Collecting Dust Bunnies Among the Stars

Tags

life in the foothills, opinions, ruling the world, stupid people

You have to remember that I’ve never done this before, so excuse the oopsies and missteps. You’re not gonna do any better I just want ya to know.

This agin’ shit is pretty much play it by ear ya know. I ain’t never been here before. So if I don’t always get it right, hey, I’m a work in progress.

See I take no responsibility for all this. The world I mean. It purely sucks if you look at it all, into every nook and cranny as they say. It purely sucks.

We don’t learn from our mistakes, we don’t see the trends from multiple strands of social interaction across the globe. We mostly are oblivious. We use trite phrases to avoid thinking.

We say stupid things like, “everybody is entitled to their opinion.” What the hell does that mean? Does it literally mean that one of the hallmarks of humanity is the right to spew any sort of fermenting slop as one’s “opinion” thereby classifying it along such noted remarks as “I came, I saw, I conquered”, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” and “Mikey likes it.”

I’m supposed to accept that your “opinion” about Donald Trump being a breath of fresh air is equal to my assessment of the probability that the dark matter in the universe is sufficient to close the universe from permanent expansion? I don’t think so.

See, we have got this notion that everybody is entitled to an opinion. They are not. This is not a handout in which every newborn is checked at the door. “Yep, little Ralph has his “opinion rights” right here in his diaper. Let him go forth unto humanity to spake his piece.”

Spake his piece?

Okay, let’s get this straight.

You are entitled to inclusion in the human race on very limited standards. Basically you must have the general physical equipment of legs and arms and knees. Mostly, but hey if you are missing one or two, not a problem. If you resemble being human more than say being a salamander, you fit the bill.

This does not entitle you, however, to a soapbox and a microphone. Nor does it entitle you to open your yap whenever you wish to spout some personal preference for anything if it is swimming in a sea of “just my opinion”. Your opinion is worthless flotsam unless it is tied to this thing we call FACT.

Facebook is a collector of such human dramas masquerading as intelligent people. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of really smart folks on Facebook, millions of them in fact. It’s just that they are jumbled up with all sorts of misbegotten refuse who have the appellation of “human” while having little in the way of grey matter.  And the latter sort continue to intervene in adult conversations with their “opinions” which contain nothing but the machinations of their six brain cells operating at half power for thirty seconds.

And of course, the rest of us who are not tied to personal preferences and the desire to hang on to every penny we’ve managed to accumulate at the expense of the continuing efficacy of the planet if that’s what it takes, have to “address” these cockamamie “theories” as if they actually made sense.

So here’s the low down bottom guppies. If you are a marginal human being, meaning that you shouted “whew” at the end of twelve long years of recesses, punctuated by football floats and sneakin’ a peek at Ms. Andrews boobs when she bent over to help you with long division, and called that “being educated” then, here’s what you must do.

Shut the FUCK up. Unless it has to do with what brand of weed killer works best on fescue, shut the FUCK up. You don’t contribute to the conversation, you embarrass it. You can’t put two coherent thoughts together. Hell, you don’t HAVE two coherent thoughts.

Stick to birthin’ babies, greasin’ axles, and giving McDonald’s a reason to exist. They created bowling alleys for you. They created comic books for you. They created Disneyland for you. MOMA? Don’t trouble your often pretty head about that. Keynesian economics versus Hayekian? Stick to those abs.

See how easy this is? You return to the stuff you do best and leave us along to puzzle out the state of the world and the solutions to all those problems you haven’t really got time to think about anyway, since you really have to decide–should Hulk be the VP nominee or Sarah for the Trump machine?

See, we want you to think about that, cuz it doesn’t matter what your answer is. It has as much chance of happening as hell oozing into your toilet and nippin’ your nuts while you count backwards from a hundred and count ammo.

I’m pretty sure that your “average Joe” is pretty content to ignore politics and religion as being boring if they really thought about it. The average Joe is pretty happy with being average. He averages through life. He works, he retires, he fishes. His wife raises kids, retires (though few recognize the difference) and knits. Their parents did the same, and probably their grandparents. They think this is swell.

The rest of us, we are never satisfied. We are terrified of getting “set in our ways”, and doing the dreary ordinary things of each age category. We yearn to know everything, the faster the better. Our routines are only set in order to get as much done each day before we tear it all apart and set up new ones so we don’t get “set in our ways.” We flit from one thing to another, gleaning a bit of knowledge each time so that as we age, we do in fact become “wise” and able to discourse on hundreds of topics with some basic understanding.

