers. It must be tiring to pretend you’re God all the time.

Yeah, I’m a bit troubled. Unsettled. Angry. Not at peace. Enraged.

I suppose any of those feelings are appropriate, and even if they aren’t, they exist. I think I remember that feelings can’t be wrong, just the actions they inspire may get us into trouble. OK. It still feels like a Category 5 hurricane is making landfall while an earthquake is occurring, a volcano is erupting, and an F4 tornado is raging, all within my cranium. Which is located inside a dumpster that is on fire.

Whenever I am experiencing this level of unrest, I have to do some digging to discern the roots of the feelings. What is eating at me? What gremlin is gnawing on the little patch of peace that I’ve been cultivating?

These days, I do not have to dig very deeply. I want to say it’s the racism, stupid. But, that’s not directed at me personally. In all honesty, this unrest starts well before I even get to that. It’s about me, and how I’m living, how I’m walking (or stumbling) through my life right now.

I am still rather proud of myself that I completed and filed my 2020 federal and state income tax forms. But that was a couple of weeks ago, and I’m still getting notices from the ACA saying that I have not verified my income. So, I have to call them. I have not done that. Not sure why I haven’t done that, because the mild shame of not having completed the required tasks is gone. That’s usually what keeps me from following through on stuff like that. But still, I am self-absorbed with believing that I’ve done something wrong, as usual. I’ve done something wrong, and I’ll be found out shortly, and there will be consequences. Next.

The next thing on the inventory list is that I’ve applied for a job. It seems like the absolute most perfect job for me, based on where my heart is, where my head is, where I am in life. It’s a justice associate position at the Unitarian Universalist Association, and is a staff position that involves writing and strategizing on justice issues for the organization. I have wanted to work for these people for quite a while, and to have an opportunity to do that, and within my community of faith, sounds like a dream come true.

I discovered the posting for this position quite by accident, and it was a tremendous surprise. I excitedly read the job description to make sure I met the requirements. Immediately, I retrieved my resume and made some revisions that were hopefully in line with the job description. I went back to the job posting, scrolling down to the application instructions, and found that email was their preferred method of submission. With the same level of excitement, I composed a wordy email, describing why I wanted the position and summarizing my qualifications, attached the resume, and hit the “send” button. Done. Good job!

So, that was almost exactly a week ago, and I haven’t heard anything from them.

I woke up around 4 a.m. yesterday morning, mainly to go to the bathroom for the 100th time, but something else was on my mind. Just a faint but insistent jingle in the back of my brain…like maybe I forgot something in the kitchen that was about to explode or catch fire, or I’d left the front door open. From some dark crevice of my mind, seemingly nowhere, thoughts of a cover letter came seeping in. I had not written a cover letter, but had included some relevant facts and arguments in the email that I’d sent. All of a sudden, I had the sinking thought that I had done everything all wrong.

Suddenly, I was fully awake (not conscious, but awake) and writing a cover letter. It took more than an hour to find an effective format and make a semi-coherent alphabet soup. A couple of re-writes and a couple of hours later, it was done. I sent the whole thing in a new and far less wordy email, this time attaching both resume and cover letter. I didn’t reference or explain the previous email.

So, I’ll wait to see if there’s any response this week. I still believe I’ve done something wrong, but so be it. I hope I can get an interview, or some consideration. It would be a really good thing if I got the job, money least of all.

The pay isn’t stellar, but it’s not bad, either; it’s way more than what I’ve got coming in at the moment, and it has benefits. It would be a fully remote position, which is exactly what I have been looking for. The big thing I need from this is a win, a victory, a success. Affirmation from the Universe that I’m on a viable path for now, that I’m in some kind of synchronicity with where I want to go.

So, that’s done. Still cursing and berating myself for not having realized that I needed to send a cover letter. I had gone through the job description so fast that I missed a bunch of information. I could have addressed some of their requirements in the cover letter, and/or on the resume’, but I didn’t. I am still my own worst enemy, but right this second I’m trying very hard not to call myself the most stupid person who ever lived.

Back to me. There are quite a few other feelings rolling around in my head right now, though, totally unrelated to the job application. I suppose the more constant source of the disruption in my psyche is the unrest that continues to manifest in the world around me. That’s beyond unsettling.

I was thinking earlier that I’m not sure about God, but I’m pretty sure about the proverbial Satan. Evil is afoot. Knowing that you are harming someone in a profound way, that you alone are causing their immediate suffering, that you are free to relieve that immediate pain…and you persist in causing it…that, to me, is the embodiment of evil. It is sadistic.

I cannot see where such evil has any redemptive value, if such a thing exists. More to the point, how can someone who perpetrates such intentional and emotionless acts display morality, or even humanity. They appear to walk like everyone else, talk like everyone else, but their hearts are unlike most other.

I understand, or at least comprehend, there is evil in the world. There is suffering, there is pain, there is immorality. I understand that human beings do hurtful things – hurt people hurt people. That is part of the essence of humanity. But we can shift our perceptions, change our convictions, our course, and do something different. We can back up, make amends, apologize, stop the harmful action. This is how we came to be here – trial and error. Nothing more profound than that, no matter what we think.

But there are some amongst our ranks who see nothing wrong with harming others in the realization of their own self-interests. Or even for less substantive reasons – just for the fun of it. Sociopaths have no conscience. Psychopaths have no conscience, and no remorse. Perhaps these are simply aberrations found randomly in the human genotype, but what is my responsibility in that dynamic?

My UU faith speaks to me of respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all beings. In principle (fun fully intended) I have no issue with that. Unless…there is perpetration of evil. Does evil give me a pass on respect? On recognizing the worth and dignity of the evil-doer?

Is it good enough to have respect for a person’s inherent worth and dignity in my head, in my heart, but shun all proximity, even non-physical? Is it good enough to proclaim my respect for people who do the most horrible things to others but refuse to be in their company, in the same physical space? Is there supposed to be suffering associated with practicing this acknowledgement of a monster’s inherent worth and dignity?

I think of Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who became know for her anti-death penalty stance. She established a profoundly spiritual relationship with an inmate on Louisiana’s death row, Robert Lee Willie. Willie had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young woman, and sentenced to death. Sister Helen came to know him as a person, as a man, as someone who knew that he had done a horrible thing and understood he could not make viable amends for that in our system of justice, other than to surrender his life. He could not bring his victim back, no matter how sorry he was. And he understood he was going to die.

The point of the nun’s relationship with this murderer, as I see it, was to prove there are really no absolutes in life, and that even within the persona of a heinous murderer lies some connection to that Universal power greater than ourselves. For her, that power is God, Father and Jesus Christ, Son. I don’t know what it may have been for Robert Lee Willie, but the case might be made that he encountered his own sense of humility, an understanding that he was not God, Father or Son or executioner or anyone capable of making the decision to end someone’s life.

But he had done that. He had ended someone’s life, in a brutal and merciless fashion. How do you truly atone for that? How do you look back on that and recognize your own humanity, let alone expect to be forgiven by human or deity? If so, does that mean an irrefutable shift in his character or spiritual constitution?

And what of forgiveness? When I have been wronged, the hurt outweighs any philosophical exploration of the power of forgiveness. No matter what well-meaning people want to insist when they urge me to forgive those I repel because of past betrayals, I continue reject those who have perpetrated profound hurt and suffering upon me. Forgiveness, proponents say, is for my own well-being. In my estimation, Keeping these less than trustworthy perpetrators out of my life is for my own good.

When I am wronged, and betrayed on the deepest levels, I cannot see. The rage explodes, uninvited, unbound, like an ageless volcano that has been waiting a several million years to blow its top and spew molten rock a mile high. There is no reason, there is no moderation. The rage is a blinding, all-engulfing and thick coating of simmering bile that spews putrid lava, which I imagine smells like brimstone, or Hell.

I cannot see, and I cannot feel. Feeling is the last sensory input that remains, but once the lava and the dense fog of the response have battered me, there is only numbness. The pain is still there, and the pressure of everything I want to emote but can’t. Again, it’s like an itch I cannot scratch. Sensation with no satisfaction. I am searching for some vent, some air hole; I am trying to breathe but the air is suffocatingly hot. It burns my lungs, but there’s no solution for that.

I am burning from the outside in, while combusting from the inside out at the same time. My brain feels hot to the touch, but that seems irrelevant because my fingers have been reduced to numb stalks. I am running. Running inside my head. Running for my life, but there is no gust of cooling wind, no rush of air. Trying to escape, but there is only more terrain, a flat and unforgiving surface of pebbles, rocks, boulders, visible only as each foot descends.

Not running any longer, stumbling, staggering. Not erect any longer, but hunched, half bent at the waist. Not conscious any longer, but zombie-like, wide eyed, a collection of involuntary instincts. There is no fight, only flight. There is no thought, only reflex. There is only the escape.

Escape. Escape from what, I wonder? What is the threat?

The threat, as much as I can interpret, is that I will die. This pain of betrayal, rejection, negation of my innermost self will cause my death. It will kill me, horribly. This is the total blackout of rational thought when an episode of rageful dissociation is occurring. So, I fully understand crimes of passion. I fully understand that passion is not limited to love, or sex addiction, or broken marriage vows, or money. It depends on one’s level of attachment to such things.

I think my mother could have killed my father at one point. Anybody can kill. Anybody. I don’t think the same was true for him. It’s not that she loved him so deeply and could not do without him, or allow anyone else to have him, it was the betrayal of all that she held as truth in the world – that if you follow the rules, you’ll get what has been promised. If you do what is expected of you, and sacrifice accordingly, you’ll get your reward. That is how life works. Follow the rules and you can’t lose.

