Mother Theresa was a Cowgirl

Funny, coming back here, I feel like I'm coming back to someplace significant. Like driving down M66 into the river valley that was my childhood home. Maybe the most significant thing that has happened in my absence is that life has gone on. Dollar stores proliferate.

People are populating, blogging, facebooking, twittering... the world is full of ambient noise. It is an abundance of insignificance.

If this were a yearly Christmas greeting, I'd say... "I'm TOTALLY in love with Morrissey (I TOLD you I could never be happy), I am still "teaching" and becoming more jaded-like-my-father. I miss some things. I, an obedient daughter, have many regrets, one being that I failed to devote my life to homeless people in India who have no human being who will sit beside them as they die.

If I could only be a cowgirl.

Holidays, Birthdays, Happiness, Sadness, Mothers and Friends

Why am I grouchy and sad and overwhelmed?! Oh, I remember why. It’s Christmas! Not only have we co-opted a day that is about love and sacrifice and made it a selfish capitalistic orgy, but we have placed expectations on ourselves that doom us to failure. I cannot make everyone in my family a scarf. I push myself to the edge of sanity making ONE scarf.

I think part of my melancholy is about my mom, and what the holidays were like with her. I can’t rise to the level of wonderfulness that she was, and I miss her. Life wasn’t perfect, I mean my dad was a mean depressed drunk and all, but my mom was beautiful and giving and loving and you KNEW she loved you. No mistake about it. Her departure really left a hole. Especially during the holidays, and my birthday. She never forgot me. She was the one I knew would always love me. She was funny and popular and knew everybody in town and everybody loved her. I rode on her coattails. She was so unlike me, and she knew me so well. She was a master at making me laugh, she knew I had hives because I was stressed (when I didn’t have a clue), she never read a book, she was loyal, she was basic, she was full of fun, she held the family together, she was mine.

I am acutely aware that one day my own kids will be dealing, each in their own way, with my departure. I hope they remember that I was THEIRS. Everyone needs someone that really sees them, and really loves the shit out of them. Even if they aren’t perfect. Even if they drink too much. Even if they swear. Even if they don’t read books. Even if they failed or if they succeeded, or if they left, or if they came back again. These days I just try and love my kids unconditionally and discern where our relationship will take us.

Happy Holidays, Friends. This year I am most thankful for you. You know, I think my mom would have really liked you.





“What is the feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. “

I Think I See My People

Credit: NASA

Copyright: Wikimedia Common

I was taken by this image this morning. Maybe because we’ve been caught in the election bubble for so long. We are so short-sighted. GM is delaying the release of its’ next gas-guzzler until January because they are afraid they won’t get any bailout money, and Jennifer Aniston FINALLY talked shit about Angelina Jolie. We can’t see two feet ahead of us.

I think this is my new home! When I am 90 I will travel across our solar system and enter a new one, a stranger in a strange land (like all of us), though we shy away from complaining. We are thankful for little things.

Change Must Come from Us

"... by the very design and scale of national politics, no presidential campaign could offer more than a wink and a nod to true participatory politics. Activism isn’t something that happens on TV for a general viewing audience, but at home with real people who aren’t watching the tube at all. While a president can provide some inspiration – Oprah-style, if need be - for a whole lot of people, the executive isn’t the locus from which real change occurs. As president, Obama could enact policies that make activism easier to accomplish, jobs easier to create, and corporations more easy to resist – but this activity itself would have to come from us." - Douglas Rushkof

Globalism=Imperialism

"Globalization is an attempt to extend corporate monopoly control over the globe."
- Michael Parenti

One Winter Soldier's Tale

American News Project

War Talk

While the democrats fiddle about, the Republicans have big plans for winning the election:

"The nation's top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq." (The Washington Post)

It doesn't matter how much propaganda we are fed, or for how long, or that we KNOW it's propaganda! Through our silence, we give permission.

Be Here Now

in love
continually
with life perhaps
(being shy) may require

1. detachment

"It’s not about impressing people, it’s about moving them. I always found my mother extremely moving because she had no boobs. The girl who has the perfect body, like Betty Paige, freaks me out. My son writes on my jeans with big markers; I’m always writing poems on my arms with black pen and cutting my hair very short on the sideburns to have a profile like Napoleon. I like having those weird, tweaky things. It’s a stupid girl thing, but it’s better to not look your best so that people can imagine that the best is really much better [laughing]."

yes 2. laughing
3. a drug or two,
while 4. wearing these shoes



sometimes helps
5. a dalai lama memory
6. sidestepping (not even)
around spongy ground
full of melting snow

bangs cover your eyes,
migratory
bird.
I sing!

Love Struck

"A color blind country is a false hope. Martin Luther King jr. did not want us to be colorblind in the sense the concept usually used today - he wanted us to be love-struck by one another. Being love-struck by your fellow citizen means embracing their humanity - which includes their color, culture and history." - Cornel West, in Rolling Stone

Ain't No Time to Wonder Why...

What happens when you have an unbridled military-industrial-neocon complex?

Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, last of the Vietnam vets in the high command (The Man Between War and Peace), submitted his resignation as head of Central Command. According to former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Patrick Lang, Fallon told him, upon taking over at Centcom, that war with Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch.(antiwar.com)

"...the Bush administration intends to go out with a bang – one that will shake not only the Middle East but this country to its very foundations." - Justin Raimondo

Photo by Peter Yang