Drifting, or not

Scientific American 297, 26 - 29 (2007) 

Finally, I'm beginning to understand this drifting thing of mine, being a drifter. Nothing in life is permanent. We're mortal. Simple.

So what is a life spent on being stable, secure, living in one place and accumulating bunches of stuff. For what end? This is the closest I've ever come to not wanting to move on, to not looking over the hill to what is there or even not there. I have art on the walls here that I enjoy, furniture that is comfortable, and a past. That past is what is the most enticing of all. The security and simple comfortability of knowing what was and thinking what is. The thing is it is not real. It is not real at all.

Of course I have no idea what is real, but I do know and understand with all my being that there is no permanence. Nothing in life is permanent no matter how badly we might what it to be so. Nothing is thicker than water. Being is illusive.

As much as I feel a semblance of truth in my thinking lately it has nothing to do with any god, but more the nature of our impermanence and the illusion of our existence. I've heard these thoughts often enough before in reading and thinking about Buddhism, but now more than an inkling of all this is beginning to creep into my mind with glimpses here and there of what might only be real reality. Perhaps not. I mean, real reality? Really?

I've been getting terribly angry in public a lot lately. Not at home. Not when alone. The other day, actually Christmas Eve, I went to Walmart to cash my paycheck and decided to risk the crowd to buy a few things. Silly me. After standing in line for around 10 minutes and finally getting next to my turn at the self-checkout, a couple pulled in front of me from the side. I said excuse me but there is a whole line of people who have been waiting here, but I was completely ignored and off I went calling the woman a bitch and there was no stopping me after that.

The point is I could give you a couple of other scenarios like this where I have lost control. And so I think what happens with a more delicate mind when they have lost patience with the world. I often wonder how and why more of us aren't losing control, or maybe I just don't see it. Maybe more people are losing control at home with their spouses and children or with themselves. Maybe not. Maybe I am just an oddball with no patience or just an old lady who can no longer contend with the general madness of everyday life. I'm not sure.

Anyway, I am sure that what I've always thought is is not. I can not handle the grandstanding of our congress or our purported caring about the atrocities in this country. I cannot talk about it without losing control. I lose my temper or I cry. I can no longer deal with how things are and so I've somehow been given the gift of seeing beyond it all. To the greater pale.

I know. How grandiose and full of hubris I might sound. Perhaps how schizophrenic I may sound. But it is all I have. To think there is something much more than this simple sad life of people killing each other and stealing from each other in the name of greed. I must believe there is something more and so I have begun to see that yes, there is more. But it is not in this tragic everydayness.

But rather in a something that takes me beyond it all and offers me glimpses of how irrelevant this human life really is.

And once again here's one of my very most favorites, Peggy Lee and "Is That All There Is?"

 
Well, then let's keep dancing! What the hay I say!

Help me understand

Over the last week I've done a lot of thinking and wondering as to why people don't like Obama as President. For me, I think he leans too far to the right and is not doing all he can to help the everyday person in America. I've made excuses for him saying that perhaps he has to cater to greater influences and demands from those who are truly in charge of the world. I don't know. I do know that I think he is better for the average person in America than the Romney camp.

Meanwhile, I'm trying very hard to understand why people like and support Romney and all that he stands for politically. And so I'm asking you, Romney supporters, what is it about the right that is good and upstanding? I swear I am not being facetious or flippant.

My concern is that close to half of America voted for Romney and I have no real clue as to why. I think I understand why wealthy people support him but I'm at a loss as to why the working and middle classes like him. I'm asking you to help me understand what it is that I don't or can't see about the other half. I think by listening to and coming to understand the other, we may also come to understand our own place in the world better.

I know there are intelligent and caring and unafraid Romneyians out there.

Happy Birthday Eugene Debs

"While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal class, I am of it. While there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Eugene Debs

Have you seen the new Writer's Almanac yet? 
If not, you can read about Eugene Debs, here.
Just after a lovely poem by Kathe L. Palka.

Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison under the Espionage Act during World War I for saying "The rich start the wars, the poor fight them." 
How many times have I said the same thing?

Also, "When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats; when we've stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends."

Why do such words scare people? When most people know nothing of Socialism why are they afraid of it? 

Hopefully, there will come a day soon when we can all be friends around the world.

I am my mother

Nagase Kiyoko

I am always aware of my mother,

ominous, threatening,

a pain in the depths of my consciousness.

My mother is a shell,

so easily broken.

Yet the fact that I was born 

bearing my mother’s shadow

cannot be changed.

She is like a cherished, bitter dream

my nerves cannot forget

even after I awake.

She prevents all freedom of movement.

If I move she quickly breaks,

and the splinters stab me.

Nagase Kiyoko

 

When I was younger I never noticed my mother inside me as I do today. However, she was always there trying to get inside my head, lecturing, belittling and shaming. My mother would go on tirades and my sister and I quickly learned to say nothing and to simply sit meekly until she exhausted herself. I never wanted to be like my mother.

And yet? Here I am today leading much the same life she did and having made most of the same mistakes. When I try to understand what the meaning of life is or what my purpose in this life is, I think it is to evolve past my parents. The meaning in life is to become a better person than your parents were. In this way each generation can evolve into gentler kinder more caring people. I hope.

Sometimes I think I have failed at my job and am only as good as my mother was, or am as bad maybe. But then on a day like today I think no, there is still time. There is time to become better. My consciousness has evolved past my mother's way of thinking, but I have to say there are days. Days that I am nothing more than my mother.

