Make a Move!

“Each moment, each day, each choice, is a test” -Barack Obama, from his eulogy of John McCain. 

That is exactly how we should understand each unpromised breath we are lucky enough to breathe.

When I worked at Fifth Third Bank’s processing center, I had this bulldog of a manager that always stressed a ‘sense of urgency’. It was an annoyance to me at the time, working in a job I was just working to pay the bills, but I internalized that message. Partially because of the level of passion my manager stressed it to me, but also, primarily, because it deeply matched my own orientation towards this brief and powerful flicker of a candle that is our life.

No moment is more important than this one, and the only way to honor that truth is to make a move that disregards whatever our fears may be.

On Love

Allowing yourself to experience love in any form is the ultimate vulnerability, but the only thing that makes life worth living. It’s a conundrum: the ability to love is the reason we seek to protect ourselves, but in order to experience it, we have to leave ourselves unprotected in a sense.

Ted Cruz is the Worst

The thing that makes Ted Cruz the worst is that he instinctually understood that supporting fascism was bad, and he took a few moral stands against it before fully capitulating. The fact that he obviously knows right from wrong, but still chose wrong, makes him infinity times worse than your average opportunist. Vote Beto!

Don’t get in your own way

For some reason the failures that sting me the most are the ones where I get in my or someone else’s way. So I always try to be hyper conscious of my own intent and motivation. Plus, I’ve learned when I don’t make things about myself, they turn out better. 

Or, as David Byrne said, ‘Life is long if you give it away’.

Empathy

Serious question: what is it about the conservative mind that makes it only allow nuance and ‘gray areas’ when they themselves have personally had an interaction with the idea on hand?

Shower Thought #1

Thinking about the difference in meaning of ‘throw up’ and ‘throw down’ is amusing.

‘For now, let’s throw down. After that, we can throw up’.

A Review of Sorry to Bother You

I have never done psychedelics, and it’s not something I typically think about or am considering, but for some reason the first thought I had after leaving ‘Sorry to Bother You’ last night, was ‘I’m really glad I didn’t make tonight the first time to try LSD’. I think that movie broke by brain a little bit, and I’m still processing it. I went to see it because I liked the director based on interviews I had heard, and I liked that he is an open Marxist. And the movie looked funny. I went into the movie with a certain expectation, eventually thought I saw where it was going, and then discovered I was incredibly wrong. And then I thought I caught on, but was wrong again. I went through this cycle about two more times, and eventually was just left with my mouth open, and must have muttered to the person I was with some variation of ‘what the fuck is happening?’ a dozen or so times. I was incredibly tired and feeling a little spacey, and towards what turned out to be the end of the movie—the end point was never really evident—I started remembering the play ‘No Exit’ and wondering if I had died and was in some absurd hell. After the first scene to interrupt the credits, I leaned into my partner and was like, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ She was like, ‘I want to see what happens next’ and I was like, ‘I’m afraid if we don’t leave now, we will never leave. It will be 12 hours later and you’ll be like, I want to see what happens next forever, because this movie will never end’.

Reality sat in for us as we sat at a Chinese restaurant across the street eating the best spring rolls I have ever had. The movie made everything look strange, and our conversation became odd in a funny way.

I’m not sure if I liked the movie. I’m not sure if I totally understood it. I will always remember it, and I’m thinking about it still the day after, so I know it was good.

That’s my review.

Numinous Communications

Weird! I just showed this movie to the boys last night for the first time, and it turns out on this day 6 years ago I shared this picture on Facebook. Watching it last night was emotionally potent for me. I became very reflective about my choices in life and where they have led. In the movie, Clementine shows her panties to Joel in order to anchor him back to reality and hope. Here she is flashing me this morning and it’s having the same effect. I guess the point is that God sends angels to some people, and for others, he sends Kate Winslett to show you her panties.

The Devil Made Me Do It

You know what’s funny about religious folk who believe in Satan as a literal being? They’re always looking at bad shit in the world and their lives from the vantage point of Satan attempting to usurp them in some way or the other. ‘Satan is tempting me’, ‘Satan is behind this global catastrophe that has savaged the established order of things’. What was Satan’s biggest sin supposed to be? Wasn’t it Pride? What is more proud or presumptuous than assuming that you were born into a system signed off on by God and any attack against that system comes from the adversary? Allow yourself to consider this: what if Satan took over a long time before you were born and established his own status quo, and taught all of the entities you received instruction from as you grew up—parents, religion, culture, government—to teach you to see them as the holy truth? What if the bad shit you ascribe to satanic action in the world is really just the resistance against the world Satan has created? To assume that your original orientation is representative of the truth is supremely arrogant.

He Never Laid a Hand On Me

The fact that I, a relatively thoughtful, progressive minded 37 year old man just realized how deeply messed up the following observation is, raises a completely different set of questions for me to reckon with.

