My other journal is a Mercedes

I have a blog/journal I've kept since November 1998 on another website. That's a long time to have an on-line blog. I started writing there because it was a novelty at the time -- it was one of the first, if not the first, blog sites on the Internet. Also, I like to write. I kept writing there because of the the other bloggers/journalists/diarists. A community developed quickly. We read and noted each other, we followed each other's lives.

When the other site would go down, panic would ensue; not because of any loyalty to the site or its creator, but because of our loyalty to each other, the ones who poured their hearts and souls out, sometimes daily. We followed as people married, divorced, died, got jobs, lost jobs, bought new homes, lost homes, had children, had affairs, cooked, cleaned, and created.

The other site -- the Mercedes -- is down again. Each time it goes down we wonder if it will ever come back. In fact, I started this blog as a back-up to that site's potential demise. Blogger is a good enough site to write, but developing a sense of community is difficult. It's hard to find others who will "play" with you -- that is you read them, they read you, you comment on each other's blogs.

Even though it is very easy to write here, I rarely do because there is no feedback. I'm sure it is partly my fault. I haven't taken the extra step to really follow other blogs on Blogger. Facebook allows me to keep in touch with many of the friends I've made over the past fourteen years on the other site, but it isn't the same.

This is not the same, but I may have to make do.

I don't know much, but this is what works for me

Daily Dhamma Right here, right now.

I talked to a woman this morning who is in similar circumstances to mine -- older, financial circumstances have changed, basically on her own. She was in a lot of fear and asked for advice. I was able to share my own experience with her and my tips for staying somewhat sane. The most important tips I gave her were these,

1. Keep in mind that right here, right now, we are safe. To the extent we can stay in the here and now, our suffering is alleviated.

2. Chop wood, carry water. Do the next indicated right thing and give up on predicting results.

3. Bitch once in awhile, but don't make it a regular practice. As the King of Hearts said to the Queen, "Oh, the pain! I don't think I shall ever get over it," to which the Queen replied, "You will if you don't make a memorandum of it." (A paraphrase.)

4. Don't hang around people who endorse your misery or who enjoy their own misery.

5. Pay attention so you don't miss the lesson.

6. When you start ruminating on your fate, when fear of the future starts creeping back in, to go back to 1 and 2.

Practicing these things doesn't guarantee that you will have a problem free future or get things you want. These are simply tools to help you cope with what IS.

Graties ~

1. Bike rides.
2. Working in the yard.
3. People who inspire and encourage.

Story Telling Day ~ The Kiss

Daily Dhamma God made man because He loves stories. ~Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlev as quoted by Steve Sanfield

According to The Scottish Storytelling Centre tomorrow is Story Telling Day. This is a true story from my past, as well as I can remember it; something that happened fifty years ago. It is rated PG-13.

The Kiss

His name was Buzz and he was the brother of my brother's best friend's sweetheart. When I met him I was only fourteen and in full pubescent overload, inexperienced and uninformed or misinformed about the opposite sex and full of feelings I could not identify or do anything about.

Buzz and his sister lived with their parents in one of the high rent areas of town. Their house was huge. It had two stories and a wide porch that wrapped completely around the house like bill on a sombrero. I lived with my two sisters, brother, and a parents. The six of us were crammed into a 900 sq. ft. G.I. track house in the barrio in the east side of town. I wondered what Buzz and his family did with all that room. I marveled at the novelty of people not bumping into each other in their mad flight to get to the bathroom first.

He had short, curly black hair, the most impossibly blue eyes, and jug ears. I was pathetically in love, magnifying his good points and discounting his bad points. I thought Buzz was the most handsome boy I'd ever met and far too good for me. I'm pretty sure he also felt he was good for me, so my shy crush on him, while acutely felt, was (with the exception of The Kiss) pretty much unreciprocated and therefore short-lived.

The Kiss happened in the summer of 1960. I was thirteen years old. A group of us kids were driving back from a day at the beach. My brother, at seventeen and being the old man of the group and the most responsible, was at the wheel of my parents' beat-up old Rambler. We were packed in the car like a Mexican family on its way to a wedding. Buzz was lodged onto the seat next to me.

It must have been after midnight and the stretch of road between San Luis Obispo and home was long and lonely. I find it incredible that my parents had allowed us to make the trip -- maybe they hadn't -- maybe we had "borrowed" the car while they were away. We were prone to do that sort of thing. I don't remember; the only thing that really stands out about that weekend and trip is The Kiss.

There I was wedged next to Buzz, my heart working so hard I could hear each beat pounding in my ears like a hammer on an anvil. I worried that he would hear it too, which made my heart beat faster and harder. The excitement of having him sit next to me, to have him so close, the struggle to cope with unfamiliar desires, was almost more than I could stand. I hadn't yet had a drink of alcohol, but looking back, I damn sure could have used one then.

