It's been soooo long. But finally I have set myself free.

Untitled (a work in progress)

He is cedar

Rich in the recesses

Within me

Ever present

Ever fresh

And she is redwood

Wise and old

Before her time

Her sad eyes

Bright starlight

Through her branches

Most things are images now

Names pass away

But the essence

Of things remain

More true imprints

Of what they are

She is redwood and

He is cedar

My child. My husband.

My memory fades

The details of life are fleeting

What we are

Where we went

Why she can’t take the train

Isn’t she allergic to sesame seeds?

No that was me and that’s passed now

Who you are

At your core

They cannot take from me.

What you mean to me

You are cedar

You keep me always

She is redwood

Wise and strong.

Target (a work in progress)

I came across the stand of trees

On the shopping center corridor

On the way to buy diapers

I wept as I always do

The colors are so lovely

They move me in my soul

I dream of lighter days

Their delicate features

The golds and verdant colors

The painted moss

And the brushes below

Leaves rich but branches

So fragile they disappear

In the greying sky

And appear as dainty leaves

Suspended in the wind. Once a week

I come

And that copse of trees speaks to my soul

It reminds me why I wanted to paint

Of the loveliness

Still in the world

In the glare of the glowing supermarket sign

And the careless litter blowing across

The tar walkways.

It is madness

It is the dichotomy of this life.

Real and plastic

Molded steel and siding

And the brush of the heather

Sprouting up in patches

Defying logic and sainity

Grace in a post industrial world

The tears stain my cheeks

I do not belong anywhere

A Poem For My Brother

I miss the days we ran the streets

our feet hot from sidewalk and Rob and John

and the girl who only came out at dusk

when her father was out.

Do you remember how we thought she died?

We told tales about her bloody demise but

we saw her scurrying from car to door 5 years on.

Our days were filled with danger

and challenges in the street from bullies

and near friends. Alliances were made and broken

and reforged. We built forts

in the fields behind the pastor’s house.

We dug into the earth , constructed secret trenches

covered with tarps, deathtraps that we survived.

We hid in the trees in the yard

while our mother cried in vain from the doorways.

God how I miss you and

Your sweet face, the scruff of your neck its awkward tufts,

you smiled, laughed and I never noticed

you rarely spoke. I was always talking, Rob was always talking

and you are a quiet man now with responsibilities

and children and I am a grandmother now

living a thousand miles away. Home is so far away.

I wish I could reach back into time and squeeze the last juice

from our childhood because the silence and distance

are so great. They are thunder rolling across

the valley of my mind. I know I am difficult. I have always been difficult.

But I would give ten years to spend an afternoon playing

With my brother in the yard once again.

Lemon Trees (work in progress)

The lemon trees

Swayed in the back beyond

The fence and the road that rose up

Wide and wild, the place where

My grandfather would lose his life

But that was years away and we were

Still winding our way through the cactus

That would be Nopales on our plates tomorrow

And the pomegranates that I refuse to appreciate

The chickens clucked in the yard and scratched

Wiry and testy. She wanted us to eat but she

Still had mercy. Sometimes if I stood still enough

And I forgot to breathe I could still see back

Before the time when the house had been moved

There before the tios and tias had started their own tribes

And forward to the time that the dust would still and harden

And the only tracks would be made by the vagrants

Passing through. To when we would we had all gone

And even the trains no longer made the ground shake

Elephants passing through. And my mother and my grandmother

Would find me weeping and yell at my cousins for making me cry

But I could not say that I wept because I knew that moment

Was all that I had, all that would ever be. Before, we had not yet come

And forward, we were no more. But a child has no words

On Why I'm A Buddhist Who Believes in God

Chapter 1-

I believe in God because of a kindergarten teacher with a grip like a weathered longshoreman and a Missouri drawl. She had the simplest of names, Mary Hill, but she was anything but simple. Ms. Hill was a wonder of a woman. She was a juxtaposition of Southern Baptist values-a devout Jesus-lover and staunch proponent of the scriptures endowed with a feminist independent streak that kept her from being tied to any man that she might find acceptable in a theological sense. She was a virgin at sixty and quite likely always would be. This did not prevent her from raising a child, in true fashion to her nature and in defiance of her own views that espoused the necessity of a two parent home.

The first time I met Mary she nearly crushed my hand, which was a marvel since I am extremely strong myself and had learned the importance of handshakes when I was in training to be a plumber. My mother and I talked for days about that initial exchange, amazed and concerned that a woman with a bone-crunching grip was caring for children. I learned later that this fear was a mere flight of fancy as I found her to be the gentlest of people with children.

The second time I saw her was at my brother’s wedding and we had a very heated exchange that nearly became a shouting match and sent my sister-in-law into tears. Mary was dismayed at the selection of flowers which had been placed at the top of the white chocolate covered cakes. In truth she was dismayed at her daughter, Becky’s, selection of husbands. Becky had been bred to be a minister’s wife and her choice in my brother fell football fields away from the expectations of her mother.

