So. I’m taking this course, via my UU congregation, and it has several components. It’s a journey for our mostly majority-culture faith to come a little closer to reconciliation around race and ethnicity. They know they’re very white, but sometimes (well, most of the time) can’t step entirely away from white-supremacist culture. That culture shows up when dominant culture members can’t let go of their individuality, and the notion that it is superior in some way. How that shows up is not in hurling of invectives and racial epithets, it shows up in policy and procedure, in linear and hierarchical organizational schemes, in the insistence that business operations are the singular key to success for even a community of faith. It shows up in making things about the comfort of the dominant culture. This is no different from the larger community, but we are supposed to be different, better, past all that. Well, um, we’re not there yet. Not by a long shot. And we need to own that.

So, I’m in this course, and it’s separated into racial identity caucuses – either white or Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) groups. The course content is actually focused differently, which is an interesting concept. Regardless, within the caucuses, participants are assigned to small breakout groups – “learning pods”. My pod met for the first time last night, five of us, four women and one man. We all identify as BIPOC, some of us Black or African American, one of us Latino. Some of us are GLBT, some of us come from evangelical Christian background, all of us navigating a world in which we’re a numeric and theological minority. We all share the similar story of walking through a world that frequently causes us to feel isolated, alone, misunderstood, ignored. These are my people, though we all live in different states, come from different places, are not genetically or even socially related. But I knew them, and they knew me. Fascinating.

Last night, the pod was discussing the first course lesson, which had a lot to do with ancestors, and family, and things in our lives that provide influence and witness for how we’ve gotten to be who we are now. My journey with ancestors is very spiritual, but very much about the people with whom I am genetically connected. There was one member of our group, however, who is adopted. Her adoptive family has absolutely no genetic relationship to her, and they do not share the same apparent race. She was raised in their culture, however, and described the feeling of not quite fitting in completely anywhere. This is a big part of how I feel in navigating this world, like I am partially in one racial group or another, not entirely a sound fit in any. I’ve always felt very alone in that feeling, but here is another woman, who I have never met and do not know, and she is describing the same thing. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Hearing my own story from the mouth of another person is an experience that I’ve had only in 12-step recovery work. I hear people explaining the same feelings, the same desperation, the same confusion and bewilderment that we all feel when substances begin to fail in easing our pain. It’s always a mind- and spirit-expanding experience for me when that happens, the call to remember that I am not really all alone in this big world. But, hearing my own story about walking through the big world and feeling alone on the basis of something as foundational as racial identity felt like a deeper and more core issue. A lot of people in recovery describe a feeling of never fitting in anywhere, but in many cases they are not talking about the core elements of their identities, they are talking about a feeling, about social skills, about self-worth, sometimes about family of origin issues. But when you don’t feel that you fit in because you are a different color, or live on the “wrong” side of town, I contend that’s a deeper sense of incongruity. Both circumstances can lead us to the same place, however, so one is not any worse than the other.

So, I’m feeling as though I’ve been fed a bit, nourished, by the experience with my pod last night. Because I am a talker, I was able to share a few things I don’t normally share with my usual posse, which is mostly white. That’s fine, I suppose, because I also heard from others in the pod about that same thing, about having most of your close friends being a different color than you, and loving them immensely and feeling accepted, but yet still feeling there is a niggling hint of some line in the sand, across which they can’t quite understand you (and vice versa). There’s a vague sense of sadness there, but…it is what it is. The same sadness exists when navigating a group of people who look more like us, because…there’s the line in the sand of either different experiences, or theology, or musical taste, or entertainment.

When I’m in a group of all Black people, I frequently feel that I’m on the wrong bus. We’re going some place I don’t recognize, I’m not quite sure I want to go there, and I’m not sure quite how to get off the bus. If I do, will I be in a more unfamiliar place with no way to get back to…wherever I started? For many years, I have understood – and grieved – that I was somewhat pulled out of my neighborhood and, consequently, community when I was sent off to private school in the 6th grade. That private school was an all white, and mostly upper middle class to wealthy. My neighborhood was all Black, and working class. It continued to evolve in that milieu, but I was not there to evolve with it. We still lived there, but there was a separation now. Where I spent most of my time, however, was in school…and I didn’t quite fit in there, either. Even the few Black students were more financially endowed than me, and their families’ social lives were very different. I was kind of half-in and half-out of the school, and the neighborhood. Very confusing.

New Orleans is one of those bizarre places where everybody understands the social rules from a very early age. Rich people lived uptown and in the Garden District, but poor people lived right on the outskirts of those places. So, it was not uncommon for rich people and poor people to be on the same streetcar going down St. Charles Avenue, but back in the day, there were these weird little signs that stuck in the top edge of the streetcar seats. Those were the “whites only” signs, and they were movable, so the white section could be expanded if the car was really crowded. Growing up, you always understood that, you knew that it wasn’t fair, it didn’t make any sense, but you accepted it. You understood that it would be very bad consequences if you did something to resist. For the most part, you didn’t question that practice. It was just the way it was, and usually life just went on in spite of it.

I remember the streetcar signs…just barely. I mostly remember the empty holes, after desegregation, but everybody knew what they were for. We also knew that having those signs disappear didn’t solve anything big, although it was nice not to not have to worry about where you sat on the streetcar or the public bus. Either conveyance would take you to the projects, or the sections of town considered to be Black neighborhoods. The neighborhood we moved to when I was nine was one of the first neighborhoods where Black people were allowed, and encouraged, to own property. It’s no on the National Register of Historic Places – Pontchartrain Park. The Park, as it was called by locals. It had a golf course. Oooo la la! Whatever, y’all. It was in a flood plain, and close to the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain. There was a railroad track that ran fairly close to our house, and sometimes when it passed my bed would shake a bit, but…no biggie. When it rained (imagine it raining in New Orleans, right?) there would be water in the street, and in the back yard, but just a little, and it didn’t last very long. By the time I left there in 1998, water was rising up to the doorsteps for the normal periodic summer rain storms on any given afternoon. We had no ide of what was to come, either.

Anyway, it was not long after we moved there – about two years – when life fell apart for us. My maternal grandmother died, my paternal grandfather died, my mother was losing her mind, and my father was all into his affair with someone he’d met at work. My parents began the dramatic and arduous process of legal separation…complete with screaming matches (well, my mother screamed and my father sat there in silence), my father beginning to talk to himself while driving me to school, my mother beginning to verbally abuse me, and me beginning to put on the mask of normalcy as soon as the front door shut behind me. Things were weird – when I was at school, things were fairly normal, I was making friends, there was a lot to do and I was learning all kinds of things. When I was at home, things were tense and nobody was particularly glad that i was there, and I got the impression that I was more of a pain in the ass than a child. Two different worlds, it seemed. I felt like a fake artifact in both…pretending. Always pretending, but always cognizant of the reality that I was pretending. It was maddening.

Truth be told, it’s still rather maddening to feel as though your acceptance into a group, a workplace, even a community of faith is contingent on “actin’ right”. The Unitarian Universalists are defined as non-creedal, but…every congregation has its own personality, its own culture, and they do indeed have creeds. They are just not readily admitted, and in many cases are based on the dominant culture’s norms. It’s considered very bad form in most UU congregations to not recycle. There was a joke for a while that if the UUs had a sin, it would be failure to recycle. Failure to have a compost heap is also less than optimal, although living circumstances may be excuse for not having one. Bless their hearts, as they say in these parts.

I am not an anti-environmentalist, by any means. Justice is my gig, so if I can wed environmentalism to justice, I’m happy. I think most environmentalists, no matter what race or creed, understand that communities of color frequently take the brunt of pollution and negative air and water quality on the chin. They understood that, when the toxic water situation in Flint MI came to the forefront of the news. They understood the systemic implications of how that situation came to be, and how many years of neglect and systemic racism, classism had made undrinkable water a reality. What sometimes they don’t get is that things like reducing your personal carbon footprint and doing ethical eating cost money, and resources, that some people don’t have. What sometimes they don’t get is that shopping in places like Whole Foods Market is a privilege, and the neighborhood WalMart or even the neighborhood 7-11 are the more likely choices for grocery if you don’t have a vehicle. As Angela Davis said at one point, freedom is a constant struggle. That’s the part dominant culture folks miss sometimes.

I get the point that when I am dealing with dominant culture folks, folks who have way more privilege than I do, there is a lot they just don’t know. Sometimes they truly do mean well, have good intentions, blah and blah. I get all that, but please…don’t tell ME that I have to assume their good intentions. I don’t know that, and just because somebody smiles and speaks softly doesn’t mean they ain’t carryin’ a big ass stick, the better to hit me over the head with. Don’t explain to me that they – “they” – want to learn and I need to teach them. ‘Scuse me, it ain’t my job to teach nobody nothin’. If I wanted to be a teacher, I would have become one, but I didn’t want to wind up in jail for killing a student so I chose another path. If you want to find out something, you are welcome to ask me about MY experience, but don’t quiz me about a million unrelated things and then debate with me about how I might have handled things differently. It’s my story. And if you want historical references, and books to read, or movies to watch so you can “learn”, please Google that stuff yourself. I’m not a library, or a dictionary, or a history book. And guess what? I don’t agree with every other person of color on the planet. Don’t tell me, “Well, that’s interesting, but Angela said…”. I ain’t interested in what Angela said unless she is paying my rent and feeding me and my dog. So. Do some of your own research, like I do when I’m trying to figure out why the hell stuff is the way it is.

OK, whatever. I am off on a bit of a harangue because in the middle of writing this, I decided to be a good mommy and take the dog out. She was prancing and dancing and making me nuts, so we went out. We stayed in the activity area for quite a few minutes, like at least fifteen, and when she started carrying on and barking at everything that moved, we came inside. Not 5 minutes after being in, and AFTER she got her treat, the damned little shithead cur dropped the biggest, stinkiest load on the floor of the living room. I was more than willing to convert her to airborne mode. She wisely went to hide under the bed while I rattled the window panes hollerin’. That is her least charming attribute, the revenge factor. She was probably pissed off that I didn’t take her out immediately upon waking, and immediately upon her standing on my chest and barking to make sure that I was actively waking. Shit. Head. She is a shit head. She will need to keep her distance until at least the smell dies down.

But, back to me. The weather is rather mild today, a tad overcast but plenty of light. That always does me good. The rainy and dreary spans have started to depress me more and more as I get older, or maybe it’s because the bulk of my spontaneity has been eradicated due to the COVID lockdown. I get my second vaccine dose on April 7th, and I would still be rather poked in the eye with a sharp stick, but I am already feeling relieved that it will be done. Supposedly I will be more than 95% protected against being infected with the virus. Lovely. They still can’t say for sure whether or not a vaccine will be required every year, or every six months, or if you happen to be one of the 5% who still manages to get the virus you can’t be re-infected. So, I’ll do the best I can and get both doses, and then continue to stay the hell away from as many people as humanly possible. I will still wear the mask when I have to be out in public, because there is a sizable contingent of people here who are refusing to get the vaccine, for all manner of ridiculous reasons, like “I don’t trust BIden” or the ever popular “I feel fine, but if I get it then it was God’s will”. Right. They can bury me in this mask for all I care…I don’t want to be sharing molecules, droplets, or what have you with any of those folks.

