Do you know what I learned about addicts over the years? They are immersed in their experiences to the exclusion of everyone else.
Everyone else is a prop.
Everyone has a wagon in their mind.
Addiction is natural animal behavior – repeat repeat repeat.
When is religion too much? Ask a factory worker. How many addicts work in factories?
I meant when is repetition too much.
Is discipline addictive?
There’s discipline in no discipline. It takes focus and effort to throw everything in the ‘follow the wind’ bin.
Just follow the wind at every start and stop and twist and turn and hurricane tornado calm before something bad happens.
I moved the furniture today this early morning. I move my stuff around a lot – for greater convenience productivity aesthetic value. It helps my work not to stay stagnant.
I have five work stations in my 700 square foot apartment. Two actively used computers for my use only. I don’t have to reach far when a thought demands to be written. The bathroom is off limits. No work goes on there.
I remember Oprah once bragging about talking on the phone when sitting on the toilet. To me that’s perverse and disrespectful. Wait till you’re done. Some years later I realized that fat people spend an inordinate amount of time on the toilet emptying what they ate and they eat a lot. And often. Imagine the work involved on the other end in order to stay as fat as required to create that work load.
Three animals live here – two humans and one canine – and I involve their personalities in every move I make in this little castle near the lake.
I remember sitting at the dining room table me and Dad when I told him about an electric pencil sharpener I bought as I excitedly and in disbelief told him all about how it worked and he said, “Yeah I know…I’ve got one at work”.
“You do?”
Come to find out they all had them.
I was devastated. That I didn’t know and more so that he didn’t tell me.
To me it was near miraculous that you could stick a pencil in a hole and it would automatically sharpen it. The absence of a crank handle impressed me the most, since all through school they all had handles. I wanted to share it with him and all this time he had one.
I’m laughing about it now that I thought he would have shared that knowledge with me, but more so that I felt devastated. To him it was no big deal. Or maybe he thought I’d probably want one.
Well it didn’t matter because I had one now.
Looking back I think I mattered more than I did.
I’m still laughing inside. Guess that’s a good thing.
The day before Thanksgiving on 25 November 2020 we we’re scheduled for a yearly inspection. It’s always the day before Thanksgiving. Don’t ask me why, except to disrupt poor people the day before a holiday. Make life miserable for the tenants, so they’ll get a job and get out from under the thumb of the government.
The yearly inspection is different from all the others throughout the year, the others being done mostly by banking institutions, but other entities inspect too; we never really know for sure who they are, plus pest inspections and treatments. They enter whether you’re home or not and spray everything. They claim it’s organic, like organically grown produce, so it’s safe. No it isn’t. Biological weapons, even when used in small amounts are not safe.
Complete strangers entering and going through the apartment, looking more at what’s in it…
Yes, I will kill a blood-sucking bedbug and not bat an eye – if it enters my space for the purpose of disrupting my life and making me and my family suffer.
If it’s a fifty pound bedbug I’ll kill it before it gets here without batting an eye.
If it’s a hundred pound bedbug I figure they’re bringing reinforcements, so I’ll go to where they live and get them there.
I do this after I’ve had a conversation with those who want to enter. However, there is no negotiation, no debate, no give and take. I simply tell them through telepathic highways of my intention and promise. I give them time to reverse their position. Not long.
I was given bedbugs a few years ago. A new manager showed up – Ms. Z…and proceeded to instruct Orkin on the war game plan against these parasitic blood-suckers. Most everybody had them and if they didn’t they got them.
I remember the Orkin guy telling me to expect them coming in from all directions. They funneled them into my apartment. That was the plan. It took me a month to complete all the instructions on the list given to all tenants, to prepare for Orkin to come in and spray.
Many tenants didn’t prepare; they just let Orkin come in and spray around them, believing, without knowing, what Orkin and apartment management told them, that they used organic solutions harmless to humans and dogs. Many others didn’t have the amount of furniture or office files that I did, so it didn’t take them as long and they certainly didn’t go to a motel the day they sprayed.
Any item which I thought could hide a bedbug or a cluster of bedbugs, rather than take any chances, it went into the dumpster. I made many trips to that dumpster. Even the file cabinet went, the DVD/CD stereo went. No more music for us. Furniture went, blankets, clothes I had stored in closets.
I did copious shredding of private notes, that were nobody’s business and served as raw material from which to write my essays and commentary. If we’re gone overnight anybody had access. We didn’t have a security system back then. I could always tell when somebody had entered nosing around. I could smell their cologne or sweat.
I went through every nook and cranny of my living space.
And yes, it did disrupt my life, Steve’s and Rose’s.
The bites; yes there were many. The itching and scratching was torturous.
Each time they spayed, Steve and I with Rose went to a motel for the night.
I killed many bedbugs – on the ceiling, the upper walls, the doorways, the lower walls – leaving a smudge mark where they died, so the Orkin people could see their pattern of entry. They were even rising up from the carpet – in several locations – in every room.
The manager, Ms. Z…, was brutal in her approach, even threatened me with eviction because in her words I wasn’t cooperating. “Those are your bedbugs”, she kept saying, “you’re hurting the rest of the tenants by not letting us in”.
To prepare? As the instructions told me to do? Is that how I wasn’t cooperating, Ms. Z…?
I don’t know how much more I could have cooperated. I wanted to know what they were spraying and they wouldn’t provide it. I have a neurological disorder and don’t want to be breathing in poisons. Finally, after much arguing on the phone to all parties, Orkin conceded and sent me print-outs of what was sprayed in the building, not in my apartment.
What was sprayed in my apartment was evidently secret and controlled by the defense department, since they use those sprays for biological warfare? And too much trouble for them to figure it out? To prevent lawsuits?
The ones doing the spraying simply picked up their canisters at Orkin not knowing what was in them and proceeded to spray? They kept giving me the same line about the solutions being harmless to humans and dogs.
The last time they sprayed, after they had sealed all the cracks where the ceilings meet the walls and drilled into door and baseboard mouldings depositing poisons, Steve and I with Rose left for the motel, once again.
Orkin went in and as the maintenance guy told me when I returned home the next day, “we sprayed the ‘shit’ out of your apartment. We even started coughing and had to leave”.
As I sat on the couch I kept feeling the residue from the spray on my skin and could even taste it. The apartment had a light haze throughout. Every single item in my living space had been sprayed. Kitchen too, everything.
That was the end of that.
Not quite though.
In researching the compounds listed, I discovered that the spray they used causes dehydration in the bedbugs rendering them unable to procreate and to eventually die.
I was concerned with my thirst – so thirsty, unquenchable thirst. Nothing I could do about it but keep drinking, keep washing my skin. The membranes in my nose and throat were dry all the time. My lips were sticking together. I was coughing incessantly.
The Orkin guy who previously worked in New York city told me he used compounds for the last spray not usually approved, but they funneled so many bedbugs into my apartment, that he decided to use it. “Don’t worry”, he said, “you’ll never have a bedbug problem again – maybe some stragglers that will only require some baseboard spraying.
While in the elevator one day, I was talking to another tenant, and he said, “so you finally got them too?”.
“Yeah, an army of them”, I replied.
That wasn’t the end of it. I noticed Rose drinking more water. Lots of it. She wasn’t as hungry as usual. This went on and on for months. She got weaker and weaker. Was always walking to the water bowl in search of water.
She started sleeping closer to me at night, letting me wrap my arms around her and cradle her body against mine as I slept on my side.
I’d hear her getting up several times to go for water. She started having problems walking. She could no longer simply go to the bowl and drink.
She had to turn around, and around slowly, till she was close enough to the bowl to sit where she could also reach the bowl to drink from it. It was like an engineering feat each time she did it, judging distance and how many turns she’d have to make.
For months she did that round-about to lower herself to the bowl so she could sit while drinking, instead of stand as she always previously did. I can still see her do that in my mind’s eye. She was losing strength rapidly.
Steve and I had the discussion, about euthanizing her. Maybe we waited too long. Steve was getting anxious about it and we quarreled often.
One day I decided to take the grocery cart from downstairs that was available for tenant use. I lined it with pillows and blankets, building it up high enough to elevate her, so Rose could see what was around her. Then waited longer – how long I don’t recall.