Most conversations I had with Mary were mine fields of dogmatic differences. In spite of this, and often because of it, she will always be dear to me. I knew that at critical mass we were the same. We were rebellious people that wished desperately to be good.

Being good is a relative thing and is a ‘thing’ that must be quantified. Good requires a doctrine or guidelines or opposite to define it. Given the criteria, there are tests and evaluations to determine one’s success or failure- one’s ‘goodness.’ Nevermind that one is so ill-suited to the parameters of such tests that it is asking a pale, wilting, asthma-riddled, Manhattan-born child to sherpa a Himalayan expedition up K2. Mary was undaunted by the disparity between who and what she was and the system she had chosen to appraise herself with. I, myself, was angrily bucking the saddle of it constantly.

It was our similarities that gave me hope though. Associations are like that. If one sees someone, not different from one’s self, that succeeds or is given great charity it is a success for both. In this way, it is because of Mary that I came to believe that I might have use in the world despite my copious failings and that there was a God. Believing in a God was important. At times the only thread of rope one had to hang on to when everyone else in one’s life had failed was the thought that God might love you if no one else did.

Mary knew God loved her and she was unconcerned with the drama that seemed to be a constant in her life. She told me many stories during the time that I knew her about a youth that was fraught with ill health and proclamations of medically impending death that were always overcome. During the period that I knew her best her doctor had given her eight months to live before her liver failed altogether. Years passed and she was still alive and then finally declared to be well again, at least in terms of her liver.

That isn’t the reason, however, that I believe in God or that whatever I have done that I might find use or redemption for my grevious errors. It is because of one day in particular when Mary was ill and began to hemorrhage. She knew that she should have called her daughter to take her to the hospital but for some reason chose not to trouble her. It seems that in a world where most of us are throwing our hands up and running around shouting at the smallest of problems because they appear to be catastrophic that when a truly life-threatening situation happens we are so much in denial that we fail to acknowledge it. That somehow if we acknowledge it then it is real but if we don’t and just say, “oh dear,” and turn away that it won’t be there when we turn back to look at it. I know this thinking well because I’m diabetic and have almost lost my life many times because I failed to notice my blood sugar dropping and something snapped in my brain. I would just continue doing what I was doing and then drop face first onto the table and someone would have to force cake frosting into my mouth until the sugar was absorbed and I regained consciousness again. I understand denial and its children in a deeper way.

On this day when Mary realized that it had gotten past the point where she could help herself, as she lay bleeding to death in her home, too weak to pick up a phone and dial 911, she did what I have usually failed to do -she cried out to God to help her. A few minutes passed and she opened her eyes to find her young mentally retarded neighbor standing over her. The young woman had never been to her door before, much less inside her bedroom. She said that God told her to come and help Mary. And she did. She called 911 and Mary was taken to the hospital. The doctor said that if Mary had lost any more blood she would have died.

In Mary I saw the hope that God would not forsake me, a rebellious child. And with my black social history and emotional dyslexia, I saw myself the same as the disadvantaged woman. The Bible says that God uses the foolish things of the world. For this reason I felt I must qualify for some job somewhere since I was the most foolish person I knew.

There have been times when that story was all that I had to hold on to. It has also been one which I have ruminated on many different ways and gets at the root of every real issue that I have. At the core of the story is the issue of trust. I didn’t trust people though I loved them thoroughly. I wanted to at least trust God. ‘People’ say to trust in God. The inference is that if you trust in God he will not let you down, that he will be there for you if you need him. But we are also told that if our prayers don’t get answered that then we should know that there are things that we can’t see and that it is a good thing that we don’t get our prayers answered because getting that which we ask for would not serve us well in the long run. This troubles me because what if a millennia old God sees my need to hold onto my very modest apartment to raise my children a very decadent selfish thing when compared to the African nomads who live off the land and are grateful for a bag of water for drinking every other day? I’m supposed to trust God but what if what God has in mind I’m not very comfortable with? What if I cry out to God and God just says that in the larger scheme of things it is better to lose my life but I want to live?

This leads to the question of what the purpose in living was. What was my purpose in breathing? What is anyone’s purpose? This question for me always came back to the two convictions that I had grown up with. The first conviction was that I needed a partner. Perhaps it was the years of loneliness that I spent as an awkward child that never seemed to fit in anywhere. I wanted desperately to love somebody and be a wife. Then at least I would fit in with one person. I spent all of my childhood and teenage years mentally planning my wedding. It would be big and grand with lots of dancing, maybe Mariachis and my entire extended family celebrating the fact that someone actually loved me enough to put a ring on my finger. I just wanted to be loved so much that someone would buy me a ring. This raging need was in direct opposition to the very essence of my personality. As a teenager I wanted to go to West Point. I wanted to jump out of airplanes and fly helicopters. I required the kind of life that leaves little room for another. As an adult I lacked the ability to even consider consulting with anyone else (even the times when I had a partner or husband) on anything. When I was in a relationship I operated as if I was all on my own and that fact frequently lead to me winding up being on my own.

