Doe, A Deer, A Female Deer. Giz, My silly little Mutt.

I let my dog Gizmo out, but when i went to let him back in, he was gone, Not an unsual situation, since he has a tendency to run off in the daytime. He's got an unhealthy affinity for the pig farm across the way. This always means a lot of work for me, to get him cleaned up. So it was with some trepidation that i stood on the front porch and called, my voice ringing through the neighborhood. He either couldn't hear me, or was ignoring me. About that time, i noticed the deer that was standing about 75 yards in front of my house in the little grove of trees. The deer stared at me and so i said Hi. I always say hi to the deer. I think they're cute. (I let them hide in my yard during deer season. I think word's gotten around among them).

Well, the deer walked toward me and i said, "Are you coming in for coffee?" She stopped, blinked a few times, and then snorted, running off to my left into the woods, making a big production of her flight, complete with those bounding jumps, even though there was nothing on the ground to jump over. I said, "Well, that was a little overdone, Bambi." She paused on the side of the house, big ears perked, alert. She thought shw as concealed behind some high brush, but she wasn't. I looked toward her again and said, "I seeeee yooouuuu...." So she turned and ran back in front of me, through the yard instead of into the woods away from me. (Strange. It made me laugh). I heard her go into the woods behind my house.

A few seconds later, as i was calling for Giz again, the deer reappeared on my left, having circled around the house and come back. She stood there and stared at me some more and i started laughing. "What are you doing?" i asked her, fully prepared for her to answer during this odd moment. She made that big dramatic bounding flight back into my front yard, where she was near the grove of trees again. About this time, Giz came trotting toward the house and onto the porch and i pointed the deer out to him. "Look, Gizzy--it's a deer." The deer moved around and made some noise, and Giz spotted her, whined, and launched off the porch for a good chase. The two of them disappeared toward the road that runs in front of my house. I called Giz again and he started back, huffing and puffing. About halfway back, i noticed that the deer was right behind him, Following him. Giz heard her too, and turned around to reprimand her with a bark. The deer whirled and ran again, and Giz gave chase once more. Then i called him to the porch and he came to sit beside me, huffing and puffing even more, but smiling. (Yes, dogs smile). I watched as the deer walked through the yard in front of us and back into the woods.

I suspect they are friends.

Doe, A Deer, A Female Deer. Giz, My silly little Mutt.

Being Fully Human

Theodore Roosevelt once said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

My sentiments exactly.

We all have a past. We all have things we have done, said, been--that we would have liked to be different. Yet, that is part of the human experience. Part of being fully human includes getting your hands dirty. We know and appreciate joy because we have experienced sorrow; we know and appreciate love because we have been familiar with fear and envy. We do not grow as humans until we live fully in the human experience, in all its wonder and agony and beauty and ugliness.

We cross paths with perhaps thousands of people in a lifetime, and who is to say how many of them are there to learn their own lessons by knowing you, or you, them? We can say that a person inflicted pain on us, or was our nemesis, wronged us, or in some way did us damage, yet perhaps this is the only way we could have learned what we needed to learn. We can indeed thank these people in our minds and hearts for bringing us valuable lessons (i.e., everyone can be a teacher) even though this is often hard to do, because if we blame someone else, we don't have to take responsibility for ourselves.

It's a real challenge to be okay when your past rears its head via the opinions from those who were alongside you during the journey; those who saw the dark side of your soul, the ones who might have felt the sting of your lessons, the pain of your anger or angst or confusion. It then becomes about forgiving yourself; and yet, why would we need to forgive something that is intrinsically part of the process and indeed the very reason we are here? While there is a precarious balance between personal accountability and accepting the inevitability of human foibles, this balance can be had, and is one we should strive for.

I have done so, and continue to do so, even amid my own frustration, confusion and misinterpretations. I am not the same person i was 10 years ago. If i was, it would indicate that i am not evolving. And i find that concept not only unacceptable but repulsive.

