Friday, November 28, 2008

who dictates logic and fact?

Current mood: grateful

Happy crappy-excuse-to-stuff-myself day everyone :) just some thoughts on life.... It occured to me (as it sometimes does) today that I don't spend nearly enough time cuddling, playing with, or hugging my child as I should... In those moments when I actually do it feels like the most awesome and natural thing in the world... I have a great time talking to and just generally hanging out with Lennon... its amazing how intelligent and loving and creative he is, and it becomes so obvious to me how much he is constantly trying to communicate with the world around him, even though his verbal skills aren't the greatest... though others may not see or understand it, in those moments when I am actually paying attention.. IN TUNE with my little son, I understand so much of what he says, and what he means through his actions and signs... I don't do any of it anywhere near as much as I should though.... somehow or another I forget how cool he is... or I get distracted by any one of a number of worthless things... or I get caught up in the constant nagging of "me, me, me"... waste time indulging in selfishness, foolishness, or self pity...

I also, at times, don't set limits for him like I should, when I should... sometimes because I am so afraid of sounding like any one of the many parents that I have criticized at one time or another... other times because I am unsure of what the hell it means to be a human-being myself and thus do not feel qualifyed to tell my child what is up or down, right or wrong..... but too often it is because I am simply giving in to laziness or self indulgence... too busy to see or hear... running far too fast, or much too blinded by my own wants to see what HE NEEDS...

It sucks to see and realize these things but to have a serious lack of motivation to stop doing, and being this person... maybe that is what I hope to strive for with blogs of thoughts such as this...... I try to summon it up, that motivation, but since this summer's events I have been having a pretty tought time doing it anymore... Before june I feel like there were all these things I knew about life... and all these attributes I had already discovered... all these flaws within me I was working on and all these amazing qualities I was just learning to appreciate about myself.... and I don't know what happened to so much of it... I don't know if it is temporary effects of the trauma... or of the meds.... or wether it is a permanent scar that my mind now carries to match the ones on my body.... I will think thoughts now that I am sure I've had before... I'll have an epiphany... only to realize that its one I've had before but had since forgotten... it's like being on a crash course of all the lessons of life that I had already taken the full course on, if that makes any sense... I was pretty sure I was on my way to being an awesome mama, and maybe even a pretty good human being... and now I fear I may have lost my way for a bit...

and then there on the other hand is another side to this ordeal of mine... The answers to the prayers I had been sending out to the world and hadn't even been aware of... The lessons I so badly needed to learn... the karmic debts I had yet to admit I owed...The wake up calls and the slaps in the face and the realizations of how many awesome opportunities stare me in the face....The statments and expressions of truth ringing in my ears.... So much of them sound so clease to even try to put into words... but they all call out truer than they ever have before to this girl... Life is too short to waste focusing on our differences... why do I focus so much on what drives us apart... on YOUR FLAWS when I have so many of my own? Life is too short to waste wondering "what if?" or being bitter about all those events and people who didn't work out the way I thought they should... Life is not promised or guarenteed for any length of time, nor to anyone no matter what bargins they try to make with health... too unpredictable to take those we hold high for granted, repeating those ever famous line about needing to get together soon and laughing about how time flies and making hollow promises of plans that never pan out....Our time is MUCH too short to spend stuck in the same place.... sitting at the starting line afraid to move a muscle for fear of failure or ridicule... in a tree afraid to chose another limb for fear of falling.. ready to jump in any old leaky boat for fear of actually reaching the other side... its TOO short... and you don't have THAT KIND of time.

Its hard to know what true caring, love, and compassion is until you have had to have someone else wipe your ass and bathe you... its a hard thing for me to even concieve of now, let alone talk about, how helpless I really was when sickness ravaged my body and mind.... hard to look back and feel again what I felt in some of those moments... try and REALLY recall... and no matter how hard I try I can't............................... the terrifying moments when I felt like I was falling out of my skin... being ripped from the only body I can recall knowing... Those hazy moments with angels in blue and devils tearing me apart inside and out. Hallucinations of self mutilation... my daddy by my side always with a cold damp cloth to sooth my forehead... my mom: so scared.... I thought she looked like a fragile bird almost broken in two.... my little boy.. petrified and confused by his own mother... running from me and hiding his face.... how much I missed him.... the physical ache and the never ending lump in my throat of being torn from him and not having him there to cuddle... to nurse to sleep.... to hug... or EVEN to just be able to sit and watch him babbling his foreign tounges and being a silly little kid.... straining to hear him in the background on the phone... hoping for a "he-woah, wha?" on the speakerphone.... my heart in agony at the sound of him crying 30 miles away, but what could have been a million miles... not being close enough to wrap my arms around him, wipe away his tears and kiss his nose... no cold little toes digging into my side and no smallish fingers tangled around my dreaded locks of hair as I tried to sleep it all away....