But she did lose. She felt that she was following all the rules, and she lost. I would contend that she didn’t follow all of the rules, but she believed that she was doing everything to the letter of the law. And the letter of the Church. And she did not get the rewards she believed were due. To her credit, as bitter as she was at one point, she never fully gave in to that rage, that betrayal of trust in the Divine. She was not a pleasant person for a while there, and she was kind of mean, but she maintained her faith as she had learned it, and she went on. Nobody died.

So, there’s yet another question I have about inherent worth and dignity…in the context of those who, in my opinion, surrender their worth and their dignity by doing harm. Knowingly doing harm. Often, intentionally doing harm for no other purpose but their own sadistic amusement. But, going a level deeper, is that line between good and evil dynamic, such that if you choose to cross it, you can cross it again at some other point?

What forces make it possible for some people to consciously retreat from that line separating humanity from depravity, bringing the good matter in contact with the anti-matter? What causes one person to cross the line, with or without hesitation, while another pulls back?

In recovery work, we are told that if we are spiritually fit and maintaining a good relationship, or connection, with a power greater than ourselves, we will withdraw from the temptation to drink as though from a hot poker. We are also taught that willingness is the key to establish that connection. So, I must be willing to stay on the proverbial sunny side of the street, that no matter how enticing the Dark Side may seem. Interestingly, that willingness seems quite fluid some days.

God, or Buddha, or Alla, or whatever flavor of divinity floats your boat, is the key to maintaining one’s humanity, and refusing to jump headlong over to the Dark Side. Maybe, on a less esoteric plane, it’s the resignation that you are alone in the world, that Hell is what you have. There isn’t anything else, so whatever you do here matters not. Ultimately, You matter not.

Perhaps that is the point of redemption in the Christian context – you have a spiritual awakening and understand that you are not the only sentient being of consequence in the world, and that change in perspective reunites your soul with the Divine. Um, Ok. That sounds good, but is it that simple?

It sounds like forgiveness is on some greater, cosmic level – you didn’t believe, you rejected the prospect of being connected more or less equilaterally to other beings, rejected the reality of being human. And suddenly you’ve seen the light and all is forgiven? I suppose that is why there’s a death penalty. There are consequence, says the human in the black robe.

I don’t know. And that is the point. I don’t know. And neither does anyone else, because we are not divinities. We have not been through a death experience and returned to explain what happens. Every organized religion and belief system know to human kind may well be wrong. We could be mutant aliens from some other universe, refugees from a place for which we have no frame of reference. Maybe that explains our obsession with territorialism and immigrants.

This is necessarily getting to be an absurd line of discussion, but only to prove how much choice we have. We do not have to believe what some guy, or some woman, says about the Divine from the front of a house of worship. (And we certainly don’t have to give them our money to do that).

So many humans truly believe they have no choice about what they believe, and they must work to change my choice to not believe. They are just saving my soul, however, so I shouldn’t be upset. My response to that is…you worry about your soul, and let me worry about mine

Once again, this kind of contract elevates a human beyond their pay grade, and certainly beyond their level of spiritual competency. Perhaps that is inherently human – attempting to be more than we are equipped to be. Always wanting what we don’t have. Like me wanting to be a roller derby star when I didn’t even know how to skate.

It’s human nature, I suppose, to compare our insides to other people’s outsides. If Big D. has an Escalade, and he is cool and gets all the attention and all the respect and everybody wants to be with him, then I’ll get what he gets if I just get the Escalade. Maybe I’ll just steal his – all that other stuff I want is portable, right? Um, no. Not so much.

For now, I will attempt to stay in my square, in my little corner of the Universe. It’s a really big place, so I think I have some room to bump into the walls and fall down a couple of stairwells if I can’t find my way. I suppose my work is to make sure I know where I am, keep the floor swept, and open the windows. That is all.

Sometimes, things seem to get so out of hand. I’m told to take one day at a time, but when they all seem to pile up at once and come at me, it gets a little overwhelming. I would imagine, however, that being less than 72 hours from having someone I love shot to death because of someone’s “mistake” might be off the scale of overwhelm.

There is now crowd of people who’ve been unwillingly inducted into an exclusive society in which they’d rather not claim membership. They didn’t ask for it, and it really has nothing to offer them except the grim reality of their losses. They are unlikely allies in a club where dues are paid by someone they have loved, nurtured, bonded with…someone who has been killed undeservedly by law enforcement.

There’s another crowd, a little ways away, of people who’ve been unwillingly inducted into another exclusive society, and they’d rather not claim their membership, either. These are the families, the children, the people who love an officer who’s been accused of ending the life of an unarmed person of color. The impact of tha officer’s actions doesn’t end with them, or the victim, it radiates to everything either party has touched. Ultimately, we’re all tangentially related to these high-profile incidents.

Everyone is calling for maximum penalty for the individuals who directly cause the death of these victims who’ve been in the news – Sandra Bland. George Floyd. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Daunte Wright. And so many others. These names are just recent history, but this has been happening since before there was printed media, since before there were telephones, since before there were two-way radios, since long before there were video phones. The names have changed, but the horror and the misery and the pain is the same.
It feels like justice when the person who pulled the trigger, or laid on the neck of somebody, or manhandled their victims gets convicted, or at least criminally charged, in these incidents.

But then it happens again, and we are left shouting in the streets and calling for justice and saying things must change. Then it happens again, and people go back to the streets, more or less non-violently, and there are more tears and more shouts and more spontaneous memorials. Sometimes there are trials. But it keeps happening, and every time it does, it takes a chunk out of all of us.

It’s not uncommon for people to reminisce about the “good ole days”, when things were good and you could walk to the corner store for a snack and come home safely, no matter how old you were or what color you were. Ah, those were the times.

I remember those times, too. I also remember they were peppered with missing children who didn’t make the news, murders that nobody talked about, whispered stories about what happened to some people who wandered into the wrong part of town, or the wrong part of the outskirts of town. Stories about certain people you should stay away from, and how it hadn’t been all that long since signs came down that told you where you weren’t welcome to go. And it hasn’t been all that long since any of that changed.

I hover between wanting to not expect too much because it hasn’t been all that long, but then I think…so when is the acceptable time to grieve the impact of 400 years of oppression, of the genocide of colonialism, of the broken promises of an experiment that claimed to allow life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?

Grief has no time table. When someone that I love dies, I find myself in dynamic stages of grief for many years. There are many memories, many realizations, many connections made that weren’t apparent before. You miss them, and you are inconsolable at times. You are angry at times, and hopeful at times. Inexplicably, you are even joyous at times. The full range of your emotional palette is experienced, and it is seemingly self-aware – you don’t plan to be sad, you don’t plan to be angry. It just happens.

That is the nature of emotion – it doesn’t make sense, it’s not a rational nor linear proposition. It just … is. Justice is like that. It’s emotional, it’s passionate, it makes you angry and it makes you joyful. It evokes all of these things, dynamically; it ebbs and flows.

The President, at the funeral of the Capitol Police Officer who was most recently killed, told the man’s widow: (paraphrasing) “People are going to come to you and tell you they understand. You know they can’t. And when you think of him, you cry, and you’re sad, and you miss him. But then one day, unexpectedly, you will think of him and smile. You just don’t know when that’s going to come, but it will.”

So, maybe that’s what I keep working for, that day when I’ll smile, thinking about all of this injustice and this struggle and these people who have been lost. People like Fannie Lou Hamer, beaten to within an inch of her life for helping people vote. People like John Lewis, who had his skull cracked open for trying to cross a bridge. People like them, and so many others, who didn’t fade into the woodwork after paying such a painful price for their efforts. They recuperated, and they came back to the work, refusing to give power to their opponents.

I suppose this is what makes some people activists – coming back to the effort. Returning to the struggle. Refusing to let the opponents have ultimate victory. Continuing to speak, continuing to shout, continuing to march, continuing to call out the truth.

This is why I’m still here, I think. This is why I have not decided to just leave and try again in some other lifetime, if there is one. I can’t march very far or send a lot of money or purposely get put in jail. But I can write, and I can talk, and I can let people know there’s at least one short, dumpy, middle-aged Black woman that knows right from wrong, and she’s going to tell other people when there is stuff wrong. And if you know me, you know I ain’t gonna ever shut up.

I would love to be doing more, but I know my limits. I wish I was a superhero, with unlimited physical resources, but I’m a realist, so…. Regardless of all that, it’s my hope that i will live long enough to see a different world, to see this world we dreamed about, to live truly free. If it doesn’t go that way, though, I hope that something I do will help that long for the people who come after me. Like my mama would say, shaking her head disapprovingly, “Look at this. Just Look. At. This.”. So, I’m looking. And not taking my eye off the prize, holding on.

I’ve been watching a lecture of Roxane Gay’s, and she talks about the craft of writing. One of the things she’s talking about is … finding your voice. About being unapologetic about your opinions. About communicating your trauma, your feelings, your experiences. About knowing what it is that you want to say, and then knowing that you are done once you’ve said it, and not before. About revising your work, which is the act of re-visioning. Taking another look at it, seeing it in a new way…or the same way. It may be just fine the way it is.

