I’ve often compared grief to the Godfather movie scene with Michael Corleone’s famous line “Every time I think I’m out, they keep pulling me back in!”
As the fifth year of my husband’s death approaches, I’m reminded that it’s also akin to a phantom limb: no longer corporeal reality, but nevertheless painful and aching. That I sometimes continue to reach for him, or turn to speak to him. That there’s still a stab in my heart, and often the sting of tears. The cruelty of his death never lessens, despite the fact that my life continues. I laugh, enjoy good food, have people who love me and care. I am reasonsbly comfortable, and keenly aware of the good in my life every single day.
I’ve begun to explore the possibilities of dating (only because dear loved ones pushed) and remind myself that I am indeed still alive and would like a relationship. But now I’ll only consider widowers from long term marriages who have a clue and understand that any possible relationship will involve four of us, as the one guy I dated for a few weeks sensitively and correctly acknowledged.
I can tell you honestly that until recently I begged and prayed for death, unable to comprehend how my beloved and I could exist in different realities/planes. How he could cease to exist at all, and how I could continue to exist without him. It made no sense and still makes me angry at times. That he didn’t get to enjoy our retirement and watch our granddaughter growing up. That he and our son didn’t get to build/repair things together in the garage. That he didn’t get to fully open up about Vietnam and the other experiences he was finally starting to share…
I miss his face, his warmth, the fact that he sometimes giggled like a little kid, was often silly, incredibly sweet, debonair, and sexy. I miss the way we’d dance around the house while doing chores, or when he wanted to lessen my annoyance with him. And yes, I even miss being annoyed by him, annoying him,and every other aspect of a long, genuinely loving relationship. I loved that he continued to flirt with me for 37 years and always saw me as beautiful through his own beautifully hazel eyes of love.
I miss his smooth and surprisingly muscled skin and most of all, I miss being held by him, soothed by him, cajoled and reprimanded for my temper. I miss the casual intimacy of his Boricua/New Yorican Spanish.
I miss being completely, fully, and well loved.
I’ve often thought about that saying “Tis better to have loved snd lost than never to have loved at all” and wondered if I think it’s true. The pain of losing a true and enduring love is insurmountable. But would I have done it all over again? Hell yeah.
Every had one of those weeks where every day is a Monday? A week when everything breaks, costs more than your budget? When you’ve unpacked boxes and moved furniture to the point where your body just quits and stops? A week when you’re not just alone, but deeply lonely and angry at your husband for dying?
I’ve questioned my faith and beliefs a lot since he died, because nothing I knew could make sense of that loss, but four and a half years after the fact, I made up my mind to do my best to be present and live while I’m alive, as I believed he wanted me to. I trusted that he’d watch out for me and give me a heads up when I was heading in a wrong direction. I believed that because we were always each other’s “ride or die,” and it seemed natural to me that not even death could break the bond we shared through the ups and downs, good and bad.
So after a particular vision towards the end of last year, I determined to be open and allowed a friend to put me on a dating app. After about three dates, I met a lovely man and had an intense, three month affair that reintroduced me to the living and revived my love of concerts and dining, among other things. And although our parting was sad and hard, I’m grateful for that and believe that he was the right person for that mission.
But it also renewed my anger at my husband for dying and leaving me alone, vulnerable, and far from friends and familiar resources. For the first time in my adult life, I was seriously considering packing it up and discontinuing the care of my Ancestor table, feeling as though it was another bit of magical thinking I should move away from in my quest to remain grounded and present.
So this morning, after the plumber left and I resumed unpacking, with an eye to where to put the table and its contents, I saw the set of elekes I’d taken from a box yesterday. At the time, I was more attentive to a plastic bag with photos that I hadn’t seen in years, and I just set the beads on the sofa. But today I looked at them, knowing they weren’t mine, but wondering for a minute, if I’d had an earlier set I’d forgotten. Suddenly, like a punch that winds you, I realized that they belonged to my Raymond.
