Questions on love

Why are there so many rules against loving? External, certainly, especially in this country since the religious fanatics seized power, but even more frightening to me are my internal limitations.

People have loved me, and I've loved them; and yet, my manifestations of love have been so very inadequate.

Why are there rules?

Why do fears win over excitment and curiosity?

Surely, this is not who I am.

I met a woman, and she was all sunshine and krinkly-nosed laughter. She moved me so, and I could have kissed her little face all day. More lovely still, she would have wanted me to. I didn't, not nearly enough. This woman found herself a new woman and who could blame her.

Jeanette Winterson asks "Why is the measure of love loss?"

Is it though? Not for everyone. For my little krinkly-nosed wonder it is not. For her, the measure of love is laughter and warmth. Why are some of us drawn to the darker side of love? Those of us who are should be shipped off to a little island of our own (no, heavens no, not the same island reserved for the exiled American religious fanatics), where we could work out our little issues in some sort of labor camp and then neatly reassimilate into society so that we do not hurt the good and the healthy, the little sparkles of cuteness that actually want to perpetuate joy.

"Why is the measure of love loss?"

Is it though? Even for me, in my safe little world of retrospect, where fears do not prevent me from feeling the love given to me in the past, I remember the tenderness most vividly: the smell of her ear, the coo turn small snore in her breathing at night, though she insisted she was no snorer. These memories are my measure of love.

And I want it again.

Perhaps, though, loss is a potion that snaps us from a dreamy detachment, a fear of loss that prevents closeness when it is being offered.

I want to drink that potion while there is still hope, and not when it is too late. Please tell me if you have such a potion.

jem

Religious right, please leave this free country

It's almost impossible for me to think about anything else these days other than the immoral, unethical, obnoxious, arrogant, irrational, violent, anti-intellectual, anti-cultural, misogynistic, homophobic, base, and corrupt conservative right wingers in this country.

These people (illegally) came into power several years ago promising to bring 'honor' and 'dignity' to the presidency and its administration. Instead, it put into place a moron, former cocaine addict and alcoholic who has the inability to speak a coherent sentence or to have an original thought. Instead, he leans on his invisible friend, whom he loves and allegedly entered his heart and changed his life. (My god these people sound homosexual - why can't they just admit it and just leave all the blessed homosexuals in this country alone?) These people - among them, Karl Rove, Tom Delay, Alan Keyes, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, Bill Frist, Pat Robertson, etc etc - are the basest, most shameful examples of life on the planet.

Many members of the administration supposedly belong to a certain sect of Christianity, a cult really, that believes that they are predestined to being saved and that their actions have no reflection on this truth; that is, no matter what they do here on earth, they're going to be with their man, Jesus, once it's over...so, they can expediently, stupidly, do whatever they wish here on earth and they'll still be wearing the white robes afterward.

And they do in fact do whatever they wish without regard to anyone or anything but their little adolescent endeavors. Really, I think they're all developmentally stuck at about age 13, and are reliving the times when all the pretty girls rightfully shunned them and called them names. It's over guys. Go to therapy if it still haunts you - stop attempting to destroy the quality of life of the people who want to remain free in this country.

Abortion will be illegal soon in this so-called first world country. This is my official prediction. These people are barbaric and repulsive. They will put me and my friends in jail for taking adult responsibilities over our bodies, for expressing free will and intellect. This country is the least progressive, most violent, least intellectual so-called first world country on the planet, and it's all because of these bozos.

Listen guys, some of us here actually like people, and think they're pretty cool, and enjoy cultural differences and really don't like it when you make it impossible for the good people of this country to travel and have intellectual exchanges with other cultures. I always say I'm Canadian when I travel, because, in part, the fanatics in power have made being American overseas an impossibly dangerous thing. In part, I am so ashamed of being American right now.

And some people - um, the sane people in the country - actually have respect for life right here and now, and don't follow your little fantasy story line about this life not mattering. So please get the hell away from here and go establish a little island far far away where you can all go beat each other up, sleep with each other (you're doing it now after all), take your illegal drugs, and make believe your fantasy friend really matters. And leave this (albeit diminishingly) free country to those who actually want to live in a free country, where religion has nothing to do with being a decent, caring, loving person, where art and intellect are respected and nourished, where women are seen as people, where homosexuals are left alone to be the normal, healthy (perhaps more evolved) people that they are, where life is actually a thing to respect and treat kindly.

As one literary critic said recently: my holy book is any book that is written with gorgeous, deliberate artistic attention; literature.

Agnostic in America

Being agnostic in America is tough these days.

Even when you live in Cambridge, Massachusetts...but maybe that's just because my mother is still only an instant message away. "Do you go to church?" her purple text shouts above a calming pink background.

