The Letter

Words. It's always the words...

Beware of Darkness

The George Harrison estate objected to the GOP using Here Comes the Sun and said instead that if they had used Beware of Darkness that might have been OK...

Hot Damn!

Despite all of the bad stuff in the world, and there is admittedly a lot we see these days, there is still the need to relish the good. Not feel guilty about the joy you find in your own life or in those around you.

Perhaps to counter the bad, it is even more important to feel deeply the good when you encounter it.

So, I am reminding you all (we all know this...) to find something, or somethings, or someone, or someones that make you say "Hot damn!" Seek it/them out. Find it.

It may be that it's right under your nose. It could be you, if you remember yourself, after having forgotten yourself for so long. It could be your family, your friends, the book you just read, the realization that you just experienced a perfect day, which is rare. Perfect? That doesn't come along all that often.

The point being that it is a part of all of us, a part of the human condition, to feel joy. Unmitigated, unconditional joy. And, it makes no difference how it is manifested. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. Maybe that makes it even more intense, or special, or exquisite--that it is your own intimate connection to something either outside of yourself, or within, that moves you. To be moved! To be awakened! No longer sleepwalking from one moment to the next, rather feeling a moment or moments in a day so strongly, so deep within your heart, that it's as if you are connected to the infinite, however you may define that.

You either have to seek this out, or be open to it coming to you. I won't wager on which is more likely. I think if you're not open it will never happen. If you don't seek it out you will never find it. Maybe it's a tie. It is active. It is going about with your eyes open. It is being ready in your heart.

You have to make room for good to flood into you. Nature abhors a vacuum and wants to fill it. Isn't that remarkable? If you make the space, it will be filled. It just will.

You have to get quiet too. You can't hear the angels singing if you are too loud. You can't be touched by a rare, elusive creature if you scare it away with chatter, with whining, with rancor, and discord.

The world is too loud. You can't counter that with more noise.

And you deserve to say hot damn! Everyone does. This includes you.

At one point in my life I was depressed, terribly depressed. Point is probably the wrong word. I was depressed for years. I had a huge sense of the injustice of the world and thinking about it propelled me forward, but was no impetus for me actually doing anything about anything, because I was depressed. It also allowed me to ignore myself and not face my problems and get myself together. Depression is so tiring. The work to get up out of it is immense, and sometimes feels like a sisyphean task. But, you just gotta roll that stone up the hill any way. That is the nature of life.

Because of my sense of the cruelty of the world and seeing the inequity, I somehow forgot that I had a right to be happy, and that my sadness did nothing to increase joy in the world. I forgot that I was a part of the world, a member of the tribe, that I belonged too. I forgot that my happiness would be a net gain for the whole, because I was a part of it.

I'm not preaching the prosperity gospel here. I don't think it's all just about you, you selfish bastard... I just mean that sometimes we forget that being joyful, and finding things that make us joyful, and seeking it out with earnestness, allows the world to dull a little. I think your joy, my joy, his joy, her joy all contributes to more joy for everyone. It becomes exponential because it is infectious. It brushes off on others as you float through the world smiling. It warms others as you glow near them.

Try to find something that makes you say hot damn! Or whatever exclamation would make sense for you. Try to find something that makes you feel deeply and reconnects you to your heart. You need this.

The world needs this.

Hot damn...

Long Time Gone

It appears to be a long time before the dawn. Hold on everybody. It's darkest right before.

In Clover

In Clover

Verdant green grass dotted with swathes of clover

Blossoms of white

Some purple tinges at the edges

Bees a-buzzing dipping in the nectar found within the flower petal folds

An intoxicating aroma

Air perfumed by the scent wafting up from dozens upon dozens of blossoms

No French perfumer could compete with this

No mere man

No mere woman

Nature's evocative allurement

Drawing us in as the scent reaches our nostrils

A simple walk through the grass

What is that scent?

Nature's perfume

Bees' addiction

Can't keep away as a lover needs to feel their beloved

Hold them close

Kiss them

Touch their bodies in all ways

So the bees can't fight it

So seductive this clover

Dotted through the grass in waves of white

Intoxicating, beguiling seduction

Clover

We're all in Clover

Do you smell it?

Do you know it?

Do you feel it?

In Clover

Lay in the grass and let the perfume encompass you

Lover touches you

Kisses shared, taken

In Clover

Scent reaching into brain stem

Primal sense

Reckoning all of our shared past

The smells of our forebears

The knowledge deep in the hind brain

Smell It!

And the bees taste it, knowing to sip is to live

Sip it up

Drink in

All senses touched as a lover

To taste

To smell

To feel

To hear

To see

See the white dotted grass

Know it

In Clover

Words...