I have never wanted to revise much of anything. Most of what I write comes straight off the top of my head, like that solid lipid layer that you can separate from cooking oil after it’s been used to fry up something tasty. What I write has generally been what’s knocking on the inside of my cranium and begging for release. I’ve always been like that. In high school I learned about outlines and index cards and thesis statements and how to make several drafts. The index cards were mysterious, and I figured if I was going to write a brief synopsis of topic areas on the index card, I may as well write the whole damned paper and let it flow like it needed to. I usually did OK with that.

In college, I always waited until the last minute to complete writing assignments…so there was little time for drafts and outlines and sipping a relaxing cup of tea in between writing spurts. My papers usually got pounded out on a manual typewriter at 3am, the night before they were due. I don’t know if I got much sleep during those years, but I didn’t ask for any, because it would have cut into my drinking and partying time. Ah, to be young and stupid and 20.

Actually, I’m not sure I would want to go back in time to be 20 again. I was one of the most miserable people I’ve ever met, even today. I could never get in step, could never be cool, could never understand how to dress or how to stand or where to be or move the right way when people line danced. Never. I remember my mother saying that my father wasn’t a good dancer, either…but she was no ballerina herself. I don’t think I ever saw her even moving to a beat or anything like that, so I come from a long line of rhythmless people. We’re all musicians, though, so go figure.

But I digress. I’ve never been one of those kids who seemed to know where they were going and ‘what time it was’. Some of that I attributed to being an only child, and being raised in a house full of adults. Those adults were not particularly social, either, so there wasn’t a lot of social input for me. But, I survived.

My parents were largely self-absorbed, because they were possibly even more miserable than I was. They were in a very bad marriage, and I believe the only reason they got together was obligation. They did what they were supposed to do. Men and women of their age were supposed to get married and breed, and so they did.

I have said many times that I cannot imagine how in the world my mother became pregnant, because I never once saw even the vaguest sign of a romantic spark between them. My story is that a highly ambitious sperm leapt across a great distance to tackle an extremely recalcitrant egg, and then I showed up.

Anyway, there was always lots of fussing and fighting and accusation (mostly coming from my mother). They might start arguing about something innocuous like whether or not my mother got the larger piece of meat at dinner, and the argument would drone on, long past dinner. I would leave them arguing and go off to amuse myself, eventually go to sleep, and wake up the next morning to find them still arguing about the damned piece of meat. Sometimes I think arguments came to an end, or at least a pause, only because my father had to leave for work.

Growing up with my parents gave me an odd view of relationships. It seemed they were to be endured, to be survived, to be overcome. There was never any fodder for love, or affection, or even for dreams. I was neglected on certain emotional levels, but they neglected themselves on those levels. They didn’t have it to give, and what I needed was probably incomprehensible to them. Not because they were mean, or uncaring, because they had never received it themselves.

Like I said, though, they were pretty absorbed with themselves. I am surprised they didn’t forget me on top of the car and drive off when I was an infant and toddler. When I was a teenager, my mother did forget things on top of the car and drove off several times, with cars honking and dodging things like books and record albums that were catapulting into lanes of traffic. Oh, well.

When I was little and we lived with my grandmother, I did fine. I knew what was going on. I didn’t think I was ugly, or fat, or an idiot. I didn’t stress over clothes or being a klutz. I did normal kid things, I had neighborhood friends. I don’t remember anybody telling me I was stupid or bullying me. Life was good. Until it wasn’t.

When we left my grandmother’s house and tried to do the obligatory nuclear family gig, things started getting weird. My mother didn’t work, and I remember her taking me to the City Park, and I would play on the fairy tale character swings with other kids. When we got home, we would color and watch television (well, i would watch – she always fell asleep). By that time, my father would be coming home from work, and it was time for dinner. My mother was religious about cooking dinner, because he worked and he needed his dinner. (huh?)

By the time I was ready for school. my mother was still suffering from agoraphobia, and I was sent to school alone in a cab. I sometimes wonder if anything happened in that cab – the driver was an older Black man, thin, didn’t say much. But I got there every day, and did whatever it was that I was supposed to do.

Life was rather uneventful, only punctuated by the fussing and fighting, which as I recall was somewhat intense. They got into some kind of conflagration one day, and it seemed the screaming was worse than usual. We were all in the kitchen…I was a few feet away from them, at the table I think. They were both standing at the sink, and on the counter was the percolator. It had just been plugged in, making coffee (my mother usually made a pot in the morning and reheated it throughout the day), and I remember hearing it kind of whistle, like it did when the coffee had boiled.

They were just kind of going at it, about who knows what, and then all of a sudden my mother whirls around and grabs the percolator, and in the same motion she swung it at my father. It was her habit to not tighten the lid on the machine when she was reheating coffee, so the boiling hot liquid flew out in a wave. My father had been turned away from her, and the coffee landed squarely on his back. He had been wearing only his undershirt, so he was burned rather badly across his shoulders and upper back. He yelled.

Once my father yelled, I was a little scared, because my father never yelled, or really raised his voice at all. Hell, most of the time he didn’t even talk. But he yelled, and even I recognized it as a spontaneous utterance of pain. The undershirt was all but melted, and he peeled it off, and made hissing sounds through his clenched teeth. I shrank into the woodwork at that, trying to be as invisible as I possibly could.

Some time later, the next thing I remember was being in the back seat of the car, and we were going to the hospital. I heard my mother saying it, so that’s how I knew. My eyes must have been big as headlights, and I had no words. Not that anyone was asking me anything. We got to the hospital, and I don’t remember much of what happened…my father must have been taken into a treatment room or something. When he came out, he had some white bandages on his back and one shoulder. We got back into the car and drove home. My father had to drive, burned back and everything, because my mother was still too scared of the world to do anything like drive. Plus, he was the man and everybody knows the man does things like drive and cut the grass. And have dinner ready when he gets home. And stuff.

My mother used to tell my father the most outrageous things, hurtful things about his how his mother died, about how he had skinny legs, how he had no neck. He was actually a pretty nice looking guy, if I might say so myself. But that was how my mother showed caring, I guess – she made fun of you in all kinds of ways. His head was too square, his handwriting was terrible (it actually was). Always something that she berated. So, this is how it is to be married, huh? Well, that ain’t happenin’ for ME. I decided that I was never going to have children when I was eight. Everybody thought I was kidding. I was not.

Learning about relationships is one part of it, I guess, but truth be told, I don’t believe I ever had the yearning for it. What I had a yearning for was companionship, but it was kind of twisted somehow. I wanted a companion that was all mine, all the time, with nobody else to intrude. If someone seemed to understand me, like me, made me feel good, then I wanted to be with them only. I guess that was how it was being with just my mother. I guess.

Companions are dandy, but once hormones started to make their presence know, I understood there was something more than talking on the phone and watching movies together. I understood there was something else, but I didn’t quite know what the something else was. It was a jiggly feeling that I didn’t know what to do with, so I kept it pretty much to myself. Anything I learned about people doing adult things I learned from television, because I never saw my parents hugging or kissing or even holding hands. They slept in the same bed for a while, but even that fell apart before they separated.

So, to me, the whole thing about relationships was some kind of chaste and sterile arrangement, except for what went on inside you. I knew that was different than just going to school with friends, or riding our bicycles, or hanging out in front of the house. I knew it was different, but I didn’t know why. I felt like it must be something dirty and not allowed, though. Any time my mother or her sister talked about adult things, they whispered it, as though maybe God wouldn’t hear it if they whispered. Lord, have mercy.

I suppose there is still a part of me that isn’t quite sure about why sex is such a big part of a capital-R Relationship, especially if you are not planning on having children. I never wanted to have children. Really. The bug just never bit me, and I am fine with that. But I felt as though I wanted to be in a Relationship, with someone. I knew it had to be a woman, but…even at 30, I was still the awkward kid who didn’t quite know how things worked, had no social skills, and behaved more like a 14-year old boy than a 30-year-old woman. Some days, I’m still a 14-year old boy, punching girls in the arm and making armpit noises.

In some respects, I am furious that I never learned better. But, I have to cut my parents a break. First, they could not give to me what they never had. Second, there is no guide book or owner’s manual that instructs people on the care and feeding of a GLBT child. I think my father knew something was up, but he would have died before saying anything. My mother was naive enough to believe that I was suddenly going to come home with a gentleman caller who asked for my hand in marriage. Like in the old movies, and the romance novels. I felt very guilty for a very long time about disappointing her. Really, I did.

I never had any kind of conversation with my father about who I was, in really any meaningful way, not just about my sexual orientation. When I was coming to terms with that, we were estranged. I didn’t speak to him for nearly ten years after I found out that he was married, and he had not told me. I hated him for that. He never came after me, either, so … both of us just pretended the other didn’t exist. I know that made me nearly insane, so I have to believe that it did something to him as well. No, I’m sure it did.

I know I’m not the only one who still has relationships like some adolescent goober. I know I’m not, because I attract my kind like flies are attracted to dung. I have a wack magnet – if they are wacked, I will attract them. If they are toxic but covert narcissists, that’s the particular flavor of wack that seems to do really well in my orbit. I’m trying to give myself a break about that, but…one would think I’d be able to change that pattern by now. My chief strategy is to keep low, stay down, shoot to kill. Stay. The. Fuck. Away. From. Me.

Believe it or not, all of this is to say, again, that i am no longer bitter toward my parents. I have made peace with them, as they exhaled their last gasps of life. I expressed my gratitude for the gifts they gave, for my life. I told both of them I was grateful for what they did, and that I wished things had been different in many ways. There are really no words to express that, but I am confident they both heard me. I am confident they are both still with me on some esoteric level, some place intangible. I am confident in their presence, but not so much mine.

