How’m I gonna get to Katmandu?

My hiatus is almost over and I’ll be back to work — yay!  Maybe I’ll even buy a new outfit. While I’m glad to be getting back to work, I had looked forward to my break this year, though I still didn’t have enough money to go to Greece or Katmandu, or Morocco.  Ah well.

During this break, I did have time to read the hell out of the newspaper. As a young woman, I read the New York Times, trying to learn something about this “crazy world” we all live in. That was quite a while ago, the era when blackened finger tips were common from newspaper ink. This predated online periodicals. I buttressed that with historical books and a subscription to the New Yorker, where I read really long essays about this “crazy world” we all live in.

In my thirties I realized that politics was a game of power that escaped my idealistic mind-set. I became preoccupied with trying to establish a life as a writer (which never happened). I was disenchanted with the job that I had, and overwhelmed generally by life. Fuck the newspaper! I proclaimed then, and stopped reading it.

I had been slowly getting back to reading the paper.

During my hiatus, I bought an on-line subscription to the New York Times, tired of being shut down after reading the ten free articles they allow you to read on-line per month.

While it’s been illuminating, I still would like very much for us to be running around naked and sharing things, though I know it’s ridiculous. People are people after all, and a lot of us want to kill each other just because – oh and a lot of us aren’t very smart. So I suppose this is the best model we have for now.

It’s just that with my “colorful” personality, I like using pretty colors to outline my prescription for life. Politics still escape me, though it’s been the same for thousands of years.

Oh but come on, the world’s so small now. That means there’s a better chance to communicate new ideals. The United States is a great country, leaders of the world, we could easily champion a new way of life — with our eyes closed! The young folks could then etch out the details, how it’s all going to work out — and stuff. Yeah.

Noam Chomsky referred to the market system as barbaric. Mm hmm. And I’m infected. I participate in this market, and have certain expectations as well, having been weaned on the teat of capitalism. I’m off now to shop for my new outfit. And later I’ll figure out how I’m going to get to Katmandu. Carry on!

Inside of a Living Orb

Today I interpreted life scientifically — as scientifically as one who never studied science could interpret it.   I’m an organism in some larger chain of events inside of a living orb.  Being with my friends last night helped to inspire this perception, though I do see life that way periodically.   It’s interesting thinking about why people might breed, how some people have chemistry that’s more compatible to life, how some people don’t have this chemistry — how they might be weaker links in the larger chain — why symmetrical people get all the damn benefits.

My friends are a couple that I met about six years ago.  The husband’s a physicist.  He likes explaining basic physics to me.  We have the same politics — not everyone else’s.  I like talking to them because they understand where I’m coming from.   We went to dinner and to a music festival.  Between violin sets at the festival the husband told me more physics stuff.  Ask me what he said and I’ll tell you a big blank I don’t remember — he did say something about atoms however.

I told him I should study physics in old age to keep the neurons fired up.  He has a Ph.D. in it.  I don’t think I’ll be doing that.  I have always liked the idea of using physics metaphorically in my creative writing.  I might hire my buddy as a consultant when I write my next novel.

Coincidentally or not, the Humans of New York Facebook page featured a young woman who said that she wanted to go back to school to study physics, while she had originally received a degree in art.  She says physics is like art.  Wow…  I’m onto something.

 

 

Vote for the crack of my ass

Dizzy yet?  Because we’re going in circles.  One party gets ahead so the other constructs stories against them and feeds the media so that they can make leads in the next election.  It’s a game.  In this game, politicians throw a few of us bones for the illusion of progress, as they’ve been instructed to do by the wealthy people controlling them.

This system needs demons.  For it to work, somebody has to get fucked, and not in a good way.  Jails, criminals, uneducated people, etc.  All necessary – no matter what utopian vision any politician professes, these things ain’t going away.  These elements must exist under the current economic model.  They’re built into it.  It cuts down on the competition for the wealthy.

The media prints lies to scare you into supporting their theories to help keep the few slathered in excess.  They give us buzz words and canned causes to get all excited about.  Distractions.  But it’s all about keeping that 1% furnished in cash. Warren Buffet even realized that he paid less taxes than the people who work for him. What the hell!?