The second conviction was that I was supposed to do something important. My mother had given up much to have and raise me and like parents often do put the responsibility of doing something of significance outside of the home squarely on my shoulders. I felt, always, that I was expected to do something big, but was never told what it was or how to do this grand thing. Expectation in finding my true purpose was a fabulously heavy coat that I wore in the sweltering sun. It prevented me from ever feeling comfortable but I was too vain to take it off.

By the time that my destiny came for me I was a neurotic pharmaceutically-enhanced disaster.

On February 2^nd , 2004 I spoke for the first time to the man that would become my husband. Meeting him began a process in me of discovering who I really was. The truth was stranger and more dramatic than anything fictional that I had ever read. There is a quote I wish I could remember fully. It goes something like this: To understand the true nature of reality is to go mad. After the last four years I now know that I am not the person I thought I was, that the truths I once held were a greater fiction than anything I could ever have invented, that walking among us are people that completely transcend the limits of what we call human, and that seemingly good men and women are not to be trusted if their interests run counter to your own. Even more frightening were the differences in opinion among good people on what is to the ultimate good of mankind.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Looking back on everything, maybe what I have to say has nothing to do with destiny or the path of humanity. Maybe at the center of everything is just a love story about two people. Two really, really dysfunctional people.

Much of my adult life has been spent either single or in a failing relationship. The generations before mine seemed able to have marriages that lasted lifetimes. Knowing the nature of those lives, I don’t know if this is success or failure, but either way it has given me much food for reflective thought. Was life a hell because they stayed together? Given the level of happiness that I had achieved in mine without a relationship, was life always a hell even if you didn’t stay together? Whether couples stayed together or not I had ascertained that one thing was certain: the need for communion with another is greater than the necessity of oxygen.

There is a project that I did as an art student in 2001 that sums up the gist of my single and unsuccessful romantic life. For an art critique I created an installation that included a hundred yahoo personals ads that papered the walls in an endless repetition of longing and hope. When it was my turn to discuss my work I got up and read the following:

I was born to the problem: A matriarchy full of feminists that bowed and cowtowed to the shuffle and scrape of the masculine boot, but told me I must never do the same. From the cradle I was told not to let a man define me, but taught to serve them til my food grew cold. Never let them think they have you, never sit in their chair. And endless game with the male as the opponent. It needs an opponent.

A more troubling problem: I was never beautiful. I had fewer chips to play the odds. I learned to jump through hoops instead. I learned to search faces for one with laughing eyes. One who refuses to play by their rules. Who sees me as an equal. When he sees me, he’ll know me and everything will be well.

A larger problem: We are a lost generation. We are isolated from each other. Our mothers taught us not to trust the other sex in the playing of the game. We live in one place and work in another. Our isolation increases. The rules of engagement foiled the playing of the game in our work space. I get older. The battle is now fought in roaring crowded rooms where the exchange is stunted. I lose.

An unforeseen problem: I get older, the rules have changed once again. They dictate taking everything that we are, winding it down into a critical mass. A few paragraphs, to read. Because no one goes out anymore. The game is now played in the underground-the internet. I play the odds, I write an ad Titled: The Next 30 seconds. It reads: I know that I have only the next 30 seconds for you to decide whether to answer this ad. How can anyone decide a whole lifetime of possibilities in 30 seconds? Life is an awesome thing. If I learn in the course of mine to appreciate each moment then I will die happy. As this moment hangs before you for your inspection, what are you thinking? Will you answer? Did I say something that reached deep at the heart of what you are?

I receive 100 responses. I am very popular with accountants. I go on 30 dates. 20 of them say they have fallen in love with me over the phone. I date one for almost a year. But it never works out. Even though I increase the odds. Maybe because I increased the odds. But there had been something lurking-something fundamental. And I think: am I subverting nature? Have our lifestyles and upbringing perverted nature so that we have difficulty coming together and staying together?

I meet someone who was born on the same day I was, the same hour. We drink the same tea. We read the same books, we think many of the same thoughts.

And he’d always been alone. It’s what I had always rallied against. At least when there was an opponent, you weren’t alone. But maybe the real problem is: I am supposed to be alone. And there would be nothing left to say…

When I was done speaking I sat down, looking, I’m sure, like a giant gaping wound that was oozing everywhere. My art teacher, Sant Khalsa, smiled at me and stared for so long that I wanted to run from the room. Since that day I have seen that look many times on the face of gurus and holy people, on the face of my spiritual teachers as they seemed to look into my soul and were about to either give me comfort or completely destroy the fabric of everything I had built my life on. I still want to run every time I see that look. It always means that nothing is what I think it is and that everything is about to change.

