Pakistan

The content of this poem might change. This is just what I came up with so far.

How many times
Have we seen this scene
Replayed over and over again in time
Children crying
Men punching and climbing like ants scurrying to the pie
Women bawling hands up to the sky while
Scarce bags of rice are flung at sheer
desparation by the naked emperor's army while we
Sit back
Admiring the emperor's sleek and shimmering new robe
Or
More aptly
Lightly carressing the iphone in our hands, pacified on technology's tit
Flipping from CNN to ...lost to lose the image in a blink
while never pondering
"why?"

Clean Love

This is an excerpt from a book I am reading. It deeply resonated with me so I thought I would share.

Can you imagine love without jealousy, without possessiveness- love cleaned of all its clinginess and desperation? Let's try. We can take some thoughts from Buddhism: What would it be like to love without attachment? Or to open our hearts to someone with no expectation beyond another heart opening in return? Loving just for the joy of it, regardless of what we might get back?
Imagine seeing the beauty and virtues of a beloved and letting go of how their strengths might meet our needs or how their beauty might make us look better.
Imagine seeing another in a clean light of love, without enumerating the ways in which that person does and does not match up to the fantasy we carry around of our perfect mate or dream lover.
Imagine meeting another person in the freedom and innocence of childhood and playing together, without plotting how to make this person give us the kind of love we wish we could have gotten in our actual childhood.
But...but...but. What if you open your heart to someone and you don't like what happens next? Suppose that person gets drunk? Or treats your open affection with scorn? What if this person doesn't fulfill your dreams? What if this one turns out just like the last one? Suppose all those things do happen. What have you lost? A little time, a brief fantasy. Let it go, learn from it, and go find someone more worthy of your love.
Love doesn't much take to being stuffed into forms, which is what everybody's fantasies and imaginings are: custom-built plans for a constructed individual they've created to solve all their problems. Your authors have dream lovers too. But people are not made of clay or stone, and it won't work well to approach them with a chisel. Look what happened to Pygmalion.
How many times have you rejected the possibility of love because it didn't look the way you expected it to? Perhaps some characteristic was missing you were sure you must have, some other trait was present that you never dreamed of accepting. What happens when you throw away your expectations and open your eyes to the fabulous love that is shining right in front of you, hilding out its hand?
Clean love: love without expectations.
Wishing your love clean doesn't require advanced spirituality or weekly psychoanalysis. You'll probably never let go of every single attachment - at least we've never managed it. But maybe you can let go just for an instant: your history, worries, frets, and yearnings will still be there to come back to you when you need them. Just for now, take a look at the nifty person who is standing right in front of you.

Waiting on the Hierophant to Talk

not scream
throw smoke bombs
divert and dance away.
just talk.

meanwhile the time ticks away

tickticktick

the tears keep streaming

.:drip:. .:drip:. .:drip:.

What's a woman to do?

Keep getting gray while waiting for the day that the transformation takes place?

-OR-

Stop waiting for the hierophant to meet my own needs

Nine years gone already

pieces of me blowing

bit by bit

grit by grit

until only my old bones are left.

The hierophant will no longer keep me from myself. Time is up. I will take my power back.

Love is just a four letter word...

I found this really cool old video of Joan Baez playing this song with Earl Scruggs.

Here are the lyrics:

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Café
With a friend of a friend of mine
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four-letter word

Outside a rambling store-front window
Cats meowed 'til the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut,
To you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn't think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four-letter word

I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed towards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name
After searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more absurd
Than that love is just a four-letter word

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I could only think in terms of me
And now I understand
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that's supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be assured
That love is just a four-letter word

Strange it is to be beside you, many years the tables turned
You'd probably not believe me if told you all I've learned
And it is very very weird, indeed
To hear words like "forever" plead
so ships run through my mind I cannot cheat
it's like looking in a teacher's face complete
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard
That love is just a four-letter word.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

I logged on with the intention of writing about popular education & the Wayside Center. Instead, I find myself wanting to write about something rather personal. In a way, it is connected to Wayside since Wayside also intends to be a place for personal healing as well as popular education. I think that's what got me on this train of thought to begin with.

Many of my friends are aware of the trauma i endured as a child. I was physically, mentally and sexually abused by my mother's ex husband from 4 until I was 12.5. My mother left him the summer before I turned 13 because I finally point blank told her what he had been doing to me. I will always be so grateful for the fact that my mother believed me and left. I have heard too many survivor's tell the sad tale of their mother's accusing them of lying, blaming them & abandoning them further. Thankfully, that was not my situation.

Thus began my journey of healing, learning to re-wire my brain for love rather than fear, relearning how to connect with others in a healthy, wholesome way. Here I am, 19 years later, still continuing down this healing road. I have often thought of this process as an upward spiral. It is never ending, yet the emotions needing attention ebb & flow. Each time I ascend the spiral, I end up better for it despite the pain & hurt that has to be tended to a long the way. I currently find myself with a whole lot of issues resurfacing, which can sometimes lead to me feeling really frustrated and tired. If I am feeling particularly immature about it all, I throw my hands in the air and say "When will this EVER be OVER??". It is painful and tiresome to continue to grow, push myself beyond the bounds of comfort. In reality though, I wouldn't have it any other way. This cycle of pain & growth is what keeps me evolving, keeps me striving to be a better person to myself and a better parent to my children.