I am not merely a human being, but a human, BEING.

Being Fully Human

Is that What Really Happened?

...and then there are times when our view of a situation is tainted by erroneous beliefs. It only takes one morsel of misunderstanding, one particle of perpetuation, and all proverbial hell breaks loose. And this Hell might be just the catalyst for a solution. Maybe even the ONLY catalyst that would serve the purpose. As thinking humans, we learn from our experience. We understand through associations. If we have a repeated experience, we soon believe that it is in fact the SAME experience. It is a reflection of the old adage, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck...it's a duck." But the irony is....sometimes it's a chicken. Both may be fowl/foul...(sorry) but they are not exactly the same. Perhaps these similar/dissimilar experiences serve to keep us open to new possibilities--new directions in our thinking, our beliefs, hope, when hopelessness so effortlessly seeps into us...so that we don't become jaded, even though all around us appears to be the same old song and dance. The song is always the same song. But it's not. The dance is always the same dance. But it's not. Nothing is ever as it seems, yet everything is just what you think it is. This is the eternal conundrum of life on this plane of existence. There is meaning in it, even amid frustration. In fact, the more frustrating it is, the more meaningful it usually turns out to be. And still, there is order in the chaos, method to the madness, peace amid the battle.

Is that What Really Happened?

Crossing Paths

(from my book, Crossing Paths)

Sometimes there are people who cross paths with us, and it takes a little time to figure out the big picture of just why they do. Sometimes the big picture becomes unpretty. When it becomes clear that these two people are not good for each other for whatever reason, it is not always a thing to be regretted. I firmly believe that we can choose to see it as a valuable lesson, an enrichment of us on many levels. Some people are not meant to share any kind of path, but only to cross for a brief moment and continue the journey individually. We can feel wronged by this; we can feel cheated, frustrated. We can suffer the sandpaper of anger when the eventual truth blooms in our minds that this is not to be a journey shared. It's easy to allow this kind of discord to escalate until words become caustic, biting rapiers of injury. When that happens, it is often easier to hide behind that anger so we can mask the sadness of it. If we instead try to sever the ties with as much simplicity and kindness as we can muster, it is always best--but not always easiest. When we let go of our need to defend and accuse and beat the proverbial dead horse, we are left with just the compassion that one or both people are hurting. And the anger doesn't save us from that. We have to feel it and still know that it was the honorable thing to do, even if it leaves us with a cloying sadness.

Crossing Paths

Dubya Dubya Dubya Dot Con

There was this protest sign i saw that read: "Would someone please give Bush a Blowjob so We Can Impeach him?" I can think of no more succinct way of illustrating the absurdity of the situation.

Tell me again, why was Clinton impeached for trying to cover up details in his sexual Indiscretions, while Dubya remains in office following a long list of truly High Crimes? The first of which was literally RIGGING an election. Isn't it great when your friends own the voting machines? Isn't it great when the general public don't think much of the fact that NONE of the exit polls matched the results? or that more Republicans voted in districts than there were registered Republicans? or that thousands didn't get their vote counted, or that thousands were wrongfully prevented from voting by falsifying voting records? (there is documented proof of this one). Isn't it also just ducky when those who make the final decision about who becomes president, just happen to be the Hopeful Candidate's BROTHER and friend/Associate? The list goes on, but let's skip ahead....

...to 911. Never mind that this attack was no surprise. And we knew who was responsible. Bin Laden. But somehow we went from Bad Bin Laden to Saddam Subterfuge. "Oh, we know this guy did it, but we don't want to go after him for our own reasons, so let's just pick someone else and then fashion a blame shroud we can put around him. The American People won't know any better. They're stupid."

This is the same Bin Laden family that served as underwriters for Bush's failed businesses before he was elected to any office. So what was the real reason for the invasion of Iraq? Oh I don't know, could it be, um. . .OIL???