And I lost it. Again. Almost five years after his death, all the hurt and grief, anger and despair came spilling out, like lava from Pele’s gut. Once again I was bereft and stricken, the blade slicing through from gut to heart, just as those metaphorical organs had been pieced back together.
I so want to give up, but there’s no where to go and nothing to be done. I’ve no where to fall and no one to catch me or break my fall.
I’m not the first woman to mourn a man who died too soon. Not the first woman who lost a man to stubbornness because he wouldn’t listen to her. Not the first to feel this searing, horrendous, self-renewing pain.
I’ve previously compared grief to Michael Corleone’s famous line about leaving the Mafia, and it’s true. There are respites and even periods when an earlier sense of normalcy is restored. But it’s always lurking, like a “Mr. Smith” from The Matrix: always ready to spring out and take you over, as though your peace had never existed.
I’ve never smoked and don’t much drink, so I guess it’s sad and happy music, cake, and busywork until another false scaffold can be built. Till another “box” gets opened and all that I lost comes spilling out at me once again. Till it maybe feels safe enough to let my heart peek out again, if there’s anything left of it.
In the meantime, I’ll dance and write and look cute practicing weaponry, because I can. I’ll joke and cook, and do what all life demands because despite it all and how I feel, I won’t shame my Ancestors by being the weak link.
I’ve had a tough couple of weeks, so I’ve been stressed and feeling down, which set off specific food cravings that none of the restaurants here could satisfy. So, I checked supplies to see if I had the ingredients necessary to make the properly baked macaroni and cheese I needed. (Don’t be giving me your slimy mac with no crunchy, oven baked love! Take the time to do it right or call it something else, because it’s not real macaroni and cheese, even if it tastes good. Hmmph! ISWIS)
Didn’t have everything I needed, so I hopped in Flicka, and made the 15 mile drive to my nearest supermarket, where I’m always greeted with a hello and nod from the sushi guy, a hug from a dear young bakery worker, and waves and smiles from others in the bakery, produce, fish, departments, and by Bakery Kid’s adorably dour cashier girlfriend.
Today, the line I chose was long and moving quite slowly. I chose it so that I could say an encouraging word to the new young woman who was being slammed at the register, hoping to give her a little lift on a busy day, working a register that often seems not to actually register well.
A small, grizzled man in my age group circled and stopped in front me, wondering aloud if it was Wednesday, the day for senior discounts. I don’t know if he realized that he’d spoken out loud, but I informed him that it was only Tuesday, and we both laughed, him explaining that he works nights and loses track of days when he’s off. Having worked nights, I nodded in understanding, noting that it gets worse with retirement. This led to him telling me that he was contemplating his third retirement but didn’t know if he could stand having nothing to do.
By this time he was behind me, and we were starting what would become a most amusing conversation between strangers sharing space for a few minutes.
He was exactly the type of character I gravitate towards: curmudgeonly, dry humored, quick witted, and obviously to me, a kind and gentle soul. I’ve had a soft spot for, and can recognize such old guys since childhood: the gnarled elders who brook no nonsense, talk tough, and will freely give the shirt off their backs, jump to protect the vulnerable, slip candy money to a kid, or something towards the rent for a struggling mother or widow. I know them instinctively and can quickly draw out the sweetness that hides behind the cranky exterior. I see it in their eyes and have been wrong maybe once.
This particular crank was almost bragging about being known by everyone in the store for being a pain in the ass, “Just ask them” he said, nodding towards the Customer Service booth. I saw right through him and laughed. Referring to me as “Young lady” in his working class English accent, I asked his age, countering his $500 bet that I was much younger than he. He’s three years older, so I won, but as expected, he didn’t pay up. Instead, he answered all my questions about him directly, honestly, and with a shared understanding for life experiences. He’d had a long career in the military, a couple of retirements, and was now working security at a local hotel.
He told me about being RAF attached to an American squadron during the Vietnam era, rising up the ranks, retiring as an officer. I told him about my lifelong desire to skydive, causing him to face me with a look of complete seriousness on his face.