I figure it is the “rest of us” since I never have believed for one second that I was very unique. Oh unique in the obvious sense, so we all are, but unique beyond the obvious? Naw, I doubt it very much. The Internets are good for that sort of thing–lettin’ you know you are not so unique as you think.

The Internet humbles the savage beast, or takes down the arrogant a peg or two at least. And sadly it has the worst possible effect on the stupid. A computer is so simplistic in its operation that it allows the most lacking in brains to get on it and find to their amazement, that their dumb notions are shared by a segment of humanity. And that makes them feel, what they are not–SMART.

And that gums up the entire works.

Was a time when stupid people knew they were stupid.

I’m guessin’ about that, but I know one thing, nobody thinks that today.

Hell, seventeen of them are running for President.

Whistling Through the Clover of My Mind

Tags

ironies of life, life in the foothills, lifestyle, the GOP clowns

I’m not sure when it happened exactly. I don’t recall anything especial about the day.

What day?

Oh, the day I realized that I had the answer to most everything. When I got it all figured out, and knew that the remaining puzzle pieces were all gonna fit. In my picture of the world.

It should be a national holiday, shouldn’t it? And I know, now you are grabbing a blanket, some snacks and sitting down to listen carefully as I explain the answers  to all your hearts questions.

Sarah Palin continues to bring down the IQ level of the planet simply by breathing. She interjected herself and her simpleton daughter into the Duggar fray. She uses big words of which she knows not. Pedophilia comes to mind. Sarah, coming to a supermarket opening near you.

I ponder how profoundly the world changes. I mean, one doesn’t have to be a genius when it comes to history to understand that Jews and Arabs were natural allies for a good many HUNDREDS of years before they weren’t. Jews found some safety in Arab controlled lands at least when it came to the Christians who often slaughtered entire towns of them during the Crusading years. Muslims allowed them safe haven and allowed them to practice their faith largely unhampered.

And let us not forget that Jews fled places like Spain, often ending in Muslim held lands, to avoid  Torquemada and his forced “conversions” of Jews to Christianity. Muslims fared no better.

Yet today, we have a Middle East Muslim population determined (rationally or otherwise) to eradicate “Israel from the map”. Actually I think that refers more to the physicality of the state rather than all people Jewish, but still, a hell of a turn of events wouldn’t you say?

Is it in the water? No. It is the result of trying to pretend you’re holier than thou, when you are not. That’s why the GOP continues to find itself mired in the cesspool of sexuality wrongdoing virtually ALL the time. Hastert and the Duggars are simply the latest examples. We ain’t talkin’ your garden variety adultery ya know.

Like wrap your brain around the fact, that while wringing his holy hands in shock and dismay at Clinton’s adultery with Monica, the Speaker (Newty) was busy on his third serial adultery himself (and treating his ex in the despicable manner only a man who thinks of women as disposable arm candy can).

Newt stepped down in favor of Bob Livingston, who stepped down even before he formally took the gavel, having played around with as many as four women not his wives.

And then they settled on Dennis Hastert.

Well you know how that turned out. And then there was that guy who was pantin’ after pages. And the prostitutes, and the gay liaisons. And plenty of regular old adultery. It’s not that the Dems don’t engage in bad behavior, but it seldom flies in the face of their public hypocritical stances on gay rights, and the sanctity of marriage and all that other rot.

This sign should have been posted back in the fifties and sixties to most of the mothers giving birth to people like Santorum, Carson, Trump, Cruz, Walker, and so forth and so on and so on.

If I hear one more Republican strategist talk about the “wonderful field of candidates” we have this season, I’m gonna vomit.

Seriously do you paint crazy glue on your face so as to not crack up when saying that shit?

I read this and it seems accurate. The song says, “only the good die young.” That might well be true. I’m living proof. I ain’t good by design that’s for sure. My heart leads me to places that seem to rail at inequality, injustice, and all manner of dickish wrongitude, but it’s from no desire to be good. Just how it turned out. Education is a powerful teacher.

Speaking of which, living well is the best revenge I’m quite sure. And once I learned that, I spent my time trying to live well, which made living well much easier I gotta say. And knowin’ that the people who dislike me the most live these narrow mean little lives, well that’s my frosting.

My husband and I chatted the other night about how in our darker days (before we met or otherwise) when one sits and daydreams about the “perfect life”, well, reality caught up with us both. We are living it now. Both of us, rather blissful, sober in our assessment, very very aware of how lucky and blessed we are.

We love where we live (it ain’t called land of Enchantment for nothin” folks). We love our home and fitting it to our needs and desires as perfectly as possible. We love our companion pets whom we are privileged to care for. Most of all we love each other. After nearly sixteen years we still are never bored, and seldom disappointed. We laugh, and almost cry occasionally at how lucky we are.

