Mental Viagra

My job is getting me down. I came home at midnight Friday from the west coast of Florida after a 2 hour drive on the Alligator Highway. A straight, harrowing shot through the Everglades. It was a hard day, a hard week. Another 60+ hour week.

Yesterday I woke and didn't want to leave the house. The blues were wrapping all around me. I tapped around on the computer a bit, reading depressing news. I then had to call Matt for something while he was at work, and he told me it would rain Sunday, so if I wanted to get to the beach, I better do it today.

I was out the door in 30 minutes.

The parking lot wasn't full! Yay! I paid the meter, took my sandals and water bottle and engaged in on of my favorite pastimes, walking the shore. The best way to get some exercise and work on the tan.

The beach was crowded with families stretched under bright umbrellas, opening coolers, eating sandwiches, playing paddleball, and jumping in the water. The giant straw hats of old women dotted the ocean as they waded with each other like water buffalo, cooling off in the African heat. Latino accents and Cuban music filled the air. A Jamaican family sat in the shade of the palms making crafts. An old rastafarian with giant, greying dreads runs past barefoot, in perfect and sublime shape.

During my walk, I enter the warm, tourquiose water. I float over the gently chopping waves until the worries of the past week leave me. This is better than any drug, any words of encouragement. This is therapy at its very finest.

I never thought I'd like to live in flat Florida. Lord knows I hated flat Dallas. I always saw myself in mountains. But now, I will never leave the ocean, never leave the beach again. I will also never live through another cold winter if I ever can help it.

South Florida. I live here!

DOOMED!

I was wandering around again today in Disinfo when I came across a link to this article on the homepage. Do not read this on a bad day!! Feeling a little masochistic? Go ahead and read it. We're going to hell in a handbasket....

Other than that, it's still a lovely day here in south Fla!

Cherry Bomb

Remember cherry bombs? You're on the seesaw with your best friend, laughing, going up and down with a push of your Keds, and BAM! Your sneaky friend jumps off while you're in the air and down you crash to the ground.

I do believe with all my heart that we are responsible for our ability to affect our lives for better or worse. We have free will and volition. If I'm in a bad place, I make moves to get out of it. I work a job each day to support myself and fund future dreams. I want to move up in this world, and I don’t expect anyone to hand me anything I cannot earn myself. So why are my pockets turned inside out?

In our country’s industrial age, we had men who changed how we lived our lives. Innovation, courage and determination made single men…not faceless corporations…wealthy. Today we still have great innovators with faces we recognize. These people are and were heroes and embodied the fiery independent spirit that built this country into what we have today. All the things we take for granted on a daily basis can be traced back to great men of the mind and will.

But today, those men are fading into the vast pool of the corporate. Not single brave men and women, but groups of lawyers, investors, chairmen, CEOs, CFOs, other companies, special interests, I cannot even conceive of all the faceless masses that make up just one of the massive corporations that run through the fabric of our daily lives.

I don’t hate the rich. As long as you earned that money ethically, you deserve everything you can buy. Nothing I admire more than a self-made man or woman.

But who are these corporations? Oil, insurance, medical, power, drug, communications, who drives them? Why do they have so much control over our lives and our politics? Why do I get the increasingly scary feeling that my best interests are not represented, that many fingers are in my pockets while the individuals who pool together to run these companies get richer? Who are these people? How did they get their power? Did they earn it? Did I vote for it? Why do they fund our two-party political system, particularly the GOP?

The tactic used by huge corporations these days is to keep poor folks running the backbone machine that runs our country. If they are rewarded too much for their manual labor…they will rise too high and take part of the pie. Keep them where we can handle them, where we can ride their backs.

The honest self made man is an anomaly. People today grow rich from gangster business and mob mentality. Good old boys. Who knows who. Kickbacks. Handshakes. Lobbyists. Nepotism.

Not everyone can be wealthy. And the poor will always be with us. But why does Bush give tax cuts to the rich? Why are public schools atrocious in poor communities, churning out kids guaranteed to fail in life? What happened to no child left behind?

Wouldn’t in be in our best interest for the entire country to provide tax cuts for middle-class and lower, which would provide incentives to better their lives, buy more products, school more children, and--NOT equalize our society—but raise our entire standard of living? Why can’t we create the means for middle class and poor to become more affluent—rather than just for those who are already affluent? Why can’t troubled schools get greater funding so our future generations aren’t necessarily doomed to repeat their predecessor’s mistakes and failures?

