John Edwards’ 2008 campaign is the first presidential campaign I’ve ever worked on, so it’s hitting me much harder than I realized it might. I really do believe that he’s the best person for the job. so to know that he’s not going to get the chance (at least, not this time) is very upsetting.
I don’t have a second choice, because I REALLY do not trust either Clinton or Obama. I would love to see either a woman or an African-American in the White House, but not these two. So I’m not sure how I’m going to vote on February 5th. I may still vote for Edwards, just because I believe in him so much and I’m so opposed to the current front runners. Or, just to be pissy, I may vote for Mike Gravel. He hasn’t dropped out yet, he’s on the primary ballot and I actually like a lot of what he has to say.
The never-before-linked-here but ever lovely bstewart23 recently wrote most awesome entry regarding things to try in the new year. I strongly recommend that y’all read it.
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I gotta say, I’m very happy that 2008 is here. While 2007 started out most fantastically, somewhere around half way through, sucking commenced. Most of it was financial, some of it was relationship and friendship related, some of it was health related and some of it was old depressive ghosts coming back to haunt.
Over the last four months I’ve had a lot of spinning around in place because I’ve been so mentally overwhelmed by issues that I didn’t know what to do next. And I’m battling things that leave me utterly perplexed about their outcomes, because I’m not the only person involved in resolving these problems, yet I may have to force resolutions at some point. I’m not very good at handling uncertainty and uncertainty is all there is for the foreseeable future. By association I’ve become a puppet in someone else’s sociopathic games, which infuriates me because the person who is direct line of this sociopath’s actions certainly doesn’t deserve it, but there doesn’t seem to be anything concrete I can do to help. And I sure as hell don’t deserve it either.
It doesn’t help that this past holiday season has made my top five list of Worst Holiday Seasons Ever. I would probably put it at #2, actually (2002 still holds the #1 spot, for the sheer family fuckery of the entire year). I’ve felt as if I were an afterthought to some of those close to me, both of the family and not-family variety. I don’t handle that well either.
And I’m just very tired of financial scrambling – no matter how hard I try to get back on my feet, I can’t seem to quite get there.
I’m just tired. Tired of eyes filled with tears. Tired of the pain. Because right now, my heart hurts. My mind hurts. My soul hurts.
Here’s hoping the tai chi I’m starting today can help with some of that.
Haven’t done one of these in a very long time. Let’s change the format slightly:
While I watch a fair bit of TV, and even like some of it, there’s only one series currently on air for which I have an unbelievable amount of love: Scrubs. It’s crazy, loopy, corny and humanistic all at the same time and, even when it’s not very good, it’s one of the best shows out there.
It’s also got some great songs woven throughout the series, one of which is above. Scrubs has got to be commended for bringing Colin Hay back into the American limelight. Granted, in his Men at Work days, I liked his work well enough, but didn’t think much about it. However, Hay’s acoustic renditions of Beautiful World and Overkill are fantastic. I can hum/sing Overkill for days on end. And I have.
However, Beautiful World hits me in an unexpected place. The first time I listened to the lyrics I teared up, thinking about how sad it was that the protagonist of the song was merely settling for less:
And still this emptiness persists.
Perhaps this is as good as it gets.
That used to kill me.
But not now.
Somewhere over the last few weeks I listened to Beautiful World and thought, “Maybe he’s not settling for less. Maybe he’s just finding the joy in the little things.” And I brightened up a little.
Because sometimes the little things? Are the only places a person can find joy.
Silly sweet TV shows. Beloved music. Frightfully gorgeous musical movies. Stunning sunsets and landscapes. Staring out over the rolling ocean waves. Stroking and scratching kitties and puppies. Cuddling. Laughter.
The big things? Can disappear in an instant. Break a person’s heart. Make a body wonder why and where and when. Can come close to destroying someone who never saw it coming.
But the little things? They’re nearly always constant. They can usually be found even in the worst of times, if only for brief moments. Even after nights that are straight outta Overkill – nights where the thoughts and fears over the big things are so overwhelming that one is literally immobilized, uncertainties turning into terrors, the sneaking suspicion that one’s mind is just broken and why won’t it shut up, shut up, SHUT UP and let you sleep? One doesn’t want to take the pill, because it’ll just prove that you’re not as strong as you thought, not as strong as you used to be.
But one needs to sleep. One needs to calm the ghosts, however briefly, knowing that they’ll just come back again soon, and fall asleep in the arms of one’s love.
Because the little things? Will also return. And they’ll bring joy again.
…some of the fires in Southern California, I mean.
Many of them are still ferociously blazing, unfortunately: the worst of them in San Diego County, for instance. But apparently the winds are finally starting to die down in L.A County, allowing the firefighters to start to get an upper hand.
Many have said this, but it’s true: this is the worst fire season that I’ve ever seen. I’ve lived in Southern California since 1977 and many fire seasons have come and gone, but so many fires simultaneously springing up over such a wide area is unheard of in my recollection. When I first heard about how broad an expanse the various fires covered, my first thoughts were arson. It looks like that may be the case in several of the fires. These are the sorts of people who need to be strung up by their most sensitive body parts and left alive for a very long time.
No one I know has yet been affected, which is of the good, but I still feel for everyone who’s been affected. If y’all want to help out and haven’t done so yet, please do.