I closed my eyes, leaned my head back and cocked to the side against the window. The coolness of the window and the vibration from bald tires on worn road didn't allow for sleep, but I feigned it anyway. It was better to pretend to be asleep than to sit rigid and expectant, hoping Buzz would do something. I didn't know what I expected him to do, but surely there was something he could do to make me stop feeling the way I felt, slow my heart down, speed it up, make it stop altogether!

Just about the time I resigned myself to simply being miserable, if not for the rest of my life, then at least for the rest of the interminable trip, I felt Buzz's soft, full lips flutter ever so gently across mine. The kiss was so brief, I wondered if I had imagined it. I wondered if I was asleep, dreaming that I was faking sleep and being kissed. The Kiss was so tenuous, so unsure of itself, and yet undoubtedly the most electrifying sensation I'd ever had -- as if someone had just applied a cattle prod to me. I tensed and held my breath, but I had no idea what to do next, so I just kept pretending to be asleep.

I wanted so badly for Buzz to kiss me again! I was so terrified Buzz would kiss me again! God only knows what might have happened if The Kiss had been followed by another -- perhaps spontaneous combustion. The next kiss never came -- not then, not from Buzz. Buzz leaned his head against my shoulder. After a short while his slow, deep breathing was disappointing evidence he had succumbed to the rhythm of the road. Eventually, I did too.

Graties ~

Storytelling.
Creating things with my hands.
Memories.

Women and Politics

Daily Dhamma Just because it bears repeating: If women were really smarter than men, no Republican (at least from the current manifestation that calls itself the Republican party) would ever be voted into office. There are more women than men by population and more women than men who get higher education and more women than men who vote. So WTF does that mean? That means despite having so much power, women continue to hand it over in the naive hope that men will take care of them.

One of my favorite bloggers wrote an entry with the title "more proof that men are dumber than women." I left the comment restated in my Daily Dhamma. I believe that comment to be true. Men often think with their dicks, but women almost always think with their emotions. Emotions lie to us. Emotions tell us that the guy thinking with his dick is also thinking with their emotions and wants to take care of us because we are such treasured and fragile creatures. Well, maybe sometimes that is true, but mostly they just want to get laid and, now that they can't simply bash us in the head and drag us to a cave, they have mastered the art of manipulating our emotions to accomplish that end.

If women were really smart, they in no way would tolerate being paid less than men for the same job, they would not put up with their health care costing more than men's, they would not allow men to make decisions about their reproductive rights, they would not keep electing a majority of men to office -- men who do not give a flying fuck about women's issues, but want to continue to keep women in a subordinate role.

Don't get me wrong. I love men. I admire men. Some of my best friends and all of my ex's are men. I just don't believe men, for the most part, have a woman's best interests at heart. They have their best interests at heart and that is staying in power and being able to screw anyone they want.

Now, if you are a man reading this, please don't take it personally unless it is true about you. If it isn't true about you, then I don't mean you -- you are one of the rare ones who can actually think with their brains. And, if you are one of the smart women who refuse to be second-class citizens, I'm not talking about you when I say women are dumber. Please do talk to your sisters, though, and get them to wake the fuck up.

Graties ~

Speaking of wonderful men, my son-in-law's birthday is today. Happy birthday, Martin. You're one of the good ones.

Relearning the word "interrobang." What?! You don't know what it is?!

Loving being a woman and just the kind of woman I am.

Stand Your Ground

Daily Dhamma You've got to be taught To hate and fear, You've got to be taught From year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught! ~Lyrics from "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," South Pacific.

Could what happened to Trayvon Martin happen to Mason?

Absolutely and it terrifies me. It terrified me for my son (and still does) and it terrifies me for Mason.

Trayvon Martin was a 17 year old, well-liked high school student from Miami with no criminal record.

What made him suspicious? He was black. He was walking back from a neighborhood store after buying a package of Skittles and a can of iced tea. It was raining. He had a hoodie on.

The man who killed him was a part of a neighborhood watch. He was carrying a gun. It almost seems as if he was looking for a reason to use it. He followed and confronted Trayvon when he was told not to by the 911 dispatcher. Zimmerman claims he shot Trayvon in self-defense and has been allowed to get away with it so far because of Florida's insane "stand your ground" law. Apparently, that box of Skittles looked pretty menacing in the hands of a teenager, although 911 tapes indicate that Trayvon was pleading for his life.

This Zimmerman guy is likely to get away with murdering a kid who did nothing more than walking while black. Oh, and don't forget the hoodie. He was wearing a hoodie. He was asking for it being all black and walking around in a hoodie. Yeah, just like those sluts wearing provocative clothing are asking to get raped.

If you kill someone in Florida and there are no eyewitnesses or other evidence to refute you, all you have to do is say you were acting in self-defense and you will not be charged with any crime. This law has been a prosecutorial nightmare since it was enacted seven years ago.

I'm outraged at this crime. I'm heartbroken for the family.

Graties ~

That California does not have a stand your ground law.
That Trayvon's death is raising public consciousness.
That my children and grandchildren are alive and well today.