When I thought it was getting close to letting-go-time. Steve and I thought we should take Rose outside in the cart. Let her feel the fresh air and breeze on her fragile body, let her enjoy all her surroundings one more time. We also used it as a dry run to the Vet’s office which wasn’t far away, so when we took her the final time, the trip would be familiar to her.
On the way home, I had Steve take one last picture of Rose, our daughter, with me her adopted mother. Yes, Rose adopted us as much as we adopted her.
Still we waited, and we tried not to quarrel in front of Rose. I told Steve that when it was time, Rose would tell me. She hadn’t yet. Steve trusted that, knowing how close we were. Each night in bed I would talk to her telepathically, knowing she could hear my soothing thoughts while I held her body close to mine.
I didn’t sleep much back then.
Then one night Rose got up and tried to walk, sideways, as she had come to do. Half way to the drinking bowl she let out a blood-curdling scream that I will never forget and still hear in my mind’s ear. I knew then what we had to do.
The next morning we made haste. Wrapping her up and placing her in the grocery cart, we walked her to the Vet’s office, talking to her, soothing her all the way.
There were four of us in the room. Steve and I said our goodbyes. Steve was too emotional to stay for the rest.
I stayed as the doctor took her head in her hands stroking her, then moved back wanting Rose to only have eyes for her. Rose responded to the kindness.
The doctor left. I stayed until Rose wanted me to leave.
We left with an empty cart and two empty hearts.
Bedbug sprays meant to dehydrate the enemy dehydrated our daughter Rose resulting in a long slow painful death.
She set the terms however, right to the end, staying as long as she could before traveling to the great beyond. I am so proud of her fight, her stamina, her adaptation, her will to survive. The most gentle being – to all creatures – who stood in crowds of strangers, never showing fear or trepidation.
Rose was a working dog.
In the end, Ms. Z…called, spoke to Steve and told him to apologize to me for her behavior. She said, “tell your wife, I know they weren’t her bedbugs”. She was very sorry about it all.
It wasn’t long after that she was either fired or quit. Some tenants thought she had been brought in specifically to wage war against the terrorists of the insect world.
Recently when Orkin entered to do prophylactic spraying for cockroaches, the guy sprayed right into Lilly Belle’s water dish – had I not been there, I never would have known.
Of course I should have removed it, but I forgot and frankly was appalled that when he saw what he did, he just moved onto the bathroom as if it was okay; “it won’t kill your dog”.
Do ethical vegan Jews consider ethics when forming opinions, making decisions, forming policy, about what happens to the Palestinians – people whom non-ethical animal-eating Jews consider pests? Or do they extend the same ethical considerations to all creatures – including all human creatures?
Most people grow up wanting the world to turn their way. I grew up thinking the world already did. I thought everyone was like me. How wrong I was.
But what a surprise and relief to know I was already there. I wasn’t born to be where they were. The rest was a cruise. Or so I thought.
When you exist alone you might as well exist for only you. And then another surprise. There was a back door to every creatures soul. And I mysteriously had the key.
What I could do with that. But along with that came a conscience. Three strikes didn’t exist in my dimension. No second chances when you tread on some other creature’s sacred ground.
I expect the same from myself my family my neighbors my associates and my acquaintances and friendships as I do from my President and the politicians who make decisions that affect my life directly or indirectly no matter the state or district they claim to represent.
We’re all connected. I expect the same from every country region state city township municipality territory island continent as I do my own.
Stop seeking exemptions for special circumstances or conditions. If you’re lagging behind in progress you chose that path out of obstinacy – wanting the world to carry your weight. The world has it’s own burdens and doesn’t need yours.
Move forward and contribute by readying yourself for today and tomorrow. Yesterday is gone. Whatever you were supposed to learn from it your brain already processed. Not in excuses but by becoming in sync with your reality. Nobody else’s reality matters when you matter to you.
I’ve heard ‘I can’t do it’ so many times I want to vomit my mind out. Keep your ‘can’t do it’ talk to yourself and strategize a way to do what you want. Nobody cruises from A to Z in a specially designed time mobile. Those vehicles exist only in the movies.
Nobody talks about their process, so it appears that some started at A and ended at Z by zooming effortlessly through B to Y. Trust that never happens.
Get started by doing the next thing that seems natural without much thought.
Stand up in your mind. Look around in your mind. Feel comfortable in yourself, because no matter where you are, that’s what you have to work with today.
A different slant on the news, a different slant on life, a different slant on the world as we once knew it, as we currently know it and as we will come to know it – that’s what Word Warrior Davies-Tight is all about.
The slant that everybody overlooked, because they were too quick to jump in, too lazy to figure something out, or just felt more comfortable going with the crowd, standing and chiming in with the majority, is what I focus on, which means I’m usually not going to be the first one out there with a view or an opinion.
I find no value in agreeing or disagreeing simply to put my thoughts into the conversation just to be heard. Unless it’s something new, something the mainstream overlooked or thought irrelevant at the time, or unless it’s something I feel strongly about that needs repetition, chances are I won’t be interjecting my words into the discourse. If somebody else has already illuminated a point, that I was going to illuminate, I let it go. My job was done by somebody else, and I go on to the next thing.
When I was a child my mother took me to the doctor because I started then stopped talking. The doctor said, ‘Leave her alone. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’ll talk when she wants to talk’. That’s about how it is with my writing. When I have something to write, I’ll write it.
In college I recall one of my professors talking about ‘publish or perish’. I’ve often thought about that throughout my writing career, and fully understood the concept.
Even on Facebook, if you don’t post for a few months everybody forgets who you are and it takes a long time to get back into the ‘game’.
Although I’m fully cognizant of the ‘perish’ part – and do worry now and then about not posting on a regular schedule – it isn’t in my nature to force an opinion or view from myself nor to look feverishly for a different slant or that four leaf clover, or that diamond in the rough that didn’t sparkle enough for anybody to notice – just so that I get noticed.
If it’s there for me to find, I’ll find it when the time is right for me to find it.
I write in individual and sometimes collective universal voices. It’s not a question of whether you agree with Sharon or not.
I write thoughts we all have. Some muse that I have access to what mills around in my subconscious/unconscious mind. In other words the doors were somehow left open between the levels of consciousness.
Somehow I am able to function amidst all that confusion. Perhaps my focus on junctures and doors is the result. It’s just a preliminary thought. I don’t know for sure and certainly the one who farted it at me doesn’t know either.
“They don’t know us (or me)” you lament, no matter the designated group to which you claim membership, I hear it a lot. Yes they do. But in case you’re not convinced I let you know what they’re thinking.
Thoughts are raw material. Uncensored. Fortunately by the time mine get to paper, there’s not a whole lot of censoring needed. That’s the purity of it.
My thoughts are not debatable unless one seeks to corrupt them. Opinions are. Frankly I don’t know why certain demographics want to debate everything.
Yes I do know. Where there’s money there’s debate. So right out of the gate, before the topic is revealed, the debate has already begun. It’s a stalling strategy. It’s a way of putting yourself in control, when you want to debate somebody else’s thoughts. Demand is more like it.
Usually those who are good at debate are the one’s demanding it. They know they can win with words, but not substance. A win is a win, doesn’t matter how it’s gained.
“That’s just my thought on it?”
No. That’s your opinion.
Thoughts are pure, which could be good or bad depending on who’s evaluating them. That’s why I go with raw.
Raw is real.
My thoughts travel in absence of malice. Revenge is not on the menu.
I don’t eat animals or anger.
Disagreeing with Sharon’s thoughts put to paper is like telling the artist how to paint. It’s okay not to like it, but to want to change it? Or debating the usefulness of a thought. Why bother? They’re real, which means they’re relevant.
It’s too intrusive and invasive for those seeking freedom to survive and thrive to try to manipulate their thought processes. Why do you care so much?
Dictatorial. You have an agenda and you’re dictatorial. You make a mess of your own life, then blame everybody else for it. You’re not alone. Everybody thinks that way. I wonder if my dog daughter Lilly Belle thinks that way too? Probably.