An economist wrote an article in the New Yorker that said the same thing I’ve always said about somebody having to get fucked in this system in order for it to work.  I was thrilled – it wasn’t just some wacko theory I made up.  I watched a program with two men who wrote a book outlining how politicians – ALL of them — are more concerned with pandering to the rich people who pay them to do what they want them to do.  This program showed a clip from the movie Wall Street emphasizing that truth.  These men also discussed how Nordic and Northern European nations do better under this model, and wondered why the US still has great disparities under a similar model.  Even I know the answer to that.  Those countries are more homogeneous, there are more of the same race of people there.  In America there are too many different races of people who need to be cut from the equation so that the few can have the competitive edge.  All the different tribes scrambling for wealth — no can do — not under this economic model.  But these other tribes are the necessary demons or scapegoats that help the system work for the rich.

Politics are a sport.  It’s getting worse.  With the cyber element the rich can steal and fuck us up the ass at warp speed, which is why, as the men who wrote the book acknowledge, the disparities are sharper than ever before.

But there’s hope.  The United States can be a model for something better but I don’t know if you’re up to the task.  I love the people in America.  We have the opportunity for a new model infused with an ideology not imbedded with materialism, and consumerism.  But I’m afraid we’re all too hooked on this one to let go.  It’s too seductive and satisfies our need for instant gratification, which causes a gaping hole in our being that we fill up with Zoloft.

We don’t realize it but we’re participating in our own demise with this dependency on STUFF.  Even those of you who have ‘made it’ suffer in ways you haven’t immediately connected to the state of this system.  Why are most of you on anti-depressants?  Because all that negative energy created by the disparities is coming for you in one shape or another.  We are all connected.

I’m not speaking as a person who is disgruntled because of my inability to create wealth – I don’t give a shit about material wealth.  People who know me will tell you that.  I’m kind of disconnected from the idea of money.

It would take a higher state of consciousness to recreate that model.  But how do we get there when we’ve been poisoned with materialism and the mythology of the American Dream?  Doesn’t make any goddamned sense to me that there are more than enough resources to go around yet people don’t have access to healthcare, education, etc. etc., because it’s all being controlled by 1% of the population.  This machine wants you to believe that it’s because some people simply don’t have the same drive and motivation and that some people are genetically inferior.  It’s a lie.

What’s all this got to do with the election coming up – not a thing.  Oh right – there’s an election tomorrow – ha!

Lord of the Flies

I was with a man who wanted me to have a baby — blegh!  I wanted nothing to do with them.  Today I referred to a kid as ‘it’.  I had good reason — I didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy — so I had to ask the dad, “What is it?”

My sister has two boys, so now I like kids, and feel sympathetic to little parasitical beasts all around.  But I’m glad I didn’t breed and still harbor a strong anti-procreational streak — what would planet earth do with my spawn?  I’m narcissistic, nihilistic, and a nervous nelly — I’m not a physical specimen and not good at math — AND — I know nothing of  building rocket ships.  Perhaps though for some reason beyond me, the earth did need my spawn for some large part of the picture that doesn’t necessarily suit me and my ego.  I say maybe it ‘did’ because it’s too late  now.  Having a kid now would be selfish and dangerous because I’m old.  I’ll be fifty.   Here’s a good reason why I shouldn’t — how I turned my nephew’s carefree day at the playground into the Lord of the Flies.

I want my nephews to be bully-proof alpha males.  I want them to be in the good guy tribe from The Lord of the Flies, unafraid to stand up for what’s right, and while using their brains to fight battles, like the finest general, they will have valiant physical prowess — oh yeah — and the older one will be a neurosurgeon and the little one will be an astrophysicist.  They will be extremely well-adjusted, have lots of fine friends and will be indebted to Auntie Sandor Sword-Chinned Bitch until the day she dies.  That’s why when we went to the park, I chased behind my then 3 year old nephew to make sure no kids tried blocking his way to any one of the slides.  I won’t get into specifics.  I’ll just say that my sister told me, “No, Sandee, you can’t do that!  They’re just kids.”

I watched the kids play as if watching war games.  My nephew got into it with an older kid.  The kid says during a break in their shoot ’em up game, “You don’t know anything about guns!”  And check this out, my nephew screams, “YOU don’t know anything about guns!”  He pointed vehemently, his whole body shook.  He got the last word — yeah!  When we got home I high-fived him about it, out of view from anyone who might judge me as an ass.

It was an exhausting day, trying to figure out where he’d fit in the tribe.  Back home I wanted to cry.  “Sandee — he was having a good time — calm down,” my sister says.  Yeah?  Doesn’t she know there’s politics in the playground?!  Next time I’ll tell you about the horror of a kid’s birthday party.