I recall my father saying very sarcastically as he sat in his chair, his life fading away before his eyes, “And they call these my golden years.”

Well, they are truly golden for me, and I wake with such anticipation and such eagerness each day, fulfilling all my dreams and hopes for how I would live and do in these years after the working was finished.

But I’d still like a spare million should you have it. I can do more.

I Never Wanted to Be Nice

Tags

life in the foothills, me me me

I mean I seriously thought about being nice, and I rejected it. It’s a lousy gig, one to be avoided unless you are a masochist or something like that. Being nice means not being authentic, unless you decide that it’s worth all that work. Cuz being nice is hard work. Not for the faint hearted. Not for the lazy.

I know a lot of nice people. Past and present. They are always smiling. It’s part of the persona. At least while in public.

It’s always saying the right thing, and worse yet, it’s actually believing it. It’s liking to be liked, and being liked by so many people that when you die, well, there really won’t be a dry eye in the house. Your funeral will be well attended.

Why is it so sad when a funeral is not well attended? It shouldn’t be. I figure it’s as good of evidence as one gets that one has lived a life of profligate self-interest. I figure Donald Trump’s funeral will be well-attended. But it’s not because he ain’t all about self-interest. It will be because people want to be seen there, nothing else. There won’t be many wet eyes at that one.

Nice means submerging one’s true feelings because it’s not polite to be cruel or dismissive of the normal but boring detris of other people’s lives. First on the scene with a box of cookies. First to offer babysitting services. First to offer to plan a wedding shower. Yech, I gots way better stuff to do than that.

But it’s not all disrespect and narcissism. I mean being un-nice is not being deliberately mean or something. It has nothing to do with being good or bad. You can be good and un-nice. Or you can be good in spite of being un-nice.

Good is striving at all times (well most of the time maybe) to do the right thing, insofar as it leads to correct factual determinations and ultimately the use of such criterion in making decisions that matter. Or something like that.

It means caring about shit deeply. And it means speaking truth to anyone who will listen and shouting at those that won’t because you are damned sure that you probably know more than most about whatever you choose to pontificate upon.

It’s self-centered but benign. Or maybe not so benign, but that’s a word that doesn’t get used nearly often enough. I try to encourage the use of more words.

Being nice requires a lot of time. And to a lazy person, that means it starts with so many negatives that it surely can’t be resurrected except for the most important of situations.  It requires a whole lot of time and effort. Too much.

You know the nice people. They are uniformly nice. And secretly you admire them sorta, but not really because you figure they are more patsy than role model. They are sorta soft people, who settled on the safe “being nice” as their claim on the universe.

Wasn’t she just nice? The nicest person I ever knew. She was so nice. Everyone liked her.

Now that is the kiss of death ain’t it? What wants to be liked by everybody? What sort of bland is required to reach that pinnacle of mediocrity?

Seriously, nice is the easy way out in life. It’s bending to everyone’s whim because it’s far easier than sorting through all the demons that whisper in the background for you to come out and have some real fun.

Being the teacher I shall always remember as my favorite is not a claim to fame. Better to make someone sit up in shocked attention, and make it their life long goal to prove you wrong. That’s an impact. That’s worthy for the reference books, or at least an entry in Bartlett’s.

I don’t mean to make light. But I do.

For I am defending me.

Because, not being nice, no one else will.

Well, maybe not nobody. But not a lot of some bodies.

Few.

One other.

I’m a good person. I don’t pull the wings off flies. I don’t taunt little children, not pinch dogs to make them squeal. I think of global things that matter to lives in deep corners of the world and I tell people to think about them too.

I don’t steal or lie or commit adultery. I don’t commit treason, nor do I harbor hateful beliefs about fellow humans without strong evidence. If I do have the evidence, I’m surely not too polite to tell you. I figure you should know. It’s important to know who’s who.

Good is different from nice. Way different. And if you don’t know the difference, well, I ain’t got the time to explain it. And you might just be too stupid to get it anyhow. I have few illusions.

Illusions?

Figments of facts, floating by. Snatch one or two and make a statement. Let them all float by and you are living in suburbia serving the Merikan dream and largely brain-dead.

Who speaks of all this stuff?

It’s so much easier to play in your own puddle  but so much more fun to comment on the dirty water in your neighbor’s.

I don’t smile at clerks in stores all the time. Nice people do that. How can nice people be defined properly if I don’t help to anchor the alternative? So I don’t smile. And if they say one of those stupid things, like “did you find everything?” I’m likely to respond with a “now that is some sort of stupid question isn’t it? Either I gave up looking for “everything” or I did find everything, or I’m too lazy to care.

