9/22: Political Divide Ponderings (and #crowdfunding)

I have always been in the “Bleeding Heart Liberal” category. I knew at 15 that I was going to register Democrat. My parents were both registered Republicans. But from a time when Republicans were more liberal (Dad was an Eisenhower Republican) and Dems were more conservative. My mother was originally a Democrat, from back in the day before parties switched views. She switched to Republican, around when she married my dad. I think because her views were so conservative, he nudged her to change affiliation to match her views. Dad, however, was pro-choice and all the other stuff. He voted Republican, but man, he was liberal through and through.

By the time I was 18, I knew Democrat was where I belonged. Some of my views have a twinge of Libertarian in them, but I’m staunchly a Dem. When I got my voter ID card at 18, I showed it to my dad, who joked, “Where did we go wrong with you?” I knew he was messing with me in a good way. Remember, he was quite liberal and I am such my father’s daughter. He knew, in his own quiet way, that I was in the right spot.

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Flash forward to this past week. A couple days ago, I got into a debate with a conservative woman from this shelter. Here’s where my pondering begins.

How can someone who is homeless/poor/etc and reasonably intelligent stand by politicians who are so vehemently against them? I’m talking about the Liar in Chief. I usually just use ’45’ to refer to him, and will do so the rest of this post.

How does a woman who served in the military and depends on the VA in all its brokenness support a man who cuts spending for the very system she uses?

How can someone who is living in a shelter that depends on federal grant money to help people say that the government shouldn’t be the ones who help the poor and disabled, but that churches should be?

The debate happened while we were waiting for the MAX train back from her first trip to IKEA is several years. When we got on the train, I was so pissed, I just started ignoring her. She turned to a man on the other side of her and started in about “ignorant liberals”

…

*twitch*

…

*twitch*

…

The one thing I got clearly from her was this: she got her advanced education later in life (a Bachelor’s in Science [B.S.] in something) and had dropped a class because the professor made something clear about some sort of view that was decidedly more liberal than conservative. She then went into how she was glad she didn’t pursue her degree when she was younger because she might have been convinced and brainwashed back then to agree with this more liberal view.

As with everything involving the women in this shelter (other than the backstabbing and lies some pull), it all has mostly blown over and she’s all smiles again with me. Meh. I’ll move on and chat again with her. Just not today.

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This is why I ponder these things:

I am innately curious about the human condition and psyche. Always have been. Ever since I was out of diapers, I either had a camera in my hand or was observing people in how they acted, reacted, and interacted. I wanted to understand human behavior from the time I was really little.

I’ve long joked that I’m really an alien from another planet who was dropped off here to observe human behavior. Sometimes, it doesn’t really feel like that much of a joke. I’ve always felt different. Like I wasn’t the same. Not human. My physiology is the same, save for a few oddities, but I am essentially a human being. I just don’t feel like I am one.

I want to understand why people behave how they do, believe things they do, act how they do. I’ve always been the one who asked questions and looked for answers. As a kid, I was always pulling random things from the yard and putting them under our little 3x microscope. I wasn’t big on dissection once we got to that in school, but I wanted to learn about other things.

Why are we seemingly always at war with each other?

Why do we so easily fear and then hate each other because of differences?

I know that second one is partly why I feel so different. I choose not to fear the differences. I’m curious about why the differences are there, and want to examine those differences. I love and embrace my curiosity. I want to absorb and learn and experience those differences. And I’ve never understood why others don’t want the same.

To choose being informed over conformity.

~A

6/13/18: Humans All

I’ve posted in the past about being homeless and being human and all that. The recent story about the jogger (asshole) in Oakland who took a local homeless man’s belongings and tossed them into Lake Merritt. The jogger has been arrested for taking the phone of a guy who spotted him the next day. Hopefully more charges will be filed against him for what he did to the homeless man’s belongings.

This reminded me of recent discussions on our local NextDoor for my old neighborhood. Some people were vehemently complaining about the homeless population while others were doing what they could to calm them down and help them see reason. In one of of these threads, I outed myself as being a former neighbor who is now living in a shelter due to an eviction.

This is the thing: no matter whether we live in a tent, a shelter, a house, apartment, or a high-rise condo, we are ALL human beings who will end up in the proverbial pine box (some will choose burial, others cremation, even others various other methods that have emerged). Where we live and how much we do or don’t have won’t matter in the long run.