It isn’t important that you change my thoughts, but that you have your own raw thoughts to draw on to help you form opinions, make judgments and decisions, to help you achieve your goals while not hurting others in the process.
Personally I don’t have many bad thoughts. Worries, yes. Wishing harm, no. Occasionally something bad shows up, but my God and I have an understanding that when my thoughts turn bad, to disregard the bad as something momentarily out of my control, that the universe provoked, but through my will to control myself I am able to delete, without much effort.
That sentence was too long. In better words, I don’t imagine people being harmed to ease my own tensions. I’m not a life-ruiner. But now and then I do imagine bad happening. We all do.
Wallowing is not comfortable – not for me. Staying mad has no value to me, so I leave it alone. Revenge is not comfortable. Why would I inflict on another what someone has inflicted on me and didn’t like? Where would that put my values? Not in a good category.
I’m going to make today a happy thoughts day to neutralize the negative effects from living in a senior residence, where deterioration and death happen to everybody who’s a senior, being white in Cleveland and trying to survive a pandemic.
Make yours happy too. Only you can do it.
Note: Whoever is responsible for taking many of the multitudinous cell towers off the roof, thanks. Hope they’re not coming back. Now, how about the others?
In 1975 the CIA and probably the military began spying on me after going to the Soviet Union with my husband, a couple of priests and four high school students as a school project. I paid my own way in case anyone inquires – by selling our bedroom set we bought after we were married in 1971.
So, since 1975 when I returned from the Soviet Union I was spied on by my own government, later by the Jews in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and later by just about every country and every major minority that had an espionage presence in the USA, or at least a network of operatives – often done in ways a lot more intrusive than computer espionage.
CIA, FBI, KGB/FSB, NSA, MOSSAD, MI6, NAACP, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE and others all took their turns with me – over decades now. And it continues in 2020. So, I have personal experience with oppression and all that entails.
Sometimes I felt like access to me was being sold – a certain amount of time for a price.
Despite the life I was forced to live, essentially imprisoned by those who thought it their legal and God-given right to spy on me in my own living spaces, and later, alter events in my life at their whim, and to claim ownership of my intellectual material, thus me, I continued to write.
It was made clear from the beginning that no one would ever publish me and that I would never earn income – they would never allow it. When I lost my home and was forced into a slum, after losing a personal injury law suit, in which they intervened, I was vividly told that I was where I belonged.
I learned all about consequences.
I never knew what it was like to have enemies, until the USA government, and all those to whom they gave access, entered my life and made sheer chaos of it.
And here I am at 71 years old living in public housing in Cleveland, Ohio, where nothing has changed. Ten years ago we rented an apartment in a senior apartment building. Just a few months ago it was converted it to public housing. I’m expecting the government to get a lot more intrusive and manipulative.
It’s a whole lot easier in government-controlled buildings for governments to operate freely and with impunity.
I stopped writing on the computer for about two years back in Waterloo, but it didn’t change anything. Once they’re in, they’re in and they keep performing the same procedures, practices, psychological, disruptive, terrorizing torture tactics. To what end? I never did find out. Mind you, this was in the day of word processing, not websites and social media.
Maybe they didn’t like my recipe development, maybe they didn’t like my views in the numerous books I was writing, maybe they didn’t like the practice writing brain storming problem solving venting type writing I often used to warm up my creative and analytical engines. I don’t think they even know. But it did a lot of harm to me, my family, my life. For no good reason – all that.
Once during those two years absent from the computer, I went back onto it and saw a yellow banner running across the top of the screen that read ‘secured by DOD’ with a bunch of numbers letters symbols. I eventually sent that MacIntosh computer to the city dump. But that didn’t deter them either.
When I bought a new computer, an apple laptop this time, it wasn’t long before I started having computer troubles and noticed that the DOD had a keychain access. Several.
Twenty-six years just in Cleveland, and that doesn’t include all the time before Cleveland, when I didn’t have a computer. Why spy then? Why spy at all? Why let me know they’re spying?
I know what terror is. I’ve been in it for decades.
When I was in ninth grade deciding which high school to go to my mother told me that our neighbor Mrs. Pilon told her not to let me go to Classical High School, because that’s where all the Jews go. “They’ll eat her alive”, Mrs. Pilon said.
I know what that means now. I didn’t go to Classical. But I ended up, unbeknownst to me, buying a house in the middle of an African and Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. I had no idea what I was in for. Looking back, Mrs. Pilon was right, I wasn’t equipped. Because of it, I suffered, and continue to suffer. I refuse to become like them. I stood my ground all these years, continuing to cook, paint and write. And for all these years, at every juncture, they destroyed it or stole it.
‘It’s not your turn yet. It’s not your turn yet. You’re only one voice in a multitude. Don’t be so selfish. There are lots of people better than you at what you do. You weren’t groomed for success.’
Will it ever end? Just like all offenders, they think I’m okay with it.
Why? Because I don’t blow them up? That’s what they’re waiting for, so they can justify decades of perversions against a peace-loving American citizen who never did any wrong to anyone.
I was born who and what I am. It’s easy for me to see everyone as equally worthy. Although I see differences more than similarities, only because they stick out more, the judging part is basically on the big differences not the little quirks that seem to bother most people more.
When I see all this social engineering and psychological maneuvering by governments and media to make people how I already am, it surprises me that people aren’t already that way.
Maybe they started out that way and something changed them. Maybe they’ve become too accustomed to governments and/or the groups in which they are members doing their thinking for them.
I don’t know and I don’t care to go back and start all over again the process that I’ve already been through.
What took you so long and why did you have to wait till the government intervened to set you on a more equitable course?
Now that the world is pretty much on board, don’t come to me and expect to perform some sort of exorcism to make me into the new likeness of you. I’m long past where you are now, so good luck with your new you, but I’ve got a lot of work to do in my own future absent you.
It took you so long to see a better way and to at least seemingly appear to accept some of it, that I grew tired of waiting, when I realized I didn’t have to wait for you all to catch up.
Groups never appealed to me much. I was born that way too. I wasn’t much of a crowd follower. But here I am in spite of it.
You should know something else I was born with – the ability to understand all races all ethnicities all genders all social- economic groups. It’s just the way I was created.
I understand that for most others it isn’t so easy nor comfortable. I can feel comfortable being around many ethnicities at once, hearing all the different languages, not knowing what anybody is saying. But again that isn’t something I would expect of others.
We’re born with innate survival mechanisms that enable us, and in fact drive us, to judge everything and everyone.
Trying to make people go against those innate instincts would be like declawing a cat or removing vocal cords from a dog.
It’s not natural to accept life without judgement, no matter how many gurus tell the world that it is accepting without judgement that creates that inner peace.
Inner peace, however obtained, does not translate to outer tranquility nor serenity nor a lasting euphoria.
Now that the world is at attention, it’s imperative that time not be wasted on revenge tactics or whose turn it is or isn’t. That thinking is what held the world back for so long. If you want to stay in a state of chaos for decades, then fine, but don’t draw others into your vengeful schemes.
Don’t expect others to deal with your isms. Deal with your own isms your own way. People in governments and groups will attempt to standardize your behavior to mold you into a model that fits no one, because it’s a statistical formulation, based on the majority with extremes at both ends of the continuum deleted as if they didn’t exist, yet they do.
Humans have had their way. Continental Africa is still in the infant stage of development with no end in sight with no one to blame but themselves.
The holocaust against all the world’s animals must end.
Now, not in ten years.
Humans have been taking one decade at a time as a procrastination process and look where we are.
An enemy we can’t see threatens to wipe out the human race, and it’s cause is traced to that holocaust – in every instance, no matter the global region – it is that holocaust that threatens the survival of every human on the planet.
I was born feeling the discomfort of others and wanting to make their lives better. It’s not something that came to me or that I pursued; it was already there.
People or groups wanting me to feel their pain? I already did that. How could you not know that is my question? There’s no need to answer. I already know that too and frankly I don’t want to spend anymore time on something for which you have no appetite – self examination.
It’s better that you change yourself, rather than forcing everybody else to change their ways to yours, because you can’t help the way you are. Take another look.
Integrity is what the world lacks the most. Integrity is not a personality trait. It’s not a color nor ethnicity nor religion nor political party nor gender.