I have lived for a long time between heartache and misery, which is a narrow sliver of this plane of existence. Somehow, I wedged myself into that small opening very tightly, so that I could neither go forward nor backward, and so that even light could not penetrate. Too big to fail, in the very literal sense. Too big to let in more hurt, more despair, more attackers. Fortified, impervious, impenetrable. But somehow, I failed anyway, because I walled myself off from … my Self. That takes some doing.

These days, I just want to be in peace. There’s not all that much to prevent that, except for the details like money, health insurance, vehicle repairs, bills. Nothing big. My mother told me not too long ago that she wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to me. I choose to believe her. I choose to believe that I haven’t walked all this way, worked this hard, deprived myself of this much just to be deposited at the bottom of the well. Not even Lassie will find me there…because best defense is no be there (thanks, Mr. Miyagi). I’m walking up top, and from all indications that’s where I’ll stay.

There’s more. There has to be more. I suppose I learned a while back that I’m essentially a late bloomer – I have to have the lesson run around the flagpole more than once before I get it. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean that once I get to the party all the food is gone. I think I’ve got it now, or I’m closer than I’ve ever been, but I am going to have to catch up (some jet lag or something). I’ll be OK. My mother said so, and I say so. I’ll be OK. And not because I lose weight or get the dream job or strike it big in the lottery. Not because some loser with a nice smile pays attention to me. Not because my dog suddenly ceases to be an incessant barking machine. Because…it’s just the way it is. There’s nothing insurmountably wrong. It’s all OK. (and yeah, I took my meds this morning).

I posted most of this on FaceBook earlier, but have cleaned it up a bit and possibly explored a ew points further. Emotion is high, and my writer’s mind is in some kind of spasm. I’m tired of having to see the pictures of people who were alive yesterday but dead today, because of an encounter with law enforcement. This has gotten ridiculous, and instead of being desensitized to the sheer volume of similar reports, I am become more and more enraged by having to see the same thing over and over and over again. Only the faces change, but the story is still the same. This. Has. To. Stop.

Daunte Wright’s family is obviously…upset. Enraged. Incredulous. Shocked. In such incredible pain it cannot be described. Daunte Wright’s aunt said a few things that sum up what a lot of people are feeling: What if it was your son? What if it was your nephew? How are we supposed to feel when Daunte is dead and the officer who killed him, and other officers who have killed people, is getting “due process”? Daunte didn’t deserve this, his aunt said.

So, yeah – how ARE we supposed to feel? I feel angry and I don’t even know Daunte Wright or anyone related to him. Daunte didn’t deserve that, George Floyd didn’t deserve what he got, Sandra Bland didn’t deserve the outcome she got. None of them did. I didn’t know George Floyd or Sandra Bland or any of the others, or anyone related to them, either, but I’m angry and disheartened and sad because of their deaths as well. I don’t know the Army Lieutenant who was stopped and mistreated by the police, or any of the victims of the Atlanta shooter, or anyone killed in any of the other mass shootings, but their deaths still impact me because none of them deserved that.

What DO we deserve? As Americans, I would contend that we deserve the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…what our founding documents promise…but what the eff does that even mean any more? Happiness is a complicated thing, and in terms of a government, it doesn’t mean laughter and smiles and balloons and parties. It means how well citizens come to realize their goals, and thus contribute to the overall good of the republic. If you are getting your needs met by the experience of living in this country, then you’re more apt to work to maintain it, contribute to it, etc. That’s the measure of “happiness” from the standpoint of the greater good.

In more practical terms, I believe we deserve to know that if we use a possibly counterfeit $20 bill in a store, or talk back to a police officer, or go to a Bible study at church, or walk or jog down the street in our own neighborhoods…that we stand a good chance of coming home again. That another citizen won’t fear us, or project a criminal activity on us because of what we look like. That if we run into any problems while out in public, our biggest fear shouldn’t be the people sworn to protect and serve us. That we aren’t seen as guilty of something before we even get out of bed. That’s just SOME of what we deserve.

I don’t know any of these people who have been killed while in police custody, but I am angry; I am enraged. I am disheartened. And I am very, very sad.

Enraged because one person’s life should not be worth more than another’s. Enraged because there is no rational explanation for any of this. Enraged because this is so clearly a systemic deficiency, whether it be isolated to law enforcement as a training issue, or a psychological screening issue, or the infiltration of law enforcement systems with totalitarian militaristic and racist philosophy.

Whatever it is that caused it, the system is no longer one of “peace officers”, but one of power displays and dictatorial compliance, power OVER instead of power WITH. No longer a system of protecting life, or enhancing happiness, but of protecting property and possessions. No longer a system that attempts to ensures order and safety, but one that attempts to ensure compliance through intimidation and control.

Disheartened because this keeps happening, and the rhetoric of “just obey the police and this wouldn’t happen” persists. The defense attorney at Derek Chavin’s trial attempted to get one of the expert medical witnesses to say agree that if George Floyd had just complied with the instructions to get into the police car on that day in May last year, he would still be alive. The expert refused to co-sign that fallacy, and said that were it not for Derek Chauvin’s intervention, George Floyd would still be alive, regardless of drug use or high blood pressure or heart problems. Nice try.

Disheartened because everyone loses when these things happen, when an unarmed BIPoC is killed and a psychotic 20-year-old heavily armed white racist is taken into custody alive and protected. My heart sinks every time I remember Mike Brown’s body lying uncovered on a city street for hours, while his mother watched helplessly just feet away. I cannot imagine how she must have felt, barred from even going to her son’s lifeless body to touch him, maybe cover his face. There was really no explanation for treating her that way, other than meanness.

I am sad because…I don’t see a way out of it, don’t see how we can stop this, because it feels so hopeless. It’s out of control. The system that killed George Floyd and Daunte Wright and Sandra Bland and Mike Brown and all the others has the same roots as the one that provoked supremacists to attempt to overthrow the government on January 6th. It’s the system of thought that says all people are NOT equal, that all ways of being are not equivalent, that some people are more valuable and more worthy than others. That some people will ALWAYS be less than other people, I mean just look at them – they’re ugly, and they’re stupid, and they can’t be trusted. Case closed.

I’m sad because this is the world we’ve created. The one we have to navigate now, probably for the rest of my life, in a country that takes pride in saying that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. i’m sad because i don’t know if that’s true, or if it ever was. I’m sad because it didn’t have to be this way. I don’t want this. I don’t want it for myself or anyone else, but this is what we have. I’m sad because i feel that i am watching my country disintegrate, taking with it all of the wonderful things those who came before me left for us, all they fought for, all they built.

More than anything, I’m sad because i feel that if some people had their way I would be in a concentration camp or forced into unpaid labor for the good of … someone else. I really don’t want to feel that. I’m sad because i keep seeing Black women, and men, sobbing on television, howling in rage and grief and shock as their children’s bodies are driven away to the morgue. How many decades, centuries, have these scenes been enacted, with BIPoC bodies treated so indiscriminately and those who love them so powerless?

I’m sad because when i watch the trial of the man who is accused of killing George Floyd I relive that horrible day, see those horrible images of a grown Black man dying live on national television, with every shred of dignity ripped from him as he begged…please …I can’t breathe…please officer…let me stand…please…over and over and over until there was silence.

I’m heartbroken because George Floyd’s brother cried on the witness stand, telling everyone what a “mama’s boy” George Floyd was, how much he loved his mother, and how he taught his brothers and sisters how to act. And then i hear George Floyd’s voice crying out for his mama as he was being ushered to the door of his own death on that Minneapolis street. You can’t unsee or unhear that stuff. We never should have seen or heard it in the first place.

How many more scenes like that will it take before something changes in what we can expect? How many more grieving families, will be torn apart by evens like this including the ones associated with the people responsible for these killings. How many more of us will be thrown into the hellfire of this boiling cauldron of hatred and incivility and intolerance. How many more? I shudder to think of the answer to that question.

In my mind’s eye, that cauldron looks exactly like the volcano boiling and bubbling up from the depths of the Earth in Iceland right now, molten lava oozing up from below the surface, overtopping the mountain sides and bathing the land below in a red hot sea of rage. That molten rock has been there for a long time, and nobody knows how much of it there is. It’s going to come up and over, no matter what we do at this point, so we just need to get out of the way and let it do what it’s going to do. We can’t put a lid on it now, we can’t control it. We have to respect it, and know that we can do something else to keep ourselves safe; there are some natural processes that we’re just can’t control from the surface. I would contend, however, that our collective energy affects the Planet in some esoteric ways, so…perhaps we would do well to calm our own buried rage. Perhaps. It will take a minute, though.

This morning, I am tired. Some of the emoting that it takes for even writing about this is draining. Watching the television accounts is even more draining, but not knowing what is happening does not serve me well because I make up my own stories. My own stories are far worse than anything actually happening, so…I will stay connected and make the best of it. The dog is in for it, because she is going to have to help distract me. That should be OK with her, I’m thinking, because it will get her more attention and outdoor time. She is a pushy little thing.

Confidence (n) – the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something, firm trust; the state of feeling certain about the truth of something; a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.

