Taking Out a Business Loan Doesn’t Make You a Hero

Yes! A living wage is the cost of business. There are no politicians lobbying for me because I can’t afford to buy the means of production and associated things needed to start a business. A living wage, decent healthcare, the ability to organize...these things are the price of admission. ‘Wah, I cant run my business if I can’t exploit my workers!’ Tough shit, buddy. Business owners—especially small business owners—don’t deserve the prestige they receive in our society. They’re fine, but they’re people too.

Prayer

Prayer

Dear God,

Please know

I don’t blame you

Because your just like me

An animal

And we do what animals do

We fight

We fuck

We kill

We look for food

And someone always must pay

When we get in a certain mood

So I praise you

Just like

You should praise me

In my glory

Rising erect

And nude

Aroused for all to see

Dear Animals,

Can’t you see

The God that’s in you?

You’re not limited

To the systems

That telegraph the rules

We rage

We burn

We behead

Through the paper, we peruse

And someone must always explain

Why we’re not in the news.

So I praise you

Just like

You should praise me

In my glory

Rising erect

And nude

Aroused for all to see

See my horns

See my horns

Watch me dance

See my horns

My glowing eyes

Watch me dance

So I praise you

Just like

You should praise me

In my glory

Rising erect

And nude

Aroused for all to see

Cars

It should be illegal for actual humans to drive the same kind of cars cops drive. When I clock a cop driving behind me, and register, ‘Oh, that’s not a cop! That’s some soccer mom on her way back home, after probably sleeping with her Pilates instructor’, that’s real trauma for me. You owe me money, Karen.

Loose Papers

This morning on the way to school, Eliot gifted me with some unfortunately accurate self awareness. All of the car windows were down, the radio was up and we were singing along to the music when suddenly some important papers I forgot were loose in the back seat began flying all over the car dangerously close to the windows. We began frantically grabbing at them so they didn’t get away. He said, ‘This moment is the best description of you’, and then added that he used to think this kind of thing happened to people all the time, but he eventually realized, no, this situation—at the frequency he has experienced it—is very particular to me. I was proud of how clever and astute his observation was, but the truth of it made me grimace.

Parenting Advice

We waste so much of our lives coming to terms with the fact that the gods our parents worshipped have never existed, and accepting how subjective and—ultimately—Freudian their values and world views are. There would be no need to waste so much time in our children’s lives, and create so much neuroses, if we only had the humility to admit how full of shit we are, how damaged we are, and how we have only come to these conclusions as means to personally survive, and to grace our children with our blessings to seek their own world views and coping mechanisms, liberating them from the impulse to reconcile our damage and survival techniques with their own.

Get High

Witnessing a stranger’s moment of joy just because you happened to be in the right place at the right time is one of the best natural highs available on the market.

Barbarism is a Subjective Concept

It’s always strange to me when self-described moderates (always white, middle to upper class) history enthusiasts act like Robespierre cutting the heads off of the ruling class was somehow barbaric. When compared to the death by a thousand cuts execution the ruling classes across the world commit against working people, the guillotine was a mercy.

Some Advice Can Be Ignored

I had a supervisor once who told me ‘walk through the doors that will open’. and he was a total fucking tool. The last door I saw him walk through was the back door, with his head beneath his shoulders. If there’s not a door to where you need to go, make a door. Don’t settle for less than you are worth!

How Can We Give it to You When You Don’t Even Give It To Yourself?

No one who deserves respect has to demand respect.

Advocacy Check-List

My Handy-Dandy Client Advocacy Checklist:

I’ve been doing this work for over a decade, and I have come up with a fairly simple formula for client advocacy. It’s only got a few steps, and I have been undeniably good at this work, so if you’re in the same field, it might be worth taking note of. I usually envision each roadblock to providing individual clients with what they need in terms of a destination along a long, windy, mountain road I have to get to, obscured by an enormous boulder. I will get to the destination, it’s only a matter of how.

1. Will the boulder remove itself so I can pass?

2. Can I talk to or negotiate with the boulder in a certain way that would enable it to remove itself so I can pass?

3. Is there some larger boulder—preferably one my boulder is beholden to in some sense—who will remove the boulder from my path, or is there some other unrelated boulder that can help clear my path if I appeal to it in the right way?

4. Can I remove the boulder myself?

5. Can I go around the boulder?

That’s it. Any good advocate will understand that the path will be cleared, and they will utilize whatever tools are available to them to clear the path. You will reach your destination. The only question is how.

That is advocacy.

The Cold Water Fountain

I went to Brantner Elementary, and so did all of my sons. I just randomly said to my youngest, ‘don’t you love the water fountain in your school with super cold water?’ And he mentioned the one next to the library at Brantner, which is exactly the one I was thinking about when I made my comment. There is no better bonding than a shared experience.