It’s a way of being in sync with reality. Not approving of it, but moving with it for the purpose of changing your own personal reality.
Integrity suits everyone. It’s there when you want or need it.
Integrity is rarely used however. It’s not humble or self-deprecating or a rebirth or seeing the light or accomplishing an impossible feat.
Waking up has nothing to do with black African people or race, ethnicity, gender and our inability to get along with each other. Whatever we as humans achieve in this world, we will still be at odds with one another due to our competitive natures.
Even those who claim not to be competitive, really are, just maybe less than others. But that competitive urge is there nonetheless.
Waking up has little to do with humans and everything to do with the species whom we think we’re entitled to enslave torture and slaughter – at will and our whim.
Neither does waking up have as much to do with somebody writing a bunch of short stories on their view of how we all happened, calling it God’s will and testament, as it does our human propensity to control everything within our reach regardless of the suffering it causes.
The fastest running animal can be caught by a human trap, thus we regard it our divine privilege to exploit all whom we are capable of exploiting. Who would object after all? Screams aren’t an objection, resistance isn’t an objection if nobody sees it. Who’s going to take whom to court?
And so it is the time and the turn of all those slaughtered souls and the ones yet to be slaughtered to rise from the ashes and force a correction upon the world. Humans do not come first when they are slaughtering billions of creatures daily.
No one but the slaughterers could hear their screams yet such an up close and personal connection failed to impress enough to stop the slaughter.
No one can see the enemy those screams created.
I’m not a Republican. I’m a Democrat voting for a Republican for President.
Where were the Democrats when Benjamin Netanyahu annexed the West Bank and took Jerusalem as the capital for all Jews worldwide?
With all their power and influence they threw the Palestinians under the bus, because they didn’t win the presidency in 2016. In other words, unless we have total power we will exercise no power?
That to me is a pathological strategy for failure. Now, if Joseph Biden wins the presidency, he will do as Donald Trump did – give the Jews whatever and whomever they want to destroy to make the Jews the dominating force in Palestine and in the Middle East.
They are allowed to do this because the Jews are the closest thing to the USA in the Middle East – so the Jew appeasement will continue until some other country steps forward and fulfills that role necessary for strategic advantage in the region. Any takers?
Make no mistake about this last bit of intel. I share a soul with every animal on the planet. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t become it, I was born that way – for better or worse – I chose better.
Just as I actually feel the pain of humans, I feel the fear and suffering of every other animal with whom we share this vast and abundant planet. I was born that way.
Tread carefully when you decide to abuse me or my family or any animal for purposes of gaining my attention to your MATTER CAUSES. I am already fully aware. And I do not suffer terrorists gladly.
I kneel to no human.
Remember: I was born that way. My only choice was for better or worse. I chose better – from the beginning. It suited me, even though it never brought me peace.
Peace I discovered, was a matter of striking a balance between being and doing that I had to create for myself. Nobody could create it for me.
I believe we are all chosen as individuals, and not as representatives of a group, for the purpose of contributing to ourselves, our families thus the planet by doing the best we can with what we have to work with at any given moment.
A city on Scotland’s northeast coast, where the River Ness meets the Moray Firth. It’s the largest city and the cultural capital of the Scottish Highlands. Its Old Town features 19th-century Inverness Cathedral, the mostly 18th-century Old High Church and an indoor Victorian Market selling food, clothing and crafts. The contemporary Inverness Museum and Art Gallery traces local and Highland history.
INVERNESS, QUEBEC
Irishman William Bennet came to Inverness Township in 1819, but the first colony dates to 1829 with the arrival of 12 families from the Isle of Arran, Scotland. Their descendants built two churches in the village: St. Andrew’s Presbyterian (1862) and the old Methodist Church (1862), now a bronze foundry.
My Grandfather Ernest Romanzo Davidson was born in Inverness Township, Megantic County, Quebec, Canada (a Scottish settlement) 14 November 1881 and died 4 September 1933 in Wells River, Vermont.
In the early 90s I drove to Montreal for a Dystonia Symposium for doctors, in place of the doctor who was invited and couldn’t attend. Although I wasn’t a doctor I had sufficient knowledge on the topic that he thought it would be beneficial, plus I have dystonia.
The evening before it started, I drove out to Inverness, about a two and a half hour drive. One very long paved, country road, no traffic, not a single car but mine.
When I reached Inverness and saw a general store, I got out and looked back to where I had started – it was flat land – and saw all the city lights of Montreal light up the sky in the distance, which made me decide to on head back before it got too dark. There were no street lights as I recall.
When I called my mother in Massachusetts and told her I went to Inverness, she asked if it was a town or a city. Frankly, “I don’t know”, I told her. All I knew was that I was in Inverness – what lied beyond that general store was a mystery. I didn’t see any signs of a town or city from that vantage point, only a store.
Well, this morning, about twenty-five years later, I thought to look up Inverness, Scotland and Inverness, Quebec. I didn’t know that Inverness, Scotland was the capital city of the Scottish Highlands. Upon looking up Inverness, Quebec, and seeing the images, it was a town for sure. It looked like there had been no population surge or building boom in that tiny region of Quebec. Not even a hotel – upon checking. Lots around them though at a distance.
One of the first images that stuck out to me was that General Store. Wow. Right there looking as it did back then, probably some changes in sign content. It was like I was there again.
I’ll never forget that drive along that long road, talking in my mind to Uncle Ernie I used to call him. My mother didn’t like that title. “No one ever called him Ernie, and he was your grandfather not your uncle, but me being playful stuck with the Uncle Ernie.
Frankly, I don’t think Grandpa Ernest minded – at least I was talking to him directly, how many others do that? They usually go through God in prayer.
Anyway I never know much about any of my roots from any of the countries linked to me by ancestry – my mother and father didn’t talk that way. There were always more pressing issues in life than obsessing over where your people came from. Others make careers out it, for the purpose of exploitation, or just because they have separatists natures and cling to their ethnicity or race or religion for comfort.
I didn’t find out that I was Scottish till I was in high school and my parents had the neighbors over for dinner, who were Polish, and one of them remarked, “I wasn’t expecting to be served pierogi in a Scottish household”.
Later that night after everyone went to bed and my father and I remained at the table, I said, “I didn’t know I was Scottish”. He quickly retorted rather gruffly, “You’re not, you’re Lithuanian and don’t ever forget it”.
I was a quiet, not-looking-for-trouble, rather everybody get along, have fun and don’t fight so much, kind of kid, rather to please than disrupt, still independent though and firm in my beliefs, although I kept them mostly to myself.
People can pretty much discern you by your actions; they don’t need to hear you pontificate or hypothesize, or tell your story or opinions that change like the wind.
Still, I do all that now, and love doing it, but never with malice, I truly do respect people for being people and the struggles they’re confronted with just by the fact that they’re living, and not so much for what they do, but again I usually do understand the ‘WHY’, and when I don’t, the ‘WHY’ is where I look first to bring out the truth – whatever that means – even I’m not sure. It’s not like I developed a standardized process for everything I think or do or figure out.
Actually, since early childhood till the present day my primary question in life is why people do what they do.
So yeah, looking back and later watching the entire Lithuanian surge for independence and hearing them sing while holding lighted candles, not so much in protest but rather to show to the world what they wanted and deserved in a peaceful, non-violent way impressed me. In fact they, more than the Africans, adopted Martin Luther King’s non-violent process for social change.
Seeing them fail only to rise again triumphant made me identify with them more closely than my other ethnicities, and even though I didn’t speak much ‘way back when’, my father saw those qualities in me from early on.
It wasn’t until I saw the movie Brave Heart or portions of it that my eyes opened and then wanted to shut, being too young and peaceful leaning to understand the type of brutality people endure and impose on each other for their freedom rights. It seems everybody wants to Lord over everybody else and when others oppose it, violence occurs to protect it. I see it all over the world. Minorities trying to rise to dominate the majority, and often times winning, but at a tremendous cost.
This was a film made about Scotland. I’m seventy years old and just started watching it again on NETFLIX only to be cut off halfway through. Guess I’ll have to wait a bit more till they fix it and maybe scold the person who broke it – in my mind at least.
