flipping the american bird

it was the best of times....

it certainly isn't news that new technologies make the world smaller; songs celebrate that like it's a good thing. what are the actual dynamics of a "smaller world"? we become aware of ways of being: thinking, dressing, eating, talking, believing, that we'd never imagined. and some are thrilled, and some are made afraid, leading to fear's eternal partner -- hatred.

i'm sure no generation since the beginning of generations has escaped this duality. thing is, somehow i figured that some day, like now, my lifetime, "we" would "wise up." we haven't. we have the greatest power humans have ever had to be a literal part of lives anywhere on the globe; why fear invasions from space? we've got your mosque burners right here.

but let's dig even deeper, because, as you know, some of those unwanted mosques weren't mosques at all. this brings us to another feature of a smaller world, the tremendous ease of fear-mongering. when an "other" becomes apparent, someone will also appear who can gain something from demonizing them.

the catalysts for these thoughts are several. watching adults convince other adults that health care would include death panels. watching adults convince other adults that mexicans, or muslims, are here to hurt you. they came for the mexicans and i said nothing....

watching jon stewart equate truth-tellers and lie- tellers since they both raise their voices, then watching keith olbermann and rachel maddow try discussing/debating that with him. (though "can't i see you (and you me) as you (or me) and not as truth-teller or lie-teller, not as blue or red, but just as us?" is a valid question.)

then ted koppel piles on, lamenting a newstime past that never existed, even in his own newstime past. then olbermann responds, with great insight. and then the rest of the world piles on. and i have to tell you that i'm watching the truth being thrown out with the bathwater.

part of the facilitation of this roil are... (drumroll) ... the new technologies. and while i am saying that the new tech- nologies have allowed a fuller blossoming of propaganda than humans on earth have ever seen, [propaganda by definition being the convincing of the many by the few things that are not, when un-spun, true], they have opened my door too.

there have always been liars, and there has always been a moneyed class. and since the moneyed have always controlled the media, the moneyed have always had the ability to spread whatever it wants, wherever it wants. and if you disagree, well, we have ways....

remember when pocket calculators cost more than iphone4s do now? one no longer needs to be of any certain class to get one. at our fingertips we have: all of history, much, from the most recent century or so, with actual tape, film, and video. there no longer has to be any debate as to who said what to who. koppel is wrong: until now there has been no uncorrupt news. but there is now.

what we have now, with msnbc, with progressive radio, and with "the record," is the ability for the unmoneyed to reach the entire planet with the truth. and with the proof to back it up. with twitter and youtube and blogs, we can keep up with each other in an instant.

who is telling the truth and who is lying is no longer up to the observer; when anyone says, 'i was never there,' within an instant the video proving the lie is up online.

so no. the equivalencies have it completely backwards. fox is proven to be lying night after night after night.

if they're the same, it's like the teacher saying to the bully who was beating up the skinny kid (captured on iphone), "now i don't know who started it, but you both go to your desks and i don't want to hear from you again."


simple: that teacher is ignorant. even simpler: i am not.

this is the end, my friend

SIGN THE OLBERMANN PETITION

dancing from cats

THE CAT'S SONG

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture
of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm

........mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?

Can you run.. up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes.

I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

Marge Piercy

The cat’s song from Mars & Her Children (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). First appeared in Matrix 28 (Spring 1989). Copyright © 1989, 1992 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc.

(this halloween, learn to dance)

sanity

When you're fat....

you think about fat all the time. I wonder if it's the same if you're gay, or if you're black -- do you think about that thing about you that you know others see about you first, that thing about you that makes you different, that makes you, it's clear, stand out?

Slowly, crepuscularly slowly, it is being accepted that perhaps your gayness is something you've inherited; perhaps it isn't a choice after all, perhaps, in fact, you're not deviant, just different.

And it goes without saying that skin-color is not a choice, but don't a lot of people feel that "they" don't have to act "that way"?

I have two primary doctors, my GP and my cardiologist; both are tall and thin, i'd describe him as lanky, her as sleek. He, the cardiologist, is white, be-speckled, she is long-haired and so pretty that you know being a model would have been an option. She is also black.

Neither are, as far as i know, gay.

It's clear both have made decisions about their lives-- perhaps difficult ones. That both are full-time physicians, full-time parents, spiritually involved, illustrates this.

Though both may do some forms of physical-fitness regimen, that's not why they're tall and thin; they were born that way. Just like the black guy and the gay one: this is the way they are.

And so am I. Despite all evidence to the contrary, and it is all to the contrary, short and fat is a natural state of being, a way one is born; i asked my GP if she could be shaped like me even if she did choose to be and of course the answer was no.

