It came to me in a (very disturbing) dream

I had the most disturbing dream.

It was partly my fault– per Nora Ephron the second glass of wine is the reason you wake in the middle of the night, and I am sure the entire bar of Newman’s Own Orange Dark Chocolate I ate at about 10 pm did not help either. And it was partly because my husband had to get up at 4.45 in order to get to the airport on time this morning. I woke the poor guy up at 2.30 to ask him what time it was. Sigh.

Anyhoo.

A lovely dream of my family and a beautiful and beloved Irish setter type family dog went sour when I found myself harvesting the dog’s pelt for quilting.

It was a lovely day. I had the dog’s parts neatly and bloodlessly laid out on the front lawn like the pieces of a stuffed animal and was busy getting what I needed for my quilting project when someone realized what I’d done.

What the hell!?!?

Other than mosquitos and wasps that directly threaten my kid I cannot bring myself to kill even a bug in my house or outdoors. I believe it is bad luck to kill spiders. I worry myself sick over the epidemic mass extinctions of honey bees. In the house I trap big bugs under a mason jar and slide a paper under the jar to release it outdoors. I can’t bring myself to kill bugs in my garden– I lost all my eggplant and tomato plants that way early in the fall.   I tried soapy water– nothing doing. And that was the strongest poison I could handle.  My kid loves bugs. I am deathly afraid of them and completely grossed out by them but I know how precious even the least of these is to our fragile ecological balance,  and we take photos of them for her nature notebook.

I HATE to shop at Burlington Coat Factory because I still shudder when I think about the scandal of how their suppliers harvested fur to make their coats. For the last 7 almost 8 years I’ve had not one but THREE aging dogs I rescued from various inhumane and neglectful situations– garbage dump,  running the streets of Nashville or on a four foot chain, and a fireworks store/gas station somewhere between Nashville and Atlanta– and they have cost me I cannot tell you how much money and trouble. They eat better than most humans– you should see how much their vegetarian, dairy free dogfood costs!

I don’t eat meat and I steer clear of as much egg and dairy as I possibly can for animal cruelty reasons– although the 30 lb I lost, the nasty shit that they use in agriculture and factory farming that hangs around in meat and dairy and the joy I get from vegan cooking don’t hurt one bit in confirming my decision.  I buy beauty products only if they are free of animal products and come from companies that swear they don’t animal test– the companies could certainly be lying, but I’m doing the best I can.  I sent my first check to PETA the other day. Their tactics are iffy, but SOMEBODY has got to create awareness.  

So what am I doing using squares of the family dog’s pelt for quilting, even in a dream?

Okay, so I’ve joked about making my incredibly fat and fluffy and pushy (but loving) shepherd mix’s skin into slippers. I tell her that all the time. But that is AFTER she dies naturally, not before!!

In my dream, I have to go to a counseling group (held in a bar, naturally) to face up to what I’ve done.

My mother tells me she knew I had problems but she had no idea I felt competitive with the poor dog.

I have to go to court. I have to face news reporters.

The shame!

There’s a shift in the dream when the reporter goes to cover the cruelty that takes place at a local pig farm where the animals are raised and slaughtered in incredibly inhumane conditions for meat. He takes photos and raises an outcry. Good!

At some point in the dream I think to myself, wait a minute. I’m being prosecuted for humanely slaughtering and using my dog’s pelt for a quilt, when 3-4 million healthy and simply unwanted companion animals are euthanized every year in shelters?

In my dream I realize that my crime may call attention to the broader issue– if a bumbling unstable housewife killing the family dog causes such outrage, why in hell do we tolerate the way we get our meat and the way we treat our companion animals?

And then I realize that it’s just a dream.

And then my husband is kissing me goodbye as he leaves for the airport. And it’s still dark but I cannot go back to sleep.

I too believe that you can judge our society on how it treats its most vulnerable– the aged, animals, children, parents whose balls are to the wall because they must now provide for their children and so must make terrible choices between rent or house payments and food on the table and emotional wellbeing for their babies.

I am sickened if I think about so many aspects of these issues. I loved Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked. Sure it was suggested to me by that ungrateful republican libertarian drill in ANWR whore (sorry) that tried to break up my family not to mention her own– we’re doing just fine on our own, thank you– and so its complex portrayal of evil should make me a bit insecure or should at least have been a message to me. But it’s still an awesome book, and I pray it’s a foreshadowing of some sort of awareness in our society that while they cannot speak (that we know of anyway), they can certainly suffer.

So I think I had the dream for a reason. It points out so much.

1. As my husband once asked– and hurt my feelings too– why do I think I have to singlehandedly take on and be so angry about these things (racism, gender prejudice, issues facing parents and children, etc.)?

Have I told you that anxiety is a huge part of my personality (or ego defense/mask, however you want to look at it)?