Firm trust. The state of feeling certain. When there is no firm trust or feeling of certainty, I suppose that is fear. When I cannot trust that you will do the right thing, I fear whatever it is that you WILL do. In many cases, I don’t acknowledge that I am afraid, refuse to give you the satisfaction of presuming that you have instilled fear in me. If my level of distrust is great enough, and if the stakes are high enough, my fear could propel me to respond in a manner that is of little good to either of us. At that point, I am probably not acting under the control of my rational mind, but only my limbic brain. I am in survival mode.

It seems to me that some of us believe that any resistance to our sentiment, our belief, our perception of order and correct action constitutes threat to our very lives. The only common denominator appears to be power – if you feel that you don’t have it, you will revert to limbic brain function to get it. That is a rational proposition when it comes to a life-threat, but not when the context involves difference of accepted truth.

Some of the worst conflicts I have ever seen involve money at the root. Even when it seems the conflict involves something else, when dissected, it begins with money. Money makes people nuts. If you are poor, and living a truth of having no access to health care, food, shelter because you don’t have enough money, entering the limbic brain state is a very quick response.

When you are not faced with a life-threatening circumstance, but perhaps a disagreement over religious belief, or paint color, or political opinion many people go to the survival brain regardless. Loss of power seems to raise a base primal response, and frequently we cannot differentiate actual threats to life from threats whose greatest consequence is negative emotional response.

If I believe there is no divine power, no God, why should that be a threat to someone who believes there is a God who controls every aspect of their lives? Since living in the Bible belt, I have been asking that question, and the closest I can get to making sense of that is…believers are confident that one’s very soul is at risk if there is no acceptance and subservience to God. This is the worst possible consequence that any human could ever receive, and so it is their sworn duty to prevent this for themselves as well as any other person they may encounter.

I firmly believe that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want to believe. I have never been to the Other Side, so I don’t know what’s there and which of us pitiful humans is correct about what we should be doing over here. Maybe there’s not an Other Side. There’s a kick in the butt – we could all be arguing over literally nothing. Regardless, the need to be right gets transformed into some kind of battle for survival, which seems odd.

I was listening to a newcomer to recovery speak at a meeting a while ago, and he was talking about his family. As many of us realize during our recovery, he was coming to understand the harm he’d caused with his drinking, and his selfish behavior. I’ve heard this before, from many an addict, but he added something I found amazing. He said that he’d always been clear with his family that he loved them, and would die for them…but he was now realizing that he was being called to decide whether or not he’d LIVE for them. That’s very different, I believe.

What would I live for? At various points in my past, I have not been sure I had anything to live for. I did not so much want to die, but that is different from knowing that I wanted to live. What is my life worth, not to anyone else or any institution, but to me? What exactly am I living FOR? For a long time, I was not convinced there was anything to report.

The older I get, and the healthier I get (and some days are better than others), the more I believe that I am not living entirely to provide an experience that satisfies my wants. I’m not sure I ever believed that I was living solely to make myself happy – I never felt in control of that anyway – but survivalism is more or less about putting yourself in a position of ensuring your needs. Sometimes we get our needs confused with our wants, but in either case there is a tremendous self-ishness involved. Not self-centeredness, but responsibility for oneself. Self-ish.

Is my life worth more than yours? Is your life worth more than mine? This is where our limbic brain causes us to falter – the instinct to survive is inherent, immutable. When a zebra, or rabbit, or some other prey is running for their life from a predator, the threat is immediate, and real. It’s not a perception, it’s not a possibility, it’s very real.

So, back to confidence. Frequently, I have none, most notably none in myself. Lately, though, I’ve take a couple of steps that have changed my energy a bit. The first was the other night, when I felt so excluded in a group meeting, and spoke up to say how I felt. The situation turned around, and I felt that it was a small victory for me on a very personal level. I rarely do that sort of thing, just let it ride, just sink further into myself. But this time, I stepped out of the unlocked cage.

The other thing I’ve done is even more recent. In fact, it happened today. I was poring through job postings on a job search site, and fretting a bit over whether I should take the proverbial bull by the horns and apply, even if not overly confident that I could meet the requirements, let alone be satisfied with the jobs described. I have been toying with these search results for a while now, and was just about at the point to set myself a deadline to find at least five or six postings that I could live with, and commit to applying. I was talking myself into remembering that if I got an offer, I didn’t have to accept it, so applying was low risk.

While I was scrolling through what seemed like an endless stream of unexciting job descriptions, I got a sudden notion to check out the UU Association’s website, to see if they had job postings. I did that, and *eureka* there was a job opening posted about three days ago that is right up my alley. I would absolutely LOVE to have this job – it’s a writing-type job with the title of justice coordinator or something like that. Yes, yes, and YES.

Surprising my procrastinating self, I re-read the posting and got the instructions for applying. It said that a cover letter with resume’, via email, was preferred, so I went out and found my resume’. I polished it up just a little, spun out some drivel that I hope doesn’t sound desperate, and hit the ‘send’ button. I did that. I actually did that. Holy mackerel.

I am kind of excited about the possibility. The description sounds like the perfect job for me, and working for the Association that governs my chosen faith. I hate to sound like some holy roller or something, but it would really give me a lift to be working for the justice effort in my chosen faith because…everything I do in pursuit of justice occurs in that context. I wouldn’t have to code switch or translate or adhere to some other standards for how I perceive justice. How cool would THAT be?

So, now I wait, wait to see if they will respond. Actually, I’m sure they will respond, but will their opening salve begin “Thank you for your interest, but the position has already been filled” or something like that? I think I need a nap.

In the midst of this burst of excitement about a possible job opportunity, there has been another shooting of an unarmed Black man. It occurred in Minneapolis again, fairly close to where the Derek Chauvin trial is underway. Police pulled over a driver for expired registration or some traffic violation, then discovered he had a warrant. When they tried to arrest him, things got goofy, and one officer shot him. She claimed she was reaching for her taser, and accidentally unholstered her service firearm instead, and pulled the trigger. The body camera footage was released, and she is clearly heard yelling, “Taser, taser, taser!” to warn her fellow officers that she was about to deploy the taser, but then a shot…and she yells, “Shit! I shot him!”.

Goodness. If nothing else, the timing of this sucks. The location sucks. The guy being dead sucks – he was only 20. There are now protests in Minneapolis, some of them earlier deteriorated into looting. There are more going on tonight, and it doesn’t look good. This is absolutely one of the worst possible things that could happen right now.

As if someone asked “What more could happen?”, more has happened. There was another school shooting today, and an officer was injured. There was another shooting in Georgia, following a high-speed chase of some dudes from Alabama – 1 dead, officers wounded. Another shooting in Syracuse, a baby killed and two other children wounded. And on and on and on and on. I have no confidence that we are heading in the right direction. None. Whatsoever.

Confidence. Trust. Some days I have neither. Apparently some days, nobody has either. The number of shootings is mind numbing, zombie-making, desensitizing. Trayvon Martin’s mother was on CNN earlier, and it seems like a million years ago that Trayvon was killed. It’s been nine years. Nine years and hundreds of deaths later. Sandy Hook. Parkland High School. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Las Vegas. Pulse Nightclub. San Bernardino. And most recently, Atlanta. And that’s not even the complete list.

This is ridiculous. I have no confidence the perpetrators of these shootings were good people who were having a bad day. I have no confidence these are isolated data points, idiosyncratic instances. I believe these are trending responses, and there are others who are soon to emerge. It’s a mad, mad, world. And there are so many people out there who are mad, mad, and mad.

I have no confidence these shooters are mental health issues, and no confidence that we can quell the rising tide of revolutionary hatred. We sometimes think of revolution as only the noble effort of warriors on the right side of history. I am not sure about that. There have been many short-lived revolutionary efforts that were seated on the immoral wrong side of history. Rwanda comes to mind. And it wasn’t that simple as overthrowing a government – they had help, and it was a genocide disguised as a revolution.

We’re living on the dark side, apparently, or at least tight-rope walking the line between darkness and light. Our balance sucks, and at this point, I don’t trust that we can right ourselves. I don’t trust that my life has the same value as everyone else’s.

So, full circle brings me to contemplating what I am willing to live for. I know that I’m willing to live for becoming whole. I’m willing to live for making things right, things I’ve screwed up, things I refused to do. I’m willing to live for speaking truth, for making sound that shakes the foundations of status quo. I’m willing to live for learning more of who I am, and who I was intended to be. Willing to be left to tell. Left to tell the story, left to speak the truth, willing to show the pain. Willing to be willing.

I come from a place where tradition is everything. There are just certain things you do, and certain things you don’t because…well, that’s traditional. You eat seafood on Fridays and red beans on Mondays. You go to church on Sunday and watch football later that afternoon. You wash your car on Saturday afternoon so it can be lookin’ good when you go out to the club on Saturday night. Just certain things that mean you’re not a tourist, you a homie.

More than half of the city is based on the Catholic Church calendar. The Epiphany, January 6th, is the day the “…three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts we travel afar.” Following yonder star. Coming to bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newly born Messiah in Bethlehem. But more importantly, it’s the start of the Mardi Gras season, the period of debauchery and revelry leading up to the start of Lent. Lent…the period of desert wandering and scarcity, deprivation, until…Pam Sunday…the Messiah brings forth the revolution and instills hope in the oppressed Israelites. As is the case with many revolutionaries, Jesus Christ becomes a political target, and is eventually murdered by the Romans in order to quell the social uprising. He is crucified on “Good” Friday, and then rises from the tomb three days later on Easter Sunday. Everything else then proceeds up to the traditional Christian assignation of December 25th as the celebration of Christ’s birth, and it begins again.