I don’t believe in welfare or hand-outs to those who abuse them. I just get the creepy feeling that people in my income bracket and lower have an invisible vampire at our necks, and I can’t quite point my finger at anyone with certainty. I almost hate to say it, but judging from history past and present, I do believe many with wealth make it on the backs of the middle class and poor, and expect to keep them that way. I almost feel like our country is turning towards the Caste system of India, where the upper castes will be these massive corporations, and in time the lower castes will be reduced to “untouchable” status. The gulf between classes is obvious. The richer get richer, the poorer get poorer.

Bush calls his supporters the Haves and the Have Mores. Can it be any more blatant? As an economically conservative yet socially liberal Libertarian who is sick to death of Leftie Rightie bullshit propaganda, I cannot in good conscience vote for a man who doesn’t give a shit about the Have Littles or Have Nots.

People like me and poorer than I are getting the cherry bomb.

I just found a website that I am going to check out. http://www.faireconomy.org/. I just took a look after I wrote this, and it scares me how many facts they have that back up my vague observations. The vampire is real.

Dear God, hope you got the letter and...

Religion works for some people, I don’t deny that. There are some very devout Christians I admire and respect. But in essence, I disagree with the very premise of religion altogether, and consider it a bane to mankind that has caused far more bloodshed and pain than anything else.

Religion by its very nature requires you to make moral judgments based on your faith and view the world through that kind of morality. What you judge for yourself as good and proper must be good and proper for the whole world…after all, this is God’s word. By its very nature, you cannot just sit back and be Christian or a Muslim without trying to convert the other to your faith. You cannot be a very good adherent to your faith if you don’t attempt to change what you see in the world as wrong, sinful, or downright evil. If you are lukewarm, you will be spat from God's mouth.

This makes religion inherently dangerous. Make no mistake about it. The war between America and Radical Islam is a holy war, both sides see it just that way. Anyone who thinks George W. Bush does not think he considers himself called by God to do anything he does EACH DAY, let alone wage this war…doesn’t understand the faith of the born-again Christian. He says he is fighting for our freedom. But he believes God has called him to do so. We aren't just fighting nihilistic primitives who hate everything we stand for, we are fighting Satan himself. And so are they.

The Christian religion in its very roots is based on this one premise: man is inherently damaged, flawed, sinful and corrupt and since he cannot be redeemed, another man, perfect, holy, without sin and who also happened to be the son of God, has to be sacrificed to redeem Man. That’s it. In a nutshell. Without it, the faith is nothing.

If I cannot accept that on faith alone, I’m going to Hell. I work for the other guy. The world has come and taken me away. Same with all of the "unsaved"--Jews, Budhists, Muslims, Atheists, Sihks, etc. But God loves us. God is love. Huh??

Leave it to mankind to come up with something so ridden with self-hate and guilt. Leave it to mankind to believe there is no morality whatsover without it coming from some unseen, unheard diety, and not from within.

Whoever this God guy is, I don’t think I’ll presume to understand even one iota of his nature. The pious talk with the him daily, having pleasant chats, intercessory pleas for deaths of old liberal judges (smirk), begging of forgiveness. They claim to know him very well, they've got him pegged.

I don’t buy it. God is in a box for all to see, the religious thumpers have it all figured out. Come see God in Las Vegas, flowing robes and pulling rabbits out of hats. God will talk to you and shake your hand. Maybe sign an autograph.

How can I know? I won't even pretend I do. How could I be so arrogant to assume I know who or what made the oceans, the skies, the universe?

Whoever this God is, what kind of cruel joke would it be to create so many religions that people would constantly bicker and eventually kill each other over them? Everyone thinks they’re right. Everyone else is going to hell. I must take up arms, fight the good fight with word and then sword. Then the kingdom of Heaven will be mine, all mine.

Does this seem to be the work of a loving deity? No, it absolutely REEKS of petty mankind. Man cannot go three steps without waving the flag of his own tribe and poking his neighbor in the arse with it. I’m right. You’re wrong. My holy book says so here. Poke. I'm going to heaven to hook up with some fine ass virgins. I have a room in God's house.

Is that God? What if God is up there right now shaking his head at all of us, wondering why we are literally killing each other over this? Whatever happened to Love Thy Neighbor?

What kind of God is that? Smells like man to me.

Not That Kind of White (BFB!)