But, it just occurred to me how terrible it is that when women of prior generations (our mothers, aunts, grandmothers, etc.) would reflect on their marriages after their partner had passed, or were just in a stock-taking kind of mood, it would be very common to hear the following assessments levied in a tone of gratitude:

“He never laid a hand on me”

Or

“He came home every night”

Or

“He was a hard-working man”

What an incredibly low bar husbands throughout history have had to jump over. Regarding the first one, since when do we get praise for not being an abusive piece of shit? This bit of praise is an indication of the degraded state women in our country have had to accept for themselves; expressing joy that the man who owned them chose not to hit them. A subtle implication is also that he chose not to hit her,but he would have been fully in his rights to do so.

There is also an indictment of man as a gender in this praise: it is the suggestion that man is inclined towards violence. It’s like saying, ‘I swam through the shark tank and the shark didn’t even take a bite!’

For anyone who likes to extol the virtues of manliness, this should be offensive to you.

On the second one, it seems to suggest he was faithful, but that’s not really what it’s saying. ‘He came home’ means that whatever else may have been going on outside of the home, at least at the end of the day he comes back. I am the one who gets to wash his underwear.

The final one is often left for men who had no other redeeming qualities. He worked hard, it drained the soul from him, he was an empty husk at home, had no joy, was unrelatable to his wife and children and the changing world around him, but at least the electric was kept on.

This makes me sad, and makes me realize that we—as a society—are not even close to out of the woods when it comes to equality and progress. The wounded, fearful men of our country—predominantly white and undereducated—and  their obedient, wounded wives, just elected as president a heaving postule of toxic masculinity, fearful chest-beating, and regressive ideology. This vote is a cry for help to some extent; the mewing of a wounded animal. As much as their pain has been inflicted upon them by their fathers, they have retained a striking obedience to authority and empty symbolism. The personal pain they will not look at is transformed into fear of the other, and antipathy towards the government, Hollywood, liberal elites, etc: those who would dare suggest to them ‘a better way to live’.

‘No thank you’, the Trump voter says. ‘I’ve made it this far without any guidance. I’ll pass on yours’.

This is why they are so triggered by the concept of safe spaces. This is why they are bothered by minorities being given equal rights and voice: where was their safe space growing up in this absurd patriarchy? Where was their voice and rights when dad would come home drunk

But, they might say, ‘At least he came home’.

Frieda and Josephine

I have 2 cats.
Frieda came first,
I drove for hours
To pick her up
After seeing a posting
On Craigslist
Because she looked
Like my previous cat
Stevesie—
My favorite cat ever—
All grey with a white belly,
Who was a perfect Buddha
Of a cat, very loving
And calm,
But died suddenly and young,
And not long after the end
Of my marriage,
Tearing another small hole
In my heart,
But it was one hole too many.
Frieda was not like Stevesie.
She had no chill.
She was all energy and
Playful biting and clawing.
I accepted the appropriateness
Of this: an attempt to make
One living being
A replacement for another
Always turns against both of you.
Later, feeling Frieda needed a friend,
I went back to craigslist
And found the cat who would become
Josephine. Another kitten. A calico.
I picked her up and took her home,
And she hid for the first month
In the couch, which she accessed through a slit
That Frieda had put in the back of it
During one of her playful kitten rampages.
I coaxed Josephine out eventually.
There was a brief power struggle between
The two cats. Frieda quickly established dominance,
And there was peace in the house.
Frieda has a wanderlust though. Ever since
She was a kitten, she would arbitrarily run
Out of an open door, jump out of an open window,
Or—in one extreme case—claw through
A window screen.
Just to get out, just to explore the neighborhood,
Probably also to honor that distinctly animal
Instinct to get laid.
At first we would freak out when she left,
But she would always come back.
Eventually we learned to respect her strong will,
And let her out when she wanted out,
Not worry too much while she was gone,
And greet her like a traveling friend when she returned.
Awhile after the ecosystem in our house had been
Established, Frieda left for an extended period.
While she was gone, Josephine doubled in size.
When she came back, she was scrawny,
And Josephine chased her under the bed,
And would growl at her whenever she came out.
Frieda stayed under the bed. She would urinate under there.
I would research the conflict, attempt mediation,
But to no avail.
One day Josephine caught Frieda at the food bowl,
And chased her out of the front door.
And that is where things stand to this day.
Frieda is now an outside cat, and Josephine has
Won the kingdom of our small house.
As I type this on the porch swing outside, I see Frieda
Sunning herself in the driveway.
I just filled both her food and water bowls (outside)
And Josephine’s (inside).
I don’t understand animal politics, but I have to reflect
On The battle between these cats.
Yes, Josephine owns the inside, but Frieda owns
The outside, and—most importantly—herself.
This kind of freedom may put a cap on life expectancy,
But looking at her now, in the sun, stretching grandly,
I have to remember that old saying about quality over quantity.

On Language Barriers

I just heard a woman at Mt. Storm park say a typically beautiful sounding sentence in Spanish, and then immediately translate it for someone on the phone: ‘That means your sister peed in her pants and I’m taking her home.’