Don't forget that when the invasion was announced, it was christened, "Operation Iraqi Liberation." What's that stand for, Class? Right. O.I.L. That little Moniker was summarily changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom when someone realized that there were some American people who were smart enough to think their way out of a wet paper bag. Remember the speech Bush gave, warning the Iraqi people: "Don't burn any oil wells"? Well, we now know there were no WMD's, and therefore the reason for the invasion is moot. Yet, we're still there somehow, and Dubya has the blood of thousands on his greedy little hands. Meanwhile, his story is different. The reason we are there changes as often as Dubya changes his socks, because it's not about being there for the right reason, it's about OIL. Many of those soldiers died because they didn't have the gear they needed to protect them, and the Bush Administration was not forthcoming. The soldier's families often paid for something as simple as armored vests. Meanwhile, Dubya lines the pockets of friends and relatives who are profiting from the war itself.

And when the folks on the Gulf Coast were suffering from the worst natural disaster in memory, Bush made an obligatory appearance while FEMA continued to be AWOL, and then headed over to Pakistan, who'd suffered a bit of an earthquake, and summarily gave them a billion dollars in assistance. You remember Pakistan. . . the Prime Suspect in harboring Bin Laden. Can you say "Dubya Dubya Dubya Dot Con?"

Now, I see that Dubya is headed for Iran and probably Korea. It has the potential for being the end of life as we know it. . .I can envision germ and biological and chemical warfare, perpetrated on our own soil. At the very least, we will be ensconced in still another unfounded, unnecessary and unending war because Dubya now thinks of himself as the World Police, and he wants to continue to posture and throw his weight around. Why shouldn't he? He's got the People fooled well enough to have avoided impeachment or rumors of impeachment. How did we allow our government to become this corrupt? How did the Democratic Party manage to lose its collective testicles?

Make no mistake. The Axis of Evil is Washington, Texas and Florida. The very definition of WAR CRIMES is embodied in the Oval Office (or Awful Office, as I now want to call it). Pretty soon, some other country will have to FREE US. They will have to invade our cities, kick in our doors, put the muzzle of an M-16 to our heads, burn our homes, rape our children and wives, torture us, and plunder our lives. But it will be for our own good. We will need their help to free us from this evil dictator, this minion of the Devil, this Pretender to the Throne who enslaves and punishes his own people. Oh, I hope it's someone nice, like Switzerland.

_________
Good Vs. Evil: Bush's Theology of War
Strategy for Security or Blueprint for Empire
Shocking and Awful: Resistance at Home
Bush Commission: Session II Introduction - Jan 20-22, 2006
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
Netflix carries lots of great documentaries about this subject too, like:
Weapons of Mass Deception
Bush's Brain
Uncovered: the War on Iraq
Bush Family Fortunes (A particularly informative documentary).
The Cost of War
One-Third of Iraq War Spending Goes to Bush's Campaign Donors
http://www.freespeech.org
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/kept_promises.html

Dubya Dubya Dubya Dot Con

Love Me, Love Me Not

I had a long conversation with an old friend recently, and we were discussing the many women whom we'd both known over the years, who seemed to respond negatively to being treated well. This has happened to my friend more than it has to me, but the pervasive pattern is that when they are treated with care and respect and love, they begin to push against it, and in extreme cases, even begin to mirror/ reflect/project their own damage onto that person who is treating them well.

We began to examine this, and it occurred to me that almost every one of them (if not all) shared one common denominator: they were all abused, neglected or molested as children. My suspicion is that they never healed this wound sufficiently for them to welcome good treatment; and on some level they don't believe they deserve it, as this was drummed into their heads through the actions of neglect/ abuse/molestation, and this so profoundly affected their own self-worth, that they are incapable of allowing anyone to treat them otherwise. They freak out and will do anything--even create drama--just to be free of that unfamiliar RESPECT toward themselves, or from others.
I believe that until lesbians (or any woman) makes self-respect and worthiness part of their CORE, rather than just a surface idea they "WISH" was true, they will always have stormy, short-term relationships, and those who aren't shackled by this pattern will always have to deal with it in their romantic lives as well, because that's what's in the dating pool. The dating pool, as i have said before, that needs chlorine.