If you have all the trappings of success, they could vanish next week. If your belongings fit in a storage unit or a shopping cart, you could have a windfall next month and things could improve.

Or it could all end in an instant without any change.

None of us truly know where our lives will take us. Only where we’ve been. We can have all the grand plans and ideas written down somewhere, but it’s all a matter of chance, with some choice tossed in. I learned long ago to not plan too far ahead. The rug got pulled out from under me and plans changed frequently.

I changed as well. Every instance in my life that made me change direction in some way changed me. I am nowhere near the person I was 25 years ago. Hell, 10 years ago. I’m not the same as I was last week. I learn as I live. Each day holds at least one lesson. Sometimes one I have to keep learning (don’t get me started on foodstuffs).

But back to the topic in general.

No matter where we stand in society, we are all the same. Yes, there are differences. Education, disabilities, income, housed/unhoused, skin color, eye color, career choices, etc… we are each unique in our humanity. But strip away those differences and our human-ness is a common link.

I think some -far too many- tend to forget this. Like the people in my old neighborhood bashing homeless people. The differences are merely on the surface of who we are. They forget that they could easily end up homeless like me in an instant (well, maybe longer, but given a tragic incident and draining of savings and loss of job… you get the idea).

No one is perfect. No one is above another. Money doesn’t make one superior, despite what that person may think of themselves.

I may expand more on this as I go… for now, this is my observation.

8/3: Sealed Secrets (#poetry, #crowdfunding)

Dreams abated.
Life has me in a
Stranglehold.
Caught between my past and
What I am to
Become.

Who is that person?
The future does not give
Sneak
Peeks.
It holds those secrets close.
A seal on its contents.

Where will I be in
Five years?
Ten years?
I do not know.
Preferably breathing.
Hopefully more than that.

I wake each day.
Not knowing where that day
Takes me.
The adventure can be small
Or one of great challenges.
But I have to wake up first.

~A

(Yes, still crowdfunding. Any help will do.)

5/21: quick “note”

You guys (and gals) never cease to amaze/amuse and befuddle me. My earlier post was really nothing spectacular… just more of a “hey, I am still alive here” post… and yet 11 likes on it… this one won’t be much better.

Pretty sure I’ve rambled about this before, but tonight’s poem made me think of this. A lot of my poetry is train of thought. I rarely edit them. Most of the time, I hand write them. Those may get a word change or two when getting typed up, but still, nothing radical. My poems also fall into a “freestyle” form. And they tend to be either observational (the one from earlier this past week about being at the station and watching people is that type) or internal and sometimes extremely personal. I don’t write those to get attention or anything… they’re random stream-of-consciousness pieces. Nothing grandiose.

I sometimes read them to my therapist, who loves them as both a written art form but as being therapeutic. They can trigger an intense conversation in session. Tonight’s poem, which will post at 11pm PST, is an internal reflection piece… it’s kind of an internal conversation… take from it what you will. I’ve noticed a lot of people pay attention to the poetry posts. So, as long as you read them and like them, I’ll keep writing them. The monthly Patreon poem will be a longer, likely more traditional, work. These are just short little ones.

Well, half an hour before it posts… enjoy.

And thank you for bearing with me with my frantic situation over storage… and ensuing “crash and burn” this weekend. It takes a lot out of me.

~Amanda

5/14: Untraveled Darkness (poetry)

Life not
Carved
In stone.
The path laid before me
Turns and shifts
Different every time
I look
Up.
Changes
As I watch.
Veering off
The unknown
Unsettles me.
The path leads into
Dense fog
And
Silence.
A step forward.
Hesitant.
I move forward
Into the shadows
And fog.
I cannot see what
Lays before me.
What hides in silence
Along the sides of the path
I walk along.
Sensing movement beyond my place.
Stand still.
I cannot run.
If I do not know
Where
I am going.
Breathe.
I can see my feet and the
Worn path under them.
One step.
Look around.
Silent.
My fear pushes me another step.
What lays ahead
Can be no worse
Than what I left
Behind.

~Amanda 

5/12: It’s Alive!!

Another short musing.