...and then there was my brothers and sisters: my friends... with tears in their eyes... looking at me in a way I had never seen them look... afraid that tommorrow I may not be there... trying to be courageous and not let me know just how close death's grip might be... all willing me the strength to hang on and FIGHT for my life... and somewhere in my drugged and confused mind even the vague knowledge of all the friends and aquaintences who in some way, wether large or just for a moment, had heard the news and felt for my family and I... and all the fear and sorrow I felt for those I would leave behind and the ordeals that they would experience with my passing.... And most horrifying of all... that darkness I was spinning in.... swallowing me up.... afraid to let go and fall.... see if there might be more light on the other side.... afraid to stay another day... to face another moment of a waking nightmare.... and that unconcious understanding that it was my choice to make.... which way I would go... so much unfinished and undone.... so many things still to breathe for....

....all of these things I am coming to grips with... trying to absorb still... and also trying not to let the physical, mental, emotionals scars and lingering wounds keep me from moving forward...



...and in light of all of this....

On this day of thanksgiving. I refuse to give thanks to or for the twisted (and as of now manipulated and adulterated in common references) events which brought about the creation of the corrupted/corrupting heirarchey currently in place in this GREAT LANDmass which holds so many incredible human and non human lives.... but I will undoubtedly and wholeheartedly give thanks for the life which still gives a throne for this soul to sit... the lungs which still breathe and the heart which still beats... the kidneys that still cleanse my body of the toxins which poison it... the brain which survived to think another day... slowly yet steadily recovering from the damages suffered from seizing and sedating alike... for the over 400 human arms which donated the blood and plasmas that saved the only mother my son will ever have (and the body's and soul's attached to those arms :)) and for the many souls out there who wether seen or unbeknownst to me held me up when I was falling down. I am truely grateful for all for the first time on this: THANKSgiving day....


Currently reading:
The Sneetches and Other Stories
By Dr. Seuss
Release date: 1961-08-12

one final thought on falling...

Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

First, in my confusion, I thought that the blackness I had seen while falling from my body was reason to fear death.... that it meant that there was nothing more after this life has left us... these houses have passed away.... but now I have realized it is confirmation for me of the exact opposite... confirmation of what I had long since suspected: that our experience in death is relative to our experiences in this life.....

The darkness was there in that moment because it was not yet my time.... if I had let go and let myself fall it would have been out of cowardice... I would have died the same way that I had lived up until that moment... RUNNING blindly and in fear... terrified of feeling any pain... scared of facing tommorrow... and in doing so running right into the grip of the dark forces in life that I was trying to escape.... I believe it is the same in life as in death.... my life was not finished... my purposes not yet fully completed... to die would have been the final act of selfishness in a life so often played with little regard for any feeling outside my own bubble.... This was truely my second chance at life... and my most urgent motivation to truely live...

Thursday, November 6, 2008

wasting your vote...

Current mood: insubordinate
Category: News and Politics

Wasting Your Vote
by Mark Jeantheau, GrinningPlanet.com

A VOTE IS A TERRIBLE THING TO BE FORCED TO WASTE
Wasting Your Vote — The Voters' Choice in 2008:
Darth Vader, The Emperor, or Luke Skywalker

Election Day 2008 is coming. Perhaps you lean right and have a case of Baracknophobia, or you lean left and think McCain is insane-in-the-brain. There are indeed some differences in how the two candidates present their platforms, but underneath all the talk and sniping, whichever of these two candidates gets elected will largely continue Business As Usual in the US, merely taking slightly different paths to the same end—the further entrenchment of corporate power and further support for the rigged system by which the rich get richer during good times and let the poor pay for the elites' mistakes when their leveraged investments go south.



During the primaries, the few Democratic and Republican candidates who talked about real issues honestly—Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and John Edwards—were all run out of the race by their corporate-dominated parties. Ralph Nader, who ran as a third-party candidate or independent in 2000 and 2004 and is now running again in 2008, has been even more forthright about the country's most important problems, most notably the issue of corporate dominance of the federal government and corporate hegemony in American life. But Nader is beyond even being considered a long-shot for victory in November, and writing-in a candidate like Kucinich or Paul or Edwards seems like a no-impact approach. So, one really has to pick between Obama and McCain, or it's just wasting your vote, right?


Feel the Power of the Force

Hmm. Let's imagine for a moment...

Let's say we're going to vote in a galactic political contest—the 2008 Election for Supreme Ruler of the Universe. The Republican candidate is the crusty, creepy Emperor from Star Wars. The Democratic candidate is a convincing upstart named Darth Vader. In this scenario, though, the public is convinced that the Emperor and Vader are on different sides of the issues. In reality, of course, they work towards the same purpose but with different techniques. Your only other voting choice is a third-party candidate named Luke Skywalker.

Election 2008 environmental voting

The media pundits pronounce that Skywalker has no chance of winning. This strongly implies that to avoid "wasting your vote" you must vote for the Emperor or Darth Vader, right? But would it not also be a waste of your vote to give it to either of the voting for Skywalker makes a statement of protest, a small finger-poke in the chest of The Powers That Be to say "I don't like your corrupt system and I'm not gonna vote for either of your henchmen."