What she related to me, to the whole class, was like a roadmap for everything that happened to me later. I won’t tell you just yet what she said. I will say this though: it left me with an even deeper longing and the promise of what could be that took years to come to fruition. Also, I have to say that people focus so much on the attainment of something-a physical object, a relationship, a situation- never ever considering the implications of actually getting it. Getting it is just the beginning.

In January of 2004 I had a terrible kidney infection. My activities were limited to lying down and sitting up at the computer. I had been writing or rather trying to write on the regular basis and it wasn’t going well. Being sick meant that I couldn’t even blame my lack of writing on being gone all the time. Nothing of any value was coming out at all although I was writing volumes in emails and discussion groups. I was spending copious amounts of time on this new network I had discovered called Tribe.net. I joined discussion groups called “Shut Up Hippie” and “Alpha Female” and “Bad Ass Bitches with Guns.” I had never seen anything like this on the net. There were a ton of artists and writers on the network writing day and night witty repertoire about hemp and the wearing of sandals and patchouli. In the middle of the fever and the pain I was having a good time.

Having people, men in particular, to verbally spar with made it easier to write again. Granted, much of it was tainted still with the scorn and contempt of a woman who has too many cats and has taken far too many painkillers, but something was being done nonetheless. Maybe, I thought, what I needed was a regular opponent in these verbal games to ‘write against.’ So I started clicking through the yahoo online personals and I wrote my own ad. The Title of the ad was, “Lemons Don’t Make Good Flotation Devices” and was a five page relating of my Devil-May-Care attitude and love for motorcycles and backpacks and the creation of impromptu sculptures made out of white bread on the living room coffee table.

Then I came across the ad that changed everything. Truthfully I didn’t fully read it. If I had read it I never would have written to him because he specified that he wanted to date someone who didn’t want kids and it wasn’t particularly funny or interesting. But the picture, wow, the picture. He had red hair and I love red hair. I thought he was gorgeous and I knew it was wrong to answer the ad because he was not in my league and wasn’t going to be interested in me. But the title of the ad was “As you wish,” from the Princess Bride. The Princess Bride was one of my all time favorite movies. It had also, I was quite sure, contributed to my inability to realistically find a suitable companion. I was always looking for a Wesley.

So I wrote to him:

Greeting Earthling,

My name is Jacqueline. I have decided first emails are worse than first dates. Down with all first emails! That’s the first thing to go after the revolution. After that it’s the soccer moms. Down with the soccer moms! I live in an area infested with soccer moms. I used to like SUVs until the soccer moms tried to create the illusion for themselves that they weren’t soccer moms at all but these really cool chics that drive SUVs and go offroading every weekend. They aren’t fooling anyone. I digress…

Contrary to popular opinion I do not suffer from multiple personality disorder. Wait! Who said that?! Nevermind. Anyway, I’m just this weird chic who lives in the valley. I have a degree in English, almost finished a degree in Art, was working on a Masters in something else but recently dropped out to write a book and homeschool my kids. I am 35 like you and I have three kids! Three kids, good grief! It always freaks me out when I say it. If you run now, I don’t blame you. Actually the oldest one is off on her own now. She’s 18. Eek, now I really feel old. Then I have a 12 year old (who swears I am absolutely ruining her life because I’m too traditional (I know, is she serious? Me, traditional?) and an 8 year old who is the light of my life. All girls unfortunately. If I had known they’d be so beautiful I’d have spent more time at the shooting range.

Thank you for being a geek. I think that’s really hot personally.

I know a few people who have had the by-pass surgery. My sister-in-law just had it last year as a matter of fact. Everytime she sees me she tries to convince me. I’ve never agreed to do it though because my make-up would put me at risk for cardiac arrest after the surgery. I’m glad that it went well for you though. Some people seem to be a lot happier afterwards.

I’m sending you a few pictures of my artwork, because I’ll show anybody I can manage to stop in the street. Email me if I haven’t scared you off or you can call me at your convenience.

Jacqueline Moreno-Garcia

Despite the insanity he actually wrote me back:

Jacqueline,

Okay, first things first, how did you know I was from Earth?? What gave me away? Second let me just point out that you have the coolest name, ever! Truthfully that’s the name of a foreign exchange student I fell madly in love with my senior year in High School. It was tragic, though, because I didn’t admit how I felt about her until the day she left for Luxembourg. That’s when she admitted that she felt the same but knew it would never work because we couldn’t leave our home countries. Then the orchestra music reached a raging crescendo, waves crashed on the beach, the blood red sun broke through the clouds, and somewhere in the distance a mountain lion hacked up a massive hairball.