But I found another one – a series with three seasons so far and I only have three episodes to go and when it’s done I will miss it. It’s called OUTLANDER, another movie about Scotland, more specifically, the Scottish Highlands and done so well and creatively that I had to start pacing myself, so it would last longer.
I don’t usually recommend movies, because Steve and I watch so many of them, but this one excels in all the right ways. One small criticism – the sex scenes are wa-a-y too long. Other than that, I look forward to a season four!
THE MAGICAL STONES
Visiting the past for the purpose of changing the future.
I looked in the mirror, and for the first time I saw an old lady be me, and immediately zoomed to the teenager who met me in that mirror – like the teenager I used to be, looking in the mirror now looking at the old woman who is she. We both laughed.
Wow. Look at you. Look how I look now. I’m an old lady. How did that happen? Wow. So many years, people and places ago. I remember you.
I started talking to myself in the mirror. I blew myself kisses. How did it all happen? I’m 71 years old and still thinking somebody’s going to hire me so I can make some money before I die.
What would I do? What could I do? I’m been in solitary confinement for so many long years of my life, that I probably couldn’t do anything. There’s not a job description on earth for what I do. I don’t know if I could fit in or adjust to the real world.
Then I said, this is the real world, right where I am in my tiny castle reaching out, making better what others made worse.
That’s real. That’s worthy. What’s wrong with that? You old lady dog!
You look like old ladies are supposed to look. What a shocker. I think I’m mourning the death of my younger self on my 71st birthday. But hey, that teenager who looked at me in the mirror is still in me, so I feel energized by that. I loved her so, and now I know she loves me back.
I lost a lot. Maybe everybody does. Maybe it’s normal. Well, I never aspired to be normal. But heck, if that’s where I’m at, I’m looking fine with it.
Maybe I climbed too many mountains with nothing found at the top.
At 71 years old I can’t imagine being anybody else but me – otherwise I’d lose that teenager in the mirror, who after all planned this journey, planting me where and when I needed to be planted – a journey that isn’t yet over.
Sharon, Sharon, Sharon, look what you’ve done. Who would have thought? Wow. I’m in a good place viewing myself and my life of planting seeds in the minds where I traveled the universe.
I’m still here after all of it. Loving the space that surrounds me. It’s like seeing for the first time my place in the universe – as the universe wraps itself through me, bringing me into the fold as one with all now.
A gift from the universe to me. Wow – a hug sublime.
I am in the head of all life past, present and future. I share the DNA of plants as well as every animal. I share the quarks, atoms and molecules and everything before, after and in between all that existed, exists and will in the future exist in the universe.
That’s how opening oneself to the universe carrying the Mark of Five Principles, transforms the universe – by recognizing your power to do it.
Any governing entity may think that by blocking/burying my written word, they limit my reach, when in reality my written word comes from my soul – a soul that has no such restrictions.
Too bad the American Negro chose and demanded of the world that they be called Black, when their true color is brown. By choosing the black rather than the brown label for themselves they opened the door to competition south of the USA border.
That was a huge strategical blunder. What were they thinking, that American Natives got a lot of money by being called Red, so they copied that model? I don’t know of anybody who calls Indians Red. No one. Oh, the Red Skins, a football team. Well, they won’t have that name for long. Washington D. C. of all places, calling their team by a skin color. And where did you get the idea that Red people prospered under the supposed color of their skin?
[I never saw a red-skinned person, unless they had a sunburn and even then it was more pink than red. Same is so with white-skinned people. Even albinos when compared with a white paint will not look that color.]
Most Native Indians on reservations live in squalor. Have you ever moved to assist them? Why not? You think that being called by the color of their skin gave them freedom and riches and opportunities?
The Indians negotiated a bad deal that isolated them on reservations. That’s what the Jews are now doing in Palestine, copying the American model of Apartheid. No good will come out of that deal, just as it didn’t with the American Natives.
Just imagine all the people in the world of Spanish descent not being able to cash in on the color brown. That’s them; they’re brown and you’re black. The Spaniards declared it. That means with limited resources, what used to be 100% in your minds, seemingly overnight turned to 50%. You must still be kicking yourselves over that one. In the future as more people breach the border, you’re cut diminishes even more.
Frankly, I don’t like being called white. Never did. Being called a color, is demeaning and disrespectful. I’m a living, breathing human being, not a color.
In my view, being called a color limits another’s perception of who and what you are. Why you all chose to limit yourselves in the eyes of others still baffles me. Most people have a favorite color. Ask, you’ll see. Or their favorite color changes over time. Colors are fickle. Colors aren’t serious. Colors entertain. If you’re going to claim, “oh, you want serious, we’ll show you serious”, that’s not a color talking, that’s a terrorist talking.
If I had to be called something, I’d rather be called European or after one of the many countries where my ancestors were born and raised. Because America is still young as a country, most people who live here call themselves by the countries or continents of the origins of their ancestors. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I never heard an Irish person call themselves American – not here. They wear their heritage, not a color. Okay, green is their color, but not their skin. Scots traditionally like plaid designs in their fabric. They don’t call their skin plaid.
However, if they travel to other countries, it is there that they call themselves American. When they leave home, they bring America with them.
For a while now, I’ve been referencing Blacks or Black people as African. I’m transitioning from an imposed description that I was threatened into using by an entire race of people who burn villages to solve problems, but that I found offensive. I’m done with following orders from people I don’t know and from people who don’t respect me because of the non-color of my skin.
You and Yous are all Africans to me from this day forward. When you attempt to scam me or influence me to my detriment or to the detriment of my family or to the detriment of any other species, then you or yous are Nigerians to me. Yeah, how do like that one? Think that will make the Nigerians hopping mad?
Old age is like an incurable disease with an expiration date.
When we’re young it’s the crossing of the street or getting into a car that could end it all prematurely. It helps to lift the doom knowing the odds that it probably won’t happen and that all activities present some risk.
When we’re old it becomes the slip and fall that could end it all. None of it is within our absolute control, but we do take measures to keep ourselves safe throughout our existence no matter the age.
All precautionary measures taken being equal, old age remains a constant looming death sentence if you’re old.
There is no best way to deal with it and it certainly isn’t something one can overcome. It’s not something you can be taught or learn from somebody else. It really is a solitary journey.
But given that you’ve survived this long by handling everything else that came your way – and there was a lot of stuff that you weren’t prepared for but handled anyway – you’ll do the same when your time has come for your death to be made final.
At times I look upon it as I would the preparation of a holiday event. Other times I just want everything organized and loose ends tied so my husband won’t be left with a mess. Still other times I think who cares anyway. He’ll cope as always. We both have long histories of handling adversity, and this is something we all eventually face.
Age is a state of mind I often hear. And sure, at times it is – a delightful, exhilarating, intellectually profound, in fact, state of mind. Most of the time it’s not much different from your younger self, excepting the wrinkled skin and mobility issues.
You become more cognizant of everything you do – every detail – and although the tasks are more physically difficult, your drive to complete whatever you do well far exceeds the drive required of your younger self, which makes you feel emotionally stronger as a result, even if weaker physically.
You are your younger self after all.
The difference is that in addition to that younger self that you carry with you always, you operate through an older version of you now.
Both of you will simultaneously reach deaths door when it opens.
Are you one person or a multitude of like-minded people in one person?
How would I know how you individually feel and then how a multitude of like-minded people inside of you feel?
How would I know that? Did you tell me, specifically, or even generally, how you feel about anything?
How about me. Do you know how I feel? Do you care how I feel?
Why would I care how you feel if you don’t care how I feel?
Oh, you want to punish me and then say, yeah, now you know what it feels like?
So you think I’ve never been punished by anyone, by any group, by any demographic, by life itself, by prejudice, discrimination, enslavement and torture? So how could I possibly know what it feels like?
Prejudice leads to discrimination, which leads to enslavement, which leads to torture, which leads to slaughter if left unchecked. In other words, if not stopped.
I’m up to slaughter. I’ve lived through all the other stages.
So, what are you really asking?
You want me to feel your pain?
Are you ready to feel mine?
Oh, you want me to feel your pain, then you walk away without feeling my pain.
