Tag Archives: sadness

For the continued storylines in this blog, go to…

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For the continued storylines in this blog, go to http://www.treetrunkmoss.wordpress.com.

And please, please, please, seek professional counseling before deciding to kill yourself.  If nothing else, look in the mirror and tell the world the universe is here to serve you, so the world will just have to deal with your greatness.

I am the greatest person the universe has ever seen.

I know it if no one else does and that’s all that matters.

For those who don’t know, it’s their loss, not mine.

 

For more on the topic, read “In local news…“.

Now, back to my new blog!

What I love and take for granted in my community

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In the last two weeks, I have conversed with an international consortium of dance enthusiasts.

Our conversations took place in a dance studio in the town of Madison, the county of Madison, the state of Alabama, the United States of America, Earth.

Countries of origin included the Philippines, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Mexico and the United States, of the ones specifically stated; heritage included unspecified European, African and Southeast Asian countries.

In some conversations, I was the “American” toward whom the comparison was made about ethnic/national meal preparation — I agreed that some cultures were known for watering down or making bland the spicy foods of other cultures, such that a Mexican or Italian restaurant in the U.S. was not “authentic”.

[this blog entry was interrupted so my wife and I could watch an episode of “SNAPPED” about the murder of a high school mate of mine, Jeffrey Freeman, one of the funniest guys I knew, an impersonator who was great at portraying Carnac the Magnificent, both Jeffrey and Johnny an inspiration for my humour then and now — my thought trail has been shifted as a result]

What I heard from every one of the people with whom I talked was their love for the variety of foods available from countries all over the world here in the U.S. — if there wasn’t a restaurant serving their favourite dishes, there was almost always a grocery store that carried the spices, fruits and vegetables of their home country with which they could cook their family secret recipes and share with friends/family.

Millions of people travel around the world, settling down in new places, rediscovering themselves and their subcultures.

In fact, it’s the story of the billions of us who’ve lived and wandered this planet to make a better life for ourselves.

I have learned a lot about myself in preparation for a dance showcase — rediscovering the joy of living with people of many different backgrounds just as important.

How people outside the state of Alabama see the people inside the state is a perception I don’t control.  What I see is the thriving community around the Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal responsible for moon landings and solar system exploration, with all the ancillary occupations that give the community’s residents a healthy lifestyle.

I have taken my fulfilling life in Huntsville for granted.  For that alone, I am thankful this beautiful autumn day, leaves falling on the driveway, and chipmunks, their cheeks filled with winter food, hopping across the flagstones surrounding the backyard pond.

Text exchange of the day

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(1 of 4) U move to the city to find work. Do you A) pay more than you can afford for your own apartment or or B) live in an apartment in the slums?

A

In the capital of Manila, one third of the 12 million residents live in the slums because they can’t afford to live elsewhere. Text 2 for question 2

2

(2 of 4) Ur boss is threatening to cut your wages, do u A) stay quiet & lose wages u can’t afford to lose or B)risk retaliation & join a local union to protest?

A

Now that you’re making less, you may not be able to afford food, becoming part of the 40% of Filipinos affected by hunger. Text 3 for question 3

3

(3 of 4) You’re making minimum wage & can’t cover all your expenses. Do you A) cut back on spending or B) take on a second job & work more hours?

B

In the Philippines, poor workers make less than half of what they need to live, forcing over 23% to resort to working in sweatshops. Text 4 for final question 4

4

(4 of 4) U worked 22 hrs & ur boss wants u to take a drug to stay awake. Do u A)take the drug & risk side effects or B) not take the drug but risk losing ur job

A

Workers are often offered drugs to stay awake, some even die of exhaustion. U made 4 difficult choices women make daily. U can help! Text FINISH to find out how

FINISH

DoSomething & Kiva.org have $$ to give to 25K real women in need! Share this experience w 6 friends & you get to select who gets the $! Txt your friend’s #s

Sobjectification

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Sobjectification : (n) feeling sad that you feel bad about yourself for sexually objectifying people around you.

Lee’s body was shaking, his shoulders aching.  He woke up at 2:12 a.m., feeling aroused and disappointed.  Why had he objectified the women in his life yesterday, the old defense mechanism that almost went away but showed up again unannounced?

His body only shook like this when his set of states of energy were rattled severely — at the end of running a marathon on a 25 deg F day, the first time he kissed a woman and the first time he kissed a man, the first interview for a real desk job, the first time he made love to a married woman, standing in a funeral home parlour greeting friends and family of his dead brother in-law.