4th of July, part 2

I expressly remember complaining to my English teacher in 10th grade after having to read 1984 and A Brave New World back-to-back (among however many other dystopian books and short stories) ‘Okay, Jesus! We get it! If we’re not careful we will fall into an authoritarian state! Fuck, can we talk about something else?’ And she smiled knowingly and said something cryptic, and I’ve justified the fact that I had to read all of these shitty, heavy-handed warnings over the years because the population has to be wary...and now we’ve elected a fascist government who joyfully obfuscates the truth to a willfully ignorant and compliant electorate, and all I can think is that maybe banking on English departments in the Midwest defending the concept of democracy all by themselves wasn’t the best bet in the long run. Happy 4th of July!

4th of July

It just occurred to me that posting something critical of the domestic or foreign policy of the U.S. (even a critique of how we treat returning veterans) is frequently met with the rejoinder, ‘Yeah, try to post something like this in another country!’. Which is akin to saying, ‘Yeah, maybe my boyfriend cheats on me constantly and gave me the clap, but at least he never hit me!’. Which is an incredible lowering of the bar.

On Criticism of Cardi B

 I hate people who dissect Cardi B in ‘think pieces’. It pisses me off to see some pseudo-intellectual mine her entire being for material to support whatever worldview they are pushing, delegating her entire existence to a footnote in their grand philosophy. First of all, Cardi B is 26. Why do we feel entitled to indict her entire being over some mild to non-existent infraction upon our preferred social outlook? I can tell you this: I didn’t know shit when I was 26, and I barely know shit now at 37. Cardi B is a gifted performer with charisma and a compelling personal narrative. Maybe we should hold off for a second? Maybe we shouldn’t expect her to be Howard Zinn at 26? Maybe that’s not what she even wants to be? Jesus, I don’t know. Let the woman breathe!

Social Work

As a case worker, I have intentionally absorbed a very stoic worldview, and rely heavily on a dark/absurd sense of humor to navigate this environment. I care for my clients and work as hard as I can to help them succeed, but the human condition and our society is unpredictable, so I make it a point to stand outside of any given situation, and to focus on celebrating the small successes.

Today a client of mine who has had a lot of anxiety over her situation got matched with housing, and when I showed her the e-mail about her match, she cried with joy. Her whole spirit changed. It was infectious and inspiring, and it cracked my demeanor and made my heart swell. This job can be very hard, but when it’s good it is very good. I’m going to allow myself to enjoy this moment of euphoria.

Fundamentalism and Happiness

It doesn’t matter how much one thing seems to naturally follow another, how clear-cut causes and effects are made, or how straightforward the rules for success are made to appear by the eyes given to you by your fundamentalist faith; you will never be happy, no matter how closely you adhere to the tenets of your church, or how often you pray, or how many times you read the Bible. The reason is the eyes. The eyes your church gave you control you by making you see God where God is not. With those eyes, you learn to not look for what is true, but rather what confirms the lies of your church about your holy book. A book of truth doesn’t create the truth. It conveys the truth. Therefore you can’t prove the truth of something by saying ‘because the Bible says’. If the Bible says something is true, then you should be able to arrive at the truth in dialogue without reference to the Bible. Like the math teacher in school said, ‘Show your work!’

You will never be happy deforming your body and soul in attempt to conform to the doctrines and values your eyes have been trained to seek out, because they aren’t of God, and they aren’t even human. They are constructed to maintain power for certain people and oppress others.

You have been given lying eyes, and you need to pluck them out and replace them with your own eyes.

What Happens When You Show Up Early

As is my tendency, I showed up way too early to pick my kids up from camp. My days in college working at a bank informed me: if you’re 15 minutes early, you’re 15 minutes late. I pulled into the only parking lot in this predominantly farm area. It turned out to be a biker bar. A guy and his girlfriend pulled up beside me  on a Harley Davidson as I smoked and read a book. He struck up a conversation with me. His name was Curly, and his girlfriend was called Half-Pint. He seemed very impressed by the fact that I was a social worker. We joked, exchanged stories, and he ended up inviting me into the biker bar, where he introduced me enthusiastically to his friends Violator, Roman, Gator, and Tito. We all talked and laughed and joked, and they seemed to appreciate the idea that a ‘city guy’ wasn’t afraid of them or uncomfortable in their environment. We ended up singing ‘Keep on Rocking in the Free World’ with the band on stage. Everyone had liquor on their breath. Now I’m outside of the boys’ camp—that has a very rave like feel—waiting for their end of camp dance to end so we can get home and get enough sleep to get up early for the pride parade tomorrow. What an unexpected night.

Don’t Wait For History to Set You Straight!

I look forward to hearing this child tell their story as an adult. I look forward to it, and also feel anxiety about it. They are going to tell us something important one day, but what will the message be? To me, this photo is the same as the naked Vietnamese girl running away from her village with her skin burned by napalm. It’s also the famous photo of the little black girl being escorted to her newly de-segregated school by the national guard. Let me ask you this: where do you fall on this photo now? To me, your answer to this question now tells me so much more than your answer 50 years from now ever will.

Credit Where It Is Due

PS, I’m not giving Trump props for signing an executive order ending his own fascist policy that separated families and put kids in cages because he realized it was ‘bad optics’. And to the person who responds, ‘See! They don’t even give him credit for doing the right thing!’, I respond, ‘Fuck you too. You don’t get credit for doing the bare minimum to pass as a human being’. No props for creating an unnecessary disaster and then choosing to end it.