So I really need to take a xanax and be a bit more realistic about the size of my share of the responsibility and angst of our society’s evils.

2. The hypocrisy in our society is simply stunning. I’m not necessarily even down on people who eat meat– some of my best friends eat meat, haha. Just open your eyes, as many of my best friends have done, and be informed and honest with yourself about where it comes from and then make your choice.

Oh, and don’t tell  me vegan and vegetarian are elitist choices– plant proteins are cheaper than meat and go a lot farther, and a crock pot sets even a busy working person free to create delicious vegan foods cheaply and quickly.

Maybe this is easier for me to take in because I grew up in redneck land, where pinto beans and macaroni and cheese, white rolls and green beans and corn and taters were good eatin’.  

I dropped 20 lb just giving up meat and still eating every other food group including refined flours and suagrs like a pig– could this perhaps an answer to the obesity epidemic that is disproportionately harming other groups of our most vulnerable citizens, the impoverished or disadvantaged, minorities, and the poor or working poor so horribly from tragically earlier and earlier ages, perhaps?

So in a nutshell, I need to stop losing sleep and feeling like a murderer because I have failed miserably at preventing any and all animal cruelty.  AND, I can be proud of the little I am doing and continue to pray for a better world and for truly manageable and effective opportunities to contribute to something better. (As opposed to throwing blood on people wearing fur coats, even if I do snicker a little when I hear that another horrified starlet was victimized.)

So.

I’m going to go take a xanax and make my vegan menu and shopping list for the week. And then I’m going to do some quilting.

It’s settled

The gloves are off.

I was voting for hope. I was voting the issues. But now I’m just voting for Obama because he’s black.

Bus boycott and the march to the Capital notwithstanding, I live in still extremely segregated Alabama, okay?

It’s plenty.

But last night in the debate my man used the phrases ‘clean coal’ and ’safe storage.’

Jaysus.

I can’t remember every key point I heard in the debate last night… during the first bit I was ferrying food back and forth for the wonderful friends who came over for our debate watching party. Clad in my apron, armed with my matching dish towel as I slaved over the delicious hot food and the good china (okay so my husband cooked, not me, I worked all day, although I did come home at lunch to sweep, wash the tile floors, air the stinky dog beds, and bleach the guest bathroom), I had the urge to hoot in redneck derision many times– okay so a few times I actually did so. But I can’t remember why, dammit. I need to catch the video of tha first bit.

A big, fat, red white and blue Republican Party of Alabama RV was parked around the corner from my house, tonight. Wanna go tip it with me, like a giant red white and blue cow? What was it doing in my neighborhood?

That was *not* the sort of integration I meant when I said I am proud that our nieghborhood is integrated. ‘Course maybe the folks in that house hope that a few more years of this will finally drive the undesirables back out of our neck of the woods– cause they sure as hell won’t be able to get or make payments oon the mortgages on the extremely modest and cheaply built houses ’round heah.

 Oh, all right. There are a few other reasons I’m voting for Obama. I’ll come clean.

McCain is all about nuclear power.

http://blog.sustainablemiddleclass.com/

He said he would freeze all spending EXCEPT defense. He really said that.

The obscene neglect of veterans’ needs after they’ve sacrificed their health, their limbs, their sanity for our nation– for McCain, nothing but a quick side mention.

He says we have to cut spending. Every agency can stand cuts.

Like the Department of Energy Libraries, perhaps?

Worst of all…

He dared to invoke the name of President Eisenhower who said, in 1961, the sacred words my mother instilled into my heart, mind and conscience for ever. She told me to beware of the military industrial complex. Somehow McCain blew this aspect of Eisenhower’s legacy right off. And it was on.

Ike called it.  Mama said there’d be days like these. Eisenhower will be one of the dear souls honored on my altar for All Souls’.

“Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

[Emphasis here and in later paragraphis is mine.]

“But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs — balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage — balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

 [I guess according to GWB, it's all been clearly necessary, eh? At least in Iraq... I'd love to make a chart of how many Iraqi children Saddam Hussein killed in his entire tenure (I'm not saying he was a good person. But stay with me here) compared to how many have been killed in Iraq due to our invasion... or how many have died right here in the US due to neglect, poverty, abuse, lack of health insurance, or our wonderful infant survival rate-- what, we're 42nd best in the world, eh? We should be proud of that, right?]

“The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

[Our citizenry has been asleep since 2003. No wait, since the first Gulf War. War is good business. And business is good.]

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

• and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

[I wouldn't call them elite, exactly...]

“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

“Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

“Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

“Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

“Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

“So — in this my last good night to you as your President — I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

“You and I — my fellow citizens — need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.

“To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration:

“We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love. “

Amen.

oh, NOW they’re worried about sexism?

 

I’m so fucking sick of all the bullshit about sexism… it was perfectly okay to be sexist against Hillary Clinton, and now they’re worried about sexism toward sarah Palin?

