Tag Archives: justice

Thoughts of Laquan

06 Saturday Oct 2018

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One

  Two

Three

Four   Five  Six

                      Seven

Eight

Nine
Ten.    Ten.   Ten.

   Eleven

                      Twelve

             Thirteen 

                Fourteen                                         Fifteen 

Sixteen. 

 

I’ll bet you’ve had sixteen kisses planted on your face when you were in the middle of something by a little kid who loves you, rapid pace, out of the blue, the moment when your child’s cup overflows and they must kiss and love the joy is so much and you might have been annoyed for breaking into your busyness, but sixteen pecks on your face. Pixels cannot hold that moment but a heart can.

The number means something different to me today. It means less because I am not his mother, I am not from his community. I don’t know what she knows. But still, I think about him today, and yesterday.

I don’t know what 16 bullet holes looks like in my son’s flesh, or even my own.  I could draw little dots on my body to see how it looks but that’s dots and this is flesh that will write junk today and junk tomorrow. I just need someone to know that I won’t forget. That her son matters. Justice matters. And I don’t want to play this numbers game anymore.

Universe, Fingerpaints.

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

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I wake up at 0400, I don’t know why.

My Hoya plant climbs and changes direction all day, pushing out leaves that start out maroon then turn green, looking for something cling to, I guess, but I don’t know how. They don’t care why.

Somebody’s gorgeous, imperfect black Mercedes 350 D sits in the parking lot, and I don’t know who it belongs to. Should I do penance for coveting?

I had a dream and you were in it and I was awful to you. Should I apologize?

My son shivers under a pile of covers every few weeks and nobody knows how to fix him. When will we find the answer?

Who will tend our nerves and muscle, spine and hips, and tell them stand down, the money has come, go and get well, healthcare has come?

What does an unaching body feel like?

Where does music come from?

Why are those finger-sized fishes jumping out of the bay into the air?

Where did my pouch of flash drives go?

What will my next best writing look like, and who will tell me “Yes, we want this.”

Are you the one tapping on my window at night when it rains, sounding like somebody is dropping berries onto my windowsill from the roof in the middle of the night?

Who’s going to put all this stuff away, and wash laundry, and take the garbage out, and pay bills, and wash the car?

Does anyone else hate the fact that Greenie’s is gone and wonder what will replace that beach bar that the mayor said yeah that was nice but it’s time to move on?

How many children are still without their parents at the border and will they ever see them again?

Peace in our time?

Are aliens shunning us?

Who made the first fishing net?

I dunno.   It’s all just Universe painting, I guess.  Meanwhile….who can think with all this going on…  20180926_070410

Sexist Me

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

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In 1984, at the age of sixteen, I heard about female genital mutilation.  I was horrified and angry, but I had nowhere to share this information or how I felt, no way to make a change. People at home were too busy fighting, and everyone at school was all about everything you can imagine going on in high school. Horrified, angry, and helpless make for flinty bedfellows. I internalized and built me a case for hating men.

In 1991, five years after I graduated from high school, Anita Hill testified that Clarence Thomas, supreme court nominee, sexually harassed her.  I thought she was brave for coming forward, I believed her, and after he was confirmed my hatred for men accelerated.  How could anyone let this pig become a judge?  (Side note: I didn’t even understand at the time that he would be a judge for a lifetime and what that meant, or how his wife’s politicking everyone ignores.)

Four years later, 1995,  I married my best friend. My high school years and many after did nothing to help me learn and grow into becoming the best person I could be. I was a man-hating woman hell-bent ready to punish everyone and everything who brutalized women. I. Won’t. Be. Your. Victim. Anymore!!!   Those years were tumultuous, years without a strong support system. I hated men less because my husband was kind, but the lurking vigilante shadow was never far away, and I did little to banish it.

In 1998 my son was an infant, and I was enmeshed in the daily life of being wife and mother.  I kept up with the news in a fairly background noise kind of way.  I heard that Clinton was being accused and dragged to court and impeached for lying under oath. Well that was stupid, Bill, what the hell were you thinking?  I heard the woman he was with was a willing, if not eager, partner, and I gave him a pass.  What?   Yes.  I gave him a pass.  He seemed like a charming dude, really good on camera whether it was an address or a spot on a talk show.  I mean, how could a dude who seemed so decent (yes, he had a dalliance and he’s all humbled by it) be the predator these other women and politicians made him out to be?  I felt like the women coming forward were the unfortunate victims of those who had a political axe to grind.  I felt like, if Hillary stood by him, why shouldn’t I?  I gave Bill Clinton a Democratic pass because he favored the same things I did, he was charming, and I was not paying attention to the deeper, more relevant, issues.