Most people perceive God as someone who can perform humanly impossible feats of power at will or whim or urging, that is communicated with or without a request or a demand from a conglomerate of molecules, atoms and chemical reactions in an organism called a human.
James Frederick Davies and Katherine Rose Germonte.
Grandpa’s father was born in England and his mother in Ireland. Grandma was born in Lithuania with Russian, Ukrainian and Polish roots.
When Dad and Mom bought their old house and Grandma and Grandpa moved to one that was all on one floor, Grandma left behind in the attic stacks of old Arizona Highways magazines. I was in second grade and had no idea how she even got them.
I’d go into that attic that Mom was turning into a clothes closet, turn the lightbulb on and sit on the floor for hours looking at the pictures of all the Indians, wondering why Grandma had magazines about Indians who lived so far away. We lived in Massachusetts and these were Indians in Arizona.
Most kids dream of being somebody important. I wanted to be an old person sitting in a rocking chair on a porch in Arizona where people would come from far and wide for my wisdom. I never told anyone that before. It seems so foolish. I was in second grade dreaming of becoming an old woman. I rocked a lot. Dad had to bolt my crib to the floor. They’d get up in the morning and my crib would be across the room and they’d wonder how it got there.
When I got older I used to wish I didn’t rock. Now it makes me dizzy. I outgrew it.
You know, when you grow up you don’t pay much attention to how your family looks. That’s an outsider thing. When I received these photos a few days ago from someone on ancestry.com, and knowing that most American Indians migrated from Russia/Asia, I began to think that Grandma had those Asian roots.
I know this sounds funny now, but Grandma had sort of kinky hair. And we always said that she looked the same no matter how old. She never seemed to change. She was tiny, under five feet and never lost the so-called baby fat on her face.
When I look at her now, except for the white skin (and in person it wasn’t that white), she looks like those Indians I saw in Arizona Highways.
I think she enjoyed looking at ‘her people’ without ever knowing for sure who her people were, except that Auntie brought her from Vilnius, Lithuania when she was ten years old. I don’t know what Auntie’s name was; we all just called her Auntie.
This photo is of Dad and his sister Ann. Her real name was ANNA, but she Americanized it to ANN. Dad was Thomas Joseph. Grandpa’s and Grandma’s other son was James Frederick, like Grandpa. Dad joined the Merchant Marines during WWII.
I love balance. Not as in good vs evil and settling for somewhere in between. That’s compromise.
There are endless shades of good that have no connection to evil that I just happen to like to balance – not as in a juggling act, but as a necessity desired by me to bring out the highlights of all the shades so I can see better.
It’s not for others to see. What would be the point of that? My neural connections are my own, as are yours. I don’t covet yours though I do seek to understand them on a basic, rudimentary, general level.
If by chance, and it’s always by chance, your connection and my connection collide I don’t consider it random or an accident. It is both of our connections simultaneously recognizing the universal dictum of good luck.
There is a slight but significant difference to me between ‘random’ and ‘chance’ that leads to simlutaneous recognition. Statistically significant in that realm where I drive doesn’t matter.
I’m a territorial daughter of a natural born engineer and a mother who possessed exceptional reading, intellectual and organizational talents, both of whom were savy enough to follow their own minds in their own ways. The two left a mark on me that nobody except me can own. Not even them.
unpredictable for the sake of her own survival – like all animals.
She’s not afraid like we are – of that connection. We fear it. She recognizes it. Embraces it.
Accepts that which she cannot change.
She is it. She has all the animal moves – the gender moves too.
It’s all her. She walks it talks it sleeps it.
Then writes it paints it cooks it – puts it all out there for us to see.
Ever notice how she doesn’t refer to herself as an animal lover, as other animal advocates and activists do?
She really doesn’t love a particular species or breed within a species, just because they’re animals. She loves her family and part of that family comprises other species.
Just like she’s not going to like a human based on their skin or gender. She respects everyone’s right to exist within certain parameters – those that affect her safety and the safety of her family and the safety of those who can’t defend themselves against intruders.
She has been throughout her career of service concerned primarily with security in every area of living. It breathes her like she’s on life support. Nobody knows where that breath comes from and it’s best not to pry.
That’s all there is to Sharon. She is one Goddamn simple animal with one Goddamn simple constitution, who embraces all of her traits, while respecting the traits of others – until they conflict with hers.
I don’t really want to be connected to a group. I don’t know why I’m that way. I love to be around people. All kinds of people. It doesn’t even matter if they’re nice. Maybe because my DNA matches so many regions around the world – and I draw on all of them by the way – I prefer living in a multi-ethnic environment.
I don’t have to like particular features of your culture and don’t tell me to accept your ways as a condition of anything. I accept only your humanity and right to exist, not the parts of your culture that demean the human creature or any other creature.
Those whose ancestry is limited to one region probably prefer to be with people from only that region. It’s a preference predetermined by one’s DNA (deoxynucleic acid).
Discriminating against someone or shaming someone or a group of someones, because they prefer the company of people from a particular region of the world is exactly as stated – a discrimination. It works both ways however. For a group that is more comfortable with those who look, talk and eat like they do, to discriminate against everybody else is as stated – a discrimination.
By you shaming or blocking or isolating them serves no useful purpose. Name one beyond the joy of psychological torture when you’re the one inflicting the pain.
For me, the whole group thing doesn’t allow me the freedom to be me. Groups do that. There are rules of conduct that reflect certain views, that if not adhered to or followed, then excommunication from the group results. That’s the discrimination that occurs within the group. All groups are the same in that regard.
There are always people within those isolated singular-ethnic groups, who experience the surge of wanting to see what’s outside their world on the other side of the invisible fence. They’re called explorers for that reason. All cultures accept those members of their respective groups who do that. They return with knowledge of different places and Peoples and habits.
It’s the explorers who bring the world together, but as people migrate or emigrate they bring their invisible fences with them and set up their congregations where they land. They develop networks that shuffle people to new locations where similar people have settled. It makes perfect ancestral sense. People want to be with their living ancestors.
What the world fears is assimilation. I don’t want their culture. They don’t want yours. So the invisible fences stay.
No one to date has found the key to unlock that fear. People don’t want to change the way they are. They want everybody else to change to their way. Unfortunately the oldest civilizations are the most resistant to change.
That’s why it’s called resistance. Half the USA wanted change that created a better more organized less wasteful, less fearful country sixteen years post 911. The other half wanted things to stay the way they were, chipping away, while holding onto the “never going to actually get there or by the time we do nobody will care mentalities. Slowpokers I call them now.
Slowpokers over time become high maintenance.
Somebody who makes a feverish attempt at staying slow is resisting the inevitable faster pace required for meaningful positive progress.
My grandfather was born and raised in Inverness, Quebec Canada, yet my DNA results do not reflect me as being Canadian. I was born and raised in the Unites States of America, yet there is no DNA marker that proves that I am an American.
Canada and the United States are not ethnicities. The ethnicities of those who live in Canada or the United States are of a different origin. Native Americans, although they were here before the Europeans arrived are also not American nor Canadian by their DNA.
So-called Native Americans migrated from Siberia to the western coasts of Canada and the United States, then moved inward. That makes those we call native in America and Canada basically Siberian in ancestry, which makes them essentially Russian/Asian, which explains in part the confrontational history and animosity between these two Peoples: Russians and Americans.
The question that remains is who inhabited North America before the Siberians came to inhabit and claim this land as their own?
To answer that question, you’d have to know how the first human emerged as a human and at what place on the planet that occurred. Did it occur in only one location, as one human in one location, or as two or more humans in the same location, or in simultaneous locations around the planet?
Many years ago while in nursing school and doing my maternity part of schooling, our teacher discussed pelvis sizes regarding ease of birth. She pointed me out and said, “Sharon, you’ll sneeze out your babies” – meaning I had a wide pelvis. At 69 years old I can attest to the fact that I sneezed out 7 dogs and 2 cats.
I decide what offends me, not you nor any person nor any law nor any local custom, religion, race, gender, policy or practice, nor influence based on the status of anyone or any institution.
My entire life is handmade by me. Every facet, nugget. Every thought, action, reaction is perfectly designed at every juncture to fit the need of the moment.