“What do you think’s the hardest part of skydiving?”, he asked.
“Landing,” I answered, thinking of my recent knee surgery and back pain.
“No!” he scoffed, his eyes merry. “It’s being pushed out of the plane!” I laughed along with him, and learned that his name is Phillip, H……or H……- he seemed unclear about which he wanted to go with at the moment, perhaps realizing it might be imprudent to give his name to a random stranger in a store. We somehow discussed the US Marines he’d flown with, and a bit about my connections to the Corp, both of us being uncharacteristically careful in what we said, both respectful and appreciative as only people who’ve experienced multiple sides of something can be, knowing that critiques required contextualization impossible under the circumstances.
He told me about his anger at having to work with a racist, and his gleeful pleasure in being pivotal in having the man fired. We talked of many things on line and as we left the store together. A short, but unexpectedly intimate encounter between passing ships.
Before leaving, I made the cashier smile and saw her spirit lift, and I waited for Phillip to check out his few items. We continued talking as we headed towards our cars, mostly about his lifelong hatred of racism and other bigotry, as well as the joy our grandchildren bring us, our antidotes to the poison spewed so freely these days. Our hopes to see a better world while we’re still in it.
Before we parted, I asked to hug him, a quick but heartfelt embrace of a kindred soul, doing his bit to make the world around him a tiny bit better, with no expectation of praise or reward. In fact, I’m sure he’d be mortified that I wrote this, and meet my scribblings with the sarcastic humor of a self effacing man. Any pleasure would be hidden well behind smart remarks and pity for a girl so silly as to take him seriously.
But that particular grizzled old Brit made my day a lot better, and I’m smiling on the inside now, thinking about how often angels have passed through my life cleverly disguised as crabby old gents and ladies.
I am so sick of analogies of darkness being equated with evil/the bad/deprivation. I’m too tired to shriek, so here goes.
We and everything in the natural world were created in darkness. We cry when we’re spasmed out of that nurturing and soothing place into the bright light of turmoil. We adults forget that we need the darkness to shade our eyes, to rest and sleep, to be creative. We value the lotus, but scorn the mud. Yet it is that darkness that not only creates the flower, but continues to feed it and to hold it up to receive the sun. Without that mud, it shrivels and dies, and no amount of light will save it.
Although it exists, most seldom know the healthful balance between Dark and Light, not as opposing forces, but mutually sustaining. We draw sustenance and wealth from the dark, rich Earth, and She is nurtured by rays of Sun, and quenched by the loving Waters. In balance, all is fruitful and giving, and through them, we exist.
Fearing the dark has never made any sense to me. Anything that can happen under cover of darkness can happen in a well lighted space, and the light at the end of the tunnel is likely to be a train you won’t survive. I crave the quietness that comes with sunset- I love how everything in the natural world pauses at twilight before the night singers begin their chirps and croaks, how the ones who hunt at night have silent feathers to blend in with the hush of night. I love the time when loved ones share a meal and stories or simply sit or lie together. That our ancient selves know that work and stress should stop at night, despite our 24-7 societies now. That our bodies fail without the dark and the peaceful quiet that it brings. We ruin it with our lights, and noise, and activities, our bombs flashing, and led lights, but our bodies hold fast to their origins and fail to thrive amidst such things, our health and quality of life diminished and shortened with each additional assault.
I say these things in part because of colour prejudices I’ve heard my entire life, amped up every few years, and accompanied by vile and violent acts against other humans. I’m writing because every time someone equates darkness with evil/ignorance, they are subtly or not so subtly reifying tropes of superiority, inequality, and ideas about worth, and value in our cultures.
I say it for the more trivial reason that our “NY style wardrobes”have an abundance of dark clothing for which we are gently teased when in semi or tropical climes. I honestly find an abundance of bright colours jarring, albeit sometimes beautiful. There are colours I don’t want on my bed and bright patterns that would keep me up at night, without a doubt. In nature, bright colours delight me, but the manufactured versions seem out of place and never have the vibrancy of living things. How could they?