Twenty-eight years after I graduated high school, 2014, I found myself in the lobby of a hospital waiting to visit my son.  I picked up a copy of Vanity Fair which I don’t normally read, but this issue caught my attention.  I read about Monica Lewinsky’s life after the scandal.  The focus of the article was humiliation and bullying. 2014 was a pivotal time for me in so many ways, and this article was part of it.  Ms. Lewinsky describes her life after the scandal and her hopes for what women need to do going forward.  Monica had been a throwaway for me. She was a willing participant in an affair, so what, let’s move on. After reading the article I learned how wrong I was.

In October of 2016 I became enraged and sickened by the words of a president-elect caught on tape. I looked forward to his sad-faced confession and withdrawal from the race, but that did not happen.  People did not seem to care that he admitted to groping women without their consent, enjoying it without fear of retribution because when you’re famous you can get away with it.  The Narcissist-in-Chief is our president, and I mourn every day.

It is November 2017 and I am questioning everything I know about myself as a woman and everything I believed right up until this day.  Three women accused Bill Clinton of rape or misconduct. No one cared. Sixteen women came forward to describe being abused by Trump before his inauguration. No one cared.  Harvey Weinstein was exposed, a tap was opened and it appears the floodgates are breached. Every day more women and men are coming forward to share stories of their abuse by the famous and the unknown.  As I sit back in amazement at the revelations I cannot help but look at myself for being complicit.  I gave Bill Clinton a Democratic pass, ignoring the women he abused. Should I give that same treatment to Al Franken because his sins were not that big a deal? Why turn my back on Roy Moore but not Charlie Rose?

The harder we put men’s bad behavior under the microscope, the harder I take a look at myself, the closer I listen to my internal tape recorder. I am shocked by what I find. I read a female journalist’s book and in several places I felt annoyed and frustrated that she was complaining about her hair, or her choice to give up her relationship and comfortable life in exchange for face-time on air covering a presidential candidate. I heard my inner voice saying to the cashier where I buy groceries, “Geez, lady, would it kill you to smile?”  I am sexist just like all the rest, but at least now I know it and I am willing to work hard to do better. I no longer want to exercise vigilante justice under the cover of my superpower, invisibility.  I know now that knowledge is power, and so is my voice. I have to stand up and speak out equally for what is right, instead of giving a pass to the folks I kinda like because they’re cute or funny on a talk-show.  Justice looks so different to me now. I hope my voice will add geometrically and make a real, lasting change.  I pray for equal vision, equal treatment, and an open heart and mind always.

My Remains Ask You To Examine What Matters

28 Thursday Sep 2017

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morning crickets, disorganized, a messy symphony, out of time and tune like a first grade choir. they are young and vigorous, excited, eeping out of time like i’ve never heard before and we love them, dearly love them, dabbing our eyes with pride and ready for more.

green water with long whitecaps in the bay, ambassadors to the hurricane’s arrival. white sky turned gray for days, cloud processionals form impressive figures like gray knitted blankets, then icebergs moving fast in a distilled sunset sky that dispenses piss water instead of whisky.

i hear you. i hear you all. i allowed you to take over me like some drunk uncle at the barbecue who knows better. our burgers were adequate, filled our stomachs but we really didn’t want cheese on ours and not exactly burnt on one side.  it all works out in the end because we’re family and we take what we get, even after I told you all to fuck off because i can’t take your flag-waving bullshit anymore. We’re a family. I can do better, and so can we.

my anger is constant. it simmers long and sometimes a bubble pops and you get hit with the spray of “fuck off,” a little stain on your favorite faded t-shirt or that gauzy thing you wore for the first time today.  i try to keep her in check, in the cauldron, but after 16 days, sometimes it goes critical and that nicey girl, the one you thought was so well spoken and decent and measured bursts and she… she will not forget it.  she’s been wrestling your vipers and her vipers. my unwieldy elbows knocks the cauldron over and now another job:  own the disaster. the strife. the discord, the worry, the ransom, the fear, the woman, the apple, the evil, the world. I mop up the bloody mess and wring the rags out into the cauldron to begin again. again.

then i seek to breathe. to hold. to measure. to examine and find a way to spread the peace. the love. the wonder. the beauty. the magic. the grace. the harmony. the creation.  to own and love and share that thing i cannot see that made me and made you and reach for your fingertips in our birth and in our death, the turning wheel that pricked my finger and gave me a sword to fight my own dragons.