For years now, I have heard “poetry is dead…” 

I’m no Poet Laureate or anything, but the fact that I have friends who regularly get their horror/suspense poetry accepted to genre mags, and that -this week alone- the pages/posts that consistently get the most hits are the poetry posts… 

Those who say poetry is dead can go suck it! Between poetry and my fiction, writing in general has been very therapeutic for me. It helped me process my mother’s Alzheimer’s and eventual death. Dealing with my PTSD (and the assholes who did enough damage for me to develop it). With my dad passing away suddenly. With my own brushes with death, my suicidal ideations…etc… writing has helped me process a LOT of shit. As well as general observational pieces. 
Poetry is powerful. And in the right “hands,” it can rock worlds. Just look to Maya Angelou. She made words soar.

Poetry is alive and can be used for great things in times of upheaval.

~Amanda (still in pain, but not as bad as 2 hours ago)

Dragon Talk: Community #crowdfunding

Likely my last post of the night. Almost time for bed and meds are taking effect. And those meds are why I’m going to talk about community again.

Not everyone leads some charmed “normal” life* … honestly, some of us don’t want the “American Dream” life of a house, white picket fence, kids, a dog, working cars in the driveway, etc, etc, etc. Some of us choose a different path. But that, by no means, does not mean we never need community. I am different. My sexuality, my looks, my intelligence, my skills, my education… I could go on. I choose to not marry or have children. I might  find someone I could live with someday… hell, I may even adopt a kid (older, no diapers) someday. But not right now.

Just because my life is different doesn’t mean we want to all be hermits and cut ourselves off from society (although a nice break from time to time wouldn’t be so bad). Have we forgotten how to BE a community? To give a shit about those around us? To lend a helping hand, in whatever method one is able, to those in need of assistance?

Or have we already been slowly diving into the deeper waters of “us vs them” … cutting ourselves off and telling people to just “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” if they need help? I swear I fucking hate that whole bootstraps bullshit. Usually the people who say it grew up with a fucking silver spoon in their mouths and gold trimmed diapers. I have an education. I’m finishing up my masters. Hoping to head overseas for a second to boost my desirability in my field. But no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get work to tide me over and help save money for getting there.

Community, from my own opinion, is people banding together to help those who are down. A good strong community doesn’t look down on those less fortunate. It doesn’t tell them to fuck off. It doesn’t ignore those who, by current standards, are stepped over, tossed aside, written off, and told to ‘suck it up.’

What we have today is not community. Community looks at the bigger things that need work as well as the little things… such as helping the person down the street. The one about to be evicted because they struggle to find steady work they can physically do.

Community is not “I got mine, screw you.”

Where did we go wrong? When did ‘loving thy neighbor’ turn into ‘judging thy neighbor’?

I know it was likely sometime during my own lifetime. I remember things differently. It wasn’t all “squeaky clean super-duper all-American” but if a neighbor’s dog got loose, people banded together and helped get them home. If someone fell ill, neighbors checked in. A lot of that sort of thing…

It can be done in a more global sense via the internet. We meet people online we likely never would have met in real life. But there’s still a sense of disconnection from community.

All I know is that it’s getting harder to find people who understand what community is. And that tires me out.

~Dragon

 

*I dare you to define “normal”

Random Things… & #crowdfunding

A little crowdfunding…. a little of other things…

I now have 24 hours until absolute deadline before they file eviction paperwork. I hate letting it get this far… I have until 4pm Thursday. Just under 24 hours. 850 to cover everything for rent…. storage is over 400 at this point with two months of rent and late fees… I have a little coming in from two gigs this weekend, and a shade under 150 in donations…. but I’ll need whatever I can get to survive this. And if anyone wants to put something under my Christmas tree, the Amazon Wishlist link is somewhere around here (sidebar…. hey, I don’t LOOK at the site that often, just the dashboard and stats).  Warm non-wool socks (Portia is allergic to wool) would be nice…. but stuff on the list is best…

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So, here’s one topic I want to do some reading up on before I go into any detail. This may also get cross-posted to my Archivist blog as well. I haven’t put anything on it yet.

Aleppo

I try to keep an eye on world events, but like so many others here in the US, things that happen in the Middle East and countries that aren’t predominately white get glossed over in the news. And thus Syria and Aleppo. I knew Assad’s name, but really wasn’t fully aware of what was going on. Now, I want to know. I want to be more informed. I will say this about it without the education I’m going to delve into over it: I always felt uneasy about Assad. He has always come across as an extreme dictator type… and now I see my feelings were more accurate than I wanted to believe. Being an Empath who can read people has its advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes the lines are blurred between the pros and cons… people like Assad are where those lines are blurred. I felt uneasy… I could see it in him… but seeing it also makes me sick. I have the clarity and the ability for that clarity to hit me like a semi-truck and shut me down.