Love Me, Love Me Not

Weapons of Heart Destruction

“There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.” ~ Cyril Connolly

As a creative person, it is necessary for me to open myself up and take chances. To create art of any kind, you must be able to dig down and reveal yourself in order for the creative result to be honest and visceral and meaningful. I have learned that when you open yourself up to SOMEONE, a specific someone, thinking they might be significant in your life--a future lifemate, a soulmate, perhaps--you always take the chance of having that personal information twisted and thrown in your face when things don't turn out they way they want. You might be having a spiritual/emotional crisis that you are trying desperately to work through, but the minute the situation disappoints them and their own goals, they reduce your feelings to mere character flaws, they spit venom at your self-worth, Then everything they embraced and loved and understood about you morphs into this ugly Grendel, and you suddenly become the embodiment of all their own angst and fear and ugliness. They turn on you, they load their weapons and they begin to fill you full of holes. I have learned it is best to hold back the deeper aspects of your heart, and never reveal any past demons you've conquered and learned from, because others are capable of forging them into weapons with which to cut you, bludgeon you and inflict the deepest emotional harm--harm that can render you faithless and hopeless and wounded. I can't fathom ever opening myself up again--even if it's the small amount i managed to do it this time...and if i do manage to be foolish or brave enough to attempt it once more, it won't be until i have an extended period of proof that they are not capable of such carnage and such viciousness, and what they tell you about themselves is not merely words... "When are you going to understand, that i am not like those others?" they say, over and over, "You are too hard on yourself. You just have to learn to let go and be in the moment and allow yourself to feel..." You open that door just a little, and you take a step inside, And then they demonstrate themselves as clones of those others with their hatefulness, and have the gall to say it is somehow all your own doing. WE are all humans and we all have our limits, and can only be impaled with a sharp stick so many times before we will do anything to make it stop. I have learned that i am capable of attacking back when these wounds are so deep that they feel like life or death. I abhor the way it makes me feel about myself to lash out, or inflict reciprocal harm, to lower myself to such a level of pain that i will hurt someone else out of some need to protect myself, i also recognize it is a perfectly natural human reaction to such a overwhelming amount of injury to my heart, my psyche, my wounds. Thus, I will use every ounce of strength i have left and that i manage to collect afterward to never allow myself to be that vulnerable again. No one will ever be able to hurt me like that again. No one will have my heart for awhile. It's too bruised and battered for handling. Even by me.

Weapons of Heart Destruction

Eye of the Beholder

With regularity, I am confronted by various personal ad placers who accuse me of being shallow or superficial because I require a photo of someone first, before I will explore any potential relationship. There are many reasons I require this, not all of them about attraction, but for the purpose of this particular sore spot, I will address this as if it is exclusively an attraction issue.
 

The distinction to be had here, is that I don't place ads to find friends. I have plenty of friends. I am seeking a lifemate. Therefore, the attraction factor is crucial. I don't know how anyone else defines the difference in friends and partners/lifemates/lovers, but for me, a lifemate is a friend, whom you also make love with, share a home with, and a day to day life with. This is a person I want to go to sleep with each night and wake up to every morning for the rest of the life of the relationship (one always hopes this is a very long time or until non-homicidal death do you part...essentially, I mean it's until the relationship no longer serves both of us in any beneficial way). Thus, it would be helpful if I was attracted to that person.

That being said, placing importance on appearance and attractiveness is not a reflection of my shallow, empty soul. It is a function of nature, a biological fact that is in place for clear and profound reasons. But this is an initial indicator to me, and not the end-all be-all (refer to previous blog entries ISO: In Search Of and Sour Milk From the Cyber Teat-or check out my book, ISO). Now, I might be attracted to some drop dead gorgeous model, and then she might open her mouth and converse with me a moment, and I might discover that she is selfish or cruel or unwilling to evolve, and that attraction can go right out the window. People can become more beautiful as you get to know them. This is the sometimes inexplicable chemical dance that takes place in the human brain. I make no apologies for it.