Back to Real Life

The Star Wars election metaphor maps rather easily to the actual 2008 election: McCain/Emperor, Obama/Vader, Nader/Skywalker. The specifics are different, of course, but the overarching themes align quite well: There are two establishment candidates (McCain and Obama) and one anti-establishment candidate (Nader). The differences between the two establishment candidates are minimal compared to the stark contrast between either of them and Nader, who asserts correctly that "the establishment" the other two men yearn to preside over is a cesspool of corruption. Without a plan for radical change—sweeping reform of campaign contributions, elimination of corporate lobbying, and a breakup of corporate media—the establishment candidates' promises of change are empty, and the differences between their platforms are minor.

Those who favor McCain will surely protest that he is a great hero, a patriot who only has this country's best interests at heart. His actions and recent rhetoric tell us that whatever patriotic feelings he has in his gut, his brain has been co-opted by the same dark forces that have steered things in such a calamitously wrong direction over the last eight years (and, to some extent, the eight years before that too, when Clinton championed disastrous policies like NAFTA, media consolidation, and repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which laid the foundation for the current financial crisis).

Those who favor Obama will insist that here, finally, is a candidate for real change. But Obama does not oppose corporate power, and his solutions to our energy crisis include more nuclear power plants and support for the mythological "clean coal." He should be supporting massive investment in and conversion to truly sustainable energy technologies. He should tell us the truth about our energy future—that reductions in total energy use will be required (i.e. we will have to undertake "lifestyle changes," a verboten topic in politics). But Obama is not really about true change; the best one might say is that he's merely "less bad" than McCain on some issues and will go about destroying the planet more slowly.

yeah thats right... I voted Nader.

Current mood: impervious


Howdy folks... just a quickie today... Just wanted to say Hi to everyone. My recovery is still moving right along... Protein spillage counts are still dropping. I am almost off the prednisone, which has kinda sucked to wean from... All sorts of fun aches and pains come along with depriving your body of steroids after it has become used to them. I feel like I'm 80 years old with bad arthritis some days! But this too shall pass so, its all good! My face is starting to look a tiny bit like ME again, and the swelling in my feet and ankles is going down too.... I am completely off all the mood altering shit they had me on... Dealing with some necessary attitude adjustments from that, but again... taking it one day at a time! I went to see a Lawyer today... he seemed like a decent fellow, but not the ball of fire that I was hoping for... If anyone out there knows a real hotshot kinda lawyer who does personal injury cases please let me know!

hmmmmm what else has happened since last post.... Halloweenie.... um Lemon and I dressed as Gorgons... me as Medusa and him as my adorable little spawn ;) I made both our costumes...needle felted 30 or so snakes to twist in amongst my dreads and made him a hat with needle felted snakes all over it. We both dresses in all green and green makeup and such...
The afternoon and evening were one of those times where NOTHING goes as planned and thus I didn't get any pictures, but have no fear (lol) I still have our awesome costumes and I shall be putting us back in them at some point soon to take some photos, which I will then post promptly for your viewing pleasure.... In other news I am trying to get a storefront up online with all of my random creations for sale... I'll post a link and all that good stuff once it is done.... I'm hoping to start going back to a pool every day again next week after about a month hiatus... it seemed like it was helping alot and if nothing else was giving me an hour or two everyday to collect my thoughts and gain a bit of my vanishing sanity! So hopefully that will happen.... I guess thats about it... on to that most dreaded of subjects..... POLITICS

So yeah, YES I voted for Nader/Gonzalez... Why? Because it was the ONLY choice I could feel okay about... well not the only, it was a toss up between him and Cynthia Mckinney the Green Party's candidate... Sorry but I think the two party system is a bunch of bullshit and I think voting for the lesser of two evil bastards is ridiculous... If I am going to bother participating in the game of "election day" than I am going to vote for someone who truely speaks of a "CHANGE" I can believe in... not some bullshit flashy rhetoric and catch phrases.... and just cause someone can raise his voice in a psuedo passionate way in all the right places in his speeches does not make him my saviour, or the next MLK, or any of the other foolish things I've heard Rabid Obama fans spouting... Yeah McCain may have been slightly more evil... but Obama's voting record speaks for itself... he is just as easily bought as all the rest! The "changes" he mentions when he is actually getting specific (which is rarely) are hardly the radical ideas that are needed to truely change this country... I don't care how much he uses the word "change"...I'll believe it when I SEE IT. Believe me, I hope that I'll have to eat those words some day... but I'm not gonna hold my breath on it.... Yah know what would be a good first step he could take to prove he is so much different than all the other snakes in washington? If his first official act as President was to indict those scum sucking POS's (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Petreus...ETC... etc... etc) on all of the crimes against America and against ALL OF HUMANITY that they've been commiting for the past 8 years.... but I'm pretty sure that won't happen....I'm pretty sure his first act will be to join in which ever of those currently active crimes is the most profitable for him and his..... Am I cynical? no.... just realistic, outspoken, and informed... Its a shame more Americans aren't... maybe if they were there'd be something behind all the "FREEDOM" speak.....

Currently watching:
Zeitgeist, The Movie