The other thing I’ll say is this: What I see in news reports now is pain and torment for those who have remained. I know Assad is to blame for a large chunk of it, but what I need to educated myself on is who the rebels are. How did this start? Those sorts of things. My heart aches for those who have lost family and friends. I hate war of any kind. To hear that women still in Aleppo would rather kill themselves than be raped and tortured…. I think rape survivors know that feeling all too well. My heart breaks for those still there. Those who will likely die because they’re caught between the rebel forces and Assad’s regime.

My hope is one day we lay down the guns for good. All over the world. Stop this pain and anger and retaliation and hate for those different than us.

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A friend of mine on FB got into a debate (and I jumped in, along with a few others) discussing how she was changing her views on faith and atheism, etc… the debate got going when one dude got really snippy about how you can’t change from being an atheist. Anyone can change. Anyone can believe or not believe in what they wish. In this country, we have full freedom to believe in what we choose. Right now, I’m somewhere between Deist and Spiritual Humanist. I’ve yet to find one website that can give me a proper breakdown comparing the two. What I tend to gather is that Deism is “Logic with some Faith thrown in” and Spiritual Humanism is more “Faith with some Logic to even things out and explain the rest of it” …. For years, I thought my dad was Agnostic…. now, looking back, I think he was straight-up Deist. He lived on logic and reason, but still believed -to some degree- in God and that there is more out there than we can see. I agree with him on this…. but in Spiritual Humanism, I find there is more ritual and faith…. it leans toward the faith side of the spectrum, but still accepts and finds logic and reason as sound aspects of what they use in life.

Maybe there’s a site out there that explains it better. Then I found this last night…

I think this resonates for me as well…. I’ve long observed and read up on different faiths from around the world… I haven’t gotten them all, but I find some commonalities between them. If anyone is ever curious, read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book on Jesus and Buddha as brothers.  It’s an interesting read on how their teachings are similar. Peace, love, respect. And yet so many who follow faiths that teach these have hate in their hearts for those who are different. I may bring up individuals whom I despise, but I do my best to not hate whole groups just for their differences. I want to learn from all. I want to listen, to understand the core principles of as many faiths as possible.

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I think that’s it for now. We’ll see how the evening goes with blogging…. there’s a cat begging….. yes, the one in the featured image.

~Amanda

12/3: More Dragon Musings… #crowdfunding #writing

Fiction, Magic and Being an Empath

Being an Empath maybe is what makes the whole feeling I’ve had since finishing NaNoWriMo on Wednesday so weird. The power of Abby protecting her ancestors and new home as well as the power of helping the angry/malevolent ghost to heal and understand maybe why she was also stuck here…. those were the most powerful scenes, other than the two descriptions by Mary and then another in watching others die on the property and being helpless to save them. Then describing how others died saving other family. The anguish, frustration…. a lot of emotions.

Emotions that were likely fueled by my own frustrations and such about my real life. And now, as I slowly process what the fuck I wrote, I realize it follows the same basic theme of most, if not all, of my other books: fish out of water/finding strength within. Maybe this is because I feel like I’m out of my own element in many ways. I relate to them in this way.

School/Life

In my self-pity post, I described how I feel with school… it’s partly burnout from just everything…. the stress, etc. Not knowing most months, like right now, where my rent money is coming from…. now I need to finish up my website and do a few other things and scramble. I’ve been so exhausted from the stress and emotional burnout that trying to figure out my last few things…. just a little more, etc… then winter break…. depression, stress, frustration, apathy about the rest of the usual stuff in my life. And trying to put a small incident from con behind me…. trying to just find some semblance of what I would deem normal. I’m not seeing it.

Last musing or two….

I have a cat who is being rather insistent on lap time, so I’ll wrap this up. I swear I must have had several past lives as animals… a fair number had to have been critters that hibernate during the winter months…. I’m groggy and tired and want to sleep. It doesn’t help that I got hit with some vertigo in advance of a low-level migraine.

Do still need help covering rent and all that as usual. The GFM is back up and will be for a bit. Rent is coming due (750) Monday, then tacking on a late fee to make it $800. Storage is behind, so I owe last month and owe this month…. I can’t lose that stuff…. a lot of my fabric is in there…. a few things could go and make room for keeper things… but that whole hibernation/no energy thing isn’t helping….

Okay, Dragon is out for the night.

~Dragon