And speaking of the corona virus in question…SARS-2 I believe it’s officially titled…after all the xenophobic taunts of calling it the Chinese virus and kung-flu and probably getting Asian-Americans harassed and killed, the former head of the CDC is now saying the virus most likely originated in September/October of 2019 in a Wuhan virology lab. I suspected as much, because the whole infected-bat-in-a-wet-market origination didn’t quite make sense to me. Viruses that jump species are kind of rare, I thought. But the whole lab experiment seems way more plausible to me…that’s what virology labs do, is play with viruses, create viruses, mutate and engineer viruses. All it would take was a tiny amount to escape and infect worker, and *whomp* there it is. I have always thought that about HIV as well, but…that’s another story entirely.

Today, I want to clean up some small part of my space, no thanks to the shit head dog, and try not to let my thoughts dwell on the swan song of democracy. It may not be dead, but it’s definitely got a case of the boogie-woogie flu, and there ain’t no vaccine for that one. People have just gotten so cruel these past few years. Unnecessarily cruel. I don’t understand why, either. What difference should it make to anybody whether or not another body waiting in a line to vote get offered a drink of water, or a snack? Are you just afraid then they’ll need to use a restroom? The law usually requires that water fountains be available in public buildings anyway, so what is the big deal if someone brings the water to you or you go and get it yourself? You can’t deny the water, and if you think you can, I’d like to see you try. Yes, judge – I plead guilty to the crime of quenching my thirst, of drinking water. Guilty as charged. Give me a break, people…is this the best we can do???

I was browsing the FB page of an old friend, and she had posted John Lewis’ last essay, written shortly before his death and published in the NY Times after he died. It’s a magnificent piece, and here’s the link, if you’re interested, or see the end of my drivel:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html?fbclid=IwAR06s_neT_uFjpwb3ue9N5Ono4vvT8aKoArnOv6dSMAe8IHqFYDh_IPKY4Y.

Anyway…I was most interested in his closing, which said: “When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.“

So, where are we with this? Are we any closer to triumphing over violence, aggression, and war? Are we about the business of laying down the heavy burden of hate, and approaching peace? I would contend that we are not.

I would contend that collectively we are digging our heels into the murk and mire of the status quo of the last several decades. A status quo that says some of us are better than others, and those folks deserve to do whatever they want to do. A status quo that says if you resist, be prepared to lay your life on the line, and have everything you’ve worked for laid to waste. A status quo that says be grateful for what you have, and understand that while rhetoric may proclaim the sky is your limit, your limits are set by systems put in place to intentionally lower the ceiling for many of us. Things will go much better for you if you accept that reality, many of us are told, and you should remain thankful for being allowed to have what you do.

I believe the status quo is more at risk now than ever before, and when you rock the foundations of a system, even the top wobbles. In an earthquake, it’s pretty scary to be up so high when the walls shake and the floor bounces and you’re not sure if you’re in for a fall. And we all know – it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s that sudden stop. When you hit the ground. Nobody wants to hit the ground, especially if you’ve been up so high.

This is what we’re up against, I believe – some of us trying desperately to avoid hitting the ground. The building is shaking, and there is panic, fear. Others of us, who have always been at ground level, angry because we’ve never seen the top, and it looks as though it’s carefree up there. Never gotten the expansive view, the big sky, the space to breathe freely. Same place, different perspective, different experience.

I am beginning to think such views from the top are unnatural, and the result of much hubris. Humans have been forced to employ natural resources and invent mechanical beasts of burden to elevate ourselves to those heights, literally and figuratively. Some of the most wealthy have amassed their fortunes via industries that harvest metals from the ground, and converting that to build machines and structures that raise them above the ground level. It’s not our natural state, however, and sometimes…well, sometimes they fall unceremoniously back down to Earth. Natural forces may reclaim the literal structures and machinery, while man-made economies may falter. No matter how high, it’s a house of cards.

What does peace look like? Does it look like limousines and penthouse apartments? Does it look like big-screen televisions and high-end electronics? Does it look like travel to exotic places? Or does it look like no fighting in the streets, being unafraid to travel in those streets? Or does it look like not having to look over your shoulder when attending a concert or a sports event, or grocery shopping? Maybe it looks like the security of knowing that when your child has a high fever, you can acquire quality medical care that will provide some remedy. We need to know what peace looks like before we can achieve it.
For me, peace looks like not having to worry quite so much about the people I love. Not having that niggling thought in the back of my head that my friends’ son, who is a very sweet 20-something Black guy. He’s a big guy, who likes to hug people. Will he meet some intolerant person who sees only a threat? Peace will look like being able to do ordinary things without fear, like going to 24-hour stores in the middle of the night if I’m craving a snack. It will look like not having to wonder whether or not I’ve lost my job because I performed badly, or because white superiority dictated that a white man was the better choice to have it. Peace will look more like not having to be constantly on guard about how I express myself, what I wear, what I say, how I think. It will look a lot like not having to worry about whether someone has a gun on their person, and might use it on me if we have an argument about the last bottle of hand sanitizer on the shelf in Walgreen’s. It will look a lot like freedom, and it will be a lot like liberation.

It is not lost on me how long that might take. We’ve been building that prison for hundreds of years now, and it’s quite a formidable structure. It’s going to take a few minutes to repurpose that, to come up with a different way. If we do that, however, the rewards will be immeasurable. We cannot even begin to imagine a world where guns would not be necessary, and so we are frantically, desperately, clinging to these hunks of metal, bigger and bigger, to “protect” ourselves. If we have money and nice things, we are forever afraid of who is coming to take them. If we don’t have money and nice things, we are forever trying to get them, often by any means necessary. That is a lose-lose scenario.

I believe we can do this, although like John Lewis, I might not see it before I die. I hate thinking about dying, so I try not to do it, but it’s a reality. It’s going to happen at some point, but that’s not today. Today, I’ve got to figure out how not to put another brick into the wall of this prison we’ve been building, how to lay down the tools that have built my oppression. I don’t have time for arguing about whether or not it’s the right time, or the right way, or whose fault it is. It is what it is, and that’s all that it is, and what it is needs to change. Period.

Audre Lorde once said, “You can’t dismantle the Master’s house with the Master’s tools.”. So I had better figure out who the Master is, and give him back his tools. For me right now, the Master is my complicity with the status quo that is so oppressive. The status quo is about white supremacy and social caste, but systems are intersectional and so enmeshed. Accordingly, I may not be able to totally eliminate my complicity, but I can at least be aware of it, and make different choices when and where I can. That may seem like a small thing, in the general schema, but perhaps small things can add up. Knowing what I am doing, and why I am doing it, allows me to stand more in my integrity, and I believe that allows me to speak truth and intentionally cause no further harm. Millions of people doing that will make a difference, I believe.

People talk a lot about personal responsibility, and I have some issues with that, in terms of knowing what I’m responsible FOR. I’m not sure we all agree on the rules of engagement, but that’s another story. For me, I know that I’m not responsible for participating in systems that cause harm. I didn’t create them, but I can call them out. I’m not responsible for supporting systems that keep people oppressed. I may have to contribute, because the law says I must, but I should at least know why I’m doing that. I’m responsible for being present in my skin, for doing things that don’t harm other people. I’ve harmed other people in my life, and that doesn’t feel good, so I just need to be doing something different now. We all do, because none of us is perfect.

John Lewis charged us with getting into “good trouble”. I stay in trouble, but I’m not sure it’s “good trouble”. We’ll see. All I know is that I can’t go on my merry way and say nothing after seeing people gunned down because there is no viable mental health system in this country, seeing people freezing to death in their homes and cars because politics and greed dictated a dysfunctional power system that could not provide them with heat, seeing people die because they could not afford health insurance. That is not peace. That is not making anybody great again. That is not justice. Sometimes, that is simply not human.

Posted this on FaceBook this morning:

I am watching a CNN interview with a GOP House Representative from Nebraska. He is opposed to the pending gun control legislation that would make background checks necessary for ALL gun purchases. One of his nonsensical points of opposition is that requiring a background check for even private gun sales is onerous, and puts the burden on the law abiding citizen gun owner. He denied that assault weapons, such as the AR-15 (used in numerous mass shootings, including the most recent one in Boulder) are weapons of war.

His most ridiculous contention was that a private citizen should be allowed to sell a gun to their family member or friend because, well, they know each other and can vouch for the buyer. He then went on to confuse the First and Second Amendments as being infringed if such a requirement was put into effect, but I think he caught himself after having done so multiple times. Yay for him. There was simply no reasoning with him, and I am sure he is one of many legislators who feel this way.

One of the most distressing lines of resistance he presented was in response to the interviewer pointing out that proposed legislation is calling for extending the waiting period before a gun purchase is approved. This, of course, would have delayed the Boulder shooter from purchasing one of the weapons he used in his assault. Admittedly, that alone would not have prevented the incident, but it might have helped, at least in principle.

The Nebraska Representative waxed poetic about the onerous burden that background checks in private sales would place on law abiding private citizens, but then he went totally over the edge by trying to make a case for women who are victims of stalking or domestic violence. He said that a woman could lose her life, and of course this has happened, while waiting for her fun sale to be approved. A delay might cost her her life, so you see, this is onerous.

OK, dumb ass, if a woman loses her life due to sexual assault, or domestic violence, or stalking…let’s get this straight. Her life is lost because a perpetrator took it, not because there is legislation that prevents her from purchasing a firearm. She is killed because someone else took her life. She dies because someone else – probably, or at least most likely, a man in the case of sexual abuse or domestic violence -committed a homicide. She should not be in the position of needing a firearm to be protected by the law. Remember that? The law. In so many cases, law abiding citizens who purchase guns for their personal protection are killed by that gun, because it’s available at the scene of a lesser crime.

The interviewer persisted with this guy, and asked why someone might possibly need an AR-15, or any rapid-fire assault weapon like it. He said it’s a right to purchase whatever we want. We shouldn’t be able to question someone’s motives…or their mental health…about what they purchase. Let’s face it. We are doomed with thinking like this.

Let’s also face this – even this type of legislation regarding background checks, or any other that attempts to provide rational gun control is virtually useless in America today. If someone really wants to acquire an AR-15, or a military-grade assault weapon, they are going to get one. There are numerous underground methods to acquire weapons like that, in quantity, and legislation is not going to be able to stop that. Unless we can change the hearts and minds of people. nothing is going to change.

As I write this, I guarantee you there are private militias out in rural areas, in the woods, in the forests, in the swamps, in the hills of various states…practicing maneuvers, rehearsing. They are getting ready for…whatever they have in their heads is coming. Some have been open about preparing for a race war. Others, just generic invasion by undesirable elements. Some of the insurrectionists on January 6th made reference to having made preparation for an armageddon-like scenario that would follow the interruption of government. These folks are not idiosyncrasies. They are not alone.

