Sep 26 2010

Being Grown Up is for Kids

gaia

I could come up with all sorts of rationalizations but I choose no longer to spend my energy on rationalizations.

Rationalizations … ok, I’ll use the new health insurance laws as an example.

My sister will receive desperately needed health care she otherwise could never have gotten.  I don’t mean my legal family sister, btw.  I mean my human sister.  As in the expansive sense of all my brothers and sisters in this world.

And my brother will have it worse than he had before, these new laws will probably literally kill him.

And I could rationalize my sister’s need away.  That’s what I mean by no longer choosing to spend my energy on rationalization.

There’s no way for me, oversensitive and vain woman that I am, to face this without pain that any reasonable person would insist on trying to avoid.

I am no saint and I’m not even a virtuous woman.  As a matter of fact not too long ago I’d be described as a “fallen woman.”  Heh.  Good old daze.

So what would make me decide, choose, not to avoid this pain that I have every reason to want to avoid?

The only thing that would make me choose this is that it hurts even worse to rationalize.

So I won’t rationalize any more.

I am happy for my sister in an unqualified fashion, may she benefit entirely from this new law.

I am devastated and in pain over my brother and feel burning anger and shame and despair to see him be so hurt by the failures of our human family.

And those two feelings have to exist side by side all the time.

I am no longer interested in the “right thing to do.”  That is not motivation enough for me any more, I don’t know why this is the case and I don’t care, either.

My actions will come out of my being, not the other way around.  And a human being’s actions are not so readily definable or labeled.

I used to concern myself with justice, in the most primal sense.

That journey has led me to a strange place where in order to find justice I have to give up my whole passion for it.

Watch out.  I’m smokin’.  Look twice at me and no doubt you shall be turned into stone.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

In conclusion, take away all the labels and brands.  I’m a citizen of a crumbling empire.  There is more to my power as a citizen than going to the polls once every couple of years.  Or making phone calls for the emperor’s court.  Or joining power blocs of people who think making phone calls for the emperor’s court is the be all and end all of power.  There’s way more to my power than that.

26 comments

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    • Edger on September 26, 2010 at 03:49
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    “I’m a free woman. Fear me!” 😉

    • Edger on September 26, 2010 at 04:41
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  4. In conclusion, take away all the labels and brands.  I’m a citizen of a crumbling empire.

    Very true.

    In the end, we cannot let those things define us, and that’s actually a struggle I am dealing with right now.

    On one hand, I do feel it necessary to contribute to the civics.  On the other, fuck them!  Maybe it makes better sense to invest in those local, community things that can directly impact our lives.

    Love your “smokin” essay, and I think I may just join you in that.

  5. And my brother will have it worse than he had before, these new laws will probably literally kill him.

    Do not go gentle into that good night,

    Old age should burn and rage at close of day;

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

    Because their words had forked no lightning they

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

    Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

    And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

    Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    And you, my father, there on the sad height,

    Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    The most familiar of these is a supernova, which is the curtain call of a massive star with eight or more times the mass of our sun. When the nuclear fuel runs out for such a behemoth, the collapsing core generates an explosion that outshines an entire galaxy-worth of stars while it lasts.

    Photobucket

    Rage.

    Not anger.

  6. to turn to stone those who would sell out our Party platform in exchange for more corporate donations.

    I, for one, welcome your opposition.

  7. in a good way, i.e. open, exploring ideas, learning…

    Ive been looking at Kid’s 8th grade US History textbook the past few days, side by side with Zinn of course. Now, I sorta knew a lot of this stuff, or was taught it …. in Catholic schools in the late 60’s , so none of the Zinn aspects …  I remember so little.

    Anyway, they’re on The Thirteen Colonies, Unit 2, so thats what Im reading about.

    Dayum.

    Theres this Chart. Lists the 13 and “Reasons Founded” and  “By Who”… “religious freedom” is listed 5 or 6 times but most of them are: “expand trade”, “profit from selling land” etc etc. Then theres, well, gobs of stuff (The Bacon Rebellion sound more like the tea party people if you ask me, I think that is the country those folks “want back”) but jezuz h christ, the whole foundation of this “great nation”, this “grand experiment” in representative democracy, what a total blatant fucking lie.

    I knew that, but just reading it like this with all the gorey details (no, not all, just a smidgen)…. its grotesque beyond words.

    The absurdities of some Brit guy awarding land in the colonies to some other Brit guy, who then has the “right” to sell it or make profits form it, while massacreing the people who haved live on that land for thousands of years…. well you all know this. Holocaust. (And we havent even gotten to the slavery stuff yet.)

    I dont know why this is blowing my mind right now. I guess its just the sheer unadulterated….. pride and glee… modern day people hold for our founding, our founding principles are still held up as “ideal”. Sure, theres great stuff in the Declaration etc (havent gotten to that yet either in kid’s class) but….. really. Really? What brazen horseshit. It was empire from minute one. Skipping ahead in Zinn’s book, well, I cant find it now, but there was something like 75 million people living, flourishing, on these lands for I dont know how long, before the Europeans arrived. 75 million. Oh here it is, 75 M overall with 25 million in North America. Hundreds of cultures, a couple thousand languages.

    Zinn:

    In the vision of the Mohawk chief Hiawatha, the legendary Dekaniwidah spoke to the Iroquis:

    “We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each other’s hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake it or break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace and happiness.”

    So much for that.

  8. it’s not about enthusiasm or lack of. I seem to be in a hold mode a still place where my mind body and pirit are not asleep but watching it play out. The facts are all there but they make a crazy picture as a whole. I too went on a journey where I lost my passion. They call Obama a chess player those that bother to choose a side. I do feel I’m watching a game whose outcome means nothing anymore as it isn’t the real game. Good essay for my frame of mind which no longer seems to have a frame to hang it in. Strange days and going get stranger, there is more to all our power then we seem willing to know. Strange days indeed but aren’t they always…

     

    • Xanthe on September 27, 2010 at 00:56
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    though yours is more eloquent.

    By the way, I have an interesting past myself.  

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