At his age, shaking could be the early signs of many neurological disorders, not just psychoemotional moments.

Lee’s chest felt like a tree trunk being struck by a hammer.  He needed something to calm his nerves.

He turned to the script to check where in the current round of world politics his thoughts were supposed to be aligned…

23 November 1957. Open Letter to Eisenhower and Khrushchev by Bertrand Russell,” published in the New Statesman, followed by a response from Nikita Khruschev on 21 December 1957, with a reply on Eisenhower’s behalf by John Foster Dulles, published on 8 February 1958.

Lee’s shudders got worse.  He wasn’t supposed to see he was stuck in an endless tape loop, the sound quality deteriorating playback by playback, his thoughts disintegrating into repetitious nonsense.

Shouldn’t he care where he stood on the alpha male hierarchy of his times?  “To know is to do” he was told by the advice of history.

If the universe was here for Lee’s entertainment, why wasn’t his body as entertained as his pondered theories of social engineering?

Why did he revert to objectifying women’s bodies just when he was making a breakthrough?

Why did he let his wife’s withholding of her body for sexual activity influence him in any way, make him feel unwanted, unused, unworthy of attention by the opposite sex?

Was his body’s uncontrolled shivering related merely to caffeine withdrawal?

Yesterday, Lee was sitting in a room with his wife and two people interested in closing a deal to manage Lee’s finances for the rest of his life, taking his hard-earned millions and returning to him an annual “salary,” pension or annuity as a monetary security blanket to hold until he died, depositing his funds in a bank that contains the wealth of others in the entertainment business, from Hollywood to Nashville.

Money had no meaning to Lee.  Never had, never will.  He only understood purchasing power.

Money never bought Lee happiness.  Lee was always happy in his pursuit of knowledge to aid his quest to reorder the words in his vocabulary, long ago knowing that something as mundane as the changing patterns of dust on a wall could entertain him for days.

Money bought Lee new knowledge — he could overwhelm his senses with knowledge or he could add to his knowledge base one coal pitch drop of tar at a time.

Nervousness had crept into Lee’s thoughts yesterday that he had shifted into the habit of sexual objectification to give himself the false impression he was above the petty feeling of being nervous, one of his passive-aggressive attitudes he wanted to change.

What if he had told the investors that he was nervous about his life’s fortune being managed by complete strangers and hadn’t turned to seeing one of the investors, who happened to be female, as sexually desirable at the very moment he needed to concentrate on third sigma distributions of financial risk management and Monte Carlo simulations?

What if he had told his dance partner, who complained of aching body parts, that he wanted to say he’d rub her foot if she’d rub his because his foot was really hurting but he was afraid admitting his foot hurt would sound like a weak excuse and worried, too, that the request to barter one foot rub for another due to his lack of cash fluidity would be mistaken as a sexual come-on because he couldn’t get the confusing sexual objectification out of the thoughts of the new Lee?

Self diagnosis of one’s thought patterns in the mental game of self therapy could or could not be as slow or fast as professional psychosocial therapy.

Lee was a cheapskate.  His visions of life were not grand enough to include hoarding vast sums of institutional level financial security.  He knew he had to depend on someone else’s financial expertise to keep him out of debtor’s prison but it didn’t mean he had to like the idea or be able to sleep fear-free at night.

How was Lee going to deprogram his sexual objectification when he was nervous?

He finished a mug of Earl Gray tea, never quite sure if the caffeine calmed his nerves, his writing calmed his nerves or if an unknown script writer gave the actor Patrick Stewart a character named Jean-Luc Picard who moved a lot of people to drink Earl Gray tea because they really believed that they themselves discovered it tasted better than other flavours of tea, coffee or sources with “natural” stimulants.

Lee mentally apologised to the women he saw yesterday, setting in motion his newly-minted curmudgeon self to tell the next woman he saw, “Look, I’m a bit nervous.  Either I can share with you what’s really going on in my thoughts right now, which are really not socially-kosher at this moment, or I can stare at your boobs and ass.  It’s your choice.”

Suddenly, an image of the J.K. Rowling character named Dobby riding a wrecking ball while nude and speaking Russian passed through Lee’s thoughts.

Lee smiled, the shaking subsided but not completely gone.

History may repeat itself but Lee was going to enjoy the ride, even if it meant he was going to throw up because he was dizzied by the scenery flashing so quickly through his thoughts.

Is civility civil in “civil war”? Does it matter if it’s Spanish or Syrian by nature?

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Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention
Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
the fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,
the chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles;

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines,
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek,
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. but to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines,
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
On the crag by the leaning tower:
“O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor.”