I point out stupid well. It’s a gift.

It’s lonely here in the gut section of humanity. Being the speaker of the obvious truth rather than pointing out how lovely your crappy dress looks with those shoes when they look hideous. Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not nice enough to not bother telling you that that crappy dress looks hideous with those shoes, because  why is it my job to care how you look? I enjoy a joke too ya know.

Mostly not being nice allows me to enjoy all the stuff I want to, without bothering to note the inconsistency in my commonly held positions on just about anything. Oh I bother now and then, and strike the old cognitive dissonance bell a time or two. But being good means never having to say you’re sorry. (Surely I did not lift that from Love Story?)

I’m almost sure I said everything. It’s hard to know, when you’re fighting writer’s block and feeling all Hemingwayish. No I did not mean that I’m fondling a shotgun or anything. Death wishes bore the shit out of me, and I find such people tedious.

I’m almost through grieving for Robin Williams. Almost.

Can you almost hear the sarcasm?

Can you almost wish this were over? No, my ego says no.

Almost.

We participate, (with a certain shamefacedness) in SoCS.

 

 

I Likey, You More Better, Capisce?

Tags

Catholic Church, faith my style, Humor

When all else fails, I can always talk about myself. It’s my favorite subject after all. Okay, like three dozen people just ran off to call in this story to their editors. . . .hot off the presses, Sherry is gonna talk about herself. Cheeky? Arrogant? Full of self? Oh yeah, all that.

Who does she think she is?

I said it before. Like her, or not, there are few other alternatives. She ain’t tepid oolong or Earl Grey.

She is me, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that you probably got that.

I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof.

Or not. Mostly not.

If I were an animal which one would I be?

Polar bear mama?

Ponder that with your swayt tea. Yeah, we get that down here in New Mexico. I frankly hate that stuff. Sugar in tea? Are you mad?

People make me wonder. I mean take Bobby Jiggles Jindal. That man has no more chance of winning the GOP nomination than I do of winning a best in show at Madison Square Garden. Yet he twattles on.

Twattle, is a word conceived in sexual confusion. A cross between cunt and flapping lips of the face. See? Now you get it.

It’s a hell of a thing when your spiritual guru is a gang banger.

Well, not really, but sorta.

Yesterday I was a sittin’ in the pew when I noticed a young man with the usual accoutrements of style. . .ear-ring, sleeves cut out of the t-shirt. jeans, sneakers. He was sittin’ a few pews to the front of me.

Which made it convenient to watch.

So instead of concentrating on my own sinful self, I was bemused by this young man’s spiritual methodology. A very long time on the kneeler. No singing of entrance hymns. No murmuring of the “profession of faith” which is such a convoluted rattling of various Council pronunciations as to be indecipherable to all but the most religiously stringent of the faithful.

When that Gloria came along, oh good grief. It’s so badly written as to leave a normal believer astounded that given the whole of the Roman Catholic Church, no better rendition can be rendered but this? A squawky, akin to the Star Spangled Banner inability to keep the tune, sort of music that is painful to the ears and the senses.

My gangbanger, stands stoicly.

Mostly he sits with his head down, as if he’s there to beg atonement for a laundry list of crimes too numerous to mention. “Sorry God, but I shot somebody in a drive-by, and then celebrated with some blow, while threatening the mama of my baby for not having my dinner ready.” In the next breath, more sinful conduct is extruded.

Is any of this real? Oh probably not at all. The dude is probably a pediatrician, just out in his hoodie regalia which helps him calm down from the high intensity life of savior of children.

I jest?

Mostly.

It provided a handy excuse for not paying attention as Father explained all about the Holy Spirit and how we neglect it in our prayers.

Is that true for you too?

Do you pray to Jesus or the Father or the Holy Spirit? All the same yet different as they say.

Is it reasonable that Christian theology must be so convoluted? I suspect it works for theologians who like to think of themselves as pretty smart folks. And they are for the most part. Least they sound that way.

So, I’m sittin’ in the pew, figurin’ this guy is really doin’ it right. Most people don’t if you noticed. They are rushin’ around front to back, always with the obligatory bow to acknowledge that Jesus is layin’ on the altar, while we are talkin’ to our neighbor in the pew about a meat sale at the Carniceria.

So, I’m not talkin’, just praying me some Rosary until the bells ring and they remind everyone to shut the phones off. And I’m watching my mentor. I watch him with his own style of reverence, again on that kneeler when most everybody else is standing, because  the whole consecration thing is something to be knelt about.

And I wonder what the hell am I doing here?