I hate racism. I know, I know. A lot of people do. We all cringe at the thought of blatant racism in the guise of the KKK or the proverbial angry black. The everyday racism I’m thinking of is more insidious than we imagine, more prevalent then we realize. It’s an ugly monster and its right in our bathroom mirror. It’s a high wall, slippery to climb and topped with broken glass to cut your fingers. It happens everyday.

I’m white, but grew up in a typical blue-collar, working class, suburban south of Boston home. My mom was and is a waitress. My father was and is a cook. We never owned a house, and the cars were always used until my parent’s later years when they invested in a Saturn. I didn’t go to college. I wasn’t given cars. I didn’t wear designer clothes. I didn't have a trust fund. My parents couldn't afford any of what so many kids take advantage of.

I don’t get white folks these days. Why don’t I relate? Who are these bourgeois upper caste smug bastards with the Lattes? The ones with the minivans and McMansion in the suburbs, a white flight haven from the browns and blacks downtown?

My present day job uniform includes decent attire, laptop bag, slick do, wireless mouthpiece on head. One black guy in an airport store asked me how much I made. Like the naive goof I am, I told him. “Shee-it”, he says. I don’t make a lot of money for what I do. My car is a used Ford Ranger. I shop at Marshalls. I work a whole fucking lot, so much I barely have a life now. I have no savings and no investments.

Fuck his “Shee-it”.

Some minorities assume: white=privilege. Like I popped out of my mama and immediately started making money. They don’t know about my mom feeding us baloney sandwiches because she couldn’t afford anything else, how I waitressed and worked retail like a slave, and how I still do it now. Only I’m experienced and sane enough to somehow be called a manager and join what I consider the lower-middle class.

My whole life I was shit on by my own kind. I’m lucky I got away from it and came even halfway as far as I did. By all intents and purposes I should be much farther than I am. But I’ll get there.

I can’t blame that black man. Not really. We all make the same mistake. We see a person and size him up according to his ethnic appearance. It can’t be helped. We ARE different, after all. Different skin, bodies, voices, social and economic backgrounds. Black people make assumptions about us. We make assumptions about them. Same with all the other races.

Every time I meet a person of color they are a clean slate to me, a human being pure and simple. But society has imposed a set of assumptions on me that conflict my natural tendency to equalize all mankind. They taunt me in the back of my mind, daring me to slip up and let quiet, common racism pop up its nasty head. “You people”, it says. A separation. Us and them. They say the same about us. How can we climb this awful wall?

We aren't to blame, not fully. The black race is still recovering from the wounds of slavery. They are still angry, and white people are still scared and guilt ridden. The pain is still there, and it's a slow heal. The wall won’t come down right away, it has to crumble bit by bit. Each decade that goes by that the men and women of color climb higher on the platform of social and economical equality, a little bit of that wall will crumble. Each decade that goes by that witnesses the death of the old guard on both sides who held the deepest racist ideals, the wall will keep crumbling.

But it will remain if we don’t get rid of “You people”. The stereotypes must be challenged. Laugh at the ones that are real, discard the ones that hurt.

Until a man is truly judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin; black, white, beige, red or yellow, the wall will remain.

Insomnia Rant

I’ve been dealing with insomnia for close to six months now. It started inexplicably. My body just literally would not fall asleep for days.

I’d lie awake feeling my blood pulse and my heart pump quickly. A mild anxiety. I tried hot showers, meditation and aromatherapy. That didn’t work. I tried sleeping pills. These didn’t work. I tried gin. That worked, but I hated it. I hated the idea of relying on booze to allow my body to slip into much needed sleep. Sometimes, the booze didn’t work.

My life was not stressful, although I had gone through a good dose of it recently in the past. Work was easy and unchallenging. The only stress came from the jitters of moving all I owned from Dallas to Miami, which could in fact be a contributor. Each night my heart would pound hard, or my mind would race. Or both.

I went to my doctor. Immediately she told me it sounded for all the world like a drug symptom. Some drug in my body was giving me unwanted side effects. I don’t take drugs usually, except pain killers for a bad back and neck. Or allergy meds. But I was on Depo Provera for birth control. That’s the hormone they shoot in your hip every three months. It was very convenient and always worked for me.

I stopped taking it. It’s been about 4 months since the last shot and now I’m in Florida finally. I now have a very stressful and frustrating job as a regional manager for a company that has yet to get its shit together. My periods are back and I’ve put on some weight…mostly from the drug leaving me and a slip in my diet and workouts due to 60+ hours of work a week and constant travel.