Rev. William Barber, II of the Poor Peoples Campaign has been saying for years that America has a “heart problem”. As a collective, our heart has become cold and bitter and devoid of empathy and compassion. He says we need a defibrillator. We need people to come together and challenge the policies and rhetoric that promotes this, and demand that we embrace the empathy and compassion that has made us who we are. He says that we need to shock the heart of the country back into a healthy rhythm.

That’s all very poetic and metaphoric, of course, but there may be something very practical about it. When you see something, say something…that’s one of those little ways that one person can make a difference. Pay it forward. There’s another one. Do the right thing, put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a minute. There’s some more. Instead of looking for grandiose solutions, and dramatic strides, perhaps just the small things, the one-on-one things can accumulate and make a difference. Perhaps.

We’ve got to do something before we go down in flames. And I’m not going down without a fight. That’s how I roll, that’s how I’ve always rolled. Resilience is great, but you have to take a shot if you’re going to have a chance for a rebound. That means speaking when you need to speak, and speaking the truth when you do. It means keeping your eye on the prize and not getting bogged down in the little things, stuff that’s meant to distract you, stuff that just makes you feel good for the short-term. It means having faith in something beyond your own ability, and your own accomplishments. It means giving a shit about something that’s not here yet.

Have a new vision. Don’t give up. It’s important.

Today was a strange and wonderful day, emphasis on the strange. I knew that I had an appointment to get the first dose of my COVID-19 vaccination at 12;45pm, and was strangely anxious concerning the affair. Last night I found it really difficult to sleep, and once I had fallen asleep I woke up a couple of times. I hate that more than not being able to sleep at all, because it feels as though I’m fighting with myself. Can’t get comfortable, can’t settle down, giving new meaning to the descriptor “tossing and turning”. Ugh.

I managed to get through the night, although I’m really unclear about why I had so much anxiety concerning the vaccine. I suppose it was all the hype, the reporting, the preoccupation of everyone who has a heartbeat with the progress of the virus and the vaccines. Will you get the vaccine? Why or why not? Oh, you don’t think you want the Moderna? Side effects! But aren’t there side effects with the Pfizer vaccine? And what about the Johnson and Johnson shot? It’s only one shot, and I hear it’s not all that effective. Wait there’s another one coming? Astrozeneca or something? I heard that one gives you blood clots!

So, by the time I was almost at the doorstep of the needle, I had already been driven to distraction with all the talk, all the speculation, all the hypotheticals and misunderstandings. But, I was committed, so when Walgreen’s sent me an email with a confirmation number and confirmed my appointment for today, I was ready. The email cautioned me to bring the email with me to the appointment. It also instructed me to print out the included vaccine consent form, fill it out, and bring it to the appointment as well. When I got up this morning, I had one mission – to print out the email and the consent form, fill out the form, and proceed to the pharmacy. Easier said than done.

My printer, which is wireless and connected to my router via wi-fi, had other ideas today. It had decided to just, oh, take a break from the network. OK, no problem, I’ll just restart it and it’ll be right back. Nope. Even though I swear I have printed since I moved the printer from one room to another, and connected a new router, it had other ideas today. It wouldn’t attach to the network, so I figured it wouldn’t be difficult to re-connect it. Nope. It had somehow forgotten who it was, even that it was a printer let alone how to connect to my network. OK, how hard could this be? Um, well…

It took me more than two hours to get the damned router to recognize the printer, and vice versa, and not only to recognize it, but to connect. After cussing up a storm, including words I’d never heard before, and could be considered speaking in tongues, and rebooting printer, router, and cable modem multiple times…there was finally a connection. Goodness. I must have logged a full mile trudging from room to room to reboot and press the WPS button and peer vexedly at the status screens. I was on the verge of storming out to just get another printer, but then *presto* the battle angel of the ethers did her thing.

After getting the printer working, I printed out both the email and the consent form, hurriedly filled out the consent form, and logged into a regular meeting that I have on Monday mornings at 11am. When that was over, it was time to head out to the Walgreen’s location where I’d get my vaccine. So, that’s what I did, still feeling strangely anxious yet also excited, like it was time to go to Disney World or something.

So, it took me about 10 minutes to get there, and I was all proud of myself as I bounded into the store and right into…a line at the pharmacy counter. OK, not a big deal, shouldn’t take too long. Well, except that the guy who is always in front of me at any counter, any appointment, any store, any ticket line – THAT guy, who is sometimes a woman, but always THAT guy – is in front of me. I’m the next person to be served, but…I can’t get past … him. As he always does, he is not prepared – he didn’t go through everything I went through to print out the form or the confirmation email. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have his insurance/prescription card, as the email instructed, so he was the proverbial immovable force. In front of me. Taking the attention of the only staff member available.

Mr. Man couldn’t figure out how to even describe his insurance benefits to the technician, so he had to use a lifeline for assistance. He was talking to someone on the phone about what he needed…tick tock…tick tock…tick tock. The pharmacy technician had been frantically typing into the terminal, and finally…SUCCESS! He found the necessary information for the nice man, who didn’t hear that because HE WAS TALKING ON THE PHONE. The technician had to tell him that he could hang up. After Clueless ended the phone call, there was still negotiation at the register, but finally it was done. He then hunched over at the counter, directly in front of me, to fill out the form. The technician, once again, had to set him on the right path, and instructed him – in the voice one might use with a 6-year old, and said, “OK, you don’t have to finish that right here. You can take it over to a chair, and have a seat to finish it. When you’re finished, just bring it back to me. ” **crickets** **frogs croaking* *crickets*

So, I get up to the counter, finally, and proudly hand over the email and the form. The technician proceeded to ask me every single question that was on the form. I answered him, and kind of gently inserted that all of those answers were on the form. He nodded, and said, “They want us to ask them.”. *crickets* *crickets* He didn’t even look at the email with the confirmation number, but looked it up himself. OK, these are moments when, as my mother used to say, you just have to “give to it”. Not sure where that came from, but I gave to it. Minutes later, I was all checked in, and it was only 10 minutes past my appointment time. I had been early, but found it curious that Mr. Clueless who had been in front of me in the line also had the same appointment time. No worries, though, because there were people who had been there when we both got there, still waiting to be seen.

So, we waited. There were a few forlorn chairs that had been set up, but some of them were a little too close for comfort. I got a chair, kind of isolated, and waited. Then I waited some more. And I waited some more. Turns out, the pharmacist was probably gone to lunch, which I can’t say I blame her – it was well past 1pm and she was the only one giving shots. Eventually, she opened her door again and was back, calling for the next customer. few minutes later, she called my name, and I was ready to rock! I almost dropped my jaw to the ground when I saw her, though. She was the tiniest little woman I have seen in quite a long time. I don’t believe she weighed as much as the fat arm I presented to her for the shot. Heavens. A piece of a woman.

To my surprise, the vaccine I was getting was not the Moderna product, but the Pfizer. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me – depending on who you listen to, either one will either give you a bad case of COVID, cause a blood clot, make your arm sore enough to wish for amputation, or give you headaches. Whatever. I’m going to die anyway at some juncture, so all I expect from this vaccine is that I don’t die from COVID-19. Fortunately for me, the tiny sharp shooter did her job well…I was in and out of there in literally 90 seconds.

I was pretty angry when I left, though, because I am accustomed to getting a sucker when I get my shots. There was no sucker. I was robbed, and left entirely unfulfilled. She offered me a sticker. I offered her a single eyebrow gaze. I left the room, and wandered around the Walgreen’s for the remainder of my 15-minute observation period (during which time nobody observed me, unless the closed circuit cameras are counted). I found so suckers, but did find $55 worth of other crap and an individual pack of two chocolate chip cookies. So, I took my victor’s spoils and came home. No side effects, thank goodness. I cam home and ate a bag of popcorn (the cookies didn’t make it home), and we’re done. What a relief.

Before the vaccine drama, the 11am meeting that I attended was my regular Monday morning meditation/mindfulness group. It’s a small group, fewer than ten people, and we’ve been meeting for a few months now. One wouldn’t think a meditation group would be effective on Zoom, but somehow it works. There is an energy there, and we are reasonably well matched. It’s people from the congregation, so we’re all more or less known to one another. We check in, then have a 20-minute meditation, either silent or guided depending on the sentiment of the group on any given day. Today was silent. I was really needing it, because I had just finished running around like a lunatic trying to get the printer to work, and was going to soon be rushing off to the vaccine appointment.

When I meditate intentionally, I do my best to get control of my breathing, or at least to be aware of it, mindful of it. When I can do that, I go places. My mind does gear down a notch, and I am more in my body but in a different place spiritually. This morning, I was able to come down a bit from the previous near hysteria quickly, and immediately I felt that I was in contact with my paternal great-grandmother. I have been in contact with her quite a bit during these sessions; she is my father’s grandmother who committed suicide. I cannot locate her in any genealogy records, but I am still looking. From the small bit of what I’ve been able to find out about her, she committed suicide not long after she birthed my grandfather. The account I have says that she killed herself after her partner (husband? boyfriend?) left her, and that would have been my grandfather’s father. The story gets hazy there, because he had a different name than ours. His name is one that I’ve only found associated with a Jewish family in New Orleans, upper class, and the name that matches the name on the account I have was a wealthy Jewish lawyer who immigrated from Bavaria or Germany. If he was actually my grandfather’s father, he abandoned this woman and my grandfather. I think he may have already been married to someone else, though…and perhaps my great-grandmother was a mistress or something. Regardless, he left them.

My great-grandmother was, apparently, despondent over this and began threatening to kill herself. People in the family brushed this off, because they had experienced her previously as cheerful and fun-loving. Unbeknownst to them, however, she made a will that stipulated my grandfather, who was still in diapers, should become the custody of a family nearby. After she died, my grandfather was legally adopted by that family, and was given their name. That is the name I carry. Even knowing that bit of information explained a LOT about how we came to be, because that name is not terribly common among people of color.

From what I remember of my grandfather, the few times I met him, he was very withdrawn, and didn’t seem terribly happy. He had grown up in New Orleans, in his adoptive familiy’s home, and I don’t have any evidence of his biological father being involved in his life. When he became an adult, he married a very attractive woman, and they had five children – my father and his siblings. My father was the youngest, and shortly after he was born, his mother died. I don’t know the cause of death, but I remember my mother talking about something to do with her brain, either an injury or a disease. My father never talked about it; I’m not sure he really knew her. After becoming a widow, my grandfather moved to California and married again. He started a new family out there, but he left his New Orleans children in New Orleans with his sister. Curious, because his sister had five children of her own, so they were a mashed potato family of ten. My grandfather sent money. I would love to know if he sent more than money to his California family.