First emails, evil, got it. Soccer moms, scourge of the Earth, unholy and deceptive contagion that must be eradicated. Check. Viva la revolucion!

Did you say kids? As in more than one but less than a crowd?

Well, that’s just fine. I think I need to be serious for just a moment. Jacqueline, you’re an educated, single mother of three beautiful girls and dedicated to doing what’s best for them. That’s something to be extremely proud of, not ashamed of. If a man doesn’t find that admirable AND attractive then, I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong with him, not you. Needless to say I don’t have much respect for my testosterone crazed brethren who have given the male gender a bad rap. Sometimes I feel like I spend most of my time, when I first meet a woman, just trying to exorcise the ghosts of boyfriend’s past.

Geek=Hot. Therefore, Night=Day, Black=White, Up=Down…yeah it’s the beginning of Armageddon. Excuse me while I crawl under a lead tent and wait for the flash.

Well, the bypass was my only option left. My weight was definitely killing me so the risks were worth it. I’m definitely glad that I did it and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I do miss being able to eat normally, sometimes, but then I remember that I can buy clothes at the discount clothing places and I’m the cheapest date in the world. So life without all the food isn’t so bad…

I LOVE the artwork. You’re very talented, no doubt about that. I would love to see and experience more. I’m sure that your art is very important to you and you get a lot of praise because of it, but it’s not who you are. That’s who I’m interested in getting to know more about.

Were you trying to scare me off? If so, I’m not sure that it worked. In fact, I think it may have backfired on you. I’d like to call you tonight, if it’s not too much trouble. Until then, m’lady, take care.

Jodie Bass

I sent him my phone number and he did call me. Within five minutes I had the conviction that he was the nicest guy I had ever met and that I could never ever talk to him again. My style with people was mainly to be blunt with my feelings and opinions. Growing up with an Irish father and a Mexican mother gave me far too much passion for every idea that popped into my head and a flashpoint temper that was constantly burning bridges between me and the rest of humanity. I was a loner, not by choice, but because I was a pain in the ass.

Jodie, on the other hand was kind, loving, and polite. Unfortunately, he also reminded me of other men that I had been with who couldn’t handle my personality and who wound up in the end being emotionally devastated. I liked him so much. He wasn’t just smart and funny, he was brilliant and quick. It’d never work. I knew it instantly.

The Tragedy of Our Time

Depression tends to engender a lack of bathing. Depressed people need affection. No one wants to hug you if you haven't bathed. This leads to greater depression. It's an ugly circle and a horrible tragedy of our time. Out of compassion, right now, find the nearest depressed person you know and turn the hose on them. Then while they are surprised and before they begin to cry give them a great big hug.

THE REVOLUTION IS HERE

I am a late bloomer. I hit college in my late twenties already having suffered the strains of the typical working life, having three children, and having been married then divorced again. I was excited to start this new venture and had an idealized vision of an intellectual life where I would sit around with other passionate people discussing art and literature and politics and how we could make the world a better place.

I was sadly disappointed.

There were a few of us here and there but the level of discussion that I had dreamt of was not to be found during that time. Oh, there were other places in the world where one could walk along the street and into a café and chat with others about such and such bill being passed and about all the important changes happening in the community and in the world. That place was not where I was however. It was a ‘commuter’ college. People were desperately trying to finish their degrees and had little time for being involved in the machinations of potential political change or in intellectual social life. Poetry readings were rare and were usually put on by me. The level of apathy and lack of interest in the world were profound. People didn’t see themselves as part of a community of any kind, didn’t see their involvement in the outside world as anything that might bring benefit to their own lives. They were therefore unconcerned about changes that were going on- and there were immense changes.

It didn’t surprise me that over the next ten years our civil liberties were slowly taken away from us. It was a sleepy hostile takeover that most people didn’t even bother to roll over in beds and acknowledge.

I was determined that as my children grew that they would have a knowledge of the constitution and government. The majority of people in this country don’t even have a cursory knowledge of the constitution. The American Constitution is one of the most innovative groundbreaking pieces of literature has ever been written. It has been also a living document that was evolved with the needs of its people. In terms of all the things that came before it, it was indeed audacious. It was part of a way of thinking that wasn’t just revolutionary for America but also for the world.

You can be fairly sure in those exciting and unsettling times every person in America, such as it was, had an opinion about politics and the government. What a different world it was when I was in college! You had your occasional Go Green! fanatic but for the most part there was a dearth of people willing to care about the terrible changes that were occurring around us.

A decade passed and I fell into the malaise that I knew most people had fallen into. I lost faith in the ability of real people to make any substantial change. Things weren’t very bad, they just weren’t very good. The first years of the new millennium were marked with the kind of constraint that wreaked of McCarthyism, but we have great cell phone coverage now and Ipods and dvd players in our cars. People rarely change unless things are bad.