Sleep started coming again naturally a week ago. But now I’m back to being up. The heart is fine, but now my head races with work. I cannot stop my mind from trying to work while my body lies down…paperwork, phone calls, talking to my divisional manager, talking to my reps, imagining uncovered stores floating in my head on a map like mapquest and trying to think who in that area can I give them to.

This job was sold to me as 50% travel and no more than 40 hours. The pay could have been higher but I liked the idea of travel and merchandising. The fact is that I work day and night, and I’ve done mostly 80% travel in places far from home. There is no time to workout. I eat irregularly and less than ideal, although I’m still getting healthy alternatives when I can. The only solace is my weekends.

The job calls for a lot of up front investment of my own money for this travel. You do get reimbursed, but slowly. It’s not enough to stave off the constant investment I have sunk in already, and I’m always running broke.

No wonder I can’t sleep. Any thought of getting my mural biz up again or doing any art during the week…or any recreation or personal pursuits during the week other than chores…are shelved for now.

Things will change. This is the story of my life. Sometimes I have to step back in order to step forward. I was aware that this may happen, to expect things to be not as they seem or how they’ve been related to me by others. I will get out of this, I’ve been in far worse predicaments, I have always come out ahead. At least it’s a job.

The real point is: I’m still lucky. I have love in my life. I’ve shedded a lot of bad energy and people from my past. I’m in a place I find inspiring and beautiful.

I just wish I could fucking sleep.

Why I Won't Breed

Matt and I have chosen not to have kids. I chose that path for me a long time ago. Never, ever having kids. Never wanted kids. I take great pains to prevent from having kids. While white trash skanks were dropping out of my high school one by one after getting knocked up after a nice night of Heffenreffers and puking, I wasn't screwing around. When I decided I was going to screw around, I got on the pill. I've never been pregnant, which is good, because I don't like the idea of abortion.

The reaction I get when I tell some gal I don't want kids has been anywhere from "Oh, you say that now, someday you'll want kids" to outright horror. I am Satan. They look at me sideways and slowly slink away. I cannot be trusted, I am no real woman. I am utterly selfish and inhuman, a monster with tits.

How could I, a fertile field ripe for seed, not want at least 2 screaming brats? Look at all the pros! Special parking spaces for my minivan just like the handicapped! Entire sidewalks open for me like the red sea parts for Moses when I come bombing you down with my double-decker SUV all-wheel-drive monster-truck stroller! Even traffic screaches to a halt as I walk out in the middle of rush hour proudly pushing forth the stroller as if it was a magical divining rod that instantly stopped Mack Trucks and Hummers right in their tracks.

Everything would be built to sustain me and my ever growing brood, the world is always G-rated, always family-friendly. I can look forward to politicians kissing my ever widening arse as I work hard to see they turn this country into a sterilized faux brick Disney Land where nothing can offend or corrupt my precious little ankle biters. No Howard Stern. No comic book stores with adult comics in a hidden, dusty corner within range of a school. No fine art murals of a nude woman painted on a gallery somewhere in Texas.

Having a kid is a one-way ticket to sainthood. Everyone will clamor to coo and ogle my bundle of joy as I stand proud. I will be considered...at long last...matronly, caring and truly unselfish. No one can question my judgment...not at least until he's 7 and the other mommies on my street will chitter behind my back about his passe Nikes that obviously I got on sale at Marshall's.

I will not make the same mistakes my parents made when I was growing up. I will never hit my child, never scold my child, I will always show him unconditional love and understanding...even when he throws his creamed corn all over the restaurant table and draws in it with his fingers. When he runs over to that strange woman I don't know and hits her in the thigh, I will not apologize to the woman or reprimand him. He is fragile! I am a mother! Look at this cute Finding Nemo diaper I got him! See? Cute, cute, cute!

After reading this, it will probably appear to you that it's probably good I'm choosing not to have kids. I do appear a little monsterous, I suppose. But after seeing how fucked up our world is and how many frigging people are in it doing the fucking up, I choose not to indulge whatever need I have to breed. I also don't hate kids, I happen to think they're great. Especially in plum sauce.

There are plenty of cool kids and cool moms out there breeding smartly. Really, the kids of today are our hopes for tomorrow. How nice of us to leave them a gaping sore of a world to clean up.

I'll be happy to park at the back of the lot and you can have the whole damn sidewalk...just leave the titty bars alone. Your husband needs at least one place he can escape to.