So, all that to say…there was always this sadness with him, my grandfather. He was distant and detached, not unkind, but not connected somehow. It seemed that he came into the world with the sadness and grief of his mother, then before he was walking, graduated into grief of losing her. When he married and had begun to surround himself with his own family, he became a widower, so there was more grief and sadness heaped onto his shoulders. It seems that he somehow passed on some of that to my father, because when i recall what I saw in my grandfather’s face on those occasions when I was in his company, I saw the same thing on my father’s face. Both of them lost their mothers before they were old enough to know they had her. Both of them were left without a firm connection to the person who got them here. I don’t think either of them recovered from that while they were here.

So, my great-grandmother is somehow connected to me. I am fascinated with her, and have connected with her in meditation several times. A couple of sessions ago, I connected and I remember floating up my frustration at not being able to find records of her, and desperately want to know more about her life. I remember saying that I wanted to know where so much pain came from, and the answer that came back was, “You know exactly where that pain comes from. You know that pain. It will end with you.” Hmmm. I have gotten the last part of that message before I even knew about her, when I was connecting with maternal ancestry. Totally different part of the family, unknown to each other. Same message. It ends with me. I’m not entirely sure of how to articulate that, but I have a certainty that it’s true. Perhaps that is why I have been so focused on my own recovery and movement through all the pain, all the turmoil, all the angst. I can’t stay there. That generational wound has to heal.

When I connected with things earlier today, the message wasn’t so much relative to the pain, but it was about where I am spinning right now. It was about family, and connections, and progeny. I have no children. I’ve never wanted to have children, since I was eight years old and stood up and said I was never doing that. Everyone just laughed, but I knew that I was serious. And that’s been true for me. The message this morning, though, had to do with me giving birth, although not to a physical being. I was made to understand that I need to produce, give birth to something, maybe art of some kind, or movement of some kind.

I have been feeling that I am on the brink of something, on the verge of something, and so that seems to be affirmation of that. Perhaps gathering my thoughts in writing like this is part of the plan, I don’t know. Writing is helping me to clarify my intentions, gather my thoughts, remember why it is that I came here. It is saving my life. I don’t go as deep down the rabbit hole as I used to, and when I contemplate birthing something, giving birth to something, I am excited. That’s not a bad thing, I don’t think. Maybe I’ll be giving birth to me, the real me, the me that isn’t obligated to be what anyone else wants me to be. The one I’ve forgotten at times, and ignored at others, but who is still here under it all. We’lll see.

Just about everywhere I go, I’m reading or seeing impressions of the Atlanta murders, opinions, reflections, what have you. Nearly every Black, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC) reported nearly the same feeling…grief, anger, sadness, but definitely not surprised. Anti-Asian sentiment has been woven into the American story from close to its inception, including the exoticization, fetishism, and “otherness”. There has been legislation to bar them from immigrating, expel them after immigrating, and incarcerate them in order to “protect” us from insurgency. Ain’t that somethin’? Protect us…by employing the insane methodology of a dead and disgraced racist dictator who ran his country into the ground with ideological fantasies of a pure race. America, America, God shed His grace on thee…stand beside her (please, because she needs help to stand upright) and guide her (because she has lost her way), throught the night (because it’s getting very long).

I never had, or needed, a reason to make America great again. I did not think America had become anything less than great, only some of its people were a little…lost. Just as I’ve never had any reason to deny Christianity, or the Christian view of divinity (complicated though it is), I’ve found a bit of fault with some of its followers. I’m capable of separating the larger concept, the ideology, from human foible. It gets difficult when the humans make it so, when they weaponize their ideology, and make life a zero-sum equation. Even if life was not reduced to a zero-sum game, it’s hardly simple enough or linear enough to be merely an equation.

My writing prompt today asks me to consider a best friend in my life, past or present, and what that was all about. I don’t exactly know how to describe that in words, because it was about feelings. That’s what all of the nationalism is about, what communities of faith are about – comradery with people who appear to have more in common with you, and your way of thinking, than not. When I’ve had close friends, BFFs in the current vernacular, they have been people I wanted to spend lots of time with, have fun with, do alone things together with. I wanted to do alone-type things with someone else, and the someone else was them. They just felt good, supportive on a level, like they “got” me. Some people don’t “get” me – don’t quite understand the awesome mystique that is me, or something like that.

Humans are social creatures, for the most part. Some of us have shitty boundaries, some of us take up too much space, some of us are more difficult to be with than others. Those are relationship issues, usually on a deeper level, but in general we seek out each other. We’re losing our collective mind at this point in the pandemic response because we are feeling isolated and cut off from the energy exchange we normally experience, whether we realize it or not. Some of us need that exchange more than others, or at least at higher levels, so those folks are probably suffering more in the “lockdown”. Maybe those are the people most inclined to actively rebel and refuse to mask, refuse to follow the guidelines, fold their arms in the middle of the room and say “make me!”.

The people who rebel will be drawn to each other, and the people who figure “what the hell, it’ll be over soon, I’ll just wear the damned mask” will be drawn to each other. That’s just dandy. The problem comes in when members of either group want to force the other group to agree with their conclusion. Then the matter and the anti-matter are gonna mix, and everything is gonna’ go “BOOM”. I sometimes believe we all enjoy when things go “BOOM”. It’s exciting and causes an adrenalin surge, and adrenalin makes us feel good, makes us feel alive, makes us feel energized. OK, fine, except that feeling of being able to conquer the world doesn’t last forever. We crash, and that doesn’t feel so good. Makes us a bit cranky, like a hangover, and there’s nobody less willing to be problem solving and creating solutions than somebody nursing a hangover.

When I’ve had a BFF, I suspect I was a bit obsessive with them, and probably chose (or was drawn to) people who demonstrated similar obsessive tendency. That’s not entirely a bad thing, unless it goes entirely unchecked. Having a relationship, even a BFF kind of relationship, with blinders on means you run into a lot of walls and fall down a lot of sink holes. That’s been a lot of my experience, I suppose. I have a magnet somewhere inside me that attracts people who are going to sign, seal, and deliver some of my worst attributes…and usually, I am loving it. Until I’m not. It’s not the fall, it’s the sudden stop that gets me every time.

So, when you have the “wack” magnet, the least you can do is be aware of it, and respect it. If I meet people that cause me to feel inexplicably excited, always laugh at my jokes, and I can’t get enough of them…Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Back away from the obsessive tendencies, and somehow ground the wack magnet. For me, that means don’t give into the impulse to set up play dates immediately. Keep some distance. Don’t change my routines or give up my groove until I get to know what I’m dealing with, and what are the rules of engagement. Keep low…stay down…camouflage until you know it’s safe. Good lord, it’s a war.

I wonder if everyone has to go through such machinations when it comes to other people, but it doesn’t matter – it’s my trip. It’s not entirely pleasant for me, and truth be told, it’s damned frustrating, but it is what it is. It’s part of who I am. So, I have to go with it. That doesn’t mean I shirk the responsibility or desire to change that pattern, but I have to accept what it is at the moment. At this moment, it’s reasonably stable, but only because I am very intentionally staying the hell out of the way of just about everyone. I get my feelings hurt pretty easily, for starters, and will go out of my way to do what everybody else wants me to do, for an ending. The part in the middle is a perfect bell curve, but there’s no chime, no tone, no pleasant reverberation. It’s a cacophonous clanking that concludes in a resounding thud, and I find that, um, unfulfilling. So let’s not do that.

At this point, I suppose there are a few people in my life who I consider very, very close friends. There is give, and take, and a reciprocity of effort to maintain the relationship, to grow trust, to have integrity. As I have described before, these are people in whom I do have trust, who I would trust with my life. That is not an idle claim, either. I have reflected on that statement, and been very intentional about who to include in that group. I have a few other friends who I believe do truly love me, and are very supportive, but I would not trust them with my life. I do not believe they would harm me, or allow me to be harmed, but when it comes to making decisions when I am unable to speak for myself, I am not convinced we’re on the same level. The people I consider trusted on that level are different – we seems to be on the same page about what constitutes a good quality of life, about what my life is about, about what i would want (or not want) if I couldn’t speak for myself. That’s bigger than a BFF.

So, when I was in junior high school, I went to this new school in the 6th grade and it was REALLY new. There were white people, for the love of God, and rich people. I didn’t quite know what to do with either, except be wary of them all because that’s what my mother told me. Watch what you say around those people, she warned. Don’t say this, don’t say that, make sure you say this other stuff. And tell me everything, she said. So, I was pretty shy and more than a little insecure, but … through it all … I started to wind up in the clique that most fit me – the ones who were pretty nice, not jocks, not ultra wealthy, artsy fartsy, somewhat bright. That was my crowd. There was one girl who fit in more or less at the fringe of that crowd (she was not musical in the least), and she became my best friend.

In retrospect, we were probably terrible for each other. I made excuses for her, and she was willing to play along with all of my attempts to get “discovered” by the older girls, and the ones I was secretly attracted to. I didn’t understand the attractions, but I was living my own private hell at home, so I was more or less kind of a misfit who just acted weird. She forgave all of that, and we were just inseparable.

That went fine until we got to high school. Some of our classmates became boy crazy (good for them…y’all go play over there, ok?) but we just kind of did our own thing. I’m not sure if she had the same confusing feelings about her sexuality or not, but we remained virtually inseparable. Until…until…it was her birthday coming up. Her birthday wasn’t far beyond mine – mine was December 29th, hers was January 3rd or 8th or something, but still a Capricorn. She was having a party at her house. OK, fine…I didn’t give it much thought…until she had this uncharacteristically serious look on her face one day, and drew me aside.

She told me that she could not invite me to the party, because, well, her brothers were kind of rough, and um, well, her parents said…um…mutter, mutter, mutter. What she was telling me was that she couldn’t invite me because they didn’t have Black people over to their home. Truthfully, I didn’t understand what she was saying, so I just reacted to not being invited. But, of course, when I got home and related the story…things went *BOOM*. Then, I was hurt. Because my mother was hurt, and enraged. She was right to be enraged, but I didn’t get it, because I was still a kid. My mother was not a kid, she was a slightly left-of-center Black woman who had seen all of this before, and now it was happening to her kid, and She. Was. Pissed.

So, here was my supposedly BFF, but I couldn’t come to her birthday party because of something I didn’t ask for, and something I couldn’t do anything about. But the fact remained that I wasn’t invited, and that was just that. Most of the other girls – the white girls – were invited, but not me. I didn’t know how to act, or even how to feel, and I felt like everyone was looking at me to see who I was reacting, and to get a good look at the reject. But the rejection wasn’t enough for me to entirely disavow her, or enough to abandon the relationship. I didn’t feel that I had anyone else, I think, and so…I went on. Just like before.

After the party had passed, I still felt very self-conscious, but somehow…after a little bit..my friend and I just kept going. Like I said, we were probably not very good for each other, because we followed each other down bad paths. And I was mostly the leader, I must say. That’s probably why I didn’t want to just trash the whole relationship, but I didn’t know that. The first item of significance that I ever stole, she was my co-conspirator. Our class had gone bowling (it was supposed to be a privilege of upper-class students) and the propietors of the bowling alley had left an 8-pack of Miller High Life ponies on the shoe-rental counter. I saw that, and impulsively lifted one of the bottles and put it in the pocket of my uniform skirt. She lifted a bottle as well, and we both high-tailed it out of there.