But it is clear that we are now ripe for change. The Bush administration reports that the economy isn’t as bad as it seems though the price of food and fuel have risen dramatically in the last year. Even in the town where I live signs have gone up all over banning large bags taken into stores, a sure sign that shoplifting is on the rise. The middle class has gotten smaller and people with nicer cars are showing up, bewildered, in charity food lines.

The fists of Americans have drawn tight around what little they have left as they lose their houses and their credit and the dreams promised to them as their birthright. They blame the poor and the immigrants and the other political party and people of other religious persuasions. And their government, the one that took away their civil rights and supported decisions which robbed them of their prosperity- their government often supports these accusations.

What a diversionary tactic.

Most sad of all is the fact that for Americans, the world is getting smaller and smaller. We have made enemies of many groups and countries. We have isolated ourselves. That isolation has not brought us greater abundance or security and it certainly hasn’t brought us any friends.

Almost seven years ago when the twin towers went down and we had the sympathetic eyes and ears of the world upon us, when flags were flown at half mast in the countries of the world, including Iran, we did not rise to the occasion. We did not remember any of the values that this country was built upon and we did not honor any spiritual values whatsoever. We acted in wrath. We brought two countries to its knees in search of one sickly man and in the end it was a feat which brought no glory or resolution. Our leader declared that we were to be afraid, that we had enemies. The conquest of these countries was done first in the name of ending terrorism, although we acted like the greatest terrorists of all. Countless innocent men, women, and children died in the name of ending this supposed tyranny. We even stayed in those countries in the name of acting for the greater good of their people, though the people of those countries do not want us there.

I have witnessed these things in the last ten years and I must admit that I had grown jaded and petulant at the thought of anything significant ever changing in this country. The people of this country had grown afraid of helping create any change within the structure of the government that is supposed to serve them. “You can’t fight city hall.”

But a few weeks ago this changed for me. I went with my daughter, who is now in college, to a conference with other students, teachers, and commentators. I listened to people that cared about this nation and who had a vision for what could be. These were people who were different, even had different political party affiliations, religious affiliations, and sympathies. These were not mere critics of the system as so many of us are. They had a dialogue that was astounding. This was not the usual party to party issue shouting that you see so often. These were people that were open to the differences and the places where they met in the middle. And though I was a child among adults in terms of the concrete knowledge I had in areas of world economics, I found myself talking and hoping. I found myself dreaming once again of a new way of doing things. I opened my eyes and saw that a new revolution was starting, the likes of which this nation and world has never seen before. We might all have different religious ideologies and cultural differences. We can honor that and still find a place to meet in the middle.

So often we forget that all human beings want the same things: sustenance; shelter; a respectable way of earning those things; and good health. So often we forget the natural laws that govern these, of doing to others what we would want done to us. The law of abundance states that for all the good things we get, sharing a portion of that and not holding onto it with tight fists means that more can come to us.

There is much work to be done in this nation. We are at a critical point in our evolution as a society and for many of us, as human beings. But we are ready for a revolution. We are ready to see what a society looks like that embraces diversity in opinion and still manages to be grounded in our humanity. We must be human beings first and Americans second.

My name is Jacqueline Bass. I am a one girl revolution. This is a political blog.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." – Ghandi
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.” - Confuscius
“I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
Helen Keller

Some Things Are Hard To Let Go Of

My overly developed sense of competition reared its ugly head at the Joselyn senior center on Wednesday. My daughters and I heard there was a Chess club there and wanted to go and check it out. My teenage daughter’s theory was that other geeky homeschool boys would be there because it was the middle of the day and that she could maybe find some boy who'd actually read a book once in awhile.

Now we haven’t played a great deal of Chess and it had really been awhile. I thought that we’d just watch and maybe join in next time. This, of course, isn’t what happened.

When we got there it was a group of elderly men playing in one of the back rooms. They were so excited to see us that they took pictures. I’m not lying. There is actual photographic evidence of the horrible ego-crippling defeat that we suffered there and if I have my way it will never see the light of day.

It’s funny in retrospect that I always give the advice to go out in the world and be authentic and make mistakes that you learn a lot that way. Oh, I learned a lot about myself that day. I’m sure the children will be blogging about it for some time. You see, there is a tendency I have, part genetic, part upbringing, and part stuff left over from previous lifetimes. Sigh. Every little competition becomes a fight to the death. All my life I fought so hard (ironic choice of words) to be non-competitive. And you think you have finally gotten it in check until…the gauntlet is thrown by some old men at the senior center.