Are you ever so moved by someone's words that you feel swept away by a tide? But, it's not scary at all. It's powerful and energizing. It can be peaceful and calm as you float on it, in it. And their words reverberate. They echo through your days and you recall them, or they come unbidden into your head and seem to push out all other thought, all other words, crowding out noise and chatter and filling you with something substantive and clear. And it makes you feel alive and attuned to everything else in the universe. And it feels warm and loving and real. And they are just words... Only words... Simply words... Do you ever feel this? Do the ideas you come across ever reach into you and caress your soul? Do they massage the wrinkles and folds of your mind and then reach into the chambers of your heart and gently touch and brush the edges of you and hold you firmly, and own you? No? Then you should do what you can to find those moments in this life, because that is magic, and it is necessary. Try to find it...

Roller Coaster

You know what? I hate roller coasters. HATE them. My kids love them. At a certain point, during a very small window of my childhood, I liked them too. Just like I liked the smell of gasoline, and can no longer stand it. I also liked spinning, twirling round and round, faster and faster, and can no longer stand that. Even a short time on a swing makes me feel a little uneven, a little unbalanced now.

That all said, you know what I do like? That life is a roller coaster. I am white knuckling it sometimes and it is scary, but so exhilarating. In the midst of it, it seems terrifying, and then I swoop down the long hill, screaming, grabbing on, clinging on for dear life, and I level out at the bottom, and I'm OK. It's OK. We got through that. And we're stronger now.

I don't seek out drama in my life. I'm not an adrenaline junky. I don't thrive on chaos. I just see that that's all a part of life and I might as well try and enjoy the ride. Even if it's at times scary. Even if it feels threatening. Even if it seems insurmountable.

The roller coaster approaches. I climb in. I just try to find comfort in the seat, buckle in, and hold on.

On the Dark Arts of Political Pandering

You know, I don't have a problem when people change their minds about things. When they realize that they were wrong and maybe there's a better way. In fact, I think that's a sign of a nimble mind, one which is open and can let in new bits of information, can ponder, can contemplate, can see things from a totally new perspective. It's because of that kind of thinking that they can come to better places. I think that's good. I don't think that makes someone inconsistent, necessarily. I don't think that means they are unsubstantial. It's a testament to the ability to evolve. And who doesn't love that? Do we want to remain in the dark ages?

What I do find troublesome is when it seems that their change in thinking is disingenuous. When they switched their line of thinking to only be in line with what seems more expedient to their own ends. When it panders. When it is full of pretty words to sway another's opinion. When it is to gain an increase in their esteem, but it's acquired through a veil of lies. Lies, because that new thinking does not represent their true convictions. When it is just so much bullshit.

We're seeing a lot of that in this campaign, aren't we? On many sides.

I think this is how Hillary operates.

I am not a complete naif. I know politics is a rough and tumble sport. Things get said in ways to convince, and that may sometimes mean candidates push the edges. That might mean they heavily shade the truth, but hopefully it's still there, to gain traction in an argument. They carefully (or don't: TRUMP!!) choose their words to the greatest effect. There's a theatricality about it all, and must be to catch the eyes of an increasingly distracted electorate.

However, in this time of great metaphorical starvation, when people's lives are difficult and we're all facing such dire problems, there needs to be a lot of bread with those circuses. It can't just be so much gussied up pretty looks with nothing true under the surface. How can there be any trust there, if that's the case? How can we measure the possible behavior of the future, if there's no there there right now? It's transient. It's wispy. It's a circus side show with carnival barkers calling out full of bluster. It's not real.

Which brings us back to Hillary. She is pandering hard. Bernie is gaining momentum and people are hearing his words, which are pretty, I will give him that, but they're backed up by years of consistency. He is not saying anything new now, nothing that he hasn't said all along, but now people are listening, and listening in ever greater numbers. He is speaking to real needs in people's lives in real ways. He is substantial. Hillary is jumping on.

Her beginning to parrot Bernie's language and highlighting his lifelong issues, is nothing short of cynical political posturing. She's posing, all gussied up to catch our eyes.

I don't think it's working well, and I think people are seeing through it. Thank God for the internet and the long memory of the digital repository. It's all there for the taking. It's all there for us to see.

Ar

Is Trump the New Hitler?

So, is he?

Does Donald Trump really represent the same kind of threat for certain groups of people that Hitler did in his rise during the 1920s?

No. No, he doesn't.

Hitler actually spoke of wiping out the Jews in Mein Kampf. He blamed them for Germany's defeat in WWI, and felt that they must be removed from German society. He actually wrote that the "sacrifice of millions at the front" would have been prevented if "twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas."  He wrote those words. He outlined his intention. He telegraphed to the world the horrors that could come.