Cree, when I asked I was told through a physical medium – scrabble tiles I used during my rehabilitation from a toxic brain injury caused by toxic molds.
I wasn’t too pleased with that, considering their hunting nature, but then all Indians share that nature. I still don’t like it.
Canadian. On my Grandfather’s side. I’m a Scot French Canadian Cree. Ernest Romanzo Davidson was my grandfather. He died early, when my mother was six years old. My grandmother told me, “your mother will never tell you this, but you have Indian blood in you.” I believed her.
He was born in a Scottish community in Inverness, Quebec.
Romanzo is Italian. Don’t know what that all means. Maybe I’m Italian too. Crees are noted for their cross-breeding.
Maybe my grandmother was part Indian too. My mother said she had a touch of Dutch, from upstate New York in her from her mother, but never said the rest of what she was.
Nanny never did say who I got the Indian from, and I didn’t ask.
In a letter from my mother when she was eighty-two years old, she said her father was delivered by an Indian. That’s the closest she ever came to saying anything about it. I felt like she was leaving something out, but didn’t question her. It didn’t matter.
I was part Russian most of my life until Lithuania became independent of the Soviet Union, then I was Lithuanian. I felt like I lost something, not knowing what.
My father is English and Lithuanian, also Irish and Welsh. Davies.
I could be part Chinese for all I know. My parents didn’t talk about stuff like that. Probably because we had a mixed heritage – which one do you focus on? None most likely.
Create connotes willy-nilly. There’s nothing willy-nilly about my process.
I engineer everything I do – the entire recipe developing process is engineered. I don’t cross my fingers, take a deep breath or hold my breath, pray, hope, wish or hand it over to the universe. I take control at every juncture.
I don’t try something merely to see if it might fly, or just out of curiosity. The world is full of curious-seekers. I’m not one of them. If I’m thinking about it, I already have a pretty good idea whether it will or won’t fly or if it won’t, can I make it fly, and is it worth it? If I’m excited about the possibility I’ll continue. If I’m holding my breath, I won’t.
In the rare instances where I have to make more than one attempt, I do so knowing in advance that I will succeed – eventually. I keep the pace that the project sets for me – not the other way around. I don’t frantically test and retest to get it right. When the skill-set matches the mind-set and the products are available to make it happen, I’ll be there to make sure it does.
Nobody can tell me to hold up a project for their own self-serving interests. Nobody can tell me to give a project to somebody else whom the world favors more. I don’t have private investors who play all sides of the fence – even the top and the bottom of the fence (put it on hold or sink it parts of the fence).
I’m not a tumbleweed. I don’t go where the wind takes me. I make the wind turn in my direction – because it sees the value in going the way of the Five Principles.
I don’t force it. It wants to be a part of this great project.
If you want to be a part of it all, then you had better show up with some talent and know what those talents are.
You can stay a tumbleweed if you want. But if you want in on this, then you had better talk to that tumble part in you and line up with the Five Principles:
No prejudice, discrimination, enslavement, torture and slaughter.
I don’t stay mad at people. Never have – even as a child. Others would get mad at me because of it.
I never saw the good in it. It wasn’t in me to carry the stuff. I don’t know the why of it – only that I had no interest in getting even. Even when now I might say I do, I really don’t.
I can find better ways to waste my time and energy – all more fun.
Some may think it’s a form of mental illness or a brain defect. I consider it a rare gift.
Not staying mad has a survival advantage that staying mad doesn’t.
I wouldn’t know how to tell somebody else how to do it. For me it’s effortless. I don’t have to talk myself into it.
It doesn’t mean I don’t get mad, only that I don’t stay mad.
Upon choosing a healthier more compassionate diet, you will be challenged by those who have not yet taken that step, to defend your decision to not eat animals. They will argue that your animal-free diet contradicts your other animal using behaviors, thus making the issue of killing animals not worthy of consideration. They will point to your leather shoes, your wool sweater, your prescription drugs in a capsule, and the operation you may have had at some point in your life, which was the result of animal experimentation. They will look closely at what you eat, laying in waiting, ready to pounce, should you inadvertently or advertently consume any semblance of an animal product.
They will present you with a myriad of arguments: We slaughter animals because we raise them for slaughter; we’re at the top of the food chain; they don’t contribute to society; God gave us permission; they taste good; we’ve always done it; everyone else does it; men developed large arm muscles with which to hunt; we developed canine teeth with which to tear flesh; animals kill each other; it’s a matter of survival; we’re superior; plants scream when pulled from the ground; they’re dumb; they can’t feel pain or fright; they would otherwise suffer from overpopulation and starvation, all the while keeping you on the defensive, in order that you not offend – them and their right to consume animals.
What gives us the right to raise anyone for slaughter? An animal in captivity has the same capacity to feel pain, fright, and loneliness as an animal who is free. The only difference is that one gets a death sentence before s/he is born, and subsequently suffers accordingly. I suppose that being at the top of the food chain is not a bad place to be, unless we’re ever invaded by aliens who have a penchant for humans. My guess is that we’d get rid of that “next down balance of nature” theory real quick.
One cannot measure contribution, however, if one could, animals would be categorized as contributing a great deal to any society. However, animals do not exist on this planet for the benefit of humans; they exist for their own benefit. And I sure would like to meet the person God told that we could use the animals as we saw fit. Since when did the word dominion come to mean use, abuse and destroy? Humans wrote the bible. Where God’s inspiration left off and their self-serving motives began is a little unclear.
If we happen to be stronger than some animals, that in itself does not give us the right to use and abuse them. Nothing gives us that right. As far as tasting good, so might we. But we don’t do it, because we know that it is wrong. So whether we like it or not, rightness and wrongness is at issue here. If a woman has always battered her children, does that make it right? Of course not. If we continued to do everything we’ve always done just because we’ve always done it we’d never progress. The effort to civilize must continue.
…and who says a couple billion people can’t be wrong? Of course they can. The majority is not always right. If we did everything our neighbors did, we would be slaves to their desires, and our destinies would be in their hands.
Why men developed stronger musculature than women, nobody really knows; they can only conjecture. However, if men’s muscle development were contingent upon the amount of food they brought home from their hunts, they never would have developed, since 80% of all food gathered was close to home in the form of nuts and berries, by women who carried large baskets as well as children for hours at a time while they walked and worked. So, if hard labor was the precipitating factor in developing high levels of testosterone in men, thus giving them strong muscles with which to kill animals, then women would have developed high levels of this hormone as well, which they didn’t. Be that as it may, men’s arm muscles were used for a lot more than pulling strings on bows and arrows. And about these so-called canine teeth: these teeth are needed to open nuts, tear stalks, peel fruit and eat vegetables. I do not tear flesh, but consider these teeth important to the enjoyment of my food.
All other animals do not kill each other to eat. In fact, most animals are vegetarians. But regardless of whether an animal or human kills another, that does not give us the right to do it. Why do what somebody else does when you know the pain and suffering those actions cause? Our judgments regarding what’s necessary for survival are biased by our own desires, habits, and previous as well as on-going conditioning by our parents, our peers, the medical profession, scientists for hire, and advertising campaigns designed by companies that want you to buy their products. If eating animals was such a cure all for what ails us, there wouldn’t be so many hospitals and nursing homes filled with sick people. Eating animals hinders our health by injecting too much saturated fat, protein and salt into our systems.
Superiority is always bad for the ones marked inferior, whether it be an ethnic group, a race, a religious group, an age group, a sex, a socioeconomic group, the homeless, the handicapped, the unemployed, anyone with an IQ below 120, anyone who challenges the status quo. The perception of being superior gives no one authority over another’s life. We all witnessed, in some way, the systematic slaughter of millions of humans initiated solely by the erroneous assumption of superiority of one ethnic group over another. This is what we as humans are doing to the animals–with impunity.
…but to go so far as to claim that plants scream when pulled from the ground and use this to justify the continuation of slaughter, leaves those of us with compassionate minds no room for compassionate choices–a clever tactic from the crafty minds of those who profit from our consumption of their products. All movement makes sound. When magnified thousands of times, even something as harmless as plucking a hair from your own head, will sound pretty horrifying.