Imagine if you will that I am prodded into a game by the coordinator- a sweet-natured elderly Asian man. He smiles a lot and reminds me of certain rules from time to time. It’s been awhile since I’ve played and I take awhile to make moves so he makes a move and then goes to get a cup of coffee. After an eternity I make a move. He comes back and makes a move and then goes to the bathroom. Then eons pass and I make another move. Then he comes back makes a move and goes to check on something in the office. I make a move, he let’s me take his queen. It’s a gesture. I recognize the gesture. He says, “Oh, look, Jacqueline, you’ve taken my queen!” in his sweet polite voice. He makes another move.

Finally I remember strategy, something awakens within me, something ancient and familiar. I begin to think 3 moves ahead and battlefields rise up before me. I begin to play ruthlessly and boldly. I remember the thrill of competition- of pitting life and limb wholly into rising above every level you’ve ever achieved, of staking everything on it wholeheartedly.

I’m reckless, I’ve always been reckless. I stake everything on one move, hoping that he won’t see the opening. I lose. I’m once again in the backroom of the senior center with the fluorescent lights with men in suspenders and soft tired voices sweet with age and experience.

The smallest, most fragile one of the group motions to me and says in his sweet old man voice, “Perhaps if you learn the rules, next time you’ll play better and we won’t have to teach you girls so much.” I smile as I am rising to leave and nod okay. I get to the parking lot and turn back to the doorway that I had just come from and declare in a voice that thunders down the corridors-

“AS GOD AS MY WITNESS VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE! NEXT WEEK YOU ARE GOING DOWN OLD MAN!”

Apparently I still have much to learn…

My Toothbrush Has Been Violated and Other Musings

It was so simple. It had been staring me in the face for weeks. My toothbrush had hair in it.

It’s not like I had left my toothbrush in an unfortunate spot and someone had brushed their hair and it had fallen in my toothbrush. My toothbrush was up high, face level, on the toothbrush rack. But it had hair in it. The hair in it was grey and short and could not have belonged to any human member of the family.

The next morning I caught him, Jodie’s cat Flick, licking my toothbrush. He wasn’t licking Jodie’s toothbrush or Megean’s or Bridget’s-just mine. First I felt violated. Then I began to think about what it really meant.

Flick and I have had a turbulent relationship. He hated me when he and Jodie moved in a year and a half ago. He’d scratch me whenever he got the chance and he terrorized my cat. My cat turned into a neurotic mess who lives mostly behind the sofa and poops underneath the bathroom sink and only comes out when we lock Flick in the bedroom. I began to hate him as well.

Then one night Flick got underneath the kitchen sink and ate some laundry detergent. To Jodie, Flick was the child that he hadn’t gotten to raise. He was devastated. We took the little bit of money we had and took him to the Vet. We couldn’t afford to run a lot of tests so the Vet gave him antibiotics and we watched and waited. For two days neither of us got any sleep. I began to feel incredibly guilty about the way I had felt about him. While I was laid next to him watching his troubled breathing for hours I fell in love with him.

Loving him didn’t mean that he loved me. It just meant that I felt more often like giving him tuna and I appreciated his silliness and I defended him against Jodie throwing him up in the air. And believe it or not I got Flick to revolt against all the junior high crap that Jodie put him through. I hadn’t thrown a cat by its tail just to see where it’d land since I was five, but Jodie had never gotten over that sort of thing. Flick would take it when Jodie did it to him, then he’d promptly go beat up one of the other cats in an act of displaced aggression. But I finally got Flick just to scratch Jodie when he did it. It was a one cat revolution.

Flick is half feral and doesn’t necessarily like to be petted or messed with too much and he hates being picked up. You can get close, but not too close.

So, when I saw Flick licking my toothbrush I thought about all the times recently when he’d come lay near me or literally on my feet, even though there were plenty of other places to be. I remembered the way he loved drinking out of glass and when he was hungry or his litter box wasn’t clean he would come to me and only me to have it taken care of. And I realized that he loved me. In his own way, he loved me. I thought about this every once in awhile over the proceeding week as if there was something more to it that I wasn’t getting. There was actually and it very nearly cost me my happiness.

You see, over the last year and a half Jodie and I have fought every single night, with few exceptions, over one particular thing. There was something I needed from him that was very simple (at least to me it was simple) and I felt that I would never have it. To me, if he couldn’t give me this simple thing, it meant that he didn’t really value me or really love me. Because if you love someone you try to be giving, especially when whatever it is that they need emotionally is so easy to supply, right? I didn’t need a guy who would take care of me financially or take out the trash or supply romance or the million and one things that women complain they don’t have. I just wanted him, at a certain time every night to come to bed with me and talk in bed before we went to sleep. It wasn’t about sex, because we have plenty of that. I just wanted time with him away from the children.