Donald Trump is no Hitler, but it may be a matter of degree, rather than actually saying what you intend. That is the concern.

Would Trump be willing to corral Muslims, badge them, register them? Yes, and he has said as much. The most supremely unAmerican thinking demonstrated there in Trump's language. Is it similar to Hitler's? Yes, absolutely, in the "othering" of a group of people that are already woven into the fabric of our culture and daily life. They are not the other, they are us. As American as you or I.

It's easy, especially in this particular election cycle, to become alarmist as the hairs stand on the back of all of our necks hearing these outrageous words, these horrific ideas. However, I feel it's important to be discerning and thoughtful and realize where there are differences and where there are similarities.

Hitler was voted in. Trump could also be voted in. Hitler's policies were encoded by the the Reichstag, rubber stamping all that he decided. The bigotry was made law and then chipped away, bit by bit, at the civil rights of German citizens who happened to be Jewish. Or, gay. Or, Romani. Or, handicapped. Or married to any of the previously mentioned. For Trump to become in any way equivalent, the whole of our Congress would have to follow suit and proceed to erode our rights here, through law.

Yes, I know. Agreed, it's not like they're not trying. Mississippi just passed some of the most limiting anti gay legislation and it is making its way to the governor's desk to be signed into law. It would allow discrimination based on religiously held beliefs. So, try getting an apartment if you're a gay couple, or renting a car, or even eating in a restaurant. If it offends the religious owner of the establishment that you and your honey are of the same sex, you might not get served.

So, clearly there are all sorts of evil shenanigans afoot in our states at the local levels. But is Congress trying to do any of that nonsense? I would say not quite yet.

So, as I shudder daily at the things spewing out of Trump's mouth, I recognize that his is mostly of the bullshitting variety. Which is its own evil. There's no truth there, is there? There's no actual conviction, I don't think. He's pandering, getting the hate vote that I had no idea was as large as it is here. Really, I am constantly amazed when there is such bald hatred and ignorance and disdain for the tolerance that living in a pluralist society demands. We have always been a melting pot, or at least a salad bowl, and we have always had "others" amongst us, working, living, dreaming as we all do.

Trump is not Hitler. But, he is most definitely a threat. People should push back in all the ways that they can think of. When you see such disregard for the truly American notion of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, for whole groups of people, you need to speak up. We all do. Everyone is supposed to get a shot at those things. That's what this country is about. Period. It doesn't matter that you don't like someone's lifestyle. It is their own and they have a protected right to it.

Trump is no Hitler. Yet.

Let's keep our eyes and ears open, and hope it never comes to that. Further, let's make sure it doesn't.

On the Rediscovery of Music

For various reasons for the past few years I've not listened to a lot of music. Instead it's been an almost steady tuning in to NPR and all that they have had to say. I've read books after hearing interesting interviews of authors with Terry Gross. She's a great interviewer. Such a good listener and not stuck with needing to ask the next thing on her list. She lets the conversation grow organically. She responds with follow up questions after interest is piqued.

Lately, I have had a huge reawakening to music and lyrics. They speak to me so much now.

So many things are speaking to me these days. It's as if I've been walking through fog, going through the routines of life, such as they are, and now I see things more clearly. Everything is sharper. Everything is more beautiful. Everything is more powerfully moving.

I feel free...

Hello, After Several Years Absence!

Well, hello!

How goes it?

I've been gone a long time, haven't I?

We have long ago finished our life experiment of ONLY buying, borrowing, used things. We often get new things without even thinking twice about it these days.

It's not that The Compact wasn't a good idea. It was. But, we can afford to get what we want when we want it, and we are still thoughtful about our purchases.

The lessons learned from going more than a year with only getting used things, or borrowing what we needed, still remain. My husband, kids and I don't NEED much. We don't WANT much. But, when we do, we get. I notice that when the kids get things they really want, they are profoundly grateful. We are comfortable in our life, but don't take a lot for granted.

So, a success, I think.

In other news, what the hell about this Trump guy?! Right?! How in the world has this happened--that he is the Republican frontrunner?

We Don't Buy It was always about more than the rejection of buying new things. It has always been about the ideas, social mores, stuck patterns of behavior that we weren't buying. And, so it is now.

I think I'll start writing here again regularly. I've missed it.

Do you write? Do you work out ideas? Do you share what you know? It's nice, isn't it? It's a release and a philosophical exercise. It's an exploration. It's a conversation--even if none of you ever respond. I know someone somewhere is reading. I know some may agree with what I say. I know some may vehemently disagree. And, it doesn't really matter if you chime in or not. It might be fun if you do, this can be so one sided, but it's not required for this to be a worthwhile pursuit.

So, hello again!