 Maybe this one is fake

 

But this one is not.

 

What the hell is she wearing? Her Land’s End Squall from the 80’s? and with those HORRIBLE shoes. WTF?!? Hillary would never be that stupid.  Even without a stylist she’d know better.

I will not

I will not answer to my slave name.

I need to take some advice from myself.

You gotta admit, that’s pretty fucking inspired.

A long time ago my mom gave my then-boyfriend, who was on his way to a new job or school or something, a little card that said on the front ‘always carry a little bag of shit with you’ and inside ’so that when someone tries to give you shit, you can say no thanks.’

Or something to that effect.

Sometimes — okay, a lot of times– I lose sight. I cry and snivel, my heart breaks.

Ass kicker, not ass kisser.

What am I doing crying my eyes out about this? I didn’t do it, you did! Defend myself? You’ve got to be kidding. I get the martyr badge, bitch. Maybe next year you can have it, our first year together you I am damn sure you earned it, but this year it’s mine.

What am I doing wasting time feeling bad because someone disagrees with or criticizes me? I know what’s going on. I know what a decent, caring person I am. I’ll give you limitless chances before I really get pissed off, because I love you and I see the best in people until they prove me wrong about five times. If I finally get there, it’s cause you’ve been way too big a asshole for far too long.

I have proof of this… I am still married. To the same person. And I lovingly let the person back into our life who f*cked me over the first time, so that she could f*ck me over a second time. (See post ‘Here’s the sad thing.’)

I study my ass off about things like animal cruelty, the environment, alternative energy, women’s and children’s issues, relationships, community building, racial and gender prejudice, wellness, corporate abuses of our people and our environment– I don’t have all the answers, nobody does. And I don’t spout off much, or force my views on others much at all.

But at least I stand up in my own little way and say what I think. I work and I pray for a better day, in what ever small way I can. I work and I pray even for you, jerk. Especially for you, cause I feel sorry for your kids.

Yes, I am pushing forty, getting old, finding out that I am not, in fact, able to simply take up where I left off before I got married– groupie, party girl, career girl, hospitality angel, hottie.

I’m working on my marriage, which paradoxically after my husband handed me my martyr badge probably stands a better chance than it ever has of making it. I still want that baby so bad, and I know I most likely won’t get it– I certainly won’t if I’m waiting for the time to be right. I’m probably never going to be able to completely kick my addiction to cigarettes (a pack a week, now, with lotsa nicorette gum to get me through the rest of the time) and as long as I am a full time parent as well as a full time wage slave I’m probably going to have to stay on the (legally prescribed by a physician) xanax, antidepressants, and amphetamines.

I’m probably not going to write that novel or travel the world or be famous for being the one-woman braintrust that I am… and I am going to bitch about it as much as I want.

And I will not answer to my slave name.

here’s the sad thing

I am still the same flawed, decent, damaged, loving person that I’ve always been. I’ve ramped up ‘doing my best’ over the years to be a better partner but he never sees it. To him I am still– well, what he eventually figures all women are, after the glow wears off, and he can barely bear it– bitchy, needy, a victim, angry, etc. I’ve never heard him call any woman he was ever intimate with anything nice, in the end. Ever. They were all weird, neurotic, selfish, snobbish… and what have you.

He didn’t come home because he loved me, intending to make it work, or because I am the better woman. I mean sure he rocketed from teenager style Angels and Airwaves over and over and over again true love to uncertainty pretty damn fast after he finally spent some time with you… but he just needed some time, as anyone would, when contemplating ending their marriage AND being hounded by a desperate and selfish and needy other woman to get on with it already so she can use him as she claws herself out of her own bucket of crabs.

He didn’t come home with the intention of dumping you, coming clean and working on our marriage.

It didn’t hurt that when he came home I was serene, caring, and open to his attempts to be kinder (because he lied, but also because I’ve worked at that regardless of what he is or isn’t doing), but he hadn’t yet hopped off his fence.

You tipped his hand and lost yourself what you were pushing and clawing so hard to get.

You could have still had your rescue (after all the years your husband worshiped and slaved to make you happy– he’s imperfect, but I have a feeling he has never been the problem here, because you can never, ever just be happy and kind so it never mattered how hard he tried or how much he gave. at least be honest and tie up the loose ends in your own marriage before ruining someone else’s, huh?).

If you had the love and decency in your heart to stop clawing and grasping for a little while, stop pushing– but you always had to push, so-called best friend– and let him figure it out for himself,  you had better than a fifty-fifty chance.

You could still have at least had the deal I have– free from the husband you don’t deserve– or, perhaps, from the husband you do deserve after all he’s done for you– my house, my little girl even, at least part time.  You could be the one who is, for better or for worse, struggling to work it out with him, struggling to forgive and to make amends, living with all the ways he is human as he is denigrating all the ways you are human– the one who just had a hot shower in my beautiful blue master bedroom while my angelic five year old snores softly in the king bed… the one sitting at my stepson’s computer writing you this open anonymous letter because i promised I would not contact you and even though he has violated that promise over the years… I won’t.