Trying to recapture what once I had, yet which has so thoroughly departed. The devotion, the intensity, the It fuckin’ matters syndrome, it seems ephemeral after all this. Yet, I turn attention back. Jesus, I am not worthy to have you “under my roof” which is another of those John Paul/Benedict changes that is just change for change’s sake.

And he goes up for communion, but he is ahead of me, and I don’t realize until I get back to my seat, conveniently marked by my purse (what do men do to find their seat again?), that he has gone.

Guru man, you are of that ilk, (which I have never been) of those who in the confusion of people traipsing from pew to communion and back again, against the backdrop of a couple of hundred faces, working out their salvation with a wafer and sip, chooses to keep walking to the back and out the doors. Done! Got what I came for. Jesus is digesting in my belly and I’m roaring off in my Mazda to new Saturday night adventures.

I’m a bit chagrined by this turn of events. I wanted him to remain pious to the last second. Maybe be one of those stalwart types who continues laboriously to sing the closing hymn while people jostle  to get by and into the aisle, seeking the fastest route of escape past the priest who is taking a stand outside hoping to catch every last hand as it passes.

Alas, he has escaped and I’m chagrined, yet I’ve spent exactly three minutes of the sixty actually contemplating my own salvation. I don’t account all that bunk for much actually. I am, as they say, more of a Matthew 25 person. Get on with feeding the hungry and tending to the sick.

My spiritual guru seems made of common clay after all.

I sigh.

Whatever I’m here for, I seem to find. Not sure what exactly that is. But I feel better about everything somehow.

I don’t find it makes me kinder to stupid drivers though. I still yell at them from the safety of my car seat, taking satisfaction in the fact that I’m not stellar driver, but I am damn well better than that!

And I put it all aside, as I do every Saturday evening. Done! Mass obligation met. No need to think about that until next Saturday.

Which reminds me of the old guy at the pool, who apologized so deeply and long for not being able to sign my petition to open the pool at 8 because as he said, he could never come early, since he’s at Mass every morning. Alex, who recites the Rosary while he walks the water channel, did sign. No morning mass for him.

Too much piety for me. Except when I was in formation to be a nun.

Oh that’s news to you?

Fancy that. I prolly should yak about that sometime.

But not today. I don’t like to brag, unless I have a captive audience. God I know, I’m such a bitch. Which makes you even madder doesn’t it?

Remember this: happiness is the best revenge.

We participate occasionally and poorly in SoCS.

 

 

To Thine Own Self, Be Specific

Tags

the middle, the right and left

I’m not sure how to negotiate these waters. I cannot walk upon them surely.

It’s not for want of trying. I surely have done that. Ad nauseum as they say. To both sides. Repeatedly. Exhaustively. With patience even. With frustration. With anger. With self-righteous certitude.

Never were two opposing groups so much alike. Never did two loggerheaded enemies share one common mind-set.

I suppose that’s why trying to reason with either is futile.

Right wing fundamentalists of the religious persuasion, and left-wing fundamentalists of the non-religious persuasion.

Neither has any concept of nuance.

Neither will entertain that there is a compromise to be sought after.

They are deranged in exactly the same way, having an operating system that conveniently filters out everything but “their side” and allows them to hold perfectly nicely contradictory views on a range of subjects without ever even being aware that the conflict exists.

Where are the rest of us to fit? How can we reclaim control of the bratty kids we apparently have raised and allowed to run free without harness?

For the rest of us are in the middle, believers and non-believers alike. We here in the center of things recognize that historically religion has much to crow about and much to be ashamed of. We have philosophically pondered and drove ourselves slightly mad at times in attempting to reconcile beliefs with reality and coming up with coherent and satisfying personal ideologies/theologies out of all the facts at hand.

We have arrived and still refine from time to time these beliefs or ideas. We recognize that there is much that is still not a perfect fit. It provides us with intellectual exercise when we wish it, and we shrug and get on with the day-to-day activities of life the rest of the time.

We don’t obsess about any or all of it. We approach it as a puzzle, which we work at for a time, and then leave off for a time as other things impinge upon our time. We see it as a lifelong quest, and part of being human. We have more questions than answers and we are okay with that.

We enjoy from time to time a rousing discussion with people who think differently than we do. That’s when we begin to get in trouble. For we reach out once again to have normal conversation and instead we are ridiculed, be damned, laughed at, and told we are doomed to be either more stupid than a rock or headed for a sea of molten lava for eternity.

We sigh. We shake our heads, we wonder where are all the others like us?

The truth is, the others like us are the majority, yet like the middle in general, we only come out to play when there is something big at stake. An election, a holiday. We require something large to move us from our soccer games and endless to-do lists and planning for down time with the kids.