Experience has shown me that when people don't want to share a photo of themselves in the milieu of dating and romance, they have something to hide. And why do they feel a need to hide? Because they know they don't meet some supposed societal criteria of what beauty is? Probably. But then we get into the quagmire of defining beauty. One definition of beauty: Beauty is the phenomenon of the experience of pleasure, through the perception of balance and proportion of stimulus. It involves the cognition of a balanced form and structure that elicits attraction and appeal towards a person, animal, inanimate object, scene, music, idea, etc.

One may see a beautiful tree, and a beautiful flower and like the flower better than the tree, but the tree doesn't become jealous of the flower. They are each beautiful in their own way, just as humans are. However, i am under no obligation to be attracted equally.

if two people are not attracted, or one person is attracted and the other isn't, it means they are not suited to each other. It's not a make-wrong, nor a harsh judgment, but a reflection of natural brain response.

So some of us were not born "beautiful." Maybe there's a deeper reason for that, too. If you believe in reincarnation, perhaps in past lives we were beautiful and it kept us from learning things we needed to learn. Perhaps we were on the other side of that attractiveness coin and we misused it and need to have the other experience. Most likely it is simply a matter of probability based on the combination of genes and chromosomes. This is not really the point anyway. The point is, someone will always be attracted to anyone.  Whatever the reason is for the bodies we end up with, this cannot be pawned off on everyone else. We are what we are. We attract what and whom we attract. I am not attractive to many people. So be it. There has to be something there that draws me--and it doesn't have to be classical beauty or a modelesque body. I probably won't find you attractive later if I don't find you attractive now. And until I have evolved to the point where I can be attracted no matter what someone looks like, (as some people have told me they are capable of doing) then I'm left with what I have to work with now--in this moment. And I'm being honest about it.

Eye of the Beholder

How to Freak Out Your Ex's New Love Interest

...Just say any one or all of these.....

"So...she finally found someone who would take an ice cube bath and then remain completely motionless during sex?"
"I thought your feet would be bigger. They were when i fantasized about you with the control top panties, the spatula and that plate of mayonnaise.".
"Do your titties itch when you get around cheese?"
"So, what's this about a weird noise you make during orgasm?"

"I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive my behavior. I was out in the parking lot earlier eating dirt."

How to Freak Out Your Ex's New Love Interest

Parenting: Yeah, Uh-Huh

It is more excusable to me that bad parenting existed a generation ago. Back then, there was no internet, no Dr. Spock or Wayne Dyer, no mountain of research from all corners of academia. The only touchstone parents had to go by was the example set by their own parents, and so on, back to the beginnings of child-rearing. Hopefully, we learn from the mistakes of our parents, but I suppose this doesn't happen, if you're never aware that mistakes were made.

These days, though, there is simply no excuse for bad parenting. Too much information is available to anyone who wishes to raise a child into a quality adult. Those old chestnuts, "If it was good enough for Mama, it's good enough for me" and "My Daddy beat my ass all the time, and I turned out all right" don't wash. For one thing, who decides what "Turning out all right" means? To wit:

You hit your kids; you humiliate them; you ignore them when they try to engage you; you place your needs before theirs; you don't care how they're doing academically, emotionally, spiritually or intellectually; you respond to their questions with irritation and impatience, you make no effort to better yourself or set an example; you give them no moral compass to emulate; you own only a hammer, so all problems look like nails.

But you turned out all right. Yeah. Uh-huh.

I think universities should offer entire programs in parenting. And I think the government should give tax breaks to parents-to-be who take specialized parenting classes.

And I think that ultimately, some people should just not breed.