You could have had the one thing you wanted, at least– out of your marriage with someone else to pay for it and nurture your children– even if the grass wasn’t greener, you could have had your paid ticket out– you could have figured the rest out, if the relationship went south, later, uprooting your children yet again. ‘anywhere but here’ is going to follow you all of your life, don’t you see?

Or, if he decided, in the end, to be with me, at least if you’d kept your mouth shut you would know he chose to come home because that was the best choice for him… or, if you really loved him and gave him some time, maybe he would have decided to end his marriage, maybe you guys would have had a chance just a bit later.

But as it is, he says he’s through with you because of how hard you worked to screw him over. That doesn’t mean he loves me… it just means I’m still here.

You tipped it, opened your mouth to rat him out and ruin his chance for peace and decency– I guess that’s because you know those two things are not within you, so you will make sure that nobody who is close to you ever gets it either.

You don’t know how many times I have been tempted to get in touch with every woman on your friends list and tell them just to check into whether you’re sleeping with their husbands too– not just sleeping with, that’s nothing, but trying to get them to be your free ride out of your current life into a new one, three kids and all.

But unlike you I know better than to fuck with destiny, and I feel sorry for everyone in your path. I reserve the deepest grief for your poor kids, and the second deepest for myself because of the kind of friend you claimed to be to me. It makes me sick, to be violated like that.

I guess in your every man for himself, dog eat dog, libertarian drill in Alaska spend like there’s no tomorrow world… there’s no chance for lasting and honest relationships in the first place so you haven’t lost or lied about or ruined anything, right?

some people

Just can’t stand to see someone else happy, ya know?

I have some pretty solid ideas about fossil fuels and American foodways (or lack thereof). I’m not presuming to have written or even read the definitive book, backed up with pages and pages of citations and footnotes from solid scientific research, on global warming– cause there ain’t one.

All those things are both independent and intertwined. I can speak about any or all three, and have made some decisions based on what I have gleaned that I am pretty pleased with. I’m not claiming I completely understand causation and have solutions. I sure as hell can’t predict the future and don’t trust anyone who says they can. I’m not even beating anyone else over the head with it, unless you call urging people to learn more beating someone else over the head with it.

I am, however, tickled to be thinking these things through and doing my own small part based on what I know or believe. What the hell is wrong with that?

Fossil fuels are bad on their own merits, independent of whether their emissions cause global warming. Current American agricultural, nutritional, and culinary (if you can call it that) standards are dangerous. It’s as simple as that. And it is because it is completely overrun by nationwide agribusiness.

Buying local food in season is good because it keeps money in our community and reduces emissions and reduces the slaughtering or storage or transportation or agricultural practices needed to get people what they want when they want it regardless of season or quality. And most importantly, it increases nutrition and drastically reduces incidence of foodborne illness from mild intestinal discomfort to e coli to brain eating bacteria that will kill you quick (Just take a look at Fast Food Nation, please, for me?).

And it is just not good for us to be completely divorced from the reality which produces our food. But it *is* good for us, especially for our children, to see and reap the rewards from the processes that grow nourishing, ethically and naturally produced foods. It is good for our children to understand the natural principles at work, and it is good for our children’s bodies to eat the products of local produce unadulterated by the chemicals and untainted by the environmental damage necessary for huge scale single-crop farming and transport across the nation and around the globe.

Fossil fuels produce useful but poisonous plastic and petrochemical byproducts that are omnipresent in our lives, from baby bottles to personal care products. They are becoming increasingly expensive, and increasingly require either kissing ass in tense relationships with unstable nations or invasion of badly needed wildlife habitat in our own nation. The chemicals they release into our air when burned are clearly linked in real live reproducible scientific studies to ills from cancer to miscarriage. It’s not rocket science, and it is not activism either.

And climate change is happening, regardless of the cause– it’s natural, and it’s unpredictable, and whether we are accelerating it or not is not nearly the issue that both simple preparedness and generalized concern about food and water supply for ALL HUMAN BEINGS and pollution should be.

I was talking to someone about Animal Vegetable Miracle and asking if he’d read it with me, and come to a discussion about it. I’m so tickled with that book, and I thought the guy would be too–he was the one who got all gung ho about our raised bed gardening, after all.

He said, I meant to forward you this link that questions whether global warming is even really a threat, and even if it is, it’s probably natural and trying to fix our climate to maintain our current lifestyle seems arrogant and fruitless. Fossil fuel and agricultural emissions are actually just a drop in the bucket. Etc. Etc. Etc.