I also asked her, according to her experience, if i could choose to be like her (the thin part, not the tall and black, of course). If ability to change is borne out by statistics (as has been used as an argument in the nature of gayness), the answer has to be a loudly resounding , "No!"

Her experiences predict the same as that of the many published reports: only 5%, at most, of people who attempt to lose weight permanently are successful. My cardiologist reported a higher number, 20%, which he believed was due to greater motivation; still, in that case, four out of five patients failed.

Being fat, then, is being a failure; when what you inescapably are is seen as changeable, like the belief that prayer can "heal" homosexuality, those who believe that assume you have failed (unless you are too lazy even to have tried).

Is it any wonder that it is so easy to fall into the trap where self-esteem's only source is the report from the scale?

The assumption about fat people, by thin people and fat people alike, is that they should, and can, be thin. I suddenly realized this year that i had spent a fair part of every day for nearly 60 years thinking i should be "repairing" something about myself, that i was, intrinsically, in the wrong. At all times.

And quickly added to this: that the same was probably true for almost every other woman alive; tell me this isn't oppression? Tell me that anyone who assumes i am lazy, un-intelligent, un-motivated, boring, slovenly, or worthless, because i am fat, isn't oppressing me? I live in a society in which the assumption is ubiquitously that fat is sin, not characteristic.

*I cringe when i hear Oprah berate herself for gaining back some weight; is it even possible, in this society, to define one's lifestyle not as 'letting herself go' but rather 'letting herself be"?

Does fat come with health consequences? Of course! Diabetes, heart disease, and more. But, and i know I'm not original in stating this, but the stress of living all the days of one's life seeing oneself, and being seen by others, as a sinner is not healthy either. I'm not debating that there is a relationship; I'm arguing that the relationship is inherited, not made. If someone is fat, start early with diabetes and cholesterol treatment. Don't ask your patient, your friend, your child, to do something they cannot do, and then judge them for not doing it.

You wouldn't do that if the subject were sexual preference. I know you well enough to know you would not. And if you did, it would say more about you than about your lesbian friend.

My tall, thin, beautiful doctor had never had anyone tell her that they had been beating their head against a wall for 60 years. That when you're online you don't reveal you're fat because that might just invalidate everything you say to just too many people. That people have told you they would love to be friends with you but they just didn't like fat people. That neighbors don't look at you when you meet in the street. And that these things had been happening for 60 years. And you've blamed yourself.

Tyra Banks dressed herself up in a fat-suit; she looked like she weighed over 300 pounds despite being as tall as she is. "The people that were staring and laughing in my face -- that shocked me the most," Banks said. "As soon as I entered the store -- when I went shopping -- I immediately heard snickers. Immediately! I just was appalled and hurt! There's no excuse for rudeness. There's no excuse for ugliness. And there's no excuse for nastiness and that's what I experienced,"

"It seemed like the last form of open discrimination that's okay, and I deci- ded to put on a 350-pound suit myself and live that life for a day and see what happens. And it was one of the most heartbreaking days of my life."

it is true that body shape and size, like race, sexual preference, mental illness, and more traits they're learning every day, are inherited, not chosen, and thus no more than these other traits should it be judged.

lily pond (lotusgreen)

*she has since retracted those statements

the wearing of the purple

in solidarity

in support

in compassion

with love

it gets better

don't suicide

plant a radish get a rose

happy birthday john

the white-crowned sparrow sings

this is a photgraph from wikipedia that i played with. and regarding that song, the WCSs have regional dialects, sometimes drawing from a VERY small region, so in fact if you live anywhere other than my back yard, they might sound a little different.

also, regarding their coming and going, they don't actually go very far. they hang out all summer at the shore of the bay, where it never gets as warm as it occasionally can here only a mile inland.

equinox

OH YES

Oh no --
now we're in for it, everything's
slamming shut,
closing shop, the leaves on the cottonwood
are crying
fuck it and letting go in the wind, the cold

is coming, winter storms are massing at sea,
morning ice on the deck and the dog skids off
in a blur of legs, then it rains and rains
and rains,

and the plague is upon us, strange fevers
and aches,
the body spilling out, impossible to ignore,
you're in a machine consuming itself,
and this morning walking out, you look

at the persimmon tree
for the first time in weeks
and notice all the leaves are gone, and there they are --
persimmons -- fiery globes, hosannas and lauds,
and you can't help yourself, admit it, even sick

and miserable,
mired in the dreck of winter,
you reach out your hand,
take hold of the fruit,
oh yes, there's another world, there's a sun

within the sun, yes,
kindness is real,
oh yes, blessings are everywhere.

Joseph Stroud