We, you see, are the great middle of basic ennui. The issue of religion, of politics, of the environment, of anything much at all is “uh, yeah I care, but I’m busy now. Catch me next week, I may have time to squeeze you in.”

See the carers are the ones who get shit done. The passionate ones. They are invested. The “the world isn’t worth living in unless we can change this.” Those people change the world, or commit suicide, or at least think of it once or twice. They have the unfailing optimism that they can make a different. The are unceasing. They get up a thousand times from the ground and continue the march.

They are heroes to me. Well, heroes only if they are on my side of things. Otherwise they are fanatics.  Sometimes they get in the way of success because they won’t compromise. But they are the canaries in the tunnels, chirping away to remind us of what needs doing. They make us feel small and selfish too. And that leads sometimes to us blocking them from our view so as not to feel those things.

It is the purpose of every campaign manager to awaken the beast. Whether it be of a candidate or a cause, the point is to “get out the vote” “get the signatures” or “get the funding.” It’s getting the behemoth to move out of the way, and sometimes to actually act.

You see we want to be left alone. We want to believe that the planting of spring flowers, and the trip to Carlsbad, and the creation of that new mousse cake are IMPORTANT things worthy of our time. And the carers are there to remind us of how really unimportant those things really are when children are starving and people are not free. They remind us by their presence that they are better than us, and we don’t like that much.

I’m no different. I just talk about shit more, and call that “my contribution.” I’m not out organizing and marching because it impinges too damn much on what I want to do. 

Recently I did my usual stupid thing. Somebody raised the question of petitioning our pool to open an hour earlier. Not content to just nod that I would sure like that, I did what I always do, stood up and offered myself as the “petition” collector. I do such things not out of some humble service offering, but because deep down I figure if I  want something done right, I gotta do it.

Put me in a group, and I’ll take it over sure as shit, because I can’t stand wasting time with people who are gonna take a week to figure out the obvious. Sometimes I’m undoubtedly right in this assessment, mostly I’m just an arrogant bitch who thinks I know better.

In either case, I bring the work on myself.

Soon, I was faced with idiots who told me, “oh you shouldn’t do a petition. It’s better to just go up and talk to the administration. ‘They don’t like petitions.'”

So the sheep of which most of America is composed, refrained from the petition. “I’ll sign later after we find out if they are okay with us doing that.”

Yikes people, how did we win a war of Independence with such wimps?

So I called the administrator and set up a talk time. And it went well, and he was distressed that anyone was spreading the idea that the pool personnel were “against the right of people to sign a petition.” And as we all know, the decision to open earlier would be based in large part on how many would actually come an hour earlier, so the petition was necessary.

So then I ran a petition for a week. And I was in and out of the water a dozen times some days, and carrying it in the water and trying to keep the paper dry while people stood in swirling water and signed.

And I found that instead of the thirty or so people I thought I could muster, I ended up with sixty-two signatures. And I turned it in, and three days later, they announced that they would open an hour earlier starting in Mid-May.

And I’m so incredibly glad the process is over, because it impinged on my life and I got shit to do. But I got another dose of how frustrating it is when you try to do something. Thank you vague people who said, they’d “think about it,” while rushing to grab their foam weights and enter the artificially heated pool to “work out.”

And that’s it folks. The planet is dying because we befoul it, and “hey, I’ll think about it, but right now I gotta get that box of rice krispies off the shelf.”

The country is turning over to an oligarchy of wealthy business leaders, and it’s “oh, yeah, regrettable that Citizens United thing, but I’m running late for my hair appointment.”

That’s us. That’s human nature I suppose. That’s me. Unless it becomes something I care about enough to take charge of it.

How to turn that to everybody in the middle land of “not my fucking problem”? I dunno.

I think Socrates had this problem. Jesus sure did. How to get us to move off our butts and fix stuff?

See it’s an age-old problem.

Back to pondering how we ever got out of caves.

 

 

I’d Like a Piece of that Peace

Tags

peace, SoCs

Ya ever wonder how two words end up sounding alike yet have nothing to do with one another? I mean, a piece is a part of a whole, a unit unto itself. It is a “something” that together with some more somethings makes another thing.

Yet it also means having sex with someone “a piece” or giving some of your thoughts to another as in “piece of my mind”, which is not literal as in a piece of pie would be, but rather an idea conveyed, which still remains with the thinker. I can also demand a “piece of the action” claiming that for some reasons I’m entitled so share in certain activities or profits.

Confusing?

How does a word get to mean so many diverse things?

Now peace means no war. It means tranquility and freedom from turmoil. It relates to countries, groups within a country, families, or even the individual. Wherever there is upheaval one desires cessation. Calmness is desired.