That’s not even something I’m arguing. If we’re talking about climate change, why not just glean as many solid facts as possible from as many sources as possible, assess for yourself the risks and realities, and make your choices? I’ve been in that process for a while now, myself. I’m well aware that we don’t know far more than we know. But if we’re talking about our current lifestyle, yeah we’re doing just fine, rolling along, here in the USA. But what about their current lifestyle in famine stricken Africa? Or possible consequences, whatever those might be, of our current lifestyle?  Let’s not do anything to alleviate those either.

I was treated to yet another sermon about how activists will cobble together a point of view (or latch blindly onto someone else’s point of view) and then go in search of facts to prove it. I pointed out, yes, as those who oppose the activists’ point of view will, simply because they dislike activists,
go in search of facts that disprove the activists’ point of view. Everybody does it. I feel like you’re attacking my viewpoint when you don’t even know my viewpoint, on the basis that it is ‘activist’. Did you even read my most recent article? No.

If wanting better nutrition for my family, enjoying the satisfaction of at least attempting to garden and produce food and create green space and habitat for living things, and along the way to having a great time trying out new recipes and ways of cooking and shopping and at the same time hoping to do something better for the environment is activism– call me a fucking activist. Jeez. And go find you some facts to prove what I am saying/thinking is wrong and what I am doing does not even matter anyway. Go ahead. If your facts hold up, I’ll adjust my worldview. If my facts hold up, you’ll just be pissed off and breeze on by.

I got a similar feeling to the feeling I had when someone said ‘Why do you have to take on all the racial and gender prejudice in the world, anyway? Why are you so rabid?’ It makes me feel pretty lonely in my supposedly intimate relationship, and because this person has been pretty rabid in publicising the very poor at best and in reality very dangerous careerist and profit-motivated pseudoscience that is our HIV-AIDS paradigm (something I took great interest in and informed myself about instead of asking him why he had to take on the danger posed to the entire world by the Pharmaco-AIDS industry on singlehandedly and rabidly) it’s also a pretty stupid thing to say.

Or like I felt when I presumed to ask that we split the work of a particular must-do task 50-50. How dare I ask such a thing?

I feel that way sometimes– like someone will find fault with one’s viewpoint just because they want to find fault with one, regardless of any facts one way or the other. I don’t feel like it’s a genuine debate or search for facts– I feel like I’m being blown off simply because I am actually daring to care or like they simply think it’s bullshit because it’s my viewpoint. If one of his coworkers said the same exact thing, he’d be like, damn, you really think so? I’d better look into that.

1. Before you accuse me of being some sort of hysterical activist, read what I actually wrote on the issue, and listen to what I have to say on it. I am actually a pretty balanced person with some pretty balanced views.

And this is the same guy who just bought us five reusable grocery bags. He must be a hysterical activist!!!

2. How about getting some facts on your own instead of putting down those who are already attempting to educate themselves and make some positive changes?

3. Go take your midol. Maybe you can be happy and hopeful too.

Overpopulation and Obesity– Just Do It

Reading David Steinman’s Safe Trip to Eden (which I highly recommend) and Animal Vegetable Miracle and talking to my brother about the environment have brought me to a clear and final conclusion.

Spend the time you are wasting on activism, going green, building a better tomorrow, paying off debt and saving for the future, on eating and f*cking like it’s 1999.

People who think we should not have children because overpopulation is part of our environmental problems have it all wrong.

Do it like rabbits. Statistically speaking, with the natural disasters we’ll be facing shortly, we’re going to need as many humans as possible so that most can die and a few can survive to carry on the race.

Go ahead! Pump ‘em out!

Likewise our so-called ‘epidemic of obesity.’ Eat up, bitches! Tear up those amazing American-sized portions– eat til it hurts. Don’t feel bad that those single-person meals you regularly consume could more than feed a family of four for a day in Africa and alleviate all sorts of suffering and disease.

Cause when the shit hits the fan, we’re going to be facing starvation not just in Africa and India (those are not that important, never have been) but worldwide. You’re gonna need all 2-300 extra pounds to survive until you figure something else out– if we ever do. If we don’t, at least your miserable, starved life will be prolonged enough to really suffer until you die. Your aching knees and back will be cured in no time.

I was thinking about this last night. All kinds of terrible shit could happen at any time. The whole pay off debt, fix up the house, work hard and save up money for the future thing? Sounds great. But in reality, when the shit hits the fan, is the pretend money you socked away so that your wife and children will be taken care of in case you die untimely even going to be there? Or if it’s there will it be worth anything?

One of my favorite books The Motherhood Manifesto talks about how being a stay at home parent is one of the best things you can do for your child (depending, of course, on your parenting philosophy and emotional readiness to sacrifice sleep, sanity, dignity, any chance of winning any truly important argument or grudge with your spouse, and all semblance of control over your life for the wellbeing of your children) but the worst possible financial decision you can make. You lose years of saving for your old age, not just the money you might have put in, but the interest your savings might have earned. If your breadwinner spouse dies or leaves you without adequate financial resources, you are skrewed.