I drank a few sips out of the stolen beer later, at home, alone. It tasted terrible, and I wondered what my father liked about it. That was probably my motivation for stealing it in the first place – my father always had beer, or a cocktail in his hand when he was home, so I wanted to figure out what was the big deal about that. Anyway, there was a big deal at the school, and the obnoxious gym teacher demanded the guilty parties come forward, not publicly, but just confess to her. My friend went forward almost immediately. I was more than willing to go to my grave with that secret, until my other classmates somehow figured out that I was the second thief and pressured me to confess. So I did. No big whoop, but I suspect my friend had ratted me out. Not sure, but it’s possible. Anyway, like I said, we probably weren’t very good for each other.

After graduation, my friend and I did not keep in touch. We both went to college, she a few hours away, me locally (but it might have been Mars because of all the changes I went through during that time – I was as far away from that high school experience as one could get). The friendship became just a memory, not anything I had any pull from. Not anything I wanted to put energy toward maintenance. With the advent of social media, I’ve seen her in the nooks and crannies of high school reunion groups and what not, but we’ve not conversed, nor have I had a real desire to do so. Her parents are both dead, I believe, as are mine. We’re different people now, and the period of our lives that provided ground for our friendship in the 70s has long since passed.

I don’t so much grieve that relationship as wonder about what the attraction ever was, other than me feeling that i had no other place to go. Here was someone who accepted me, or at least tolerated me, and so … I was in. I don’t feel terribly proud of that, because in retrospect it feels as though maybe I used her. That wasn’t a conscious thought at the time, but I can see how that might work. And when there was no need for her any longer, the need to be close evaporated. I’m not sure. I hate to consider myself that shallow, but perhaps I was. I don’t know if I’m shallow, although there are times I just can’t bring myself to put up with stuff that doesn’t stimulate me, so maybe there is some shallowness there.

So, there’s more about my startling journey through relationships, from another angle. The people I consider friends at this point in my life are definitely getting to have me as an actual person, and not somebody who needs them to prove to myself that i’m an actual person. I know way more about who I am than in my junior high and high school years, thank goodness. I’m feeling that I can truthfully say that I have more integrity these days than to just use someone because I have no other friends. I will have to work on forgiving myself for being that shallow and self-absorbed back in the day, because self-forgiveness does not come naturally to me. It’s one of the hardest things I have to do, but I try.

When I look at the whole gamut of why I am so dysfunctional about relationships, I am thinking part of that is about my dysfunction about my Self, that i am not perfect, that i don’t feel like I am good for anyone – including me. I’ve been told that I’m a good friend, but I have to be careful that’s not because I say “yes” whether I mean it or not. Because I don’t set or enforce healthy boundaries and in some cases let people get away with murder. All of that to say that I don’t take care of myself very well in relationships. I suppose that is where my healing work is located, and damn…I just want to take a nap and have that all be magically fixed by the time i wake up. Gonna have to summon a genie or something while I’ve having lunch…I’ll Google some incantations and stuff. It’s always something.

So. Another white man acts on his twisted ideals of supremacy, and ends the lives of non-white bodies. Because he can. From all indications, these people – the majority of whom were Asian-American women working in massage parlors in the Atlanta GA area – were objects of his sexual fetishization. They were not human. They were objects, and so it was as easy for him to remove himself psychologically from their murder as it is for a child to break a toy that no longer entertains them.

An object exists only for the pleasure and use of a human. So ending it, causing it to be no more, is not a momentous choice. It is the same choice that slave owners made when using bull whips on errant stock items of their inventory, who had the audacity to bleed and cry out in pain. The audacity to not produce, or entertain, or comply. It is the same choice that sexual predators make when they abduct and assault, or kill, women (and children, and some young men) when they rape and then kill.

There is very little difference between Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy and this Aaron Long of Georgia, except the length of the serial outburst. Bundy and Gacy took years to manifest their nefarious compulsions, while Aaron Long was mercifully brought short in less than twelve hours. That makes it no less horrific.

The women killed by Aaron Long were minding their own business, working. Working while Asian. I have not checked to see whether these women were born in the United States, or had immigrated here, or were possibly even trafficked here, but it matters not. He didn’t look that up, either. All he saw were physical features that were unlike his own, and which he apparently exociticized. But again, he did not see these Asian bodies as human – he saw them as objects. We have been seeing that same dehumanization, without evidence of the sexualization, in the plethora of cases that ended in the murder of unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement officers.

To me, this constitutes depravity, moral and otherwise. This is the result of a human devoid of that which makes us human – moral compass, empathy, compassion. When you are assured that your choices, and your perceptions, your way of walking in the world, are unquestioningly correct you don’t need to pause and ask yourself if you’re doing the right thing. When your world has conspired to give you no consequence for bad behavior, or enforced any valid code of conduct on you, you don’t second guess yourself. That is the fertile ground of mental illness, of the toxic narcissist, and when coupled with a firearm you get eight people dead after a casual trip across the metro-Atlanta landscape.

Are there serial killers of color? Of course there are. They are simply in far less number than white serial killers. Are there female serial killers? Yes, but again, in far less number than white male serial killers. It stands to reason that rational people would raise the question of what the HELL is going on with so many white men who are so enraged and so willing to dehumanize other people?

Homicide and serial killers have been around since the earliest moments of human history. What is concerning at this point, though, is that we can see this in real time, and we can’t turn away from it or pretend we don’t see it or ignore it. I contend the propensity to generate these aberrant personalities starts very early, and sometimes people live out their lives without acting on their errant impulses. But sometimes they do. And sometimes we get fair warning, but do nothing. We need to take a look at that.

As with any other unacceptable behavior patterns, we’re all responsible for speaking out against them, or at least sound the alarm. Seeing insurrectionists using bear spray and flagpoles on law enforcement officers during the January 6 insurrection seems like uncloaking the same kind of sadistic and murderous rage that characterized Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Jack the Ripper even. Had it not been for media coverage, we might have been looking at a ridiculously high death toll. We might have been looking at the end of the American experiment.

The killings in Atlanta are the end result of unchecked hatred, and bigotry. And this is why racial and ethnic minority communities are not surprised by this, and not sympathetic toward neighbors who express shock and surprise at this occurrence. We are however, dismayed, disappointed, and afraid. This is the same story, just the names and faces are changed. This is the same rage, whether clothed under cover of badges or business suits or polo shirts and khakis. Ethnic communities are numb. The Black community, in particular, has been seeing this for 400 years…lynching was a public event, sometimes an entertainment venue. You cannot maintain a level of outrage for all this time without some degree of resignation, and despair. All of that is related to all of this, and for so many of us, there are no more tears to cry, no more surprise, no more shock to exhibit.

But the circle of direct impact is widening. The rhetoric of politicians has seeded this fetid pool of dishonor. Mass media is a double-edged sword, whether it’s Fox News or CNN – people listen to what is put in front of them, and they believe. They believe what they see on the internet, they believe what their heroes tell them. That’s not new. What’s new is the total abdication of leadership. And in the absence of leadership, people will contrive their own. That can’t go on, unless we concede civil society and contract to live in a world that resembles Lord of the Flies.

He who dies with the most toys doesn’t win, however. He who dies with the most toys is still dead. And we will die, most of us without any toys, or anything to show for it if we don’t change this paradigm. There will have been no purpose for the suffering, which is simply absurd. Why bother? If we are not going to learn anything, why the hell are we doing any of this at all? Let’s pull the plug now if we’re not willing to see the experiment through.

Things on this Earth are not here solely for my amusement. This I know…because there are way too many things outside my control. The real test of my fortitude, and value is how well I can control my self, how well I can live in harmony with the rest of the world and still manifest happiness, joy, value. There have been many times in my life when I couldn’t control anything about myself, but…I’m not in that place any longer, not that person any more. If I can’t move from point A to point B, I feel like I’m wasting my time. If I’m wasting my time, I figure I can be doing something else and not put up with THIS boring murder a day crap. I’ve had fun before, and this is NOT it. Feeling like I’ve wasted my time is NOT it. I need to make this count, y’all. I don’t like me when I’m bored.

When I woke up this morning, it was raining. My treat-addicted dog was standing nearly on my chest, staring intently, attempting to psychically force me to wake…not so that she could be taken outside for her morning constitutional, but for her ritual morning treat. Mommy gets her coffee, and the pooch gets a treat. That’s the rule of law in this domicile.

When I don’t rise quickly enough, the psycho dog interprets this as war, and begins her campaign of retaliation. First, there is pawing at the blanket roll closest to my chin. Then relatively quiet snuffling. Then elevated snuffling that crescendos to a sneeze-cough. Then…scratching at my face…somewhat gently, but forcefully enough to attract my attention. Then, if I have the audacity to keep my eyes closed and maintain a recumbent position, there is a symphony of every bark in her vocabulary – the play-bark, the play-growl, the half-volume bark, the 3/4-volume bark, the whine, the whining bark, and finally – ceremoniously – the full throated and full volume cacaphony of a formal BARK, including a small novella of complaint, entreaty, accusation, and litany of wrongs endured. Oy.

So. I am on my second cup of coffee. Reached out to an Asian-American friend of mine to check in, and see how she is doing. She is Korean-American, born in the U.S., but of course that doesn’t matter to xenophobes in this day and age. My friend pointed out that the only thing different about this time, as opposed to past times, is the media coverage. As I keep pointing out, the revolution has gone live, film at 11. Or 5. Or all day, every day. Take your pick.

The revolution is happening, in slow motion. We are dizzy with the changes, dizzy with having our heads turned so rapidly by every shocking bit of news that shows how depraved some of us have become. I admit to being frustrated with the shock and awe that many are proclaiming when faced with the seemingly widening stream of hate crimes. How can you be surprised? How can you say you didn’t know this element of depravity existed in our country? We have been seeing it for centuries at this point. Not years, not decades, but centuries.

When lynching of Blacks was sport in parts of this country, when lynching victims’ body parts were severed while they were still alive and mounted as trophies after their death, when hundreds of people were brutally murdered in the streets of seemingly civilized American cities and towns because they were Black…how can you claim to be surprised? How can you claim to be unaware of this legacy, in this age of Google and information super-highways? Were you waiting for people of color to educate you?

If I sound angry, it is because I am. This has gone on far too long, and I realized yesterday – for about the thousandth time – that I’m tired. I’m tired of speaking condemnation gently, to spare the feelings of the more fragile, and in a language that does not even begin to do justice to the injustice of what I describe. I’m tired of seeing gentle people, who have done nothing wrong, be murdered in the streets for…walking. For enjoying their lives. For working, jogging, driving, laughing, texting on their cell phones. For breathing.