Beyond Pizza

I just noticed that Cicis has the motto ‘beyond pizza’ next to the name of their restaurant on the marquee. Has this already been the case? Either way, my first thought when I saw It today was ‘I bet they also sell assault weapons now’. 

Hurt People

Another example of parental miscommunication: for years, I have told the boys that ‘hurt people hurt people’, whenever the subject of general cruelty or bullying or just basic nasty human behavior would come up. They have always understood my underlying message about how unaddressed trauma can lead a person to traumatize others, but today my 8 year old made it clear to me that—although he has understood and internalized that message (he feels bad for the president, that he’s lived so long and is still hurting people)—he has always understood ‘hurt people hurt people’ to be a kind of mantra that damaged people repeat in their minds as they go about their lives, as in, ‘I must hurt people!’, rather than what that saying actually means, which is that people who have hurts they won’t or can’t address will often hurt other people. I saw the lightbulb go off over his head when I explained it. We say things, and we assume those things are understood in the way we meant them, but it is critical to appreciate how different each person’s context is.

Smoke

I smoke my lungs

And I smoke my mind

I smoke my soul

And wonder what God will find

In the ashes of my body

Maybe just little bones

Will he find my spark

And the thing that called me home?

And I 

I smoke to you

I cloud my mind

Man is just an animal

A pain in my side

Why do I care for this beast

If it lives or if it dies?

Why does it torment me so

When in the night it cries?

I am smoke and you

Are a solid thing

Can I encompass you

Can you breathe me in?

Is love just a tumor?

A cancer that can hide

All of the emptiness

That God has left inside?

I smoke my body

Like a salmon on the grill

Will anyone mourn me?

Taste me, I know they will!

What is the flavor

I’m glad that God has died

I’m glad I twisted that knife

When I kissed him last night

I smoke my lungs

And I smoke my mind

I’m surprised he didn’t kill me

After what I said and I

But here I am alive

A living blasphemy

And your body tastes like honey

And I welcome the bees that sting

My lips

My tender parts

My imagination

My bleeding heart

My bleeding bowels

My swollen ass

I’ll sink down into hell

Where at least I know they dance!

Our Most Accurate Biographers

It is both intimidating and humbling to realize the we are the first historical figure our children will do a deep analysis and study of. They will fully understand our worldview, our ethics, our politics...our entire overall philosophy of life, but also be able to balance what we say we believe with what our actions—and their experience of those actions—reveal about what we actually believe. Our children are the foremost scholars of our lives and works, and although they may not write their findings in an actual book, how we interacted with their world is imprinted on every page of their lives. 

Affirmation

You are beautiful, important, and unique, and I’m glad you exist. Yes, that includes you, you giant fucking asshole.

On Bosses

For reasons, I was barely able to sleep last night, and my supervisor totally didn’t sweat me taking a half day because of it. As someone who has worked in warehouses, factories, and restaurants as long as I’ve worked in the human services, I can say definitively, social workers are much more understanding and trauma informed that foremen and shift managers. I can’t even imagine the abuse I would receive for attempting to take a self-care day in those other environments. The bottom line is that I am grateful to work for and with people who both understand and care about people.

Pizza

Every time I’m at a lunch meeting that orders pizzas, and someone brings the pizzas into the room, the only thought I have as the meeting goes on past the time of the pizzas’ arrival is ‘this is yet another minute that I am not eating that freshly delivered hot pizza, and I am full of resentment’.

I Dreamed That I Died

I dreamed that I died last night

It wasn’t so bad

Surrounded by my all my loves;

My sons, my girl, my brother and sister

My mom and my dad

I dreamed that I died

Which will someday come to pass

But I am present today again

No one will ever say

‘He dreamed that he lived’

You’ve got to grind and hustle

Move in the direction of your fear

You’ve got to call us up your palms

And drip sweat from your hat

And you’ve got to love and share

And live by a code

And as long as you give to those you love

You will never be alone

I dreamed I died last night

But now I am born again

And when I am just a memory

Let be a memory of helping hands

Of integrity, and belief

In the potential of man

I dreamed that I died and someday I will

But for now living

Is the business at hand.

We Are Commodified

Capitalism has a parasitic relationship with our identity, both personal and as members of however many groups we belong to. The goal of capitalism is to commodify each individual and group, extract as much labor and capital from each individual member of the non-ruling class as possible, and use the divisions created between each non-ruling class (proletariat) individual and group by the system itself to create division whenever the ruling class is threatened by popular challenge or uprising. To capitalism, we are not people or communities. We are brands with stock market values that can be weaponized against one another whenever the rulers feel threatened.