moe-tif

Why was I born a Cancer?  Why do I have to feel things so deeply?  Why do I have to walk around with all this passion and idealism only to run into people who don’t feel it  I do?  It would be so nice to be a Taurus…stubborn, or a Libra…balanced or, hell anything but Cancer.  And why the hell a crab?  Why?  I can think of plenty of other critters way better to represent than a fucking crab!  I’m a moody, manic, moonchild walking fucking melodrama and on top of that…I’m a crab. 

Who was the first person to eat a crab?  Or a lobster?  What was he thinking…”mmmm, that looks good, I think I’ll catch it, kill it and eat it…”  I mean…I like the taste of crab but, I sure as shit wouldn’t be the first to go scurrying around a beach with my spear salivating at the thought of digging into that?  It was a dare, I know it.  Cavemen brothers, Gorf and Foonk were walking along one early evening feeling mighty hungry and mighty disappointed in having failed to bring down the wooly mammoth they’d spent the last winter tracking.  Had they caught him, they would have had more than enough to last…hell, this summer evening they’d be snacking on mammoth jerky but no…stupid Gorf got scared at the last minute and the mammoth took chase when he smelled the caveman’s fear.  To make matters worse, instead of throwing the spear at the mammoth charging him…Gorf ran like a bitch.  So, Foonk was out to get him…but how, how, how?  Aha!  There, walking sideways towards the ocean…a giant crab!  Foonk grunted at his brother…, “I triple domesticated dog dare you…catch that crab and eat it!”  Gorf, desperate to get back into his brother’s good graces hesitated but…took  the dare.  Even back then…a guy couldn’t pass on a triple dog dare.  So…he lost a hand, but, he killed the crab and that night it was discovered that crab dipped in butter was pretty damn tasty.  Now, crab with mammoth steak…oh…that’s taking it to a whole new level…

dammit…can’t sleep and now…i’ve got a craving for steak and crab legs…i think i’ll go lay down and see if my children will allow me the luxury of sleeping these last few hours before the alarm goes off…it occurs to me that since the birth of my three year old…it’s been at least a good two and a half years since I’ve slept thru the night.  i don’t remember what it was like to sleep past 7 on a Sunday…i think i’m going crazy…hence these weird ass blogs…and just the other day their dad had the gall, while he was writing me my child support check, to ask me what i was contributing?  he who has them one, maybe two nights…(nights?  picks em up at 3 and starts calling me at 5 wondering when i’m coming home) a week…

i’m so tired…is there anyplace that’ll deliver steak and crab at…(FUCK!)….almost two in the morning?   

“What we do in life echoes in eternity”…don’t know where I first saw this but, I liked it and wrote it down in one of my many half filled journals. I decided tonight to open this journal and begin again the attempt at actually finishing the pages.  Lately I’ve been getting hit with so many epiphanies and realizations…most of which I am not fucking enjoying.  It’s like my subconcious has decided to spell things out to my concious self…in other words…I’ve run out of lies to tell myself and I’m starting to chance looking in the mirror.  I am so good at judging everyone else…I’m so good at challenging others to try something different…but when I step back and take a looksee at myself…I realize that I’ve been running away from doing those very same things.  DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!  Yet…as pissed as I feel, I realize that this pissy feeling is yet another way to avoid just sitting down, being still and taking a moment to meet myself.  It’s so much easier to judge myself than it is to just be myself.  And who’s this “myself” anyway?  I mean…what if I don’t like her?  But, it’s not her that I might not like…it’s all the shit I have to dig thru to get to her that I’m cringing back from.  There’s so many layers, I’m so scared to get started and then…when it really starts to hurt, find that I lack the strength to keep going.  And then there will be yet another goal or task that I didn’t see to completion…but wait, maybe that’s the one first step on the ladder to meeting myself that I’ve been blind to?  What if I took this worry away by understanding that there is no completion…there’s a beginning…or is there…is it possible that this exercise I’m fixin to apply myself to has no beginning, has no end/completion and is really nothing to be afraid of.  What if the digging I do turns up something/someone simply amazing…what if she’s been there all along waiting for me to open the door and like little children giggling as they hide at a birthday party…she’s just bursting to yell “SURPRISE”?  And, what if finding her opens me up to being the most fantastic mother, the most wonderful friend, the most amazing sister and daughter…the most amazing me? 

WHAT THE HELL AM I AFRAID OF IF WHAT IF REALLY IS?  Isn’t it worth the pain if what I come away with is that?

Karma n.

1. Hinduism & Buddhism The total effect of a person’s actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person’s existence, regarded as determining the person’s destiny. 

2. Fate; destiny.

3. Informal A distinctive aura, atmosphere, or feeling: There’s bad karma around the house today.

[Sanskrit, deed, action that has consequences, karma; see k^wer- in Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

  “Follow the three Rs….

[ Respect for self….

[ Respect for others….

[ Responsibility for all your actions…”

“When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take steps to correct it.”

