It’s a good day when the answer to your problem is cooking some bacon.
See I am the proud owner of a valued family heirloom…the cast iron frying pan. It’s almost as old as I am and it is black as tar. Everything you cook in it tastes better. But recently it got a little spot on it and I needed to re-season it, and so following the esteemed advice of my mother, I have been cooking bacon in it everyday for the past week. Of course good bacon should not go to waste, so I have also been ‘taking one for the team’ and enjoying a nice side of savory breakfast meat every day.
You would think some things are just common sense, or at least only have to be learned once in a lifetime…but as a gentle reminder, let me just say to anyone reading this, don’t cook bacon naked.
Go, go, go, go
Go, go, go shawty
It’s your birthday
We gon’ party like it’s yo birthday
We gon’ sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday
And you know we don’t give a fuck
It’s not your birthday!
Well, this week it IS my birthday and it’s about time I gave a fuck!
I’ve been in such a pissy funk lately, but it’s time for me to take the bull [headed pouty-pants attitude I’ve had] by the horns and take control.
It’s time to stop letting the external circumstances feel like they are pulling me down.
So, this week, I’m doing things FOR ME. It’s about ME, about what I want, what feeds me, what delights me, what encourages me, pampers me and what celebrates ME.
And it may be even a little about what gets me into trouble, just for the sake of being in trouble. [Wink!]
Go, go, go, go
Go, go, go Hausy
It’s your birthday
We gon’ party like it’s yo birthday
And you know we don’t give a fuck!
‘Cause It’s your birthday!
There is a balance in the universe that cannot be disturbed. When one particle changes polarity, another particle, light-years away, will instantly change to balance. That is the nature of things.
With that in mind, consider this. I seldom watch television. It’s like a habit that never really stuck with me. Now I know that several of my friends enjoy television and some of them even have this Tivo™ thing that they swear by. I must admit that if I really liked TV, then Tivo™ would be the way I would want to go. It has many advantages, but one of them is the ability to easily skip over the commercials.
So last night, as I sat at my computer and engaged in one of my favorite past-times (no, not porn and masturbation) I imaged my friends happily zipping along their recorded favorites and skipping over the commercials. I had to smile because I was witnessing and participating in ‘The Balance.’ See, I have a minor fascination with advertising. I think it offers some of the best insight into the mores, traditions and values of a people and a period in time. [I mean really folks, my degree is in Literature, Art and Culture…where else do those three things come so glaringly together, than in commercials and music videos?] I’m the kind of person who only watches the Super Bowl for the commercials. Now, with the Internet it is easy to find foreign commercials, old commercials and some of the most creative/outrageous commercials the world has to offer. I can spend hours pouring over commercials.
So skip away my friends. The balance is undisturbed.
CP’s funeral was today. It was beautiful. She was 47.
What if someone told me I had 12 years to live? Would I do anything differently? I know it sounds like a cliché thought, but that doesn’t stop it from hitting me right between the eyes.
Because of the funeral, I also ran smack into one of my ‘old worlds.’ Overall things went well. I feel real indifference toward most of the characters from that chapter. Our lives continue on without one another and that suits me. However there is one special someone who I continue to hold dearly in my heart, yet for circumstances beyond both of our control we are forcibly estranged. He and I were able to sit together, undisturbed, for about 10 minutes. We reconnected and enjoyed each other’s company. In a simple and causal exchange he offered a comment/compliment that almost dropped me to my knees.
As I grieve tonight for the loss, and ponder my own mortality, I also sit within the warm knowing glow that I live in his heart, as he does in mine. And no one can take that away.
I’ve never been much for tragedy. I remember studying the Greeks and Shakespeare, and the tragedies always made me cringe. I suppose that is the point, right, evoke pity and fear. But still, I can’t stomach watching two well-intentioned lovers act rashly for just a moment and end up dead in each other’s arms, or reading along as fate constantly intervenes against the actions of the ill prophesied family and the son kills his father and sleeps with his mother anyway. Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic, or maybe I’m just a naïve optimist but I want that kooky disguise to fool the authorities and allow the lovers to meet in secrecy, I want there to be a wedding in the end, I want to think that people can live happily ever after.
What’s even worse is when I see tragedy unfurl in real life. What’s worse is when I see those moments or decisions that change the course of everything. What’s worse is when I see those moments either in my own life, or in the lives of others, and I feel powerless to do anything about them, powerless to changes them. You know, those moments when you have one split second to act, or react, or say something, or keep quiet….and you don’t. We all have those moments.
My friend CP passed on Sunday. The last year and a half of her life was filled with major challenges. She was truly one of those people who had made it to the top of the world, when suddenly it all started to unravel, uncontrollably shift. I visited with her last December and she had spoken of moments of enlightenment and depths of faith she had experienced along her path. What had played out much like a modern day tragedy had been described more like a kind of blessing by the person who lived it.
Perhaps that is part of the story that never came across to me while reading the tragedies. All I’ve ever seen in those stories is the seemingly useless suffering, the painful ironies that lead to failure and heartbreak and leave you asking “what for?” And I have this terrible urge to re-write the endings, to change the course of events.
I would like to think that all suffering does bring with it a blessing. I would like to think that all things work out for the best. But then, I guess I would be talking about the comedies… and right now I can’t seem to get the tragedies off my mind.
“No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.”
Over the next week, the Not In Our Name statement will carry out an audacious project to puncture the whole shameful celebration of war, greed, and intolerance that will surround the second inauguration of the Bush regime.