I don't have anything against churches. Well, maybe just a tad against those that interpret my natural curiosity and intellectual skepticism as proof of certain damnation. Call me sensitive, but it's not a pleasant vision, my friends and I the seasonings for a stew of globulous primordial slime forever nearing boil. Plus, I've grown somewhat fond of my recalcitrance, offering it as a slightly more matured substitute for the Betty Boop curls and bright red lipstick I wore when I first moved to Boston 10 years ago.

There's this belief among the country's most conservatively religious, especially those in leadership positions, that nonreligious folk are immoral. And yet, there is Tom Delay indicted on a conspiracy charge; there is Bill Frist under investigation for a shady stock trade; there is Pat Robertson suggesting we kill another country's president. My agnostic friends and I, we're low-key in comparison.

My friend Meghan went apple picking recently, and spoke to me of the guilt she felt in sampling the apples that had fallen to the ground. "I went out of my way to find ones with worm holes," Meghan offered in an attempt to assuage what was eating away at her. I absolved her of this dubious transgression as best I could: "Some four year old might have slipped on it," I said. "He would have had to go home early and miss the hay ride."

I am of the mindset that morality comes with natural human development. You learn many important things early in life: if you see that you have hurt someone, you will commonly feel uneasy for doing so; when you are kind to someone, when you visit an elderly person in a nursing home, when you raise money for a community in need, you feel happy, alive. Just as we learn to breathe, we learn to love and care. The assertions of the conservative right that only those who believe in God know right from wrong have endlessly been disproved not only by their own subversions of the belief system they advocate, but by the beautifully compassionate and selfless actions of all the nonreligious people I know.

Several years ago, I was a volunteer at Ground Zero in New York City. I chatted daily with a certain construction worker who would come to the food tent for lunch. Once, he stopped on his way out of the tent and asked me, point blank, "Are you a Christian?" I hesitated to answer, afraid that I would be asked to leave - the organization I was volunteering with was evangelical Christian. Finally, I told him that I wasn't. "What motivates you?" he asked incredulously. I was incredulous in return. How could desire to bring comfort, to help, be overlooked as the universal reality that it is? "You can't leave with more than one orange," I said, resorting to the authority I held during my shift as food guard.

"No mom, I don't go to church," I reply in some mundane default text. Lying to my mother just doesn't seem necessary; heck, it's not even an option. More importantly, I have no interest in becoming a member of a church. And in my mind, the values I very consciously try to follow are accessible to everyone, whether they bite into some prohibited apple or not.

jem

Success doesn't have to hurt

You know, there's the mindset in this country, certainly in New England, that success follows only from grueling efforts. One who is calm and happy and takes it easy will not succeed. I see this fallacy everywhere, experience it firsthand: at work, in creative writing workshops, in the media. I wonder if this has something to do with the seemingly miserable 'founders' of the country. They set about their hard work of killing and rebuilding wearing their puritan and religious shackles - all in the cold weather!

At work I see it in the culture established by the founders of the company. They are MIT folks who believe that it is obsessively rigorously detailed work - work that never ever ever ends - that has brought the company success. Thing is, there is so much wasteful effort that goes on there too, so much sloppy managing, so much overlooking of the obvious. Everyone is too busy trying to be stellar in their own little compulsive way, in their own little gray-walled cube devoid of any pretty or soulful decoration. What's really annoying is that everyone is trying to outdo each other with just how 'picky' or 'anal' they are. Really. People boast about such things. People win awards for working through sickness, sacrificing their weekends, for neglecting their family. Truly.

And you see the impact such fanatic and compulsive attention to detail has on people: many of the people I work with look much, much older than they are. They are out of shape, they are prematurely bald, they are unsociable. Most of them look like they've never been out in sunlight.

Why can't we do a really good job and call it a day, and - um, here's an idea - be happy! Why do we have to 'destroy our competitors' and become a 5 billion dollar company? How about this as a goal: fostering a mutually supportive, friendly, happy, and productive environment. The rest is garbage. It really is. It breeds unhappiness and unhealth and spawns a mutant breed of people who nature can't quite recognize. For every obsessive, neurotic, hypo-diligent person out there, surely there is some quiet, perceptive, empathetic and peaceful soul harmoniously doing her thing. How's about we call her in for a 9:00am Monday morning meeting and learn her secret to success?

I saw a bit PDiddy's show this weekend, the one where he's trying to make a hip hop star out of some unknown young woman. First off, the man doesn't sit well with me. He's just arrogant and obtuse and a disrespectful traveler. ("We're gonna rock Paris like it's never been rocked before!" By this, he meant sitting in an expensive hotel room and drinking until he vomited his camembert. Real multi-cultural.) In it, he insisted on working the women until they were exhausted, on throwing insults at them, belittling them, strutting around with some faux-power, on reminding them that when they were famous, they'd have to put up with this or that drudgery so you'd better get used to it now ladies!