I am not sure why we crave peace, but we certainly do. We say we do all the time, while we of course war. We say our aim in war is peace, but we curiously think that comes at the end of a gun rather than at the end of a string of sentences.

To want a piece of peace is to lay claim to some place physical or otherwise where we impose peace. Our island in the midst of chaos. It’s often our home, our castle as we construe it.

While it seems for there to be peace there must be all peace, we insist that if we can’t get real peace, we will settle for this semblance of it. We will have a cabin in the woods. We will meditate into our piece of peace.

It will be contained within our minds. No matter what you say or do in front of me, I won’t give it up. This piece of peace I have established. I’ll fight pretty hard to maintain its perimeter. But somehow that is not violence, since I’m preserving my peace.

People say, I won’t talk to you about politics or religion; it will disturb my peace. There are rules to peace so it seems.

I will sit and watch all around me go to hell, but it will not disturb my peace. That is something isn’t it?

I’ve got my peace, screw you buddy.

I’ll not only take no responsibility for this fine mess, I won’t lift a finger to fix it, cuz it ain’t my mess.

They gotta meme for that.

Catchy huh?

Yeah, I know.

Climb into your blanket fort and pretend it ain’t yours.

Peace at any price?

Now that will start a row.

Neville Chamberlain is reputed to have desired peace so much that any peace would do. Not yours or theirs, but England’s was enough.

That didn’t work, because Hitler wanted to his fantasy at any price.

It is your mess.

You can’t avoid it.

You can only look the other way.

So that means peace can be really fake.

It can be a pretence for peace, one imposed on an ungrateful world which refuses to go away, or at least just keep it’s horrors to itself.

I wanna get a hold of some peace, but my heart keeps looking around and seeing injustice, and I can’t get my piece of peace until I can wipe those images from my brain.

And I can’t do that, until I change the world.

Imagine that.

Talk politics and talk religion and stand forth against the raging tide of ennui and lies and speak truth to whom ever is standing in front of me. Imagine that.

If they gave a war and nobody came would there be war any more?

If we don’t care enough to learn how to tell a liar from a saint are we seeking peace, or only a piece?

It’s Earth Day.

The earth would like some peace. It needs a lot of pieces of peace these days.

Whales need a lot of peace. Not only are their seas and oceans being polluted, but they are still incarcerated and forced to perform for humans.

Women need a lot of peace. In a lot of places for a lot of things.

The list would be long. All the shit that needs some peace.

God probably needs peace too. I bet She never figured that this particular human sentience would be such a pain in the ass. We write books and then claim that God wrote them, and then we tell each other what they mean, and we all disagree, and we call each interpretation “being the real church”.

We all need peace from politics, so we say. As I said, some say they won’t talk to people who mention that stuff. I guess that’s why we got a House and Senate full of morons and when you travel around the states and cities, you find even more of them.

They say, that to achieve peace, you have to be peace. I guess that might be true. You are becoming a piece of peace, and when there are enough pieces, that makes a whole peace.

But it’s not enough to be peace. It’s not like seeping into the fabric of evil and suddenly it’s not evil any more.

You gotta actually speak up and speak out and call it what it is. Name it.

When it ain’t fair, you gotta spit out that it’s unfair, and how it can be fair. That’s transforming. Because it’s all too clear a whole lot of folks have no clue what is fair.

So are you gonna do peace today?

Are you gonna take your piece and go out and explain truth to the world?

Or are you gonna stay in the blanket fort, and pretend you got it all by yourself?

Brought to you by SoCs

Anecdote to Cognitive Dissonance

Tags

abuse, editorial, life in the foothills, women's rights

Life is sure simpler if you avoid conflict. I know how easy it would be to just shrug and say, “well, that’s me, complicated” and just return to my purchased serenity. But the price is the incessant nagging that won’t leave me alone. Conflict must be resolved. It seems, well unseemly to do anything else.

Let me dispel any notion that I was someone of importance in the feminist movement. I was a cipher to put it quite bluntly. I came along at a time when the movement to date meant that I didn’t have to struggle with some things and too late to matter regarding others.

For instance, I showed up right on time when it came to law school, with all universities working hard to bring their women’s numbers up. I benefited no doubt and probably got in when say ten years earlier or maybe even five, I might not have.  I was probably too early yet to be an air force pilot, and other occupations like police officer or firefighter were still male bastions. I consider myself lucky that those jobs were not within reach for me at the time.

I recall no march that I participated in, since those were few and far between. I was one of those “fellow travelers” who made their point largely by commenting on doors opened, “I can open my own door thank you,” and ladies first, “I’m fine being in the place in line I arrived at.”