Our aim is to publish across the nation a NEW statement of conscience (text below), signed by this nation’s recognized voices of conscience. Bush does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He does not act in our name. And the whole world needs to hear that.
We want this statement to ring throughout all forms of media, and reach every part of the country. In this country, free speech is very expensive. But think what a difference it will make if tens of thousands of us contribute, and a few who are able contribute tens of thousands.
We have but four days left to raise the necessary funds. If you would like to see this statement in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle and many others large and small, then you need to go to Not In Our Name, sign this statement, and make your on-line contribution.
Together we can make this happen!
* * *
Not In Our Name
George W. Bush is about to be inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States. Let it not be said that the people in the United States silently acquiesced in the face of this shameful coronation of war, greed, and intolerance. He does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He does not act in our name.
No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.
In our name, the Bush government claims to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq on baldly false pretenses, raining down unspeakable destruction, horror, misery and death to as many as 100,000 people. It destroys entire cities in the name of so-called democratic elections, while intimidating and disenfranchising tens of thousands of African-American voters at home. It holds an entire nation hostage, forcing on its people torture, hunger, and unimaginable privation and humiliation.
In our name, it holds in contempt both international law and world opinion. It has carried out torture and detentions without trial all over the world and proposes new assaults on our rights of privacy, speech and assembly. It has already stripped the rights of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the US, denying them legal counsel, holding them without cause, stigmatizing, and deporting tens of thousands.
Could we have imagined a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be discarded so easily? But under this government anyone can be declared an “enemy combatant” by Presidential decree with no meaningful redress or independent review, by a President whose rationale for concentrating power in the executive branch is “trust me.” Its choice for Attorney General is the legal architect of torture from Guantanamo to Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib.
As terrifying “trial balloons” are floated about invasions of Syria, or Iran, or North Korea, about leaving the United Nations, about new “lifetime detention” policies, there is no telling what further crimes this government will commit in our name against nations or individuals deemed to stand in the way of its goal of unquestioned world supremacy.
The Bush government seeks to impose a narrow, intolerant, and political form of Christian Fundamentalism as government policy. We must face the fact that this extremist movement is no longer on the margins of society. It aims to strip women of their reproductive rights, to drive gay people from public life back into the closet. It seeks to drive a wedge between spiritual experience and scientific truth, smugly denying thousands of years of human scientific achievement.
We believe all people must be free to find meaning and sustenance in whatever form of religious or spiritual belief they choose. But we will not surrender our right to think to extremists and the President in whom they have their strongest ally. The Grand Canyon was not created by a biblical flood. Women are not human incubators. Breast cancer is not retribution for having an abortion. AIDS is not a punishment from God. Evolution happened. Religion can never be compulsory. This government may claim to make its own reality, but we will not allow it to make ours.
Millions of us worked, talked, marched, poll watched, contributed, voted, did everything we could to defeat the Bush regime in the last election. It was a massive effort, bringing forth new energy, new organization, and new commitment to struggle for justice. It would be a terrible mistake to let our failure to stop Bush in this way lead to despair and inaction. On the contrary, this broad mobilization of people committed to a fairer world, a freer world, a more peaceful world must move forward. We cannot, we will not, wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to start now.
The movement against the war in Vietnam never won a presidential election. But it blocked troop trains, closed induction centers, marched, spoke to people door to door — and it helped to stop a war. The Civil Rights Movement never tied its star to a presidential candidate; it sat in, freedom rode, fought legal battles, filled jailhouses — and it changed the face of a nation.
We must change the political reality of this country by mobilizing the tens of millions who know in their heads and hearts that the Bush regime’s “reality” is nothing but a nightmare for humanity. This will require courage and creativity, mass actions and individual moments of courage. We must come together whenever we can, and we must act alone whenever we have to. This will require extraordinary acts from ordinary people.
We give our love and support to the soldiers who have refused to fight in this immoral war, and we pledge to create community that backs courageous acts of resistance. We applaud the librarians who have refused to turn over lists of our reading, the high school students who demand to be taught evolution, those who brought to light torture by the U.S. military, and the massive protests that voiced international opposition to the war on Iraq. We stand with the tens of millions of people throughout the world who fight every day for the right to create their own future.
It is our duty to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively.
So one of the pesky little side effects of my recent fast is an overabundant amount of energy, and a major shift in my internal clock. Lately it seems I can’t get to sleep until about 5 or 6 am. Now I am used to being up at that time, but this is different. I sleep from like 6 am to 10 or 11 am. I am not tired during the day, and once 10 pm comes around I’m wired!
I’ll have to work to get back on a better schedule…but not tonight.
Ps. Thanks Turtle for such a wonderful dinner tonight. It was superb.
A friend of mine is making her transition. I’ve always known her to be a fierce and vibrant woman, striding through my life with immense passion and energy. She’s always been quick with a smile and a compliment and an absolute bear on the other end of a hug…all 5’2” of her. Pure Amazon!
Most of her physicality has already diminished, but I know that in her now frail frame that spirit-fire still burns.
It always will, my dear CP. Thank you for what you’ve shared with me, and touched in my life. Namaste.
So, you’re planning on going out for the evening and you look at the clock. It’s later than you thought and you’ve got to get ready. But, you do have a little more time than it usually takes you to ‘primp’. Now two things cross your mind; you could shave your legs OR you could masturbate. You calculate the chances of someone actually feeling your legs later in the evening and make your decision. First, because no one is likely to feel your legs, why shave? Second, NO ONE is likely to feel your legs…the choice is clear.