If you later try to go back to work, you have to start all over after years with no experience. You are ‘mommy tracked’ and dubbed unreliable because if your kid gets sick or has a school function you have to leave work that day. It is very difficult to do both right– pumping breastmilk at the office or just giving up and going to formula when your maternity leave is over at six weeks, letting a stranger juggle your infant’s need’s with those of three to five other needy infants, trying to create quality time for your baby or child at the end of an exhausting day of work at the office or at home, or perhaps being forced to blow off quality time entirely in order to work two minimum wage jobs just to keep a roof over your heads and food on the table.

Still… stay at home parenting is good.

Nature is a harsh mistress, and is perhaps about to get harsher. That money you sacrificed years at home with your little ones so that you could put away for their future? Its value will be approximately equal to that of Confederate Scrip in the occupation and Reconstruction in the years after the American Civil War. If you stay at home, at least you can give them the emotional and spiritual resources to learn to be at peace with their horrible nuclear winter or worldwide Katrina/Tsunami lifestyles. It’s God’s will, right? All suffering comes from desire.

The crappy parenting forced on us by our society’s incredible disrespect for babies and parents is good too. If you’re not emotionally ready to truly connect with and parent your babies and children, no prob. You’ll just be creating tough little antisocial monsters (like some public figures I need not name) who stand a better chance of coming out on top in the food and water wars we’ll be seeing in the next decade or three.

So stop worrying. Start eating and cranking out the babies. We have no idea how much time we have left.

Eat Pray Love and Penn and Teller’s Bullshit

March(ish?) 2008

Tell me spirit, what has not been done? I’ll rush out and do it… or are we doin’ it now? I’m so behind on my contemporary independent music. But this My Morning Jacket song just sticks so sweetly in my head, and it’s so right.

What I have on my mind is something I’ve been thinking about for a good month, but haven’t been able to sit down to write about it for various reasons. Tonight I’m so tired… but I’m going to try to knock it out quickly.

My women’s book group read a book called Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. There were so many transcendent moments, and so many laugh out loud moments. She writes in a clean, self deprecating style that, if you’re not careful, will slip the profound sweetness of her experiences right past you. She had me from the first sentence, where she is lying on the floor in her bathroom at two a.m. in a pool of tears and snot, bawling because she doesn’t want to be married any more. She doesn’t want babies… she is depressed… she has always looked outside of herself to figure out who she is and what she should do… she is at an all time lifetime low and she has no idea what to do with herself. Somehow, though, doors open and she travels to Italy to eat for three months, to India to an ashram to pray for three months, and to Bali to learn from an old medicine man and find balance.

I’m calling this a three meeting book. I have only been able to meet once, but there was a meeting about it before that, and we need to have one more because some of us still couldn’t make it and I know so many of us have so much more to say. We read Shirley McClaine’s Out on a Limb in January, too. With both of those books, I just want someone to tell me– is there or isn’t there? Within us, or outside of us? And I just want to share it with the girls as much as I can.

Then around that same time I watched one of my husband’s Penn and Teller Bullshit dvd’s with him. It was about the funeral industry, life after death, twelve stepping, and a wonderful trick on bottled water drinkers– they filled different fancy bottles from a hose in the back of a restaurant in LA, and had people saying all kinds of ridiculous shit about the different kinds of water that had supposedly come from raindrops collected in the rainforest or whatever.

So to sum up, Penn and Teller said you need to live now, and be cognizant of the bullshit  you or your family will face from the funeral industry when you or they are vulnerable when a loved one dies, and if you are fortunate enough to be able to do so, call your mother.

They also said that the bad thing about twelve stepping was that it forces people to admit that they are unable to handle addiction or its effects alone and must call on a higher power to help them out. Now, is there anything wrong with that, really? Not for me to say. I think their beef was more that folks are forced to go to AA meetings and espouse some kind of religoius belief whether it’s right for them or not, when twelve stepping isn’t the be all to end all in recovering from addiction, their success rate is no higher than any other method, that such meetings reinforce one’s sense of one’s own inadequacy, weakness and helplessness which helps to create the addiction in the first place, and that the slogans and rules and sense that you can’t kick it alone and you must continue to come to meetings smack of cult.

I dunno… I kinda like my twelve step stuff. But the bit about how the power of positive change– or negative choices– resides firmly within oneself is pretty important to me, as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much I turn outward to see if I am okay, look for reinforcement as to who I am and whether I am good enough or ’doing it right’. I bust my ass, throwing parties, cooking dinners, helping others, serving, in my career and in my family and in my social life. Am I okay? Dunno, let me look at my paycheck, or around my house, or ask my husband, or my best girlfriend, or my mother, or God, but God doesn’t usually answer (or does s/he? that was one of the discussion questions for Eat Pray Love, and I am just not sure, in the context of her story, or in real life.). The greatest source of my okayness is actually my daughter, and that has got to be fucked up. Or is it? I think the love of a parent or a truly loving caregiver for a child (or other helpless entity) is the closest we get to God in this world– and all of us have experienced it, whether as a child or as a parent, no matter how briefly or how it is manifested.