The Christmas tradition in my family was a big damned deal. My birthday is four days after Christmas, and I was particularly determined to have the holiday be mine. All. About. Me. Because I was the only grandchild until I was about 9, it was most definitely all about me. I am still wrestling with how and when that changed, the injustice of it, and where the hell did these little ankle biter cousins of mine come from? I am not sharing my grandmother with you little cretins!

When I was a kid, Christmas traditions included things like Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. That was a really special thing, and I loved it especially because it was allowable for kids to be awake and wandering through adult gatherings in the middle of the night. The Mass event itself was usually pretty special – the one at St. Louis Cathedral is, to this day, standing room only and usually has a few celebrities in attendance.

When I was little, I remember midnight Mass still celebrated as High Mass, in Latin. I loved the formality and the ritual itself, although I was never totally in love (or understanding) with Catholic theology. It was the proverbial pomp and circumstance, the sheer gravity of the practice that was the same every year, and had been the same for thousands of years. I would imagine people from long, long ago doing the same thing and feel somewhat comforted by the longevity of the tradition.

After midnight Mass, we came back home and if it was cold we might have hot chocolate and maybe donuts. It wasn’t always cold (it’s Louisiana, it could be 80 degrees in December), but we always had food of some kind. My mother in particular had coffee…that was a staple of any meal or gathering or…whenever my mother happened to be in the kitchen. She was one of those people who could drink coffee and go to sleep an hour later. Go figure.

Anyway, by the time I was asleep on my feet and tired of waiting to hear Santa’s sleigh on the roof, I stumbled to put out a half-eaten cookie for the jolly fat man and went to sleep. A few hours later, it was up and at ’em and ripping open presents, smelling bacon cooking on the stove, pancakes and/or more donuts, maybe some eggs and fruit.

The best Christmases were when my grandmother and my great-aunts came to visit, and the house was full of the sound of women’s voices. It felt warm, and safe, and like things were the way they were supposed to be. Hearing the hum of my grandmother’s voice and my mother’s laughter into the night left no room for anxiety. I slept well, and woke up refreshed and ready for more, not expecting any bad things to happen.

Those holiday nights. When the normal routines of getting up and going to work, going to school, doing “necessary” things, were interrupted, I was always excited. The food was better, television was better, there was less fighting in the house, there was a buzz of hopeful expectation and excitement in the air. That felt so…right.

The year my grandmother died seemed to bring an end to those days of innocent celebration, when everyone seemed to be happy with each other, if only for a few hours on a single day. When you really felt like celebration was a real thing, and not just decorations or looking good.

My grandmother died in October of 1971, and by December things were still very depressing. We all missed her, in our own separate ways. My mother was quite literally losing her mind. I don’t think she got any support from my father, who in retrospect, was already involved in his affair. More importantly, he was dealing with his own pain, the pain of losing my grandmother, the pain of never knowing his own mother. The pain of being himself.

My mother got support from her sister, a bit at least. She got support from her aunts, my grandmother’s sisters, and the few friends she had. My father got support from his siblings a bit, and from whoever he fell in with out in the streets. I got support from…I don’t remember anybody in particular. I was drowning, and I didn’t know how to swim. But swim I did…flailing at the waters of grief and neglect and trying to figure out how to get to shore, any shore.

So, rituals and traditions are double-edged swords for me. Such incredibly good memories, filled with the awe of my childhood, when it seemed things couldn’t get any better. When it seemed that I was the center of peoples’ universe. When it seemed the universe was entirely benevolent and entirely welcoming. And then it wasn’t. Some of the rituals persisted, but they were never the same again.

My father’s father died in December of 1971, so the whole mystery and the wonder of December seemed to die on the vine that year. I’ve mentioned previously that I only memt my paternal grandfather a couple of times, and don’t remember a lot about him except that he didn’t seem like a happy, or fun, guy. Not mean, not scary, just…sad. It would take me a long, long time to understand sadness like that and be ushered into the long line of people in my family who also understood it.

I don’t know what my grandfather died from. My halting research of the past few years suggests that he may have been hit by a car, in Idaho of all places. I’m not sure of that, but I think I remember it being somewhat unexpected. I don’t remember talk of cancer or illness, as was the case with my maternal grandmother. Who knows, but 1971 left both my parents orphans, and that in turn left me the surviving adult at 11 in my household.

So rituals and traditions, in my immediate experience, held great comfort and wonder and joy, but also grief and obligation and foreboding. Over the years since, my mother and I forged new traditions for the “major” holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas. We’d go and eat at some big-time restaurant or hotel buffet, and that came to be something I looked forward to. That, unfortunately, died with her.

I still eat seafood on Fridays. I still think about red beans on Mondays, although can’t really make that happen here. The past few years I have been diligent about getting King Cake during Mardi Gras season. I still crave the wonder of a midnight mass on Christmas Eve, even though it has no theological relevance for me. But, I believe they believe, and the sense of serenity and reverence and peace has some meaning for me. Or at least some positive feeling. It still means something, has some attachment to community, something that is out of the ordinary.

My rituals in my later years have to do with things like food and coffee. Lately, I’ve been making coffee first thing every morning. One cannot have any degree of competency without at least some coffee. The stronger the better – weak coffee should be a crime. If you can see the bottom of the pot while brewing, it is not coffee. It is tea or brown water. Don’t bother, and don’t insult me with it. If you do, I am not responsible for my reaction or anything I might say.

I don’t really have any religious or spiritual rituals, although I do enjoy periodic meditation. I resist naming or labeling any of my practices, or cornering them into any degree of regularity. I figure if my oppositional defiance is here to stay, I am going to put it to good use and not succumb to the shoulds and shouldn’ts of things like my spiritual practice. I meditate whenever I feel compelled to do so, I reflect and contemplate whenever I feel the need.

In all seriousness, though, perhaps my biggest ritualistic behavior involves my recovery work, and my writing. 12-step meetings are a ritual of sorts, following the same format each time, and occurring at set and regular times. 24×7, 365 days a year. Weekends, holidays, sporting events included. I don’t mess with that – it’s a part of how I manage to get through the world, and I no longer question making intentional space for that.

Over the years, I have journaled. Always scribbling down my thoughts, feelings, observations…usually haphazardly, just catch as catch can. Fairly recently, though, I’ve become more intentional and more focused about not only journaling, but actually writing. I love words, I love the motion of getting a thought from somewhere inside me out onto a medium than can be transported outward. That sustains me, in some untoward fashion that I don’t need to understand.

Without making this writing more ritualistic, I don’t know how well I might have survived the past three years since my mother’s been gone. Not just her absence, but losing my job and coming to inhabit a different space in the universe, having a different relative position in the world. Not fame or fortune, certainly, but the relativity of where I stop and start and where everything else stops and starts. That’s not always been readily understood in my world.

So, this being Sunday, my inner Catholic is shouting that it must be time for Church somewhere…and I am ignoring that call to action. I’ll check out what my UU Fellowship is blathering about today and see if it’s of interest. If not, I’ll do a little more writing, and walk the dog, and maybe clean up a couple more feet of junk in this funky place. But, I am perfectly fine with trying to just … be. I don’t do all that well with that, always feeling that I need to be doing something. Anything. Whether it’s of any value or not, just…doing.

I am a child of the universe…a fluke, as Deteriorata reframed. I have no right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to me, the Universe is laughing behind my back. I LOVE that spoof on Desiderata. Sometimes we take things way too seriously.

I had a most interesting experience this evening, and felt compelled to commit it to writing. My community of faith, the local UU Fellowship, such as it is…sometimes not entirely in fellowship, sometimes a bunch of individuals and not quite a community…has embarked on this journey to infiltrate their dominant culture, explore their privilege, expand their horizons beyond the predominant upper-middle class academic environs. So, we are engaging in some intentional conversation with a local predominantly Black and Protestant community of faith.

I must admit I’ve been a little leery of this exploration. It sounded a little too ecumenical, a lot too paternalistic. My preference would have been to engage in a work project first, give people stage business and in the process get to know each other while engaged in common endeavor. But, the kinder and gentler amongst us pressed forward with this, so…here it is. Tonight was our second conversation together, and we split into two groups of six each. Lovely.

I was in a strange mood to begin with, mainly because of the Derek Chauvin trial coverage. At the onset of our small group meeting, I shared that I was at once enraged, dismayed, heart broken, and confused by what I was seeing in the trial proceedings. Feeling that George Floyd is himself on trial, that he is being tried for his own murder. Feeling there’s every chance that Derek Chauvin will have no consequences for his actions. Fearing the aftermath of the verdict, whichever way it is rendered – if the jury convicts this former police officer of murder, the MAGA crowd will not be happy, and I worry about their pushback. If the jury fails to convict Chauvin of anything, or of some token offense, I cringe at possible violence and outpouring of rage and frustration from the BIPOC and BIPOC ally community. Worst case, it’s a lose-lose scenario.

So, I shared all that. I felt somehow a little exposed, perhaps because I had verbalized my feelings rather than some linear analysis, some regurgitation of facts. There were nods all around; I was still feeling a trifle unsettled. The discussion progressed, and one of us discussed his awareness that, as a Black man, he doesn’t always feel that he can express his feelings, his emotional response, in public. He is a big guy, and said that he’s experienced people in mixed-race setting feeling somewhat threatened by his emotional response. He spoke about something I’m familiar with, the feeling that you need to keep your deepest feelings to yourself lest they be misunderstood and misinterpreted by dominant culture, seen as threatening. Specifically as a large Black man, he described seeing the seemingly fearful reactions of white women in his presence when he becomes angry or frustrated about some circumstance, even when that is the appropriate response. I got that immediately, and there were more nods all around.