Where I come from, colours have energy and spiritual associations. White is the colour of Death- the loss of our rainbows and life, the ash and bones left in the end. It’s the North, where the Ancestors dwell- not to be feared, but certainly the end story for mortals. Black is Creation and the Source of all Life. It is Earth, the Womb, and Mother. Red is Life, the blood in our veins. Yellow is the Sun, our Father, and lover of Earth. Blue is the Water that sparks Life for all. Green is Sustenance and the Beauty of nature. All necessary elements and aspects of our full cycle, in balance. All are of The Good.
To malign any is to put your ignorance and imbalances on full display. It is a form of violence carried throughout societies for generations. It is a harsh denial of our real place and path in partnership with Earth and all within. It’s also grammatically unnecessary. If you want to say “bad” say bad. “Bad” and “ignorant” have dozens of synonyms you can use. Question your symbology, open or Google a thesaurus, and leave the Dark to her peace.
There’s no longer any chance that Senator Schumer’s “No Kings Act”- an obvious deterrent against Executive Branch overreach-will pass. Nor will any other legislation that benefits working Americans. Many of the usual forms of civil public pressure are unlikely to be effective after December, and it’s likely that even the most tame forms of resistance will be met with increasingly harsh repercussions. While resistance seems to boil up about every thirty years, there hasn’t been a viable third party coordinated with nationally organized protests since the 1930s.
Sadly, it’s unlikely that enough people can organize and come together for a general labor strike this year, and in other year or two, unions and even such basic actions could be illegal if we’re not vigilant, stalwart, and courageous. So rest, regroup, and connect with the natural world we hope to save. Rest is also an act of resistance in our hyper capitalist society, and a right to be protected. Connect as well with the established organizers/organizations already working and who have a track record in community action and alliance/coalition building with diverse communities and groups.
We’re not starting from scratch, folks. The struggle has been essentially the same for 405-532 years for many of us, so welcome aboard. If you’re new to a group, remember what the old folks used to say, “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.” Be humble, listen, and learn before assuming…anything. While everyone is needed, it’s on you to learn where and when your expertise/experience might serve. It’s also on you to recognize your limits, of experience in diversity as well as personal energy. Humans don’t learn well on overwhelm, so while you want to expand your knowledge of self snd others, be aware of the emotional work involved and support yourself as needed- counseling therapy, yoga, massage, etc. Don’t expect to burden BIPOC with teaching you beyond required basics of the group(s) and don’t rely on allyship or other proximity to BIPOC to avoid the work of establishing new group or individual relationships. Allow time to grow real relationships: this is life work that didn’t start in 2016, and won’t end in four years.
We are always playing the long game, and thinking otherwise is counterproductive. Long term strategies combined with immediate tactics can lead to the systemic, changes necessary for long term, sustainable change and success. The ordinary people for whom integrity, ethical substance, kindness, and fair play matter will be the Marvel heroes and A Team, but only if united. The old ideas of aggressive competition and greed that have been centered since the 80s have led us to this sorry state: American vs American, ignorance of the largess and equality that is the New Testament’s central theme, and a very general unkindness and lack of compassion towards everyone. Antipathy towards science and critical thought mark our entrance to the new wave of the Dark Ages.
Much as many would like to deny it, this is who the corporate “we” have been, but it’s not written in stone and we can choose a different path. We can save what’s always been the best part of the American Dream and our greatest strength: unity in diversity.
I’m sick of Death. Worn down from the personal losses and the always at war world I’ve lived in all my adult life.
I’m beyond dismayed that diplomacy is no longer a tool used to prevent mass killings, that the united world we envisioned after WW2 has been trampled under the heavy boots of armies marching in the service of greed and racism and fascism. I am sick to my soul at the masses of children and elders murdered in Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, and the other places some of you actually care about, like Ukraine, Palestine, or Israel. Every age yes, but kids and elders tend to among the most vulnerable groups and to have fewer choices in their locals, self defense, etc.