What delusion.

You know what, I highly doubt that as 'a famous person' one faces constant drudgery. Nor would one have to. One could actually enjoy one's greater freedom, money, recognition. One might actually be able to control her life a bit more than when she need no longer concern herself with mundane worries such as rent and car repairs.

This fanaticism with 'toughness' (and I certainly wouldn't call it that - unsophisticated is more like it) and sacrifice is some gross mixture of some brute gross maleness thing, and some self-flagellating god thing.

Really now. We can do better.

jem

Still, women can't be themselves

I'm always amazed as what passes as acceptable attitudes about women. I truly think that hatred towards women is one of the last fully acceptable forms of discrimination in this country. Even, thankfully, hatred towards homosexuals is discouraged by the well-educated and moral folk. But hatred towards women is celebrated among almost everyone - even women bond over frightening attitudes about themselves.

For example, the Holloway teenaged woman who was raped and murdered recently in Aruba by (it seems too horrifically obvious) the 3 boys who left a bar with her early one morning while she was vacationing there. The boys admitted to having sex with her, but not to murdering and raping her, which they surely did. One of them, Deepak Kalpoe, described Holloway:

"To tell you quite frankly, (she) dressed like a slut, talked like one, too. (Who) would go into a car with three strange guys, and her mother, claiming her to be the goody-two-shoes. Enough with this BS already."

What the hell.

So, as the old belief goes, if a woman dresses a certain way, she deserves to be tortured and to die a gruesome death at the pleasure of a disgusting pervert. That's belief number one.

But really, everyone expects straight women to dress in a way that is sexually appealing to men - whatever that may be at the present time. So, women are trapped. If they don't dress a certain way, they are not considered by the men they want to partner up with. If they do dress a certain way, they are called names, hated, raped, and murdered. Women are, should be, at the whim of men, whatever that whim may be at the moment - attraction, or violence. This is buried belief number two.

I've heard women perpetuate this belief system: "She dressed like that, so what do you expect?" What do I expect? I expect that she'll actually be treated like the human being that she is. And this is it, isn't it? Women aren't really perceived to be human. They are sub-human. They are less than their supposed counterparts, men. Every religion says this (fashioned out of a man's rib, obedience to men, a brother kills a sister because she is acting in discord with the 'holy book' and shaming the family, yadda yadda).

Yet another reason to reject religious ideology.

I am always, and I mean that literally - ALWAYS - touched when a woman is treated with the respect and dignity that is automatically handed over to men. When a women shows her intelligence and her ideas are considered sincerely; when a women comfortably shows off her comedic talents (how many funny women does Hollywood allow us access to?); when a woman chooses to be single and to not have children, and she is considered cool, admired.

I think the clincher is this: many women (thankfully not all) want to be with men. The men in this country, all countries, are raised to perceive women as inferior, raised to treat women disrespectfully. For a woman to catch herself one of these fellers, she has to buy into this belief system, she has to suppress many of the wonderful and powerful things that she is. To not do so is, in her mind, in this paradigm, to be alone, and I can't say I blame anyone for not wanting to be alone forever. But, maybe as glimpses of women's talents, brilliance, true nature continue to surface from time to time, in those beautiful moments of respect and encouragement, then maybe these thuggish, violent, aggressive, terrible attitudes will be forced to change, as men will have to select from a growing number of genuine women, not women in hiding.

We can hope.

jem

Common sense, good, fanaticism, bad: Part 2

So, as I was saying: the evangelicals.

They say that without their god, there is no way to know what is right or wrong, how one should live. Poppycock.

Right from wrong - it's easy!
Most people I know, thank us, do not have a belief system that is religiously based. Yet, we do not kill, we do not steal, we do not try to hurt people, we think it's a bad idea to cheat on your partner, and we even feel guilty about getting too angry when someone cuts us off in Boston traffic (well, some of us).

All this is more than can be said about the evangelical christians who are trying to take over the country, the right-wing conservatives.

The idea that this country will become a chaotic hellish mess if there is no god is just plain insane. They say that without dictate from above, we will be reduced to the basest, most violent, selfish way of behaving. You know what, maybe they would - in fact, even when they're supposedly in harmony with their god's wishes they are - but that's simply not the way things work for decent people.

The most socially conscientious, caring, kind, compassionate, upright people I know are atheists and agnostics. And guess what? We figured out what acceptable behavior is all on our own! In fact, so could a 10 year old. You learn many important things early in life: if you treat people badly, it is more likely that they will treat you badly; if you see that you have hurt someone, you will commonly feel uneasy for doing so; when you are kind to someone, when you visit an elderly person in a nursing home, when you raise money for a community in need, you feel happy, alive. These things, for most of us, come with healthy human development. They just exist, they just are; just as we learn to breathe, we learn to love and care.