But my heart was surely there. And as with most women of my time (and those who became politically aware) I read the required texts of feminism, listened to the words of feminist spokeswomen, and re-evaluated most of the “advice” I’d been offered by mother and other female family members. I mostly began to rethink the notions of what women want, and what they need to do to get it.

We rejected the casting couch. We demanded a say at the table of decision making on serious issues, not just those pertaining to “women’s issues.”

But old habits die hard.

I know there are women my age who married their childhood sweethearts. And bless them, if that turned out well for them. But most of us did not, and the 60’s and onward provided us opportunities to test out our sexual freedom as well. And with that came the perils. I would bet that not one woman who was sexually experimenting (meaning separating sex from love as men always do) was not subjected to some form of rape. Date rape is what I refer to. It need not have been violent, but it was insistent to the point that we succumbed rather than continue objecting. We told ourselves or were led to believe by an insisting man, that we had encouraged it, or brought it on, and we can hardly blame him now for wanting to “finish.”

So we understand about emotional and physical abuse, whether overt or “benign”.

Over the years the struggle has had its ups and downs and re-orientations. It has focused on poor women, and women in the boardroom. On wage equality, job opportunities, and image. Lately it has focused on abuse.

Many have recognized that until women and especially young girls have better images of themselves regarding power and influence, real progress won’t be made. This is because too many female children are still being raised in traditions that value being quiet and “polite,” and above all knowing “one’s place.”   Until we teach our young boys and girls that gender is fairly insignificant to their dreams and responsibilities in life, we cannot effectively marshal the numbers necessary to push old white men off their pedestals of entitlement and take our rightful place alongside.

We must however, not merely preach the message, but we must live it, and therein lies my conflict of the day.

We are a culture that deifies to a great extent anyone in the public eye. Whether they be movie “stars” or singers, or sports professionals, we look upon them as objects to be admired. We seek to act like them, in however that translates to the average life. We dress, eat, drink as they do. We attempt to live in our modest means with trinkets that resemble their splendor.

To a degree we do this with politicians as well. Who doesn’t admire those who have managed to become known to large segments of the world simply by wielding power?

We fantasize these people into very inhuman beings, almost in some cases, as incapable of being anything but the perfection we infuse them with. They are bereft of the failings that we suffer. We tell ourselves that this is not the case, but truly we do so.

And yet, many if not all of them are flawed, as deeply flawed as we.

And of course there is a tabloid press out there ready and willing to make a buck trading on their failures. This is good in one sense of course for it reminds us of their feet of clay.  But, to those we worship from afar, we tend to find ways of avoiding what we don’t want to believe.

I and my husband have determined that we cannot bear the ugly underbelly of hate that a Mel Gibson exhibits to the world when he is sufficiently drunk or angry to let his true beliefs come forth. Gibson is nothing but a hateful racist of the worst kind. Yet we recognize his talents in acting and are saddened that we miss the opportunities to enjoy it.

There are others. Many others.

Woody Allen is my nemesis. Such a huge talent, such amazing movie-making, yet  an ugly man in his abuse of girls. One can only claim so long that the charges, which he denies, are false. The fact that he married his adopted daughter speaks volumes. Mariel Hemingway was 17 years old when Mr. Allen tried to convince her to come to Europe with him.  I cannot ignore the obvious any longer, even though Diane Keaton seems to manage.

We cannot continue with “artists must be allowed their quirks” no matter how inappropriate.

Bill Cosby was easier. The sheer number of accusers is all the evidence needed. This man abused women in a ruthless  “because I’m Bill Cosby” sort of ugliness that offends on every level.

Charlie Chaplin abused girls. So did Roman Polanski.

It is said that John Lennon beat his first wife and so did Eric Clapton. Ike Turner beat Tina.

We make allowances because of who they are.

We cannot continue to do so. Lennon, I’m told, publicly confessed his sins. Ike certainly didn’t.

There will be no more Woody Allen movies in my future, much as it pains me to do so. He is a genius of sorts, but a sick bastard as well.

I cannot and will not pick and choose based on how much I admire the work they do. I cannot, because I have a responsibility to girls growing up in this very difficult world. I cannot send mixed signals.

WE cannot send mixed signals. We must stand up for all women everywhere who are subjected to emotional and physical abuse, who are beaten down into believing that they are entitled to no more than they get. We must stand up, or collapse into our suburban retreats being nice grannies while organizing family get-togethers in some refusal to be a part of the reality that confronts our youngsters every day.

That is what it means to be a grown-up. We must leave the world a better, safer place. Damn us if we don’t.