But I’m so drained. My happiness, or sense that I’m doing it right, come from things I have to work really hard for, things I never can get quite right, not from some certainty within me. I’m spread so thin, and while I haven’t had the breakdown or the opportunities Elizabeth Gilbert describes, I think I recognize her crisis as my own, and as one every thinking person must go through, and as the nature of coming of age in our society.

And I’m still working on that. Stay tuned.

Well, I don’t have the answer to is or isn’t, within or without, angels and heavenly fire or spaceships and aliens or– just ravings written down long long ago to try to get people to act right. I think a lot of thinking people don’t honestly know for sure, either. It’s not that I don’t worship, or find happiness… my garden, my child, vegan cooking, literature or art that touches me, certain friendships or moments with family… so many things are both idols and sources of true understanding of the goodness in this universe.

But I do, at least, have an answer when people push me to go to church.

My marriage counselor encouraged me to go to church on Easter. She turned the knife by telling me to take my baby– I’m a bad mother if I deny her that comfort. I tried saying my husband is a bit of an atheist, and she said, well you go, because it nourishes you. I tried saying, I hate church in this town because church is segregated and she said, well mine isn’t. Sigh.

I feel like such a dumbass, going only at Christmas and Easter, although I have to admit it did my heart good to go to the Unitarian church Christmas Eve this year. The message was right up my alley, if you’ve read my annual post about the true meaning of Christmas–every time a baby is born it is a holy night.  But…

I didn’t have time to, or didn’t feel she had the time for me to, explain. Three years of healing school… many years more of study in various religious traditions, not to mention feminism, marxism, and historicism… I actually embrace my husband’s atheism, at least for him, although my spiritual life has had a bit more dimension than his… hell, the hand of God has reached down and literally touched me a time or two. It was unmistakable. But… healing school… Jewish and Sikh friends… Penn and Teller… But now I think– well I can’t explain my whole belief system right here and now. But at least for that case, I think I have a pat answer that will shut most people up.

Don’t get me wrong. I love church. I miss it. I am telling you, I can spout random scripture for any situation. But…

So here’s my pat answer.

I’m actually ordained to minister after three years in a wonderful counseling/energy healing school. I am my own church. Sometimes I worship by doing yardwork. Sometimes I worship by being the best parent, librarian, or social activist I possibly can be. Sometimes I worship through delicious vegan cooking, or through tending to relationships. Sometimes I worship through my healing work or consumption of literature or through my own writing or through spiritual study.

I don’t have my liturgy and apologetics quite written down yet– but I am my own church and I am pretty solid in a lot of my beliefs. I  am ordained. And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. And that’s a key part of my beliefs.

As my dear friend Annie Pearl said to me when we were both working in a terribly dysfunctional, abusive office (that’s not her real name, but I call her a pearl because she is just so amazing, one of my dearest mentors)– when you are a leader, it is just you and the lord. You can’t go giving your power away. You have to suck it up and stand up straight and do the work.

But it’s not just when you are a manager of a large agency or business. It is when you are trying to figure out what do do about your marriage. It is when you are suffering from loss, grief, illness, or paralytic anxiety. It is when you are biting your tongue when you are at your wit’s end with your child, or trying to figure out what do do with your life, or what you have done when it’s too late to change. It is just you and the lord. But really, it’s just you, and, well, you.

It’s just me. That’s not hubris talking. That’s humanity, humility, anxiety, and doing the best I can. That’s an open mind, an open heart, and some serious imperfections and knee jerk psychological defenses talking. I don’t know. But I do know it’s me, and me.

And I don’t need to go to church. Well, maybe I do, but not for that reason. I am my own church. And it’s just me and the Lord.

Fling O’ Rama

Having accepted congratulations for putting flylady to the side for a time, I just spent probably two hours throwing away crap in my attick hideaway.

It’s a big lovely room. That also means it’s got room for a LOT of crap.

It has been a  horror since Christmas. Which was FOUR MONTHS AGO.

I can’t remember what the argument right around Christmas time was about, probably division of housekeeping labor (the fact that there is none, but we’ve settled that reasonably happily now), but I remember crying and telling my husband- – I  think I’m going to start abbreviating his name CKK (Curt Kirkwood Kinda)– anyway I remember crying and saying ’That room is ME!’

Sure, it was theatrical. But it was also true. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Good old mommy, just throw it in her room, she’ll sort it out. Or, I am the only person in this house who can POSSIBLY take care of this. I’d better put it up in my study, on top of all the other crap nobody can possibly take care of but me. I’ll get to it some day.