And yes, that was a note of bitterness, because the fact that only certain wars are reported and that only the lives of certain groups matter is at the root of so much of what continues to go wrong, on micro and mega scales across the earth. That some humans are equated with animals means that (A) you don’t know that humans are animals and (B) you think that the value and lives of some animals are less important than yours. Why? Simple: they don’t serve you/your purposes. You don’t understand them or their purpose, therefore they are irrelevant to your limited minds.
Humans don’t create anything but each other and poop (that for the most part isn’t even good fertilizer). You destroy plants and animals and then realize that they were necessary to the environment and therefore your life and its quality. Yet you persist in destruction with the obviously false arrogance that you’re the most valuable and intelligent creatures! No other animals foul their own nests and none attempt to eliminate entire groups of their own species out of greed.
And it almost always boils down to greed and envy: spices, gold, land, oil, minerals, and on and on. Scratch beneath the surface of all chest thumping, song rallying propaganda and rhetoric, and the envy and greed are always there. Always. We can’t unite in peace and love, but almost every nation, race, ethnicity, and gender will get behind mass murder and still show up to pray on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, with no sense of guilt or the least compunction.
And for that and nothing else, generations continue to be sacrificed, both as soldiers and as their victims. As the great Nikki Giovanni put it:
Most people seem not to understand the difference between love and relationship, or at least what people think is love.
There are people I’ve loved with a passion, but for various reasons, those people weren’t able to engage or sustain a relationship. Their unresolved or even unrecognized personal issues turned them into psychological manipulators, or distancers, or rendered them inept or unable to express themselves or engage with others in a meaningful way. With one exception, these were sad men, not bad men, and what they lacked-including the refusal to accept that they needed to learn a different way of being- was inherited and learned from people who themselves had never known intimacy beyond the physical.
Sex is not the only form of intimacy and without the others, it quickly wanes. I would never deny its importance and the joy it can bring within a relationship. Done well, it helps create closeness and trust, because in order for sex to be truly great, each partner has to know not only the other’s body, but their limits and fears and thresholds of pain, however that may be expressed. There’s a level of respect that creates trust and allows for further exploration and innovation and perhaps lovely surprises for both. It’s knowing which boundaries are firm and which might be nudged for greater satisfaction. It is playfulness and time traveling and an assortment of discoveries and joys that can extend the shelf life life beyond the body’s physical limits, because really good sex goes far beyond the physical body and into “the Real,” where souls meet and reconnect. It is a gift and the best fun I can think of, and it enhances love and intimacy. But it’s not the only way that relationships work.
The thing with relationships is that they play out in real time, in real dwellings, among real relatives and friends, at real jobs, in the real trivialities of our daily lives. It’s remembering to replace their ice cream when you’ve eaten the last pop, or that they have a meeting or assignment that they’re dreading. It’s letting them sleep while you walk the dog or change the kitty litter, let the chickens out of the coop. It’s alternating who gets up to rock the baby and get them back to sleep. It’s not teasing in ways that amuse you but annoy them. It’s picking up after yourself and recognizing the baggage you brought into the relationship and working on it, not expecting them to do your work on top of their own. It’s being appreciative of their support as you do work on your shit. It is knowing beyond a doubt, that this person loves you and has your back, ride or die, as no one else can or does. It’s taking the risk of showing someone every aspect of yourself over time and realizing that even if they don’t like it all, they still love you and will be there as you slog through whatever muck needs cleaning or ditching in yourself.
That last bit is particularly hard for people who have shame or guilt and they’ll often reject the beloved for loving them, crazy as that seems to others. It’s hard for people to see themselves through the eyes of the beloved when they’ve been criticized, judged, disparaged, or rejected by others, especially in childhood.
Or perhaps they did wrong things that they’re ashamed of, and are afraid to face that or have it known to the person they only want to see them with eyes of approval. They fear- consciously or not- that they’ll lose esteem or even see horror replace the love.