Then, it went downhill, at least for me. The same gentleman posed a question of his own, about whether other members of the group had experienced similar reactions to their emotionalism. He directed the question specifically to the other two Black women in the group, but did not call my name. It was quite apparent that he did not include me in the group of Black women.

As the other women began to speak, I had an incredible rush of emotion – anger, rage, grief, disappointment, despair. All in a split second, no – not even a second – a fraction of a second, not spanning even the duration of the blink of an eye. All without any visible indication of what was going on inside me. Time seemed to nearly stop while the conversation was proceeding, and no one noticed that I had been summarily erased from it. That I was evaporating into the negative void of non-existence, as though I not only did not exist, but never had. I was evaporating like the proverbial “sands through the hour glass of time”…never to be seen or heard from again, but even worse, leaving no trace. Not once, or ever. Torrents of energy were swirling around like a tornado, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed.

When the women had concluded their remarks, I somehow heard myself saying words…telling the man who had introduced that phase of the discussion that he had called certain women by name to comment on having emotions while Black. I heard myself saying “I am also a member of that group, and just needed to say that.” I wanted to cry. I didn’t understand why, either. Fortunately, I did not (well, I did just a little bit but not so as anyone would notice on Zoom).

This is not the first time I’ve had the experience of being excluded from membership in groups of Black folks. This is not the first time I’ve been excluded from something I felt that I had a right to. I believe the women got it immediately; Mr. Man took a minute but he bellied up to the bar and acknowledged what had happened. He eventually apologized. One of the Black women put her coins on the rail, and said that with my skin color, it was not hard to imagine how that exclusion happens for me. I said it has gone on my whole life. I believe they understood, or at least understood the impact. The non-Black members just listened, and let us work that out.

It was a very special moment, and not one as trite as an after-school special or a “very special episode” of a sit-com. It was monumental for me. I am not sure I have ever been able to speak those words, no matter how awkwardly they came out, that said “you have excluded me, you have hurt me, and that is NOT OK. ” Dude apologized, and one of the Black women asked if that was helpful. I said…”that means EVERYTHING”. And I meant that. I meant it deep, deep down.

As I am reflecting more on this, there are other layers of meaning for me. Before we all signed off for the evening, I told the group that sometimes you don’t even know you are in need of healing, but it comes uninvited and from the least likely of sources. I had no idea that was going to come up last night, I had no idea we’d all be able to work through a gargantuan elephant in the middle of the room called internalized racism. There was something larger than us at work, and it did its job well. Something unnamed moved last night, and the road is clear for us to proceed.

Something else moved for me, and it’s just coming to light this morning. I think what that was has to do with my father. The man involved in our moment of clarity last night looks nothing like my father, but he’s a Black man, moving in world that does not always value him. Fighting for his life in a world that demands he be someone other than who he is so that others are more comfortable. I had more tears this morning, and even now, thinking of how many times I have wanted to hear my own father look me in the eye and say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry I erased you, I’m sorry I neglected to consider you, I’m sorry I did not see you, I’m sorry I ignored you. I’m sorry I did not respect you. I’m. Sorry. I guess I have waited a long time to hear that, and I finally did. And it hurts so, so much because I have to get past the wishing that it had come so much sooner. I have to get past the child-like wishing to just curl up in a tightly coiled fetal position like the little girl I used to be, hoping for someone – my daddy, or my mommy – to come and engulf me in a protective fortress that assured me nothing would ever hurt me, they would protect me. I don’t remember ever getting that. I can’t say my mother never held me, but it wasn’t so much a protective thing as it was a comfort when I cried or something, an immediate response to a specific stimulus. I don’t remember my father ever doing that. He didn’t have it to give, I don’t think. Regardless, I have never had that experience of a man looking at me and saying, “I’m sorry.” I did you wrong, and I’m sorry. That. Is. EVERYTHING.

I am still feeling very soft and squishy about it all, like it was a big deal. A big deal for me to call it out, and a big deal for us all to work through it together. I did feel a bit authentic, and that I’d been intentionally vulnerable…and nobody died. I have shed quite a few tears, and I’m not sure what that’s about. Maybe relief. I have always been more afraid of expressing THOSE feelings than just about anything else.

When the one woman said that she could see that I could be excluded by other Blacks because of my skin color, I responded “Well, what the hell can I do about THAT?”. Of course, there’s nothing I can do about that, nor do I want to. This is who I am, warts and everything. I do have a wart, too…but I digress. The fact of the matter is, though, I have gone through this my whole life, not feeling like I belong anywhere racially. I have reconciled that, I suppose, by identifying more multi-culturally. But, I was raised in the Black community. I identify as Black. My birth certificate says Black or Negro (can’t remember which right now). This is who I am, dammit.

Skin color is a curse, or at least what humans have done with it is a curse. Some microscopic bits of melanin fuck up societies all over the planet, because some of us think the less of it we have the better humans we are. White is the absence of color. Black is the gathering of all the colors of the spectrum, the queen of colors as I’ve seen it described. The Divine must be banging its head on the wall, wondering where in the world this crap got off track, and maybe it’s time to reconsider that free will thing.

Anyway, between communing with missionaries and engaging in unexpected healing with the kindness of strangers, yesterday was a most unusual day (with some aftershocks this morning). I did very little de-cluttering in my apartment, but I suppose there has been a lot of spiritual de-cluttering.

For some bizarre reason, I watched a documentary on the octupus last night, after that group call. The octopus is quite fascinating – soft and squishy, with its only truly rigid part being its beak. Because it’s not rigid (it apparently had a shell millions of years ago, but it lost was lost in evolutionary maneuvers), it has several compensations that allow it to survive rather hardily. First, it’s very intelligent. Second, it can fit into small spaces that seem impossible for a creature its size, because it’s not rigid. Third, it’s ability to camouflage itself is unparalleled anywhere else in nature. It doesn’t just change color, it changes color nearly instantaneously – even chameleons take a split second because they see the color they want to mimic and then respond bodliy. The octopus is mostly color blind, so they “feel” what they want to mimic with their arms and skin and their whole bodies, and like Silly Putty, *poof* they change. Even more interestingly, they also mimic the texture of surfaces with their skin. Incredible creatures, and there are a plethora of diverse forms of this cephalopod.

So, I bring up the octopus mostly because it fascinated me to learn about it in such detail, but also because I see a reframing of what I have been coming to realize about my life. I see things differently. I don’t see things that are very apparent with the rods and cones of my optical apparatus, but I feel them in my body and in other parts of my sensory array. I have the capability of being that human Silly Putty, where I can mimic and adapt to my surroundings. That’s been a survival mechanism, one that allows me to blend in and not become an easy mean for the wandering predator. Sometimes, though, I show myself just long enough to become a target, and then I have to swim for my life. That doesn’t mean I’m stupid, it just means some predators are really good at what they do, and sometimes they have advanced skills to bait a potential meal. Anemones are usually very pretty, but only clown fish manage to escape their deadly embrace. Hmm…I suppose I should be more like the clown fish? Or at least the clown? OK, I digress…again.

Anyway, today I am going to clean up some small part of something, and see if I can take the dog out for a slightly long walk. The weather is not making me entirely happy, because we have gone from winter to summer with only a 5-minute spring, so it’s 80 degrees and sunny outside. I am virtually useless when temperatures go above 75 degrees, so I will need to be strategic if I’m going to be outside walking. I need to do something, though, because my collar bone has disappeared again and my knees are threatening to separate themselves from my tibia and find other gainful employment.

The Derek Chauvin trial is droning on, and on, and on. I understand the purpose of the defense attorney is to establish reasonable doubt that Derek Chauvin’s actions directly led to George Floyd’s death. I get that. But, my goodness, it’s absurd to be debating whether a fuzzy audio recording contains the words “I ate too many drugs” or “I ain’t do no drugs” in the voice of the dead man. I would say that it lends more credence to the defendant’s guilt if you have to resort to that level of nit-picking. What the guy did was wrong, undeniably. He deserves consequences for that, whether for causing a death or just for very bad behavior. George Floyd is dead regardless, and if he was a drug addict – which is not disputed – he would have had drugs in his system. Had Derek Chauvin not done what he did, in depriving an already compromised body of oxygen, George Floyd would have survived that day of drug use, as he had so many times previously. Derek Chauvin was the deciding factor. And there must be accountability.

That’s neither here nor there, but I’m starting to react viscerally to hearing George Floyd’s agonized voice over and over and over again every day, every hour, begging for water, begging not to be put into the police car, pleading for…mercy. He is not cussing, he is not threatening, he is begging. I am finding it hard to see how he was posing a threat to anyone at that point. Hearing a human being begging for their life is sobering, and slices into my soul like a knife in jell-o. I cannot get past the visceral response this evokes, that when that happens it is about power, and punishment, not about law and order or compliance with societal norms. The man was already restrained with handcuffs. There is no credence to arguments that a knee to the neck added further benefit and lessened any threat of resistance, immediate or subsequent.