Since Christmas this room has been at its absolute height of representing me, I’ll tell ya. It was full of globs of wrapping paper, shipping boxes, packing materials, gifts yet unwrapped, and just shit that the entire family figured I could somehow find a good place for. My healing table (like a massage table) had turned into a work surface/catchall/hidey hole for more shit. You could not see the floor in here.

Then, obscured behind Christmas, was all of my hoarded craft stuff. I have gotten so much better over the years, but… when it comes to crafts and paper products, I am a hoarder. I cannot, cannot cannot organize or let go of fabrics, old diaries/notebooks, items that need mending that I should really just THROW AWAY, unfinished craft projects, scrapbooking stuff… It’s a horror.

Everything I keep, you see, I have to organize.

This room represents me because it takes on everything, and everything never gets finished or processed. I just say, sure! And I take on another task, or pick up another item or commitment whether emotional or physical and figure I’ll get it sorted out somehow and then stow it in my room or in my consciousness until I can’t even think. It’s very sad.

I think of this when I’m in my office, too. I am a stickler about keeping public areas of my workplace clean– tables, dusting, bathrooms– but my office is a piled up mess. My file me pile takes up a table that is, I promise you, a square yard.  I’m so busy taking care of my staff and my patrons that my office never gets clean.

I threw away and put away so much.  I could  just about vacuum up here now.

I have two attic storage areas. My back aches from stooping to come in and out of the mini doors to those dark, miserable little rooms. When I go in there I see all the crap I have still managed to hoard, for years and years and  years through over a dozen moves.

I have thrown away so much at every stop, and still here I am. I have boxes and boxes of books, diaries, photos, fancy and expensive clothes that will never, ever, ever fit me again even if they were to be in style ever ever again, holiday decorations… to me that unwillingness to throw away symbolizes fear and denial.

If I could just throw (most of it) away, that would be the energy of a person who is ready to accept and embrace abundance. The more we accept or retain crap, the more we attract it. I believe that with all my heart.

When I shut the sweetly painted doors of my attic storage, I can try to pretend all that stuff isn’t there. But I know it is, and there is going to have to be a reckoning.

What book did I just read that in? “There will be a reckoning.” That echoes in my mind– I think it was kind of comic, but WHAT BOOK WAS IT?

Ah!! Wee Free Men. One of my girlfriends put me onto Terry Pratchett for my stepdaughter and I really liked that book meself. I need to go dig up the next one.

What do you think… is taking care of me first, even when it means that something for others will not get done, still best? We said at  healing school that when we show up authentically– which includes setting boundaries and caring for ourselves first– it frees others to show up authentically. But what if I don’t get my goals met at work, or what if something doesn’t get done at  home? What if?

This is at the very core of one of my greatest lifetasks, I believe. We just finished Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed in my women’s book group, and it’s such a witty, insightful book. The insight comes from the main character’s sense that she doesn’t deserve– anything. It traces back to her relationship with her dad, and impacts her dating choices as well as how she takes care of herself and creates incredible self blame and psychotic post partum depression when her baby experiences problems at birth.  It is just ingrained in her that she doesn’t deserve these blessings.
I think that’s the spiritual root of my miscarriage a few years ago. Somehow I didn’t deserve that blessing. I’m not saying it’s my ’fault’– I’m saying I need somehow to get in touch with that essential worthiness that is in every single human being except, it seems, me. Somehow I’ve got to part that veil.
It’s actually a species of insane egomania… it brings everything back to oneself. If you’re religious, this conviction is a sinful denial of the nature of your loving higher power and it’s holding you back from your higher power’s ultimate plan of joy for you. If you’re not religious, well, this conviction is just– a species of insane egomania that’s holding you back from joy and growth.

But it is so easy to know intellectually that one has a problem with thinking they aren’t deserving, and another thing completely to say, oh, yes I am, and in fact if I care for myself I’ll be there for my family and friends and coworkers more than ever.

What if?

There’s no answer. It’s just something to think about.

Well… I can reckon, I can shift my energy to the kind that accepts abundance, some other day. I’m just glad to be able to see the floor, and I’m hungry.

– or go blind.

You know the old saying. I don’t know whether to–

Can the same person give wonderful, nurturing, positive children’s programs at the public library where she works, be such a mild, caring, responsive and responsible supervisor, and then go home and feel so drained and grouchy, dreading leaving a disorganized house and so many household tasks left undone to go back to work for the rest of the day? Can the same person feel so passionate about what she does while at work, and so sick of it sometimes when she goes home for lunch?

Can the same person feel such resentment and exhaustion, and cry over the stories in Breeder because the best thing she’s ever done– have that baby– is fading irretrievably into the past? Can the same person fight like cats and dogs with her husband, and want another baby so much it hurts, and know that this is a BAD IDEA and want it anyway?

I gotta go back to work.