I’ve known folks who were in the military and by doing their jobs, were responsible for the deaths of other humans, and even years later, could not reconcile that with their inner morality/ethics. Some had survivor’s guilt that they had survived when good companions had not.
Some might have treated women badly at other points in their lives, and others could be ashamed of criminal or unethical behaviors in their pasts.
Some, like me, might have done things others would consider trivial and ordinary childhood events, but they still weigh on that person and seep into the relationship. It doesn’t have to make sense to the beloved, but they have to accept the reality of it for their partner and go from there. Comfort, reassurance, and professional therapy can go a long way in most relationships, because even when we understand and accept a person, we cannot fix another person. We can help to create an emotional environment of peace, acceptance, encouragement, and love that allows for healing, but part of having healthy relationships is knowing where to place the necessary boundaries and to know what is and isn’t yours or yours to fix/heal.
I can chant “there, there” or “sana sana” over a bad cut or broken finger, but professional medical assistance is still necessary, and there’s no shame in that, and there should be no shame if the required assistance is for mental health care either. We are not meant to cover every job in relationships. We are meant to want to help, find out how to help, and to the best of our ability, lovingly point the beloved towards the resources required for the particular issue. Hell, going together to the library to look up resources is a great way to express solidarity and for both to learn things.
There are no wrong or right ways, only what works for you both. And that will change over time, as you change. That’s why honesty is crucial from day one. You have to take into account changes that will have an impact on the relationship: returning to school/new job, wanting to move, have more kids or prevent having more. Big or small, your changes have or can have, an effect on your beloved and they need to be informed. Your partner shouldn’t the last to know if you’re unhappy or dissatisfied or disappointed or turned off in some way! Keeping info from them isn’t “protecting”them or “sparing”them, or any of the cowardly lies you might tell yourself when in reality (remember? Where we all exist..) it is denying them choice and agency. It is a sure way to ruin a good relationship.
Will you screw up? Inevitability. Again, that’s reality. We all do and will, mostly in silly, downright stupid ways that will annoy, perhaps anger, even inspire amused pity in the partner who wonders how they can love such an addle brained fool. In most cases, you’ll even have a good laugh about it and it might become one of those family stories, shamelessly dragged out with friends you trust, among the many stories from everyone’s enduring friendships. The person who screwed up might be first to tell on themselves, noting their own idiocy and fallibility. Those first years together are guaranteed to create such stories, and most are just that: the errors made in getting to know each other, innocent boundary crossings, silly missteps and mistakes. A friend and I both had husbands who used our cutlery for tools because the toolbox wasn’t handy! Annoyed, yes. Forgivable, absolutely! Funny? Most certainly, and the four of us had a number of loving laughs about the daffiness our guys shared. They, in turn, could laugh about our little foibles, like my insistence that you shouldn’t change directions when mixing batter. Believe me, I know it’s daft, and I shake my head at myself and laugh along. If I know nothing else, through my experience and professional training, I know that humans are bundles of contradictions and comically complex. Life gets a lot easier and far more enjoyable once we can own that and laugh at ourselves.
Bigger grievances, true hurts will obviously require real attention, and when trust is broken, if repair is still possible, understand that it can take a very long time and complete self monitoring to rebuild. The aggrieved party is the one who’ll decide when they’re satisfied, not the perpetrator. A real hurt might require that professional assistance we mentioned earlier. Automatically saying you forgive the person or even wanting to be able to forgive them is unrealistic. Boundaries and trust broken is a big deal and has to be handled with delicacy and commitment. Just because the offender gets tired of the dog house, they don’t get to push their way back into the main house of their partner’s heart. Their ego has to be put aside and they have to commit to making amends. And just as in AA, they have to understand that their willingness to make amends doesn’t give them an automatic pass. The loved one can continue to love you but they may not accept your offer until they know that their heart and peace and boundaries are safe. If that will happen or how long it might take cannot be predicted or limited. And if the person who originally ignored what was best for their partner is now unwilling or unable to make that commitment, they don’t really know what love is.