This is depravity, and how do we fix that? Is it possible to fix that? Do we just leave the depraved behind and run off to some new reality? I wonder if that’s what the depraved believe – Space Force? Seriously? I was a pre-adolecent and then a teenager during the heyday of the Apollo missions, and it occurred to me then that some people were ready to get off this planet, ready to leave it to what they considered the ruinous riff-raff and start over. Up there. With a new colonial mission, but the same playbook. We’ve already planted our flag on the lunar landscape…so what else am I supposed to think?

Right now, our focus is on the anti-Asian hate crimes of the past few weeks, as it should be. But let us not forget that anti-Asian hate is not new, just as anti-Black hate did not emerge with the murder of George Floyd. We have been going through this same crap for centuries, I repeat – for centuries. What is it going to take for this pattern to shift? When are we going to connect the dots between an unmuted sportscaster calling a group of African-American high school athletes n*ggers because they were kneeling during the National Anthem before a game and the murder of an 84-year-old Asian man who was simply walking in his neighborhood. Most people can see the connection between Eric Garner and George Floyd, between Travon Martin and Jacob Blake, but not between those murders and this week’s shooting spree in Atlanta. Or…the attempted coup d’etat at the U.S. Capital on January 6th.

Let’s talk about the insurrection on January 6th for a moment. As soon as I heard the words “The Capital has been breached”, I knew exactly what it was about. We all knew what it was about, at least those of us who’ve been paying attention. The rhetoric, the narrative of hate that has been escalating unchecked for several years now is what it was about. Yes, the previous POTUS escalated that effort, but this rhetoric has been steadily escalating on its own long before he took office. And for that, we all have to accept some responsibility.

For every time we heard incorrect, false, and incendiary narrative repeated and didn’t say anything. For every time we used derogatory and racially insensitive language ourselves, but excused it because we know we’re not racists. For every time we excused the dangerous antics of elected officials because “they are just passionate, and I like some of their policies”. For every time we brushed off playground bullies, neighborhood disputes, and sports politics as just “boys will be boys” or “folks just letting off steam”. For all those times, and others, we are responsible.

Shooting eight people, for whatever insane reason can be given, cannot be overlooked for any reason, but it has to be seen with the racial/ethnic significance it carries. Six of the eight victims were Asian-American females, and that cannot be overlooked. Intersectionality is real, and you cannot ignore the misogyny implicit in the murders any more than you can overlook the glaring fact of the racial bias. More importantly, you cannot relegate this to “it was a very bad day for him, and he chose to do this”. That was a very bad day for me, too, but I chose to do something else beside murder eight people. That. Is. Not. Acceptable.

I said recently that I was not as much concerned about the Fire Next Time, as James Baldwin wrote, but about the fire THIS time. The fire this time may be much the same fire as Baldwin described, but at this point it’s not a fire any longer. It’s an inferno. It’s the pit of molten lava beneath our feet, and it could blow at any time. There are earthquakes warning us of the shifting subterranean climate – rise in hate crimes, rise in neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, increased use of anti-ethnic rhetoric and attempts to legislate xeonophobia.

Voter suppression also constitutes a part of that early warning system, because gutting the Voting Rights Act, so hard-fought during the Civil Rights era, was a resounding shifting of the tenuous bedrock of racial equity. Revolts against “political correctness” likewise have been trumpeting a coming geyser of intolerance, and here it is. And let’s not forget…when a recent snowstorm threatened to shut down the entire state of Texas, that was not a natural disaster, just like damage to the City of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was not a natural disaster. The damage that came after those monumental storms was caused by human forces – in Katrina, the levees failed due to years of neglect and substandard maintenance practices by the humans charged with their upkeep. In Texas, the power grid was minutes from failure because of decisions made by humans in governance to keep it independent of other infrastructure. That wasn’t Mother Nature. That was us.

What the hell are we going to do? Do we just leave the planet, and find another to colonize and bring our unresolved conflicts there? Do we just keep going, and develop more potent weaponry to quell any civil or international unrest, never dealing with the causal factors but putting down dissention regardless? Do we hide our heads in the sands of time and just ignore what’s happening, as long as we have control of our individual cache of “stuff” and our postage-stamp lawns? It seems as though we are somewhat invested in the latter.

I happened to hear the end of a CNN interview with former Olympian Kristi Yamaguchi, a champion figure skater. I didn’t see the entire conversation, but when I looked up, she was saying that she hope we could return to a time when everyone felt safe. That struck me, because I don’t know there was ever a time when everyone felt safe. People of color have never felt entirely safe, and even white people have never felt entirely safe. Whatever your racial identity, it’s been “us” and “them”. What defines “them” has always changed over time, depending on who seemed to be an impediment to our wants and needs.

People who claim to be 2nd Amendment supporters are convinced “they” are coming for your guns. Who “they” is varies on political administration, and seems to be regardless of racial identity – Obama was coming for your guns, Hillary Clinton was not only coming for your guns but she was going to repeal the 2nd Amendment entirely, all the Liberals are coming for your guns. My goodness, people – those must be some really valuable guns. Who is REALLY coming for your guns are burglars and house thieves, but otherwise, people can acquire guns on the streets more quickly than a parking space.

So, when have we felt entirely safe? Never. We’ve never felt safe, and I wonder if that’s an inside job. When I feel safest, I’m more at peace with myself, and when I’m more at peace with myself is when I have my affairs in order. When I have not done what I’m supposed to do – whether that’s work I’m being paid to do, government obligations (like taxes, parking tickets, vehicle inspections, etc.), bills paid, car maintained properly, living responsibly and within my means – I’m not feeling quite so fearful. When I’m taking stupid chances, doing things I know are not in my best interest, when I’m feeling like I’m owed something…that’s when I’m anxious, and insecure. That’s when everyone is a potential enemy.

Maybe that’s just me. I’ve been told I’m a little left of center. I get that from my mother. She was definitely a bit left of center, but very high functioning and living in fear. I go back and forth with fear, and I frequently have to stop and reflect on where that’s coming from. Whenever I am overcome with fear, I am doing something that’s not the best choice for me – I’m buying something I know is just a want, and that I really can’t afford. I’m going someplace that’s risky. I’m not prepared to do something I’ve committed to do. It’s really very predictable in my world, and one would think I’d be able to ward off the fear response a little better than I do.

So, there you have it. I’m a bonda fide, real, honest to goodness, human. 100% human. Entirely derived from a genetic pool on Planet Earth (not to say it didn’t come from somewhere else, but whatever). So here I am. It’s right that I’m afraid of some things, because my species is a puny organic life form that can be taken out by numerous microscopic organisms we can’t even name. And THAT is life as we know it. It hasn’t gone anywhere. Going out to dinner and movies and bars is not really life, those are just some window decorations and distractions.

LIFE Is navigating through the morass of other lives that are doing the same thing – we’re all just trying to get by. Excuse me, sorry, coming around you on the left. It can be that smooth, but we make it complicated with our wants…get the f*ck outta the way, comin’ through…move it, move it…gotta get by, got somewhere to be! Since I haven’t been working (at least, not for “the Man”), I have to wonder…what happens if you don’t get out of the way? What happens if you don’t get by? What happens if you don’t move? There will be a day when that is exactly how it goes. There will be nowhere to be, no reason to rush, nothing much to do. Then what?

So, I’m still looking at relationships, connections, and what that looks like for me. I reflected on whether or not I felt connected to things, and to people around me, but I don’t think (in more ways than one) those connections implied that my heart was connected. That it was connected to me, or I to it. Perhaps that is the larger issue. Where is my heart in all this? For much of my reflections on relationships, it’s been about where my head resided. I have always been told that attraction begins in my head, but maybe that’s backwards. Perhaps it begins with the heart, and the head simply justifies it, rationalizes it, or makes the attempt. The heart goes where it goes, often inexplicably and uncontrollably, responding to no rational considerations whatsoever. But does it lie? Can it be wrong?

There is all manner of research and scholarly exploration of how and why people make disastrous choices in matters of the heart. This intrigues me, mainly because I’ve had so many experiences that have been utterly catastrophic, at least for me. It’s very interesting, and often comforting, to explore things like attachment disorder and neurobiological factors in trying to make sense of that pattern, but ultimately, knowing why changes nothing. When families of murder victims are given the opportunity to witness the execution of the murderer, I’ve heard of some who found they didn’t get the closure they were seeking. Watching the murderer die changed nothing. Perhaps for some of them it did, but I wonder if they are not permanently linked to the execution in addition to the murder of their loved one. If so, I can’t imagine that would actually lessen their pain. But, I’ve never been in that position so I can’t speak intelligently about it. I just wonder.

So, how do I differentiate between my heart and my head when I am forming an attraction to another person? Both feel very good. I must admit, and have reflected previously, that it’s very difficult for me to perceive of love in some kind of bizarre hierarchical way. Romantic love < blood family love > friend love. That seems oversimplified, and not necessarily true. Suffice it to say that I have some fucked up ideas about love, and how it fits into my walking through the world. I think I have a lot of love to give, and sometimes wonder if that is what makes me seem “needy”. Once again, though, I don’t have time to fiddle with that. As Brene’ Brown said on a podcast in February: “I always describe midlife as when the universe comes down and grabs you by the shoulders and says ‘Hey, I’m not fuckin’ around. You’re halfway to dead now, so you gotta let go of what people think, you gotta find real love. This is it.’ ”

The universe is definitely not fucking around. This is the real deal, I have to put up or shut up. The time is past for experimenting, for being tentative, for wondering what happens when I press the blue button. I know what happens. I know that when you press the blue button, the results are essentially unknow and you have to roll with the outcome. There are really no certainties. You can press any of the buttons, and sometimes you know what happens, and sometimes you don’t. Most of the time, you don’t. The most dangerous ones to press are the ones you think you can predict the outcome. But, you pay your money and you take your chances. You’re gambling, taking a risk, no matter how you want to look at it…but if you don’t play, you can’t win.

I’m not playing, for the most part, so I suppose I have no chance to win. I don’t feel as though I was winning a large percentage of the time. When I say things like that, I don’t mean to exclude the winning efforts, the times everything seemed to fall into place. Maybe the problem I’m having is that nothing lasts forever? But it seems as though it does last forever for some people, at least from the perspective I have. We just lost a member of my community of faith, who died at 90+ years (not COVID related). His body just gave out, due to old age. He leaves behind his wife, who is close to his age, and a boat load of grown children. I had great affection and the utmost respect for him, even though he drove me a little nuts from time to time. I am very sad that he has died. Is that love? Or is that affection, and liking? I don’t effing know, but I know that I will miss him. Am I sorry that he is dead? Only from the standpoint of how I feel, how others will feel. I’m not sorry he is dead, only from the standpoint that his body is no longer failing, that he is no longer in physical discomfort, that in some esoteric way he did what he came here to do. It’s not my place to be sorry that someone’s soul has separated from their body. Would that not be presumptuous of me? It’s not my gig.