Yes, the title is certainly an oversimplification of events.  Let me illustrate further what has happened and, I ask you to please let me know what your thoughts are…

I have a friend who for a good little while now has been doing the work to make himself legal in this country.  I helped him to fill out paperwork, to understand the letters sent to him from INS, he paid the fines one accrues when one is here illegally, we rooted him on and finally, all his hard work has paid off.  Whether he chooses to become a citizen here or not, that’s another story, but at least now, he’s not having to lie anymore and that means a helluva lot to this young man. 

He’s been here for 5 or so years, working illegally.  Just recently, he went to his place of employment and admitted the truth.  His hopes were that they would allow him to make right what had been wrong and let him continue to work.  Poor guy…very naive.  What happened was, now that the truth was actually spoken, to protect themselves, this place of employment fired him.  Granted, they are within their rights but, the sick thing is, this place, the managers, all of those people know good and well that 90 percent of their employees are illegal.  They know it but they have an out, a loop hole.  These immigrants show up with “papers” and the workplace can act stupid if ever they are questioned, “how are we supposed to know those papers are fake?”….hypocrites….so, when my friend shows up and speaks aloud this unspoken “truth”, now they have to fire him because the ability to claim ignorance is no longer available.  What is so sad is, this boy, for five years, was a diligent and hard working employee.  His tasks were not the kind of tasks anyone would consider of high importance but, damn if he didn’t take pride in doing a good job.  His job wasn’t the kind of job you saw any citizens of our country rushing in to fill out an application for, this is the case for most of the jobs in this business.  For the most part, the men and women filling those positions are not from here.  They work their asses off and, there’s quality in their work.  Later, when he and I spoke of what had transpired, he asked me what was the point of becoming legal if this was the result?  This made me angry…I told him not to allow what had happened to make him less proud of his accomplishment.  He’s legal now, that is by far a much better way to be, no more lies, no more compromising honor.  And, while I understand the business having to cover its ass, I find it sickening the hypocrisy that oozes from that place.  I find it sickening that we as a people can complain incessantly about illegals yet, when one of them steps up to the plate and does what he must to become right, we turn around and slap him down.  That’s shitty folks.  We are such a self righteous country.  We complain about the illegals, yet our businesses can’t run without them.  It comes down to that…money.  Businesses run the show and pay off whoever they must so as to keep it possible to hire these illegals because they can pay lower wages to them.  They may pay a token few better wages but, for the most part, they can get away with less.  Vicious circle.  And then, one of them goes the extra mile to turn himself around and instead of congratulating him, we punish him.  Didn’t he pay the fines already, does he have to keep on paying for a crime our businesses fully know and encourage so they can keep running?  Tell me, do you think his situation will make others want to become legal too?  Please………….

I’ve held a belief my entire life…you think I exaggerate…I believe that we can change the world.  My whole life I’ve had an activist’s mind, I’ve gotten into fights over principle, I’ve cried over unfairness and I’ve made my views known, even in the face of boredom and apathy.  I know that sometimes….ok….most of the time I don’t have all the facts, but, I am driven by instinct, by emotion.  When I see folks neglected, hurt or tossed by the wayside I have to wonder, how long do I wait to gather the “facts” before I act against what simply just isn’t right?  Perhaps illegals shouldn’t be here but, before I gather all statisics that tell me why they are such a nuisance in our country, I am faced with the knowledge that they are only doing what any of us would do in their place….doing whatever it takes to support their families and dreams.  Before we send them away and close our borders….have we considered how much they do FOR us?  Is it possible that the benefits this country gleans from the hard work of these people may outweigh the negative their presence may bring?  There’s so much hardship in this world, not just directly across the border…all across the planet.  Borders, lines made tangible by rules and guns….are they really so powerful they should stop us from simply being human with one another?  Can we pull out of Iraq and regroup please…reexamine what we’re doing and perhaps choose a different approach?  While I realize that different times bring different dangers, there is an age old concept that has never gone away….just as it takes a village to raise a child, so does it take one person at a time coming together with one more, who then speaks to yet another, who then turns to a neighbor, a friend, a co-worker…a stranger on the street who, when you gaze into her eyes, you find…he’s not so very different from you. The time has long since come and stuck around…this world needs to be stood up for and the only ones who can defend her are the very ones destroying her….set aside your differences, they are not real…they are made up.  We are of one species…from one great Creator…we are one family…varied and beautiful in our differences and oh so powerful when those differences are brought together to effect change.  From something so simple as a prayer…a smile directed honestly toward a passing stranger to something a bit more complicated such as organizing a roadside cleanup or teaching someone English so they may pass their citizenship or….rallying together toward a common goal….we must set aside our apathy and realize we really don’t live in a box…we live together on a planet we are destroying…we live as people in a population that is growing rapidly and is in dire need of concious controls…control of what we use (resources), how we use it (shutting off lights in rooms not occupied, turning off water, etc.) and how we treat one another….

Can you walk the walk…demonstrate the talk? 

www.one.org

Just one place to go to…what about your cities, neighborhoods, schools, your home?  What can you do?  What if all it takes to start is a conversation? 

“As I do, so you shall…and more.”  That was Jesus talking.  So, let’s do more….