And that’s why knowing what’s most important to your partner and respecting that comes first. If you will not understand that and commit to that level of care, you can never reach those “higher”levels of intimacy and the satisfaction and happiness that they bring.
Is it always easy? Hell no. Is it worth it? Yes, beyond measure. I’m old and have done a number of things, seen a lot, heard more, made more mistakes than I care to admit, and I can think of nothing more important in any relationship, whether friendship or lover. All relationships go through changes. I have a couple of friends from my teens and over the years, we’ve lost touch, had disagreements, reworked how we know each other, and renewed and created new understandings of how we’re friends as we go through life and move further away from the kids we were. Aspects of those original relationships are there, bound by shared experiences, humor, and love, but if forced to remain the same and stagnate, respect and love would die.
My sister and I had a fourteen year age gap, so as adults, we very consciously worked on getting to know each other as individual adults with very different takes on our childhoods and parents. It allowed us to move away from the family story into our own sometimes shaky, but genuine relationship.
All good long term relationships require flexibility, adaptations, and humor. What makes them doable is love and commitment. I learned as much from my son as he from me and my love for him allowed me to rethink, even put aside at least some of my ideas about child rearing and the world. I continue to learn from him and his family, because their experience of the world isn’t mine nor is their world the world of my past. So I try to keep that in mind and work to resolve inevitable differences between our strong wills. We’re all worth the effort, because I know that they and all my loved ones enhance my life and make my world and the world a better place. They and I are worth my sometimes bruised ego or the pain of adapting to new ideas and realities, and I love them enough to sometimes request the difficult conversations.
We can change most easily through love. It never stops growing, and our capacities are built to accommodate that amazing, sometimes mind-blowing growth.
Here’s the thing, people: I am three days younger than snow, and I understand how this system works. I’ve studied it from multiple angles, in and out of college and graduate school, and I am quite clear about it and where I am within it. In my entire life, I’ve had the pleasure only once of voting for a candidate I wholeheartedly supported. The rest has been voting in the best interests of me, my class, and my people. I don’t have to love the candidates, but I vote for the one most likey to support an agenda that doesn’t set us back in terms of environment wellbeing, race, class, gender, and community well being/prosperity. If they actually move us forward, praise be! Should it be that way? NO! But I don’t live in a world of “shoulds” and dreams. I live in a proto-capitalist society that is veering from an intended-to-have-been democratic republic towards a theocratically tinged, racist, misogynist oligarchy. So hell yeah, I’m going to vote against that, despite any qualms I have about the candidate or party for which I’ll vote, because as much as I dislike neoliberalism and all that goes with it, it still beats the hell out of any possibility of being completely disenfranchised and having my rights as a woman descended from enslaved Africans and other people of Captive Nations revoked or seeing my children and loved ones threatened.
As of yet, I see no genuine and long lasting plans for a real revolution, or for what happens afterwards. If half of the current citizens don’t know how their system works and why it was set up as it was, do you really think you can garner a large enough base to have a people’s government that wouldn’t be prone to fascism? That other greedy and interested groups/countries would just sit and watch? Most Americans don’t know what socialism is, but they’re a’gin it, and we remain the only “First World” country with corporate healthcare that bankrupts families on a daily basis. So understanding communalism or other non-Eurocentric forms of government and types of societies isn’t even possible.
Bottom line: I do know much, and I know enough to know that people who speak and act against people who look like me should not be given power over me. My mother “didn’t raise no fools” and I am sick to death of people who “don’t have the sense that they were born with” writing about the short comings of the most viable candidates. Do some of you really think that redistricting, setting back voter’s rights, defunding and otherwise sabotaging our postal and educational systems is accidental and that they would do all of this if your vote didn’t matter? That union busting isn’t an act of war against the working class?