I’m sure you don’t really believe that those who can’t take intelligence tests designed for humans (or even humans who score low on such tests) are not intelligent. Animals are aware, can solve problems, use tools, communicate with each other and humans, etc. I have three dogs who have not been trained through fear to submit to my will, and their intelligence levels continue to enlighten me. The way they manipulate their environment is astounding. But even if they (or anyone else) were not as intelligent as another, that does not give us the right to hurt them. And if you think that animals can’t feel pain, then think again. When an animal is injured and squeals, why do you think they are squealing? Because they feel good? Of course not. They squeal because they hurt – just as you would. Animals do not always let you know that they are hurting – just as humans don’t. But people will assuage their consciences by telling themselves that the animals cannot feel the abuses committed against them. So why don’t they run from their aggressors? Because animals are trusting creatures – as are humans. However, the fault doesn’t lie in trusting – the fault lies in the self-serving minds of those who abuse power – for whatever reason or to whatever end.
What takes the cake are the hunters who stuff the heads of their prey and hang them on their office walls, all in the name of compassion. This concept of killing those we perceive as suffering is a frightening one. Why not go into the forests with food and medical supplies instead of guns? What will they do next, go into China, India, Africa, and solve their overpopulation and starvation problems with bullets? If I dare speak for the animals, I think they’d rather take their chances with nature. I know I would. But starvation of humans or animals need not exist anywhere on this planet. There is plenty of food to go around. Once again, the problem lies in the crafty minds of those who abuse power – for their own selfish end. But to get back to the hunters – they hunt for the thrill of killing – nothing more. Anything else they derive from the sport can be accomplished on a picnic in the woods.
My final response to the accusation that my animal-free diet contradicts my other animal using behaviors, is simply that I didn’t create this pervasive multi-billion dollar animal abusing industry. The mass abuse (and killing is abuse) of animals by humans was not created overnight and it won’t be eliminated all at once. But I recognize the situation as unacceptable, and I’m doing something about it. I believe that change is possible, and through changing ourselves, we change the world. We have to start somewhere, so I’m starting with my diet (the meat went first, then the eggs, then dairy – and none of these went all at once). The leather shoes will go next, then the wool. All the while, new animal-free products will replace the old. And, new more effective research will be developed eliminating the use of animals in scientific experiments. I see the future as bright, and I’m doing my share, one step at a time, to make this a healthier more civilized planet for all of God’s creatures. However, as long as killing animals remains socially acceptable, you will be expected to defend your choice not to participate–and in my case, it is my pleasure to do that!
Cooking and eating animal-free takes us a step further along the path of civilization and your first step, no matter how small or faltering, contributes to the direction of this process. There is no contradiction here!
Wind songs whisper through summer sands brash promises of winter snow nights melting in memories of that which spring failed miserably to deliver. Howling, piercing pain tunnels through funnels of hardened flesh frozen by air–whistling a tune one prefers not to hear. A tune one cannot help but stutter upon as it stops in mid-air. When…..the wind softens its approach soothing my eyes with liquid velvet billows of languid chiffon, coating rosy tenderness where hatred once made rigid the air that delivered it, I’ll be there–as always. When…..howling harshness softens the branches of the message delivered enabling the whispers to grow into words, by bending with its song, hope will have arrived right along side the message…..right on time.
Hard words flowing from a soft pen, turning fondly into thoughts – as God, my God, guides with fluid snow that which will melt every heart. I want to continue, not ever having cared for endings – happy or otherwise. And I will do as I desire, whether imprisoned or free – it doesn’t matter. Smooth as black glass rippling in the twilight: reflections of a star, never knowing its effect on the glass or those who view it. Gentle as silent, giant waves, refusing to be still, yet unheard, except to those who see the reflection and refuse to allow catastrophic events blind the world to its elegance.
I am not just the messenger, but also the receiver of the message.
So what God has to say through me to you is for me too.
In that regard, I can interpret the message in terms of what it means to me personally.
I cannot, however, interpret the message for you.
I would not be so arrogant as to think that I know what God is saying to you. That is a totally private matter between you and your God, and me and mine.
All I’m sure of is the foundation upon which it is said: in the absence of prejudice, discrimination, enslavement, torture and slaughter–“God’s Five Principles For A Better Life.”
In my early years, whether reading for enjoyment or for school, and I read a lot, I rarely read the introduction to a book or anything about the author. Neither did I like to see previews to a movie. I had no interest in the overview of the entire work, a summary or the titles to the chapters. I didn’t care about the historical context or what the author was thinking when he/she wrote the piece. I simply wanted to read the work, or see the movie.
Maybe I was too impatient, maybe I liked the element of surprise, maybe I wanted to judge for myself without somebody else telling me what to look for or how to interpret the work. Maybe all of the above and more. Even now when I see movie stars doing an interview on television before a movie comes out it ruins the movie for me. Once I see a movie or a T.V. show, knowing about the personal life of the star ruins the image of the character they portrayed.
Similarly, when I view a work of art, I have no interest in what period in the artist’s life they created it, what they were suffering or celebrating, or the process they went through to develop it. I want every work of art to reach me on a level of familiarity, to surprise me within my vast realm of familiarity, or to simply awe me, absent the familiarity, by the splendor of the image or the brilliance of the work, even if I don’t understand it. When I look at a rainbow in the sky I don’t need nor want to know the history of the sun and the rain and what created the rainbow in order to thoroughly enjoy it.
Most of us don’t know how electricity really works, or how computers do what they do, but we’re all awed by the result, even though we don’t understand the process.
Even in museums – historical, art, science or otherwise – rarely do I read the plaque that accompanies the display. I am enthralled, or not, by the work. It impacts me, or it doesn’t. Impact is the key. Blow me away by the ugliness, the perversity of the art, or blow me away by the subtlety of the art, or find a place where I settle into the art.
Years ago, for our weekly entertainment, my husband and I would stay up to the early morning hours with our three dogs, a bottle of wine, after a few beers, and a book of poetry. He read, we listened. One poem always got read more than once on each occasion: Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed”. We didn’t need to understand all of it or really anything about it, for it to reach both of us on a deep level of emotional knowing, longing and healing. The title alone does that. Years later when the news said that he was gay and writing about his gay lover who died, it ruined it for me. Not that he was gay, but that now my personal interpretation was not valid.
I didn’t have to know that Van Gogh cut his ear off, or now, maybe he didn’t, according to current news reports, in order to enjoy his paintings. Now every time I see one of his paintings, that’s the image I see.
Introductions are a form of advertising. If you don’t like the advertisement, you won’t read the book. If you don’t like the preview to the movie, you won’t see the movie. If you don’t know anything about the artist, you won’t view the art. Now, who’s being impatient? As far as having to know every little detail of the creator’s life in order to enjoy the work, I say the creator wants you to interpret the work through the prism of your life, not theirs–at least this artist, writer, chef does.
The only benefit you’ll get by reading anything I write twice, or by looking at anything I create more than once is that you’ll see more detail.
The names of people, groups, nations found in WAKING UP THE PLANET, A CALM LONG RANT and VIVID VIEWS were used, not to offend, but to point out flaws in order to help everyone else. They were real examples, instead of hypotheticals. Substitute any name, any group, any nation for the one used and what applies to one applies to all.
You want to explore. I know you do. It’s like being a kid again isn’t it?
That feeling of going outside, into your environment on any given day as a kid, to explore the world beyond your house or apartment to see what lies beyond the boundaries your parents set for you?
What a wonderful, beautiful feeling – freedom to see and experience the world, on your own or with your friends. Wow.
How many of us forget that feeling of liberation as a kid, as we walked with wonder and ‘a special knowing’ – with confidence – smelling the air as if we owned it, into a world we didn’t fear. That’s you then.
When I write artistically, I write in many voices. Could me yours, somebody else’s or mine.
The goal is to communicate the human animal’s and the non-human animal’s experience.
When I use the word “I”, once again it could be you, somebody else or me speaking. In that sense I assume a conduit role to communicate what I think is meaningful to all humans and/or non-human animals.
It doesn’t really matter where the voice comes from, since we all share the animal experience.