So, love is complicated for me. Maybe it’s complicated for everyone. It just confuses me to contemplate an emotional state that defies time and circumstance and relativity, yet is all encompassing of all modes of our existence. And perhaps beyond. It seems to be a visceral object, but it is not matter. It has no mass, but still it exists. It has no weight, but it is heavy enough to cause people to do amazing things when under its influence. It’s more than a random collection of chemical and neurological responses in the human body. It’s in your heart, in your soul, in your body when you grow old (thank you, Rod Stewart). It’s a paradox that questions our very understanding – or misunderstanding – of the real world, the esoteric world, the unreal world. Most of us believe, and have experienced, the timeless aspect of love. Because we’re bound to this plane, however, our biggest concerns are the here and now, the love that exists right here and right now. I can’t hedge my bets on having love three lifetimes from now, or be satisfied because I may have had it three lifetimes ago. I want what I want NOW, and that’s just how I roll.

So, am I connected seems to be a slightly different question than whether or I have love present. I can be connected to the interwebz and millions of people if I so choose. Do any of those connections satisfy me, do any of them fulfill me? Maybe some offer a measure of mental fulfillment, or satisfaction, but I’m not sure there are any that offer deeper sustenance. And what of that? I don’t know that’s what those kinds of connections are designed to do, but … I’m connected. And connection in and of itself is simply not enough. There’s more, there’s a craving and a longing for more. I often frustrate people when I want to discuss things like death, and what happens to us when we experience death on any level. There are some people I encounter, especially in the past couple of years, who angrily declare they will only discuss “happy” things, or nothing at all. Alrighty then. Good luck with that. I have to discuss it all, reflect on it all, take stock of how I handle it ALL. Cherry picking reality doesn’t seem to be reality, only control. The more I experience, the more I realize that I have very little control over much of anything outside of me. In order to have some control, or at least responsible use, of things INSIDE me, I have to talk about it, reflect on it, find out how other people handle the same things. Accordingly, there are a few people I’ve had to vote off my island.

I understand that our human condition requires, craves, connection. I definitely crave it, and I understand that I utilize various means to succeed in satisfying that craving. As I age, the means have become more meaningful, less self-absorbed, less narcissistic, and less immediate. The ends, of course, remain constant, and to some extent it is still all about me. I would hope that I give something back, throw something into the pool for others to draw on, though. When I feel like I’m doing nothing but throwing bait into the water, but not able to be fed, I get a little testy. I’m told that I should possibly change my fishing spot, or lower my standards on what bait I will consume, and in what quantity. I don’t have time for the analysis these days…and I struggle with the gut reaction that I should be able to get what it is that I want. It seems that everyone else has that ability, or at least it seems that way. Truth be told, I really don’t know if that is true. All I know is…I don’t usually get back what I am putting out there, and that’s not how I want things to be.

Now. What to do about this? I think when last I dealt with this, I was trying to choose my companions more intentionally, not getting so hung up on that feeling of flying, floating, euphoria. To some extent, I don’t know what the hell I am doing in the first place – most of my knowledge about relationships came from a dysfunctional set of parents and television. All television relationships appear to have crises, and I can see that. Only thing is…television relationships seem to resolve their crises and complications in between commercials once a week. Real life doesn’t go quite like that, and when people get hurt in real life they don’t still look like they stepped off a magazine cover (if ever they stepped onto one in the first place). I would be the first to admit that my naive and juvenile view of relationships is derived in large part from television and literary fiction. I’ve known for some time this formula doesn’t give me a fighting chance at success. What to do about that, however, remains a mystery.

I am a child of my mother, and my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers, and all the women beyond them. I am a child of my father, and my grandfathers, and my great-grandfathers, all the men beyond them. I am my Self, and everybody else. I want very much to find the common threads I share with these people, but like many people of color, records are slim and elusive. Our families didn’t always have benefit of bureaucratic record-keeping systems; we sometimes didn’t actually exist anywhere on paper. But exist we did, survive we did, live we did. And here I am, all these years later, wanting to reach back in time. My paternal great-grandmother, the one who committed suicide…I want very badly to find her. I don’t know why, i am just drawn to finding out the story, solving the mystery. All that pain, betrayal, broken hopes and dreams. Was it love that drove her to it? My gut says it was rejection, the betrayal, the realization that she had been cast aside when she became a burden, a burden with a baby. The story I have told myself is that she was the back-door girlfriend of a wealthy lawyer, and when she got pregnant, he cut her loose. He cut her loose with nothing to show for her time with him, except…this new life. She could not tolerate being cast aside, with no hope for the future, but she provided for her child, my grandfather. She made sure he would survive, and willed him to another family. Then she had to go, and there are scant few records of her. But my grandfather survived, although not happily, it seems. I reached out to her in meditation the other day, and have reflected previously on that effort. I tried to send out the message that I wanted to find records of her, news of her, and I wanted to know what the pain had been about. The words that came to me were: “You know what that pain is about. You’ve always known.” And I have always known that pain. I don’t know why it came, but I know what it is and how it feels. I know how incredibly huge it is and how it threatens to engulf a heart, a soul, until you feel that you have no place to go except death. Perhaps this is what has always caused me to feel so trapped. I don’t know. I know that it’s not mine, though. I’ve been holding it all this time, and I need to let it go. I don’t want it to land on someone else, in someone else’s ancestral tree, but I don’t know how to release it to the Universe. This I will need to work on, because it needs to go. It needs to end with me. This is what brought us all together, my ancestral line, up to and including me. This has to be where it ends, I believe. Maybe I think too much of myself, but it’s not an ego thing. Just a thought/idea that keeps coming back, over and over and over. Time to let that go and make room for something else. This is the Matrix, and I need a door, right now.

I was going to title this “Feeling Weird”, but I have thought better of it. I am just…feeling. We talk in recovery a lot about feelings, and many of us profess having gratitude for the feelings we have now, since we can recall being pretty number before embarking on the journey to happy destiny that AA references. As I was told once, you’re going to feel better if you embrace the 12-step recovery program. You’re going to feel pain better, happiness better, sadness better, grief better, anger better. You will definitely FEEL better. I suppose that’s how this thing called life works…when you stop anesthisizing yourself with a substance for less than medicinal purposes, those nerves come back to life and you feel them. Sometimes when that happens, I have to remind myself that I asked for that, that I wanted that to happen. And sometimes, I have to grit my teeth while that reminder is presenting itself. Some days, it’s like being hit full force with a 2-by-4 wielded by the Incredible Hulk and landing directly on the side of my head. That’s gonna leave a mark, and it does. Life. What a beautiful choice.

So, what I’m feeling right now is a bit odd. I was constructing a “portfolio” for a class I’m taking…not the usual kind of professional folio, but one that amounts to sort of a collage of images and favorite things and so on…I added a page to this journal for it. I suppose the soundtrack for it is “Getting To Know You”, which is somewhat obnoxious, but it’s part of the class instructions. The class is offered by a theological seminary, so it is oriented to more spiritual attributes, and focuses on anti-racism specifically. It’s a group thing. So, we’re encouraged to show ourselves a bit, and be open, and all that. OK, I’ll play…but I’m gonna hold a bit back until I see how this goes. I am a very trusting person, but it does not serve me well, so I’m trying to approach things with a bit more moderation these days.

Perhaps this is why I feel a bit odd today, after putting together a bunch of things for others to read about me, music I like, a glimpse into how my tiny brain works on certain levels. For some reason, maybe it was a writing prompt somewhere, I started thinking about things I’ve done that haven’t worked well for me, and how this attachment disorder has wreaked havoc with my relationships. Oh, I know what prompted this…I was listening to a podcast of Brene’ Brown’s (“Unlocking Us”, the Feb. 10th episode), and she was talking with Roxane Gay and her wife, Debbie Millman. Roxane and Debbie are both authors and instructors, and both have serious credentials in their crafts…Debbie is a designer with her own podcast, and Roxane is a writer with her own following. Anyway, they were discussing how they came to fall in love and start a life together, and it was fascinating. I have not finished the entire episode, but I already know that Roxane in particular speaks to me on a particular level, and it is the level of post-trauma. The level of recovery and healing. Debbie seems to have some healing under her belt as well, and specifically mentioned dysfunctional attachments. So, that got me to crankin’ on the topic of my own attachment disorder.

I have only recently started exploring this subject, and find that it seems to explain some of the more perplexing aspects of how I have – or don’t have – relationships. Most of it seems to mimic what I saw of my mother’s totally off-kilter manner of having relationships with family, or the few friends she claimed. My thoughts wandered to some of the most disastrous experiences I’ve had, and I would love to say those all occurred before I began the serious business of recovery. But that would not be true. Within the past few years, and since I’ve been in NC, I’ve gotten my ass kicked in some of the most effed up, narcissist-enabling, unrewarding relationships I’ve ever had. I feared that my propensity for finding these people – and I contend it is simply the same person with a different face each time – was escalating. I seemed to be in the business of mastering an art form. What kind of nonsense is THAT? To combat that, I have simply withdrawn from the game. For at least the past few years, since the last debacle, I have studiously ignored the social scene. I’m just fine over here, thank you very much. I figured if I just didn’t get my motor running in pursuit of pleasure and pretty things, I would be fine. That mostly worked, but I’ve even managed to attract the most effed up narcissistic just-a-friend that I could concoct. She wound up being a psycho in her own right, and she had the nerve to dump ME. OK, I’m officially done.

The problem with being done with a social scene, though, is things still go on in your head. It’s like standing outside the house where a party is going on, and you can hear the music and the drone of indistinct conversations, see the silhouettes moving about, but you know damned well that you’re outside. I suppose I can go in, but I’ll be damned if I am going to risk it. I can’t trust myself to choose any better than I ever have, so did I mention that I’m just fine over here? Really. I’m just fine over here. Maybe. I resent that I don’t feel I have the choice to be over here or over there. I feel that I have to be over here, kind of alone, because my track record sucks with being over…there. I’m too old to keep getting my butt kicked, because I am afraid that one day I’m not going to be able to get up. So, no go.

The just-a-friend person that dumped me, well, I understood her shit. That may have been the problem, actually – she could very well have become threatened with how much I understood. We had become extraordinarily close, like sisters. After a while, though, she suddenly woke up one day and decided that she deserved to have a capital-R relationship with a man. I was like whatever. I was truly and honestly not attracted to her romantically or sexually. Not. One. Bit. But there was a great deal of emotional intimacy, so that could have been my error. Not sure. But over a period of time, she began to go a little deeper down a rabbit hole in her own labyrinth…she became obssessive about guys she would meet, and conjured (and I do mean conjured) fanciful stories about what what they must be thinking, about how if they called so many times it must have meant they were “interested”, if they said certain things, like “i like your sweater” they were making a pass at her. It got progressively less connected to reality, or at least the reality of how I imagine adults might behave. She would be exuberant if one of them said what she KNEW was a sweet thing, and devastated if they didn’t follow up with escalation. She drug one guy, AND HIS KIDS (he’s divorced), out to a mountain place that somebody else owned, and talked for hours about how THEY had talked so deeply for hours…and then she engineered a way for them to sleep on the floor together, and he must have been hiding a hard-on because he wouldn’t face her, but she slept SO well and got SO close to him. From what she described, she was a barnacle attached to the back of a dolphin or something, because he asked her later whether it was possible for her to have been any closer to him. That went nowhere, and not for any other reason than he was headed on a totally different path in his life. I know the guy in passing, he’s nice, but goofy…and when I asked her about him one day, she said – in that weird way that usually means someone had rehearsed an answer to a question they knew they’d be asked – “We’re not seeing each other anymore, but we’re the best of friends.” From what I heard from him, they were never “seeing each other”, and they were always “the best of friends”. When I tried to point out to her along the way that he just wasn’t into her, she became enraged. I should have stopped there, but stupid me…I thought we had made an agreement to tell each other the truth.

