for God’s sake (possible diatribe alert)

While it is quite true, Gentle Reader, that my own little life has completely blown apart lately, it is also true that it is coming back together again, however Walter Mitty-like the repairs may be at the moment.  Fountain pens only go so far…….

But.

I just have to say: the Loser of the Popular Vote is indeed a total loser.  He is a reprehensible example of human form and in one short week? He’s managed to spew evil sauce over the world- oh, except the parts where he has investments.  This bullshit about refugees and immigrants and Muslims, taxes, health care, abortion, and that infernal wall!  Has to stop now.  If you call yourself a Christian? ASK YOURSELF WHAT JESUS WOULD DO.  Oh, and btw? You might remember who Jesus was, ethnically and geographically speaking.  And what it was HE actually  espoused.  Not a bunch of men who wrote a book hundreds of years later to reinforce their supposed right to authority over that most of evanescent of things, a human soul. You might stop and think about just exactly where your own family came from.  Because in checking the historical record?  This hemisphere was not inhabited by White people and Europeans to begin with. ( Or even Black people- they got to get here the really fun way, after all.) So, for your perusal, today’s word is immigration.  And today is when we should all step up and disentangle the concept of immigration from the concept of genocide- which has been used as an enforcement mechanism on both sides of the issue.  You may think that is an overstatement but I suggest a little cogitation on the subject. Unless you want to adopt immigration as a thing for Whites and dominant paradigm upholders only and continue to pretend that nobody is ever there before YOU arrive.  I suspect this would exclude women altogether, just as an aside.  Unless they’re approved emigre attachments.  Like the wife of the loser of the popular vote.

Every policy ” ” (and I use that word VERY loosely) he espouses is built on hate, exclusion, selfishness and fear mongering.   Stupidity sandwich.   If we do not all stand up now, right now, and make this stop? If only some of us stand and make the attempt in good faith and love? Those who do not stand up will have an awful lot of shit on their hands.  And they will deserve it.

I know violence does not work.  Anger is a dangerous knife.  But so is inattention and inaction.  This may well be the natural way of things in the unfolding of cosmic history.  But.  Given that we do not, and most likely cannot?, know that? We have an obligation as human beings to do unto others- and that means all others- as we would have them do unto us.  And yes, I know that means, literally, love thine enemy.  I can’t quite get to love at this point but I can get to deeply breathed tolerance of those who trample the light and the good under their feet.  Tolerance may build bridges, and bridges link things and progress can be made.  I’m struggling with Martin Luther King Jr’s essay, from the ’50’s, on the experiment of love in effecting change.  But I attempt to draw on the wisdom there in my daily life.  And tolerance does not mean not resisting.

Luddite that I am, I haven’t been able to do a reblog, but terriermandotcom.blogspot.com was right on today- I’m With Her.  A brilliant friend also suggested that we all observe the Islamic five daily times of prayer, wherever we are out in the world, by stopping for a moment, stepping aside if we’re in a line or something somewhere? and gently, concisely, explaining what we’re doing and why.  I’m in.  How about you?

Blessings and thanks.

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Another Dusk

The mist is rising between the trees and the distant hills; it’s getting cold and probably will freeze soon.  Right now I’m listening to the news and they’re talking about what’s going on in Vera Cruz, an epicenter of narco-violence in Mexico right now.  It’s horrible news, all of it about the drug and money and gun related violence there, and it makes me especially sad to hear about Vera Cruz.  I went there once.  I traveled through Mexico for several weeks on my own, and Vera Cruz was one of the last places I visited.  It turned out to be quite the slog because I got actual, real, amoebic dysentery the second day I was in country.  But then I fit right in.  I’d go to food stalls and they’d take one look at me and give me some concoction from the back that only the dysentery ridden got.  My huge supply of pepto bismol tablets were worth their weight in gold, and gradually I got to a schedule of being sick as a dog from about 1 am to 5 am, then partaking of the Disentero Desayuno (some of which were breathkingly impossible: raw eggs I just could not do.  EVEN WITH LIME.  I TRIED. Tortillas and coffee were the power foods of choice), then going on my intrepid way for the rest of the day.  I loved it, and Vera Cruz was beautiful. Seeing the Caribbean was astonishing, and it was such a romantic place it was even just fine to be alone.  Fragrant, bustling but a tempo of its own.   Wonderful music. Now when they talk about where the bodies have been dumped alot of times I know right where it is.  I listened to an interview earlier with a journalist who’d written a book about the narco problem in Mexico, and of course, no surprise? One of the solutions to it would be for….drum roll….the United States to change its policies regarding what they call the War on Drugs.  After all, that’s where alot of them, those drugs,  go from Mexico, to the United States.  A billions of dollars business.  Personally I think this is the war between Big Pharma and Non Pharma.  Both sides with big players and lots of money.  Meanwhile, who suffers? Regular people.  It is highly unlikely that people are going to stop “using drugs”.  Our society pushes drugs to an astonishing degree, prescriptions, advertisements, take this or that pill- we all know the drill.  To my, perhaps jaundiced, eye it seems pretty hypocritical.  We can also cast our minds back to Iran/Contra- remember that?  When our government gave guns to the Nicaraguan Contras and allowed this country to be flooded with cocaine?  It’s all about the money, and not about the ruined lives.  People could probably actually USE drugs if they weren’t surrounded with illegality.  The pain they’re trying to address could be perhaps more broadly dealt with, more successfully.  Minus the demonization.   Opiates are widely available by prescription after all.  It’s just a question of who makes the money, and perhaps what other commodity deemed valuable gets exchanged.

Ah, well.  The fun part of today was some phyto research, into the medicinal properties of Coyote Brush  (Baccharis Pilularis).  It grows all over around here and apparently is anti-inflammatory and a general restorative. Meanwhile the sun is once again setting, and the sky is blue tonight instead of last night’s lavender.  The hills are tinged with pink.  AND ONCE AGAIN? What is for dinner?  Something with chilis, I think.