Yesterday was like that. I don't know where it comes from. Well, my genes have a bit of something to do with it. But there are days where I have no patience with people, no sympathy, and little empathy. Days where my best thoughts are of how people stink of cigarettes or cheap whiskey and wondering where I'd last put the Lysol. Yesterday all I felt capable of doing was taking information, processing, and sending people on their way with a bag of groceries. I didn't want to listen to their sad stories. Not yesterday. I was my own sad story. In other words, it was a day of self-pity run rampant.

It's days like this that help me to understand my mother because the mood stems from something physical, switches not thrown or a gate broken allowing too much of a particular chemical to flow too freely. On days like this there are no particular thoughts that lead to a mood change. There is just something so wrong with the mechanics of the brain that it effects my very soul and I know this is what would happen to my mother when she would lose control. There is no choice.

There is no choice until, again out of seemingly nowhere, somehow a bit of clarity shines in and lets me see that I am being an ass. It is then that the thoughts can change the mind, but it is a slow battle of being cold, seeing the cold, thinking warm, cold again, a bit warmer then colder still as awareness tells me I am doing it again and then remembering I can change it and the warmth comes back and sits with me until my body begins to relax and care once again.

It is a process of pain that was once numbed with alcohol and drugs. I didn't know my mother was an alcoholic. I really do not like that term -- alcoholic, or addict for that matter. I didn't know my mother used alcohol and pain killers to stop her pain until really, quite recently. But she did. And I understand. There is still so much inside me that thinks as she did, but it has gotten to where I can see the fallacy and futility in that sort of thinking.

The days are growing shorter and colder, and I'm still here. There is something of a miracle in that. I can't say that I'm grateful for my life because that just doesn't make sense to me, but I am grateful for the clarity I've discovered, awareness, and having found good people.

I am not my mother.

My body is not a battleground

In case you haven't seen this yet, here you go --

Pistol packing mamas

Just sitting here with my feet propped up recuperating from a day at work and watching the news when what do I hear -- a blurb about a meeting on the NEW "open carry" law. Being my naive silly liberal self I thought oh no, it cannot be! Please God don't let them be talking about guns. Maybe they're talking about openly carrying alcohol. That would work for me.

But nope, here's what they're talking about --

from OpenCarry.org

Sexy eh? 

And I thought they only did this kind of stuff in Arizona where they need guns to kill snakes and poachers and people running across the river, but I guess I wasn't really thinking since Oklahoma is probably more backwards and scary politically than any other state in the U.S. 

What's really funny about this photo is the way the guns hardly even show. You'd think these guys would want a woman with her gun drawn and ready. It looks like one is a pistol and one is a taser. The taser being for just in case you don't "really" want to kill your neighbor. 

Ah, I'm getting too old for this ka-ka. I really really am. It makes the west coast look really good. What's a girl to do when she can't wear skinny jeans and has no guns? I ask you.

If it's not the debates, then what could it be?

So much heavy on my mind tonight. Politics. Revolution. Anarchy. Abuse. Desertion. Defense. Loneliness. Retaliation. Revenge. Religion. Indecency. Slavery.

Maybe it's the debates?

Or,

I've been working for the last two weeks in a local food pantry and already, I'm tired of the stories. Some I think are doing nothing more than trying to get over. Some need serious help and care. Some are dying a long slow hard death.

Those who are trying to get over are my bread and butter. They pay my little salary and they make me angry. They, sadly, are the majority. People who not only are willing to sacrifice their decency and pride for a free bag of groceries or a referral for half off on furniture at the local thrift store, while having no qualms about begging as they readily give up their decency. These are the people Romney types talk about.

Still, what brings a person to this point? What makes it okay for a young healthy male with no wife, no children, to go into an agency and beg for food? Does he see himself as the hobo hero? Taking what he can get as he rides the box cars of America? Obviously, hardly. He is what? I'm still asking myself.

But then to the crux of the matter. Those who need a little help, a lot of help, a little care and love, from those who have a bit of something to maybe give, the lost and forsaken of our world.

They are the women. The majority. Some elderly. Some young with children barely a year apart. And some with a history that bespeaks way too many horrors. One woman, 23 years old, white, single, no kids, was referred over by another agency that has given her a home for the next year provided she look for work and abstain from alcohol and drugs, to pick up a bag of groceries for her new home. She told me she slept 12 hours last night. That's how safe she felt her first night of not having to answer to someones demands on her body.

We all know the stories of the kids, but I don't know that they are any sadder than those typical of this woman's story. I'd like to say I am deeply touched but you know what, that doesn't say a god damn thing. Do you know how many women have no place to stay where they can feel safe? How many children are attacked and abused every night as we sleep on our, what? Posturepedic, tempurpedic, beds?

I've never been good at drawing boundaries, and this is probably much of the reason I've always walked the fringes. No, I'm no better than someone sleeping in that house on the hill for I've always had the wherewithal to somehow survive. I'm a lucky person.

And this makes me wonder, just what is a boundary? How do we manage to separate ourselves from those who are barely managing, coping, surviving? How do I not think of the women who are traded each day for sex? Around our world. In our country. Here in Oklahoma. In our backyards. And the children who are brandied about? Here. Here in the U.S.

And it makes me wonder, who am I? Who am I to sit here and ask these questions? Ask these questions. Who do I think I am? God help me.