Parenting: Yeah, Uh-Huh

Phone A Friend

I hung up feeling equal parts indignant, confused, and chagrined.

It seems that one old friend is offended by the fact that i don't enjoy a relationship that resides exclusively through phone lines; It also seems that while i may have a history with this Phone Friend, this somehow implies that i have a present, as well; I stand accused of giving more to those who are currently present in my day to day life, than to you, old friend--you, who made a valiant effort to destroy me, and then demanded an apology. . . you, whom i haven't seen in person in three years; you, who might be in my area, but is unable to find a moment to see me. . .

Now, after i have pulled my life out of a gutter of nothingness and futility, managed to win a battle against all odds, and after i have reinvented myself, learned to embrace happiness and laughter, and after i have written and published six books, which you neither buy nor read--you chastise me for not supporting your career--the one that did not lend itself to support, the one you never had--and you remember only that i was pathetic and desperate and barely hanging on; that i traumatized you with my trauma back then, that i embarrassed you with my disability.

I remember that when i was in my darkest days, hungry, exhausted, in pain--you made me watch you buy fish for your aquarium.

Phone A Friend

Spiritual Soup For One

AS I have mentioned, I am not a Christian, and there are many reasons for this. (I am spiritual, however). I was a Christian for many years, even attended a Christian College, and later studied for several years under a Bible Scholar....to understand Christianity, you must study it, and by studying it, I learned that it is very much a product of a patriarchal society; it's predicated on misinterpretation, outright lies, fear and control....so this belief system simply did not answer my questions, and did not ring true, nor resonate with me ultimately in any beneficial way. (I can say this knowing that my very best friend is a Christian, and so is another friend...although perhaps not in a mainstream way--they are not Christians in an "irritating fashion." )

So often we hear in Christian dogma that God is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, perfect...then we hear something like "God would not want you to do that" or "You have broken god's heart" or "My god is an angry god" etc...the very concept set forth about who and what god is contradicts those sentiments....if god is all the Christians say "he" is, then nothing we can do will "hurt" god...that would imply god is human, with human emotions, and this cannot be true if "he" is also omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, perfect....so at the heart of Christianity, there is a contradiction, and that calls into question everything else. (There are many other things about Christianity that do not ring true, and this is of course a profound and voluminous subject, and I could cover merely a fraction these points, and it would not fit in blog entry, nor, perhaps, 1000 blog entries). I believe that "god" is not a person, or even merely a spirit or entity, but EVERYTHING... God is a flower, an emotion, a light, the universe, the earth, science, love, a thought--and resides within each of us as Higher Self. I believe "God-as-most-people-understand-god" is also much more than those things....Christians over-simplify the concept of what "god" is. While I do believe in the concept of intelligent design, and a higher power, I believe that "GOD" cannot be personified, nor reduced to what the Christian mainstream would have us believe. The manifestations of mainstream Christianity--to ME--are cheesy, immature, hateful, maudlin, self-serving, mindless and perilously close to oblivion...I also do not believe in Blind Faith as I feel we have the ability to reason and question for good reason, and that we are honoring ourselves and our antecedent (or "god", if you prefer) by honoring ourselves and evolving in the most sincere and loving way we can. This is a subject that lends itself to hours and hours of contemplation and discussion, so I will just leave it there for now...

Spiritual Soup For One

Dubya Must Die

I find it reprehensible and infuriating that Bill Clinton can be impeached for getting his weeny pleasured, and then trying to cover it up, and George W. Bush can lie constantly, rig his election, send thousands to their deaths just to line his pockets, patronize the viewing public every time he gives a press conference, deprive the citizenry of their vote, abandon the needy in his own country while giving billions to another that harbors Bin Laden, keep company with terrorists, commit treason on a daily basis, and he is still in office. Perhaps the Christian's "angry God" will simply smite him where he stands. But since it didn't happen to Hitler, Stalin, Saddam or Osama Bin Laden, i won't hold my breath.

Dubya Must Die