While I’m contemplating this ridiculousness, I am also still contemplating the nature of addiction. I was discussing some of that with my therapist earlier today, and how systems become “self aware”. I have been struck with the nature of systems…there are bodily systems (pulmonary, circulatory, respiratory, etc.), and there are man-made systems (economic, justice, industrial, etc.). In both cases, the systems evolve to a point they become consumed with their own survival, independent of the host organism, the collective body. When a human body is deprived of air, the bodily systems will attempt to gain oxygen however it can – gasping, gulping, literally by any means necessary. This is not conscious though – the body is consumed with its own survival.

In the case of addiction, the brain becomes dependent on substances that elicit certain responses, such as feelings of well-being or lessening of anxiety. The addictive system evolves to a point that it will attempt to ensure the survival of the body in any way that it can. The brain is trained to expect the substance that generates the response, like a dog is trained to sit in expectation of a reward. The chemical response controlling the response is so powerful that it overtakes aspects of reason, inhibition, impulse control, even morality and right-wrong determination. But the addiction will attempt to survive, by convincing the body that it cannot survive without it. It’s a parasitic relationship.

Addiction is a funny thing, because is so many cases it risks the death of its host. Cognitively, we all understand that a human body can physically survive without benefit of chemical or naturally occurring substances that are considered mood altering, such as cocaine, peyote, heroin, alcohol. Once the brain chemistry becomes dependent on those substances, however, all bets are off. People will do ANYthing in some cases in order to maintain a level of inebriation with these substances, and will become convinced they willl die without doing so. From an objective viewpoint, that’s delusional, but from the inside of the addict brain, it’s not only real but it’s life threatening.

The brain is a phenomenal organ, and the more we know about it, the more we know that we don’t know. Addiction is no more understood than auto-immune disease. How and why do our brains sometimes get their signals crossed, believing there’s a threat when there is none?

Auto-immune disease is a brain chemistry phenomenon, and we can’t be entirely sure what causes the immune system to misfire. We also can’t be sure of why the brain perceives of certain of our fellows as threats, e.g. people with black skin, e.g. gay people, e.g. people of certain religions or geographic regions. Is that delusion, or is it nurture? Is racism and explicit bias merely irrational learned behavior, or is there a chemical basis for these notions?

That’s a wild leap, but it’s a struggle to believe things like racism and misogyny and homophobia are simply learned behavior. Even if it is entirely learned behavior, how the hell do we get out of it. How do we unlearn what has been normalized for us over centuries, such that it’s now inculturated?

I learned racism the same way everyone else did, even white people. It’s very hard to ‘catch myself’ when I realize that I’m selling myself short because of long-standing internalized racism that says my lack of success is probably because I was too resistant, not obedient enough. That people are correct when they tell me to make less noise, talk softer, not be so assertive, not be so demanding. That it’s merely my own mediocrity that affords me mediocre results. My rational brain says that’s bullshit, but my way-back brain says I should understand and try harder to be perfect.

Some days it’s frustrating to still be engaged in the never-ending discernment of where I stop and start, and where everybody else stops and starts. I understand the basics of that boundary, but when I am plunged into conflict, it becomes a maddening internal contest of whether I was too eager but not quite competent enough, or whether their demands were unreasonable. Am I imagining that others are given more leeway and grace than me, or am I comparing apples to oranges, or lemons to avocados? When I feel put upon or treated unfairly, am I imagining that? Sometimes I really don’t know, and in the time it takes me to figure that out, the opportunity for response has passed. Brining it up again seems punitive and sometimes entirely ineffectual. Urgency, dear. A sense of urgency is best.

I envy people who seem to be in control of themselves all the time. They seem to know immediately the right answers, when they are being wronged, and how to stand up for themselves. Me, I always have to reflect on the situation, make sure I’m seeing things correctly, making sure I understand what has happened, whether or not I’m within my rights to challenge. Ugh. By that time, the fox has eaten a leisurely meal in the hen house, burped, and had a constitutional before taking a contented nap. I’m still talking myself out of making an issue out of anything, because, well, I’m probably wrong and they probably didn’t mean nothin’ by it, and well, hell, if I was more on target it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. By that time, I’m the one who needs a nap, contented or otherwise.

So. When I look at people who are more or less self-assured, I see privilege. I see people who do not question whether or not they have a right to do whatever it is they are doing, they just do it. If they’ve overstepped, someone or something will stop them, and they’ll deal with the boundary when it’s set. I assume the boundary is there, and that I will have the short end of it. I need to do some work a’plenty on that, because it’s been like this most of my life, and it has never worked for me. Never.

I was talking with these Mormon missionary kids earlier today. They have an apartment in the complex which their church maintains for a rotation of various missionaries. One of them is from Tennessee, the other from Utah, I believe. They are very shiny and clean-shaven young men, all of about 20 or so, if that. Very erstwhile. They initially happened upon me and the dog in the doggie activity area, and struck up a conversation (as best they could over my insane dog’s vociferous and incessant barking). Nice lads.

We got into some conversation about religion, since that’s kind of their business I suppose. I’m usually up for conversations about religion and theology, and what people believe, even if their faith differs from mine. As long as they aren’t pushy or asking for money, I will talk with just about anyone on matters of faith and theology, particularly the history of theologies.

Our first conversation, which was actually day before yesterday, led us down the path of judgementalism and intolerance. There was much nodding and agreement about how those things are in the realm of flawed humanity, and not attributable to the Divine. They left me with a soft-cover copy of The Book of Mormon, with a dog-eared page for my review. They wanted my phone number (um, no) and somewhat of a return engagement to have further discussion. OK, fine.

I read the passage they suggested, and it was fine…Alma:32. (They didn’t explain who Alma was or anything, and I had to look that up myself because I’m a geek like that.) Anyhow, it had to do with people being thrown out of the synagogue because they were poor and dressed shabbily, and that was not looked upon by the text as particularly correct. (good) The text then went on to discuss faith, and how humans will not have perfect faith. Then somehow the author proceeded to discuss seeds growing, which I assume was a metaphor for growing one’s faith, and then spreading it. Or something. It’s written in that archaic biblical style, so hard to follow. But I think I got the point.

I met up with the young dudes again this afternoon, nearly by accident – they had gone out on their bicycles to do whatever it is they do on their missions. Not quite clear on what the point of it all is, other than simply to spread the faith? Like evangelically? Whatever. But we had some further chit chat about … stuff… and I was asking them a lot of questions about the LDS religion, and their mission, and how the mission trip works and where they’ll go next and all that. Their name tags said “Elder” so I wanted to know what that even meant (not sure I understand what they said about that). They answered everything, but I think I wore them out, because one of them did interject “You have a lot of questions!”. Yeah, dude. I do have a lot of questions.

They never brought up the book they’d left with me, so I brought it up and said that I’d read at least a portion of what they’d suggested. My take on the passage was slightly different from theirs, but we most got to the same point. I lost them entirely when I compared the pretense of kicking out the poor from the synagogue with the Gnostic texts (Gospel of Thomas) that attributes to Jesus the same kind of non-pretentiousness. I related to them a part of Thomas’ attribution to Jesus, who said “You don’t need this temple to worship me. Look under any rock or tree, and there you will find me.” The fellas were not particularly moved by that, but nodded politely…then suggested I continue reading the passage in Alma:32.

OK, thanks guys…love ya, mean it, but I think I’ll save my remaining questions about LDS for older Mormons…like explain to me this whole polygamy thing. And that homophobia piece…where’s that in your theology of redemption? Oh, and the misogyny bit…that doesn’t seem quite right. And that whole deal of a council of old white guys who get to decide on every aspect of all your lives and can’t be questioned? ‘Splain that.

But, another time perhaps. I had more of the Chauvin trial to watch and my dog had just about barked herself to a frazzle by that time. I was a little interested in the whole history of the LDS institution, though, and looked up a few general facts about how it got started. The young missionaries’ spiel explains that LDS is a re-framing of the traditional Christian theology, and essentially a reformation. They are non-trinitarian, God the Father and Jesus are two separate entities (there’s no bird). I asked if they believed in Heaven and Hell, and they said they believe that after we die, souls go to two places – one is more or less like Heaven, and the other sounded like “try again”. More research is needed for me to speak intelligently about it all, but as with any religion in modern times, there are a few gaps between theology and human practice. I seriously doubt the original LDS credo dictated polygamy, and golden temples, and casting out young gay boys into the wilderness.

Anyway, it was interesting to have conversation with actual human beings. They were not mean or offensive, so that was decent. I also saw my neighbors who are in love with my dog, and the dog got a big dose of lovin’. Saw my other neighbor and her Chihuahua, and we had a nice talk as well. All told, I was outdoors for a couple of hours, and discovered that I am totally out of practice for all that. It was kind of tiring. When pandemic response is finally relieved and people begin to gather without restriction, we’re going to need to eat our Wheaties. I suspect most of us are going to get on each other’s nerves a great deal. We’ve been on Fantastic Planet for almost a year, in our little meditation bubbles and not having to compete for space or get out of each other’s way. It’s gonna be interesting.

I’m going to resist the urge to watch more of the Chauvin trial, or at least the post-trial analysis and talking-head rodeo. The star of today’s testimony was an expert on oxygen deprivation, and he said – unapologetically, and in no uncertain terms – that George Floyd died of oxygen deprivation, not Fentanyl intoxication. The oxygen deprivation was courtesy of Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, specifically in the area near his Adam’s apple, for a prolonged period of time. He even pointed to a spot on one of the videos where the victim’s leg jerked upward, and the expert cited that as the specific moment of neurological response where the brain was damaged by the lack of oxygen. Ball is in your court, Mr. Defense Lawyer. Put on your dancing shoes.