Momma said if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.  I believe she was so right, so very right. But when you believe, you need to stand for it, all the way, not stare at your toes and be a neutral pussy.  Take a stand, make a change, have courage in your convictions, and fuck what your father thinks.  Our future isn’t about measuring mother wounds, and it isn’t about lobby money and power. It’s about people rising up and telling the world the world matters, YOU matter, everything on it matters, we can do better, and I will walk with you peacefully, barefoot, and speak for you loudly, peacefully, forcefully. Otherwise, my silence means I accept the wrongs, the ill-doings, the damage, the hurt, the shoulder-shrugging extinctions.

Be brave, my fellow humans. Be brave and be kind and be giving. Be tolerant. Be listening. Be strong. Be happy. Be comforted. Be loving, and be one. Be ready to speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. Stand your ground not for us but our earth and life that we cannot yet imagine will come because our time here is already done.  The future is fragile and we can sow the seeds to make it beautiful-strong.  Put love on your tongue. It’s not impossible. We are right and good and brave as we walk barefoot through all of our dust.  Bless you for taking a knee and asking for the wisdom to discern what matters.

A Prayer For The Little Mothers

31 Thursday Aug 2017

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Little cauldron Three Legs, metal of earth shaped by human hands, symbol of maiden, mother, and crone filled with smoky, deep incense:  I come to you imperfect, willing but unwise and always seeking. My hands are tied to yours, fingers burning. I ask you into my heart and my home, though my corners are dusty. No secret is unknown to you.

I pray for all the Little Mothers. My heart aches for one today, and I seek your counsel. Some Little Mothers suffer more than the others, it seems their constant charity, compassion, and kindness when they themselves have so little is repaid with more suffering. Perhaps I have much to learn from them, and should not question the choices they make, offering everything they have to everyone in need, saving nothing for themselves, still finding strength to go on.

Perhaps you are already with the Little Mothers, though they do not recognize you. Perhaps it is you that breathes courage and happiness into their ears while they sleep. It is you I see in their shy smiles. Perhaps it is we who need to examine our “suffering,” ask our hearts to empty so they may fill, open arms to all, not just the deserving.

Help me to remember these things always, long after the incense fades.

What Does Your Flag Remember?

13 Sunday Aug 2017

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Quickly! Quickly Betsy, fast as ever you can, we need to see each other from a long way. Make the flag of canvas or cotton or linen, use everything you can, but we must carry our message into the field and beyond when we’ve taken out those lobsterbacks!

Quickly! Quickly, Constance, as fast as ever you can, we need to see each other from a long way. Make the flag of canvas or cotton, linen or silk, use whatever is at hand, but we must carry our standard into the field so the Yanks know we’ve forced their retreat, our message clear!

Ah. Ackh. This flag tastes like ghost pepper, my eyes and nose and mouth are thick and throbbing.  That’s all right. No biggie. Sliding this flag off this stick 1-2-3 and you’re mine now, pathetic, race-hating antifa motherfuckers!

Ah. Ackh. This flag tastes like ghost pepper, my eyes and nose and mouth are thick. That’s all right. No biggie. My friends will douse me down with water. We got some good Go-Pro footage of everybody hollering and jeering, until they decided it was time to come and get us. Now? My flag tastes like salt and blood and I dunno what. The flag isn’t really the thing, it’s more like, standing up for what’s right.

Maybe they’ll remember Heather’s name or maybe she’ll have some 15 minutes of fame in her deceased state, you know, walking along a street wanting to stand against bigotry and white nationalism. I don’t know whose face or what place to mark that she was here. Seems like we all have to make our mark, somehow, something that says we were here. We did something. It meant something. We want our times and times and times to remember what we stood for. The little girl of me wants to remember the best of us.

What does your time, your greasy fingered baby-back rib in the front of a cave mark, stand for? Was it peace? Did you stand for neutrality to escape getting your ribs cracked because you took a stand? Or did you lick your fingers clean?

(the women’s march on dc included very specific instructions that we were not allowed to carry signs, banners, or anything sharp or cudgel-like, and we followed that rule. we carried lots of 8 x 10 inch paper, cloth, pillowcases, hats, shirts, lots of people walking to and from the mall with one goal in mind, and that goal was not to stand behind a shield, and beat you with a stick or throw bottles filled with urine or cement. why was that rule not in place in charlottesville? i await the governors reply)

We smear meanings on the wall, things we want to remember, things we teach our young. Something happened here, and smear that moment on your face so you know you are part of it. Your cannon mates, your tent mates, the buttons on your tunic, that bit of cloth that tells us where to rally, or retreat, and did you understand what it all really meant?