OK, so women and their men usually don’t have room for errant dykes to provide insight into their relationships, or whatever the hell they’re having, but then…she started making conditions about her women friends. They were nut cases in some respects. I could not have cared less, but she would make them and their alleged mistreatment of her or questionable positions on things topics of conversation with me. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t supposed to actually have an opinion, or offer my thoughts, and she began to lose patience with me. After a time, she became nearly enraged because we differed on a political candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016. I still don’t like the guy, and felt no reason to avoid discussing that with another adult. I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, but if my friends didn’t like her, I didn’t take that personally, nor did it affect me.

My friend did take it very personally that I didn’t share her literal adoration of this candidate, and we agreed (well, one of us agreed) not to talk about it anymore. That seemed to work for a time until she began getting into closer relationship with other (fragile) women who also adored the same candidate, and my story is…she didn’t need me any longer. So, after throwing me a surprise birthday party – the first of my life – that made me very happy…days later, she suddenly had so many problems with me that she just needed to get away. Her primary reason was – unbelievably – that I didn’t like her friends. Huh? Because I disagreed with them about things like this candidate or I didn’t think they were perfect, or something. I didn’t quite understand what was happening, but I had other things to deal with, like grieving my mother and trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do without a job.

I didn’t realize I had gotten married, though. My bad. So, *Poof* off she goes – daily phone calls disappeared, allyship on certain work we had partnered on was no more. Fine. That hurt like a *expletive*, but like most things, I got over it. I’m still over it. She has since lied and said she believed I was the one who called off the friendship. I just nodded and smiled, because…when a person does that to me, they don’t realize how much it’s O-V-E-R. There is no going back. I lost respect for her, and I can’t do much without that. I would like to say that I hope she finds whatever it is that she is looking for, but truthfully, I just don’t much care. If I never see her again, that’s fine, too. I have no interest in foiling her about anything, or actively wishing her a negative outcome in anything, but…I just don’t really care. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or if that means I’m virtually shallow, but it is what it is. Bye, girl. You take care now.

So, that’s pretty bad, at least for me, and that’s “just a friend”. When I get my motor runnin’ in overdrive about somebody I like, it’s even worse. Last person I thought might turn into something deeper than friendship was…interesting. Exciting. A bit self-absorbed. A bit … I hesitate to say racist, but her behavior sort of tapped on that alarm bell a little. She liked Black people a little too much, if that makes any sense. She was carrying on with someone who was very well-defined in her Blackness, and nearly stereotypical in many respects. I couldn’t understand why she preferred this person over me, certainly not because I thought I was better looking or anything like that. I never think that. Ever. But dear God…the other one was a hood rat, ignorant-acting from what I saw. There had already been some straight up ghetto bullshit that had gone on, and I just didn’t get it. I asked about it, and was told that the other one’s family had treated the white girl with warmth, and civility, and were very kind. She iterated this as though it was worthy of some award. What did she expect them to be like – tribal natives who strapped her to a tree trunk and brought her over to the fire to roast for the evening meal? That bugged me, but as usual, I overlooked it, because I really liked her. A lot. How effed up is that? Then it got worse, as she began relating other tales of how they went to sports events, but all of the other people were the ignoramuses friends. Black women, mostly. The ultra-liberal white girl was the exotic fruit, and she told me how once some brothers were trying to get on board with it. It was a problem. I know my people, and this could have been way more dangerous than she understood. But…she wanted some of that stuff. So, she would text me late at night, and we had digital quality time…typing all manner of emotionally kind of intimate stuff. She had a trauma history, and it sort of tagged along with some of mine, so we connected on that quite a lot. I handled her empathically, like I always do, so I was feeling her pain…quite literally. Regardless, where it got really stupid was when she would just disappear for days at a time, and I’d find out “they” had gone to the beach, or for some “together” thing. I understood that we were not dating, or on the beam for even heading in that direction, but I was starting to feel very much like an afterthought, one that only came up when she needed it to. Like when she was not getting what she needed from her squeeze box…and she never was. Maybe it was a sexual thing, but it sure as hell wasn’t emotional. The other one was trying to change her into what she wanted, and this idiot couldn’t – didn’t want – to see that. Because she had me to fill in the gaps. So. One day, she did a typical, ordinary and self-absorbed thing that excluded me, not that it should have but it just hit me all wrong, and everything just blew the hell up in my brain. There was a category 5 hurricane that made landfall in my frontal lobe and the wind came. I was running around yelling to nobody in particular that this field nigger was done, and she could get her house nigger to do everything for her. Then the rains came, and I was a melting pile of senseless, and useless, wicked witch goo. And then it was done. I was embarrassed, and humiliated, and spent. I had nothing left to give at that moment, so…she was SO off my friends list, blocked on cell phone, deleted from email. Everything. Done.

Saw her a couple more times, in passing, and didn’t speak. Saw her one more time at a Pride festival, and she approached – uninvited – and refused to make eye contact. I was with a friend, and she made eye contact with the friend and conversed, but refused to acknowledge me. Then, inexplicably, she hugged me, which felt as though I had been slimed by a slug. It somehow felt obligatory, and proof that she was capable of it. I wanted to bathe immediately, which is SO not my style.

I think I loved her, because I still think of her and grieve. I still think of her and want to know what’s going on with her and the issues we used to discuss so intimately. I still think of her and hate what happened. I still think of her and wish that it could have been different, and miss the good times, which of course were so very few. I still think of her and chastise myself for caring enough to want her in my life, to be hurt by the likes of her rejecting me. I still think of her and hate that I still think of her. My waters are not still but they nonetheless run very deep, and I was drowning yet again. When will I learn not to go out so far the ground can’t help me? That feeling of helplessly floating is exciting and thrilling and feels so good, as though I am free and not bound by physical reality…but… gravity is not a theory and eventually I crash. I always crash.

So. This is what popped up and got in my way. I could go very far if I didn’t keep running into myself. I suppose that is the nature of life, but I get the feeling that I might be able to progress if when I ran into myself, it was not running into an obstacle, but a friend, something to help overcome an obstacle…a step stool, a ladder, a ramp. Not a hindrance, a mud puddle, a pot hole. I am very familiar with pot holes. The ones I’ve encountered that were most impressive seemed to arise because the foundation under the street surface had crumbled. Like a sink hole. The earth just falls away, and then everything crumbles. With the most dramatic sink holes, the actual crust of the rock has shifted, and there’s nothing you can do about that. That’s another one of those Mother Nature things we’re not big enough to fight with…although sometimes we cause it by having made bad moves in the past. Like I do. I suppose that I’m not clear about whether or not there is anything to be done about this, other than staying the hell out of the fray. But I still think of her, and others, and I still hate that I always crash.

So. Ron Johnson is a work of … something. He is now trying to back out of these comments about the insurrectionists of Jan. 6th. He says he was never afraid (despite reports that people saw him fleeing the Capitol once it had been breached) because he knew those protesters love this country, would never break any laws, and support the police (despite video of these fine people beating the crap out of police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags and flag poles, spraying them with bear spray, ripping off their helmets).

But, Johnson says, if the rioters had been BLM or antifa, THEN he’d have been concerned. Interesting. I didn’t realize that NASA’s Mars explorer had transported back alien life forms already, nor that the aliens had successfully taken human form, ’cause that is the only explanation for this guy – he is from Mars. Or beyond. Maybe he was just making a pit stop on Mars when the rover happened by and scooped him up. But, he’s got his story and he’s sticking to it.

I almost want to say that I am grudgingly amazed that so many like him are sticking to their story, going down with the ship as it were. But I can’t say that. I’m disgusted. It might be loyalty, it might be saving face, it might be entreaty to the Universe for having their views validated. I don’t know, or care. All I know is…racism is alive and well on planet Earth right now. I want to say it’s kickin’ like never before, but I’m not even sure that’s true. The virulence and rancor of the likes of those people who invaded the Capitol, and those who are invading the ranks of rational society, seem pretty consistent with the ones who look like them from 20, 30, 50, 200, 400 years ago. Sneering and seething with hatred, and disdain, over many things I cannot even comprehend.

This is the 4th Reich, and they’ve left Germany to plant their flag on the fertile soil of our purple mountains’ majesty. The new world. The new world order. This is the fire THIS time, and it’s burning, whether we started it or not. The smoke is getting thick, the fumes choking, the heat becoming unbearable. The scariest part of all that, however, is that one expects there to be change when we’ve lost too much, when it hurts too much, when we are exhausted.

Unfortunately, we seem to have a tremendous capacity for pain, and there are those amongst us who are determined to keep this paradigm alive and kicking. By any means necessary. At any cost. No matter what. There is a near romanticism of the ideal, of “getting our country back”, which seems to be code for returning norms and rules of engagement to those of a time long past, a time of nostalgic fancy. At least for some. I don’t know how to resist that, how to combat that…and I feel the need to do so.

Resisting the narrative that has gained so much traction with dominant culture requires me to do a better job of ensuring that I only speak truth, fact, and being true to myself. I’m not interested in arguing or trying to convince anyone they are wrong. I’m not that powerful, nor do I want to be. It’s difficult, though, because I want to shake a few of these people until their teeth rattle in their skulls. And it’s exhausting.

Most of the time, I want to get off this planet, or at least out of this corner of it. Neither is a valid solution, so I’m resigned to quietly wait for my turn for the vaccine that many pledge to reject. Truthfully, I don’t believe they will all do that, but will keep up the front in order to save face and just to say they aren’t doing something a Democratic President is calling for. Whatever. I’ll feel better when I have it on board, but I’m not naive enough to believe that it solves everything. It will not make the virus go *poof* and so…I think I’ll order some silly masks to have some variety in my future wardrobe. It’s a small price to pay, at least for me.

I will happily impersonate Jimmy Stewart in “It’s A Wonderful Life” on the bridge, after Clarence the angel has returned him to his problematic life, and will hit my knees in the snow and sob, “I want to live!”. OK, a little dramatic, but you get the point. I never thought I would be so eager to have a hypodermic needle stuck into my flesh as I am right now, even while dreading it more than having a sharp stick poked into my eyeball. I would gladly give up that chance, however, if a simple shot could make the the vapors of racism go *poof*. I sometimes believe that’s a far worse disease than COVID-19…it’s lasted far longer and seems far more hearty. I wish we could work on a vaccine for THAT.