It’s a flawed system, but X marks the spot, baby: you are here and unless you’re independently wealthy (own corporations, resources, means of production, etc.) your ass is a worker- white collared, blue collared, or without a shirt- and you need to understand that you have more in common with the single mothers, Black, Latino, Appalachian, sex-workers, migrant workers in the fields than you do with people who make what you do in multiple years, every single second. You need to understand that you’re not going to become one of them, question the sick desire to accumulate more than is needed in ten thousand lifetimes, and grasp the reality that voting in the interests of a class to which you might aspire is voting against yourself and helps keep you where you are or worse.
So that’s it. Few people will read this and fewer will pay heed. There’s nothing I can do about that beyond having had my say and hoping that they didn’t drop you on your heads and there’s still some good sense in those big heads your necks support.
I wish us all peace, a safe place to live, enough to eat, good health, and the joy and solidarity of community and love. And I hope that you can separate ego and illusion in order to serve yourself, the actual Constitution and its Amendments (14th is important!) and do what’s in service to the generations of us all.
How did I not know that people are using snail mucin on their skin? I have SO many questions, from extraction methods to who on this garden grub green earth thought of this? Seriously, I want to know who looked at a cute little snail, plodding along, minding its business, and said, “OMG, would you look at that glowing complexion! I say there, Snail, your complexion is flawless, what’s your secret?”
I might imagine some famished ancestor noticing a bird chowing down on a snail and saying, “Move over, Bub!”and grabbing anything that didn’t kill the animal. Hunger can make otherwise unappealing comestibles seem doable. Go forward a millennia, add butter and garlic, and you’ve got a desirable protein, not merely something pragmatic.
So maybe someone noticed that cooks who prepared escargot had particularly lovely hands that looked youthful. In busy kitchens among cooks whose hands are subject to abrasions, nicks, and burns: that would be noticeable. But I’m just creating a scene born of my need to know how such an inconceivable item is now promoted as the beauty product of the year.
Having lived in a shell-less cave, I’ve been snail mucinless this entire lifetime and I am hurt to realized that not only have I been deprived, but people who I thought of as friends were withholding vital information that could have preserved my youthful glow. Instead, I’m another victim of physics- a shriveled hag, encased in a wrinkly skin bag. And why? Not because it is a side effect of the natural passage of time, but because no one cared enough to tell me that inside that shell-house that they carry on their backs, snails have wee, tiny labs where they’re turning what we previously thought of as their yukky secretions, into pure gold, extracted from desperate consumers under the spell of the multi-billion dollar marketing of an aesthetic illusion.
I can only hope that the snails have lawyered up and are being rewarded. That unlike others, they won’t become victims of their innate talents, exploited and discarded by another heartless human industry.
Perhaps slime really is ultimately the perfect product and metaphor for our age.
Update: “Stressed snails produce slime, however sometimes machines are designed to be kind of like a spa for snails, using a secret spray to pleasure them which also triggers them to secrete more slime. Then they are left in a dark room on top of mesh so that as they scoot around the slime drips through the mesh and can be collected in a tray below them.”
Thanks to Flaky Biscuits Press for the above information. I’m glad to learn that they’re not killed for it, and if they’re being pleasured in the process, so much the better. I don’t want any stress or depression slime on my wrinkles😉 (Not sure that ejaculation slime is any less dubious, but it’s better, LOL.)
Thrilled to have been able to write several pages of the book this morning for the first time in a couple of months, so I was absolutely thrilled. Until said pages completely disappeared from Word, my computer, and the known universe, including copies I’d sent to my writing group. Just spent almost two hours using every suggested recovery process, por nada. Finally found an in-between first and last draft, so I saved, saved as, copied, uploaded, downloaded and printed it to everywhere, including sending copies to all my emails. Immediately after that, the original that I’d emailed showed up. And this is why writers (in movies) go postal. In real life we bitch about it, get headaches, have insomnia, IBS, and a variety of anxiety related twitches, but ultimately get back to the work at hand.
So cheers, my dear Word Wranglers! May your vocabulary be mighty, the words flow, your pages stay safe, and your critics give praise.
shamamaspeaks 