Flags, unholy acrid, captured and desecrated. Flags damp in the dew of morning on the way to capturing you.  Flags rising up, defying a surrendered past, denying defeat and demanding glory, wanting to tell its silken story to a crowd that sits restless in chains or brings its thin pole down and down and down upon you, race-traitor.

We will remember you, in your place as we savor gobbets of meat from the fire.

ID Please.

17 Wednesday May 2017

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I heard about a high-school girl who will not be allowed to attend her prom and got kicked off her athletic teams because she refuses to cut off her braid extensions.  They’re nice, neat braids that no one would give a second thought to if you saw her at the mall, but the school says her hair is in dress code violation, as would be wearing nail polish.   I reached out on twitter to offer support for the young lady, and to agree it sure looked like discrimination. Another twitter person promptly told me that white women got no skin in this game, we’re not allowed to say what’s discriminatory against blacks. Only black people can do that. Well. That sure gave me something to think about. Maybe that’s true, but I think what she really wanted was to shut down my white voice on a black situation.

Well hey, I guess that takes me off the hook now!  I don’t have to think or say or do anything for anybody–EVER– unless it relates to being a white female, gravid-1.  All right!  Think of all the conversations I will never have to participate in because I can’t relate to the others. All the books and music I won’t have to listen to or read because they weren’t written by white females who have birthed at least once.  Rock-n-roll!

I’ll never have to be concerned with or feel the need to learn more about or certainly not develop an opinion and take a stand for men’s issues, criminal justice, female genital mutilation, holocaust denial, bullfighting, white nationalism, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, police brutality, drug addiction.  Nope, never happened to me, can’t be part of the conversation, and certainly in no place to level an opinion.

You know what?  Fuck you. I will speak when and where I please, and if it pisses you off that I’m speaking to a subject I can’t possibly relate to because my ancestors were the slaveholders instead of the enslaved, or that I can’t possibly speak against animal cruelty because it’s not my culture, or FGM because that’s not my culture either,  if I can’t speak up for people (ALL people) when they’re being discriminated against, abused, and overlooked because of my age, sex, skin color, or creed,  then I got no time for you. Can you imagine me saying, “Sorry Mr. Castillo, your death is a black, male, registered gun owner problem, it would be inappropriate for me to have an opinion about it or stand up for human rights. C-ya.”

Last I looked we were all Americans, and we need to talk to each other and HEAR each other now more than ever.  Keep turning away voices that want to lend support, you’re gonna find yourselves alone. The civil wars will return and this time it’ll be men v women, race v race, religious v non.  What a heartbreaking scenario. The poison will overtake the body with such stealth that everyone will wonder how it happened at all.

addendum: I’ve never been a fan of dress codes because I hated wearing my school uniform.  I know the codes are in place to help “prevent” bullying, gang identity, and so forth, but not letting a girl wear her hair in braids just crosses a public school line for me.  

 

Here It Comes…

31 Saturday Dec 2016

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This is where everyone writes their resolutions. Their hopes and goals for themselves in the New Year.  I ain’t putting that pressure on myself because I know that shit don’t work.  For me, anyway.  That’s all right.  I’ll take a moment to reflect and write, anyways, because it’s been on my mind.

I feel like I reset my whole life in 2016, though it was put into motion long before.  I upturned the whole apple cart.  I hurt people I love. I failed in so many ways, and the worst was walking away from a man who put up with me, who took care of me and our son all these years, and I struggle to deal with that upheaval.  2016 dealt me a “change” card. I took it and ran, and it’s hard to sleep with what I left behind.

I mourn the celebrities we lost, but they weren’t in my shoes or his shoes or your shoes all this time. Tonight is the end and a beginning, and yet I always felt like the true new year began when I went back to school in September.  More horror.

Tonight I am cleaning my bathroom top to bottom, and I will have some champagne at the prescribed time.  I look back on a life before and after I married Mike.  I miss my son.

This year I will share my fears on the page, and might, maybe, confess my sins for the record, too.  This year I will send more work out into the world because rejection just gets easier the more you take it.  This year I will try to do something about the thin skin I was born with. Perhaps I can toughen it because my armor just hasn’t been enough.  This year I learned that I can join a club, some all-grrl gang and force my view down your throat or beat you to death with it because you ain’t hearing us otherwise… or I can doctor the wounds. I can record the voices and stand up for the ones who need it most. I get to decide what Change looks like, and it doesn’t have to tear Justice limb from limb.

This year I will root for the Seattle Seahawks because I’m done with that other team. On a side note, I hope my son learns what “team” means, and that nobody gets a medal for being a lone wolf.  I hope they hand out medals to lone wolf parents, by the way, but I’d better not  hold my breath.