And for those for whom healthy human development is disrupted or thwarted, for those who turn violent and mean spirited, there are reasons why this is the case, and the world of psychotherapy along with the encouragement and love of people has proven to be redeeming and healing.

No gods needed.

Look at the more progressive nations of the world, where religion is not an obsession - Canada, Norway, The Netherlands. These places are much safer places to live than the US. Women and homosexuals are not attacked for existing.

Bad evangelical, bad!
The war in Iraq is an evangelical mission. How many innocent people have been killed as a result? Alan Keyes, republican Illinois senator and former UN Ambassador, abandoned his teenage daughter who is a lesbian. A parent rejecting their child??? These are the morals he so fanatically screams his head off about? And if the child, in Keyes' twisted ideology, is corrupted, and in need of help, how doubly horrific that he is leaving her on her own! Tom Delay is a thief, and a mean man. These people have 'found god' and made our society hate filled, corrupt, and more violent as a result.

jem

Stay away evangelicals: Part I

You know, I'm just not willing to accept that the beliefs of the 'faithful' are exempt from rational scrutiny. If the evangelicals are going to go ahead with their little plan of taking over the country, if they are going to purport to be public servants, to make the claim that they carry out the will of the people, then sit down for a while, guys, you're under the lights.

For the next few days, I'm going to look at a few of the evangelicals' most egregious offenses.

Today: a consideration of the idea that beliefs arrived at by faith are equal to those arrived at by reason.

Faith and reason are not equal
There's been a historical emphasis on the divide between faith and reason. Fine, Saint (I'm being polite here) Thomas Aquinas decided in On Faith and Reason that certain beliefs could not be arrived at with the use of reason. Thus, the Christian notion of the Trinity is understood only through 'the mystery' of faith. It is inaccessible through rational exploration. To believe it, you need to take the leap.

Similarly, the evangelicals believe that Jesus is a god, and everything the historical figure said (though altered repeatedly over time) translates into types of behavior. Of course, plenty of people disagree about what behavior is implied from what Jesus said (like, 'love thy neighbor' might actually mean 'don't try to dehumanize homosexuals simply because you're too hate-filled and violent to see that homosexuality is acceptable and normal behavior'). But in any case, the laws of the United States should reflect the supposedly immutable laws of this historical figure.

Um, and this is okay with everyone?

We all agree with Thomas Aquinas and the evangelicals that faith is an adequate means of arriving at truth, and from that, at a country's laws?

In my belief system, Sarah McLachlan is a goddess. Before the day begins in elementary schools across the nation, children will be required to sing the second verse of Sweet Surrender. Oh, and those of you who have a hard time understanding this dictate, don't try - you just wouldn't get it.

What the evangelicals ask of non- or variant believers is equally peculiar; creating laws based on their very unique, commonly unshared, and speciously arrived at belief system is repressive, aggressive, arrogant, and hurtful.

The illogical leap of faith that they've made, that informs their beliefs, is just plain odd, in my view. All you have to do to accept any set of beliefs is to suspend reason long and persistently enough, and truth shall be yours? Creepy. Glad if it brings you some comfort, but that sort of defiance of a more reliable means of gaining information is not something I can rightfully or comfortably participate in, especially since the belief system being adopted thereby so consistently lashes out at innocent, peaceful, decent people. Any belief system that advocates such behavior cannot logically be accepted as an adequate one.

The bottom line
What the evangelicals want is for everyone to act in a way they find acceptable. What they want is christian fascism. This is not okay. I don't believe in christianity, and don't want to. Even if their god spoke to me through the heavens, poked me on the shoulder with a giant finger (which, by the way, would have nail polish on it) I wouldn't be interested. I don't want my life to be as limiting and boring as it would be if I were to follow some uncritical, diluted set of rules that don't fit my unique set of experiences and interests. Stay away from me, evangelicals - your reality is not mine, thanks Fortuna.

jem

Hello world!

Hello world!

I am THRILLED to have my own blog, and perhaps now, my friends and family will have some relief from my incessant need to analyze, critique, pick apart - OUT LOUD - the country's various political happenings and embarassments.

I'm a woman in my 30's, work in technology, have a passion for the arts, do some creative writing and theater, and think that the U.S. is experiencing an ideological takeover not unlike Iran's Islamic revolution of the 1980's...it scares me to death, the Bush administration's inimidation and stifling of the media, that is, to the extent that most mainstream news sources sound ridiculously insipid. Where's the courage to tell it like it is???

How many uncritical 'analyses' of the disastrous and bungled U.S. invasion of Iraq can we listen to? NPR I love you, you are my best friend, but stop presenting the few sane voices on the issue as the 'alternative' perspective, will you? And stop interrupting those callers that try to remove the mass muzzle that's been placed on reporters, commentators, independent thinkers.

Voila. Visit me often, fine readers, and enjoy.

jem