But our timing was always off. It became a focalized point of argument. It became a power struggle. This man is a fantastic cook and is funny and kind. My parents love him, the kids love him, he is extremely considerate, to a fault. But he couldn’t seem to do this for me, even though I think he tried. It became so bad that when night time came, we’d just be mad for no reason, anticipating the fight that was coming, or the explosively charged silence. It was like we were possessed or being tested constantly. We’d be fine all day, then night time would come and we were enemies. Sometimes I’d cry in the bathroom and pray that the relationship would end, that he would leave because I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t love me. But the next morning the storm would pass and I would wonder what had been wrong that was so bad the night before.

Finally a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t take anymore. We started to talk about it and I said that I’d had enough. Mercury was in retrograde. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket. I decided to walk down to the pool and stay there in the water until I was calm again.

When I came back, he was gone and there was this cryptic note, the kind that sends chills up your spine, because when you know the person, you know what they mean. I got in the car and went looking for him frantically. I looked in all the usual places he goes when he’s mad at me. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I went back and checked the computer for bank card activity. He had gone to a liquor store down the street.

When I found him he had consumed so much alcohol that I was afraid he was going to die. Because he’d had gastric surgery a couple of years before, everytime he had alcohol he would get far drunker than the normal person and risk dangerous dehydration and alcohol poisoning. By the time I’d gotten there he’d had an enormous amount of whiskey. He was barely conscious and he admitted to me that he’d been trying to drink himself to death.

He said to me, with a look in his eyes that I’ve never seen before, nor ever want to see again, “Can’t you see that my life is with you? Can’t you see that I love you. It took so long to find you and I can’t bear to go on without you.” In that moment I saw how ridiculous the arguments had been all this time. I saw all the ways, big and small that he showed me that he loved me. I saw the way he had suffered, driving hours every day just to make what he did, and how the pressure of all the changes he had made had nearly broken him time and again, and he had never ever talked about leaving or giving up. In that moment, he was Joyce’s Michael Furey standing in the rain telling Gretta that he didn’t want to live if she was to go away. I had always wanted that, but hadn’t appreciated it when I had gotten it.

Ridiculous as it seems, I remembered Flick then, licking my toothbrush. Flick loved me in his own, with what he was able. How many times do we say to ourselves that the person we choose to be with must do this or that or be this way or that way in order for us to feel loved. Sometimes they just love us as they are able. It is no reflection on us. It just is. Jodie is a good man and I love him. I’m so glad he didn’t have to die to prove it to me.

When Children Go Wild

I was with my mom yesterday (we see each other a few times a week) and we were discussing the subject of taking children out in public. She was sad because my brother and sister-in-law don't take my five-year-old niece with them when they go out in public. They do take out their ten and eight-year-old children but that's a more recent occurance. I said that I completely understood why this was.

There is something about being in public that makes children push the limits of authority. They know that they can ask for things and get them more readily and hang on the clothing racks and act insane without the usual consequences that they would suffer at home. Why is that? Because we live in a world of appearances. How many times have you seen parents in public whispering to their child in tones of barely restrained violence, "Now, Tommy, you know you can't act that way. I'm going to have to put you on time out."

But you know when they get home, that parent is absolutely going to beat the crap out of that child. Because it's a conundrum. If you can't control your child, then you are a bad parent. If you discipline your child in public, you are a bad parent. It would seem that they have us over a barrel and it's a no-win situation.

Well, maybe not.

I just want to share my solution to the problem. First, you have to have absolutely no fear of what people think of you. This is essential and good advice for life anyway. You act in love and open your heart, but who gives a damn about appearances. You should always try to do your very best to warn them of the consequences, because that's the right thing to do. Maybe say, "Tommy, you are a great kid, but there consequences when you act up in public. I can make a FAR bigger scene than you can."

Because what they are holding over your head is your self-image and reputation when you are in public. If you don't care, then it takes the power away from them. Now, of course, the reason you want them to behave is for the greater good of everyone else there-the people who don't want to see your child break things and be disruptive. BUT, half the time, those people wouldn't also mind seeing a little entertainment, so what I'm about to suggest is a public service because it will stop the child in his/her tracks and provide public entertainment.

It started for me because my daughter, who is now 19 was absolutely wild in public. It got to the point where just with the trip in the car I'd stop two or three times on the way somewhere because of the arguments in the backseat. Then we'd get somewhere and she'd be so disruptive that OTHER people would offer to spank her.

Until one day...

We were in Best Buy and she 12 and was yelling across the store about how she wanted some video game and why didn't I get her this video game because her grandma buys her all kinds of things and I'd just had enough. So I said quite loudly, " Jessica, good grief, you forgot to change your underwear again, didn't you? How long has it been- four, maybe five days? " And she was so mortified that she glued herself to my side and didn't say another word the rest of the trip.

Since then, I haven't had too much trouble. You'd be surprised how children will behave if you threaten to make grass angels on the front lawn of their school. It just quiets them right down.