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On a less positive (and far more cynical) note, while I’m happy that the folks in San Diego County who are being displaced have found shelter at Qualcomm – amongst other refuges – I am furious that this sort of coordination and level of help wasn’t available to the folks profoundly affected by Katrina. Granted, part of it is that the head of FEMA in 2005 was an idiot who didn’t have the first clue of how to organize a sock drawer, let alone such a vitally important federal emergency agency. The current FEMA chief comes from an emergency response background and shows signs of competence that is stunning for anyone appointed by Bush and Buddies.
However, that doesn’t excuse the continuing lack of attention paid by the federal government to the fine folks in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. There’s no reason why ALL the federal attention is going to the displaced in Southern California and none is being diverted to NO. Well, no good reason. The only other thing I come up with – besides FEMA being run by someone who knows a thing or two about fires – is that the areas hardest hit by the fires are in northern San Diego County. And if’n ya know anything that area, you know that the residents are, for the most part, rich, white and Republican.
Cynical? Perhaps. But being “governed” by those currently in the Executive Branch has engendered a definite cynicism where none previously existed. Besides which, I, like many others, have seen how this administration caters to the wealthy and Republican. It’s certainly not beyond the realm of probability. It would also explain why the only people really doing anything to help the Katrina-ravaged areas are those who live there. People who, for the most part, are not rich, are not Republicans, and are less white per capita than the population of NE San Diego.
Again, I am happy that the displaced have got quality shelter. But the federal government still needs to turn their attention back to the Gulf Coast.
We’re ALL American citizens, Bush and Co. Don’t you dare forget it again.
I’m thinking of you and hoping that you’re doing all right. I hope you know that you’re in my thoughts constantly today and that I’m sending you all the love and psychic hugs that I have, soon to be followed by the real thing.
(I realize that this entry is a bit on the cryptic side – the person who it’s for knows who he/she is. I apologize to everyone to whom this is not directed.)
That time of the year has rolled around again. The time we all remember. Where we were. What we were doing. How we felt when we heard or saw or experienced the towers tumbling down. Some of us were there and saw it first hand. Others watched it on TV. And others, like myself, heard it on the radio. Still others heard about it hours later, from friends and relatives and colleagues.
Disbelief warred with our ears and our eyes. Such things cannot happen to us. We’re the United States of America. But the eyes and ears of the camera prove to us that, yes, such things can and do happen. We were innocent. We are innocent no longer.
Now we sit and take stock of the last six years, wondering and worrying about the path the US has taken since that time, and we wonder how we can get our squandered goodwill back, working as best as we can to help the process along. A dwindling number think that the fact that we’ve not yet had another attack on our soil proves we’re doing the right thing in Iraq, even though our actions there are helping to foster and foment terrorism there and elsewhere.
Some still grieve, for the people and our innocence. Some wonder, “Why do we keep going back?” Some just feel numb.
I sit and think about the soldiers and civilians who have died in Iraq and elsewhere, in a misguided attempt to keep from “fighting them over here.” My intellect – along with a portion of my heart – reminds myself that it was a miracle we went so many decades without a terrorist attack. We were the lucky ones. I remind myself that the first terrorist attacks on US soil were by US citizens, not the swarthy foreigners we’ve been told we should distrust since 2001. I remind myself that there are all too many areas in the US that continue to live as if in a terror state, crime and poverty and hopelessness seizing Americans and holding them hostage. Areas where the billions of dollars we’re spending on an unjust, illegal war in a foreign land would be better spent taking care of our own.
My intellect thinks it was past time we lost our innocence. It was – and is – past time we left our adolescence.
Most of my heart, and all of my soul, wonders at what cost.
Sometimes still longing for the innocence of days past, my mind’s eye replays the scene from over half a decade ago, still weeping for those lost then and in the subsequent years.
Yesterday morning Teddi Winograd passed away in her Beverly Hills home from cancer, her family by her side. She was 87.
I may not have mentioned Teddi in these pages before, and to be honest, I didn’t know her all that well. I worked for her daughter Marcy last year, when Marcy ran for Congress against Jane Harman. It was through Marcy that I met Teddi and attended several events and meetings in her home. She always impressed me as being kind, warm and generous, welcoming to all who entered her home. She seemed to be strong of heart and mind, didn’t suffer fools gladly and was fiercely devoted to her family.
She was also quite the activist, sure to be on the front lines and in the front rows of numerous protests and progressive events, many of those events in her own home. Her convictions drove her to fight for peace and justice and the real American Way.
I didn’t know Teddi well, but I was amongst those who could count themselves as lucky for knowing her at all.
Thank you for your hard work, your graciousness and your positive energy, Teddi. You will be missed by many.
It drives me crazy, but there’s nothing I can do. No concrete way I can help. No way for me to make it all go away.
I hug when in the same room, murmuring positive words, stroking hair and soothing furrowed brow, expressing my love. When on the phone, I still murmur, trying to make my voice convey that, were we in the same room, I would be hugging and stroking and soothing and expressing. It sounds corny, but I turn my voice into a verbal hug, hoping that it can be felt.
I hear the exhaustion and the frustration. I listen, make suggestions when appropriate, offer advice that I hope will be helpful, but try not to be a know-it-all. Because I don’t know it all. I wish I did.
But the advice and hugs and soothing doesn’t make it better. Not really. Not in a concrete, never-have-to-deal-with-this-bullshit-again way that I so desperately wish, so that this pain and anger and frustration are all things of the past, gray and hazy and gone.
The things I would so dearly love to do, to talk directly to the other people involved, make them see how stupid and immature and hurtful they’re being – I can’t do. It’s not my place. And I know, for various reasons, I wouldn’t be listened to. Because I’m involved only on the fringes – not directly.