Hindsight is 20/20

I'm a lucky gal. I hate my job, I'm not happy about my new landlady, and I've gained a few pounds going off of Depo...but I love where I live now and the possibilities before me, and the fact I now have a partner by my side who is not out to hold me down. Finally, at 34, I am in love with my best friend and he loves me back. Finally, I am on equal footing with not only someone I am very compatible with, but someone who is secure with himself and about me.

That is a relief. Most of the relationships in my life have been with vampires, particularly friends. One of them, upon calling me out of the blue months ago, couldn't stop chiding me with her favorite phrase, "Hindsight is 20/20". Well Carol, you were right. As always.

Looking back I can see that I should have left home much earlier. There was a scene in Good Will Hunting where Affleck's character tells Damon's character that he doesn't want to come back a year from now to find his friend still wasting his talent on the construction field. Now that's a good friend.

Hindsight shows me that my closest friends could never have said that. If they could literally tie you up in a bar in Quincy, MA and pour beer down your throat until you were unconscious, but you were still there and not out pursuing some selfish hobby like art or romance, they might. They did when I think about it!

I let my friends hold me back. Not the peripheral friends who I hung with...they were good people, I think of them often. I hope they're doing well, especially Paula and Stez. It's the women in my life, other than my mom, who held me back. I let them. Hindsight shows me I was naive and seeking closeness, a real sisterhood, with women in my life who measured closeness by how much you were willing to give up for them. Be it time, romantic relationships, private happiness, none of it mattered...only if they were happy. Hindsight shows me that they were only happy when you were devoted to their whims.

The most selfish of these women was my closest friend. There was nothing I could do to make her happy. She was always disappointed with my kind of friendship, I was always letting her down. I lent her money when she couldn't pay her bills, I was there for her night and day in person or by phone, I was by her side when her mother passed and her house burned down. I even moved into her house when her mother passed in order to help her family out. Her constant disapproval fed into my insecurity that maybe I wasn't a good enough friend, so I tried to measure up. I loved her like a sister, and we had great times I'll never forget. But I got sick of not being good enough. I got sick of sacrificing all my time. I got sick of her trying to control my relationships and being jealous of any time I took away from her.

It was almost incestuous. She was like a child, always crying for more, always demanding that what she was getting was not good enough, was not the pure blind loyalty she deserved. I got sick of being loyal to someone who only had her interests in mind. I got sick of feeding this constant open mouth who didn't appreciate the work I put into feeding it. She kept telling me I wasn't a good enough friend. Why would she miss me if I left?

I left this friendship once, then twice, because I got sick of being treated like this. Looking back, I was the best friend anyone could have had. Why was I still being treated like I wasn't good enough? Clearly, she had no respect. I let her know outright that her behavior was bothering me. I realized she wouldn't change, and my life was too short to deal with people who didn't respect me. So I left once. Then again, after a few years, for good. She'll never forgive me for it, and she'll tell the world I went crazy and I somehow burned her. She'll never admit to herself as she never has in her life that she might have been wrong...about anything.

There have been other women in my life that have been a heavy weight around my neck. I've learned through my errors in judgment, and I've learned through watching the true and loving friendship my mother has with her friend Nancy. My mother waited until her middle years before she found a friend as good as Nancy. This tells me how rare friendships are, and that if you find one where there is love, acceptance and true understanding, you are lucky. You don't settle for less like I have. You don't ever sell yourself short, and give all for a friend who does nothing but takes.

So I'm a lucky gal. Finally, at 34, I've sloughed off the selfish, childish, narcissist vampires in my life. I'd rather be alone than be entangled with them again. Having them out of my life is like seeing clouds roll back to reveal blue sky.

But I'm not alone. I come home each day to a wonderful man...my childhood sweetheart...who doesn't seek to hold me down, if anything, he supports everything I do. We're here together after many years of our separate struggles to accomplish what we want with our lives. Life is good. I've learned a lot. Time to move on.

Sweet Alabama

Birmingham, Alabama is surprising. You expect hick town and mullets. What you get are green rolling hills, busy modern lifestyles, gorgeous properties and friendly folk. And a few mullets thrown in there for shits and giggles.

The people here are very friendly. Just like you'd expect southerners to be. In Dallas and south Florida they're more like northerners...in a hurry and jaded by humanity. People in Birmingham make eye contact, smile, shake your hand, and genuinely ask "how'r you?" It's a nice change.

The black folk are friendly, more so than anywhere else, except for Kenyans I've been with. The racism here I am told is pretty strong still these days, but they look me in the eye with a smile, albeit with a longer look than white folk. It's almost like they want to know if I'm a good person or not.