This year I will try to participate more in the community. Change can’t happen just by posting comments on a web page.

And I’m not asking any more of myself right now because that’s a pretty good plate so far.

Sleepless In Virginia

05 Monday Dec 2016

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“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” — popularized by Benjamin Franklin

Sometimes I go to bed early because I just can’t stand another minute of being awake in this world. I set aside little projects, put my pretty glass of water on the shelf near the bed so as not to bother my neighbor with thirsty midnight wanderings that might creak on her ceiling, and hope to read until oblivion.  Sometimes it comes quickly, but most times not so much.

After looking back on the day, the days, the weeks, months, a lifetime, my mind cannot rest because it feels like all the things it wants to say, to shout, to megaphone, telegraph, all the change bonfires it wants to set or incite mean nothing.  Smug minds are sleeping cozy in their righteousness while I lie awake thinking about injustice, or tiny personal wounds or the greater ones that deforest this thing called humanity keep after me. I can’t sleep when everything feels so wrong, even while counting my blessings, acknowledging with deep, deeper gratefulness for all these things.  I am safe, warm, and fed in my bed grinding my teeth, feeling afraid for the future of your great grandchildren, and yes, still sorrowing for the vacancies, lapses, and longings in my own life.  I cannot sleep even though I count a rosary of gratefulness, though I delve down into breathing and the art of silence, hoping to form a memory palace, but the mental noise is still too great. I cannot sleep because I despair, wanting with a need so great it grinds sinews for I cannot go back and undo my mistakes.  That the world would be a better place if it would just listen to me and do as I say, because I am right, and the shock when I realize I’m no better than you are with that kind of controlling attitude.  I can’t sleep because I realize how wrong I have been, so all there is left to do is get up and write.

It’s hard to let go of despair when I realize that writing about peace, love, decency, honor, sacrifice, family, gratitude, amounts to what feels like a hilla beans. Hell, if it were a hilla beans at least it would offer a chance for somebody to plant and grow and share sustenance.   I feel like all I got now is Times New Roman type on a white page seen by few, something that provides no sustenance, in a world where women and children sift through garbage because it’s their normal, knowing if I introduced them to clean water in plastic bottles, grocery store food, amazon delivers  you things you didn’t know you wanted, media that tells you that you are unwashed and need to better yourself, that you need a constition and a militia to save you from poverty, perhaps I am the crazy one, and you were better left in your simple, scavenging life.    I can’t sleep because the things I want to say to people who do not matter conflict with the things that do. I can’t fix the whole world though I want to, like it’s my job or something, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to make my shade satisfied in the end. Perhaps no shade goes to rest satisfied?  Or perhaps they all do because they know that this earthly, mortal mess in between mighty fields of beautiful ain’t nothing but a thang.

I need to sleep in the dirt and drink from a stream and walk farther than I meant to because I am not a resident of this land.  I need to sleep beneath great black blankets of night and peeping stars, flashing skies that observe me peeing behind a stand of trees because life is just so much better when it comes by the cupful. No one of us can right the tilt of the world, its temperature, its depth.  How can I convince the rest of the world that we can coexist, if only we respect?

Crime Scene

31 Monday Oct 2016

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Is that all? The whole world, this magic wet blue orb will be remembered as just one big crime scene? After the Y incision, all those sporty, artistic, philosophic fluids drained away; the meat of our intellect, science, curiousity, courageousness; the connective tissues of love, family, hope, benevolence all extracted, examined, weighed, as Maat once did, only now there’s no one left to cross over. No one left to view the body and claim it “Mine,” and grieve. We’ll be documented and printed for eternity, a planet of possibility, now just bloodstain and ash. We silenced ourselves with every gunshot, every act of omerta, each time we shrugged off violence as the norm, or laughed it off because we stopped teaching our young how to touch “animus,” the wonder of it, the holiness of the spirit inside themselves and each other. Decency extinct because we allowed it. Could we all have been just that tired or unable to stand up and not take it anymore?

I will not pray for world peace because those are words with vague concepts and less action, exhalations that feed my houseplants with carbon dioxide, so perhaps not entirely a waste. I could light a candle and burn oxygen, study the flicker and wish that humanity would just stop killing itself. I will shed tears again and feel despair again. But then I will take part of some random act of kindness, or witness one and try to share the news. Again. I will not give up trying because I believe every crime scene should have justice, just like every victim has a name. Let justice be kindness, somehow, and know that you are so much more than a name. I don’t want to believe this beautiful Earth will be just another victim.