And the investigator peers through his instruments
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
Or enormous Jupiter finished:
“But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.”

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: “Our day is our loss. O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser. Time the refreshing river.”

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror:
“Did you not found the city state of the sponge,

“Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin’s plucky canton?
Intervene. O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.”

And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city
“O no, I am not the mover;
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I’m the

“Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

“What’s your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.”

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen’s islands
Or the corrupt heart of the city.
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people’s army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue
And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
the photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty’s masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

Viral Video Vini Vici Vino Vincent Vickie, via Wiki

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The colonists looked everywhere but in each other’s eyes.

Despite their knowledge, their scientific curiosity and their access to the ISSA Net database, none of them was quite willing to talk about the elephant in the room:

When the only source of protein, the flesh of a recently-deceased colonist, was known to contain stage-4 cancer, was it edible?

On so many levels — emotional, ethical, practical, moral.

Back on Earth, body parts recycled for food had entered the fictional mainstream eons ago, the food made flesh (or was that the other way around?) long before Martian colonisation became a buzzword, let alone a reality.

On Mars, though, there was not the sophisticated equipment to separate healthy flesh from diseased flesh.

Malnutrition and scurvy had swept through some of the outer settlements.

Colony No. 1 was not supposed to suffer the fate of poor planning and execution.

Burying the dead was no longer an option, had been argued and regulated out of existence several generations back.

The colonists put the decision off a day.

Sure, they were rational beings but mourning the dead was still an active part of their subculture.  Give themselves a day to grieve before making this important decision, they told each other without saying a word by leaving the lab where a dear friend, colleague and family member lay motionless, eternally unresponsive.

Guest post: a friend writes…

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A Letter to Rep. Jared Polis: I Ask You For Courage
by Coleen

Signatories of the Geneva Protocol, courtesy of Wikimedia

This letter was sent to Rep. Polis on 31 August 2013.

Dear Sir:

I write in the hope that my words will not be unheeded, and that you will act as a representative of all your constituents.

At the next session of Congress, President Obama will request a vote from you and all representatives on the issue of military intervention in Syria. I urge you to support this intervention and to vote for authorization of force.

Like many around the world, I have watch the horror of the Syrian civil war unfold for two years. I remember weeping in Colorado in the Fall of 2011, watching livestream coverage of the shelling in the city of Homs. I watched the tens of thousands stream into the streets of Aleppo to demand their rights as free citizens. I watched in horror as the conflict spiraled and moved throughout the nation, even into Damascus.

And last week, I watched children dying from chemical weapons in Damascus.

There is no reasonable doubt that chemical warfare is currently being waged in Syria. There is no reasonable doubt that the Al-Assad regime is using these weapons against its own people. There is no reasonable doubt that the international community is bound by duty and by signature of the Geneva Protocol and the Chemical Weapons Conventions.

Sir, I write as one about to move from Colorado to the United Kingdom. That country’s parliament recently rejected the call to action in the face of such atrocity, and will not assume its normal position as our ally in military action. This situation has not happened since 1782. I know that the situation in Syria is complex, and that there are no clear-cut answers to the problems of intervening. I know that there are many in the United States and beyond who are calling any intervention illegal/immoral/some kind of conspiracy. Any military strike will bring strong opposition. Many compare this situation to the same in 2003. But Syria is not Iraq. Syria is not Libya. Syria is not Afghanistan.

I ask you for courage.

I lived in South Korea all of last year, and I was thankful daily for the international intervention that we call the Korean War. It cost thousands of lives, and there is evidence it was not always fought justly, but that fight was necessary. Millions were displaced, and millions more would have been if not for the brave actions of our own soldiers (my grandfather included) and those of our allies. My South Korean students are able to live in a free, democratic, and prosperous country only 60 years after the official cessation of hostilities. I have such hopes for Syria.

The people of Syria know that the world is watching. They know that the world has stood by and allowed more than two years of wholesale slaughter in their country. If we fail to act, they will never forget it. And those who seek to harm their own people will know that any agreements the international community holds are toothless, that the collective struggle for human rights can be derailed by selfish national interests.

In 2003, I wrote letters to my representatives. I begged them not to go to war in Iraq. I warned them of the future repercussions of an invasion. I am not pro-war, and I never have been. But a breach of international law requires action, or a dangerous precedent is set.

I ask you to vote “Yes” on a resolution that authorizes military force in Syria. Please contact me if you require any clarification.

Kindest Regards,
Coleen Monroe