I will leave you all with a poem, the title of this blog, written by Portia Nelson. It has often brought me comfort when I am in a self-deprecating mood in regards to some misstep I have taken or succumbing to old self destructive patterns. I hope that someone out there may find some solace in it as well.

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

If Bob McDonnell Gets His Way...

Will they revise this nickel to depict the oil rigs?

Human vs. System Values

If you know me, you know I am anti-capitalist. As you can imagine, most people scoff at me & ask me "why?" I always feel at a loss to clearly explain my stance. That is, until I found the following essay in my slingshot organizer. The person who wrote this is my new hero. I hope this helps clarify the issue for you as it did for me. Yes, I *know* it is a propaganda piece, but the message rings true nonetheless...

A key to figuring out how to resist capitalism, earth-destroying mega-technology, and velveeta culture is learning how to re-define our values based on what it means to be fully human, awake and free. All of us who've grown up within this system internalize its values in subtle as well as more obvious ways. In other words, perhaps without even realizing it we start to define what we like and don't like, what we are willing to strive for and what we dismiss, what we see and what fades into the background based on a value system defined by an economic, technological, and cultural environment structured by capitalism.

The capitalist economic system requires all participants to simplify their thinking and behavior to pursue narrow goals: the most efficient, quick, cheap method, technology, or form of organization. It is important to understand that although these goals are easy to understand, they don't really mean anything - they are means to an end, but the end itself (more stuff, more growth at the lowest cost) doesn't really have any ultimate meaning. Capitalism has no internal way to determine whether anything - including, in particular, constant growth and cheapness - is actually good. In fact, on an ecologically finite planet, limitless growth is not good. Capitalist growth may kill us all if we can't somehow stop it soon. Just having more stuff does not make human beings happy or make their lives meaningful.

Because capitalism is designed around constant competition, the pressure to pursue its very narrow goals is almost irresistible for companies, communities, and individual people. If any element of the system rejects the pursuit of efficiency, others who are more efficient will out-compete the resister, who will be forced out.

Human beings are not machines. We are not merely cogs in the an economic machine. It makes no sense that psychologically, culturally, and in our day-to-day decision making we should primarily pursue efficiency, the lowst costs, and other valueless means-to-an-ends forms of thinking.

The most fundamental aspect of being human is our ability to experience raw emotion, wonder, love, freedom, pleasure, and sensation. These are experiences totally outside the awareness of economics, corporations, or computers, but each of us knows they are what makes life meaningful on a deep level. When your face is stained with tears - of happiness or sadness, but in either case being-ness- those are the moments you know you're really alive.

Humans seek freedom, self-determination, adventure, and challenges, whereas corporations, hierarchal authority structures, and machines seek control, order, routine, and the easiest, quickest, and most boring solution to problems. Humans seek to express their humanity - we sing, write, draw, dance, and rebel. Only living creatures can love, which is an irrational emotion that is also essential and even magical. It is the glue that makes society possible, makes our lives worth living, and can give us the strength and courage to organize, resist the capitalist destruction of the world, and survive. Yet love is totally invisible to capitalism - computers and corporations can't love. These structures can't comprehend solidarity which is based on love and that doesn't depend on trading something for something else.

To create a new society, we have to figure out ways to resist the social structures and institutions that oppress people and are destroying the earth. We have to create alternative institutions that can meet people's needs based on cooperation, sharing, free will, beauty, pleasure, and ecological sustainability. Doing these things means we are re-organizing our priorities away from mainstream goals such as acheiving success and getting material possessions.

To the extent the process of our struggle as well as our goals are based on human vs. system values - and to the extent we're conscious of when we're being guided by system-values and when we're being guided by human values - we can decrease burnout by increasing our sense of meaningfulness. We won't be seeking one path in our politics while self-judging our lives based on internalized values from the system. The part of our mind structured by the system is filled with a lot of "shoulds" that upon closer inspection may not make a lot of sense. It can be easy for our "reasonable" system-mind to doubt our human impulses for adventure, freedom, and ill-advised love that can leave us dangling out on a limb.

Taking a different path or doing it yourself for our own reasons will be slower, more difficult and often very confusing, and messy. Resisting the global machine means that you'll miss out on the treats it has to offer, and it may role over and crush you if you don't step out of the way at the right moment. The funny thing is that a lot of times, enjoying easy treats makes you feel empty, while seeking complex, tough pleasures makes you feel alive and engaged. Taking the human and therefore sometimes irrational and inconvenient path seriously, and following it with all your heart is what the world needs most right now. We've gone as far as we can with making things fast and cheap - now it's time to build something meaningful and human.