Obviously incoherent notes on the recent violence and racial tensions

Sexuality and Satan

JUST KIDDING!

I really want to write about some of the sentiments floating around inside my head for the past week, ever since my congresswoman was shot.

Wait, while I think this through.

Okay.

Excuse the disorganized nature of my remarks.

I am leery of the consensus that seems to be developing around the culpability of the perpetrator in that shooting. Though I have no doubt he was the shooter and that he deserves treatment as such, I do not believe that any "chemical imbalance" or psychiatric diagnosis accounts for the crime he committed. It is not mental illness that creates horrible people, it is (sometimes) horrible people who develop what society (sometimes) categorizes as mental illness. I think that the picture of him with the maniacal, murderous grin on his face says it all. He was hiding some terrible personal characteristics. That was what was manifesting itself in his bizarre behavior, his drug use, his outbursts, not the other way around.

It is now becoming the typical response to run away from this demon that may be lurking in anyone, including our neighbor or ourselves. All of us need to face him and ask ourselves, what differences are there really among us that account for some people having one fate and somebody else having another.

I have to say here that some of my writing and my concerns echo those of the shooter. I too have had fantasies of violent revenge against people who have hurt me either as employers or politicians. This disturbs me. I can only say that efforts at civility will not succeed while rage is still an expectable condition in this society. People will not accede to being kicked in the face repeatedly to maintain someone else's social position or wealth.

However, I would like to address here one of my favorite topics to think about: race. I have written some things lately in my poetry referring to some of the things my parents said about black people and about angels being "white," that I think anyone would say were not sufficiently analyzed or glossed or discredited.

I feel that creativity and human relationships must depend on a complete and unbounded recognition of the basic humanity of every individual and the basic individuality of every human. This statement is not to play games with concepts. It is a call to not bring harm upon others for their thoughts, opinions or actions. There are other ways to treat people who are, as the shooter appears to be, capable of despicable acts. Isolation is one. I know my friends, for instance, have isolated me for what may appear to be my political apostasy. They may have every right to do so.

What does this have to do with race? I know that whether or not I feel anger toward people of another ethnic group usually has to do with something else entirely than that person. I know that other people are not inferior to me. I also know that with the passage of time, as long as blindness to discrimination and persecution continue, that the consequences for the persecutors will become more and more severe. The question for me is whether I, as a person with a particular past and having the material supports and conditions that I live with, can simply not defend myself when my life is on the line.

So, who is putting my life on the line? I think that usually it is my fear. Paradoxically, however, the only way to show that you are not fearful is to be honest with yourself and stand up for yourself. I think that in times past that this is exactly the kind of paradox African Americans in this country faced, and now it is one I must face.

If everyone is family, then who do I stand up for? Myself? My friends? My allies? I don't know.

I think I had better get into the background to the idea that the civil rights movement was a "Negro uprising" as I said my parents told me.

I believe deeply that no matter what I have done with my life that I cannot turn back the injustices of the past. I also know that as someone who does not personally remember the civil rights movement that I am vulnerable to claims that it was an uprising.

I cannot make changes without beginning from the beginning.

I was cowed by my parents into rejecting certain people as my friends. One was named Raymond. He said things like "damn" and "shit," which my parents objected to, fearing I know not what since they said exactly the same things. My father actually had a conversation with me and my brother at the time (when I was six) in which I had to choose to say, "shucks" or "darn," instead. I chose "shucks," (always currying favor with my father.) Raymond was black or African-American.

Why should any of this matter to me?

I am trying to say what I like. And that is, crack is pain.

Money is pain. Crack is money. Money is time. Pain is death. There is a circular equation here.

I must be strong and tell you that I thought I was good.

There is also the matter of being queer and of being a whore.

I give a drug to myself called love. I cannot do this anymore.

Seek the hopes that are good.

So, listen, everyone is good when they give.

I give home. That is my justification for being alive. That is what I do.

Home is something everyone without regard to skin color needs.

I am a fog.

The cruelty that exhibits itself in me is painful. I would like to treat myself better.

What is happening right now is what we all need, good or bad. I cannot look toward a political or social or religious paradise. What there is to love is right here: the earth and the creatures on it and ourselves as we are.

To lose my own bearings in terms of taking care of myself in the present, of having what I need to survive in favor of some ideology or mass movement or sentiment that does not want me on the planet or wants me defenseless is not what I can accept. It is better to work with others as they are than as they might be. I do believe that there are currents of hatred, racial and otherwise in many, many people. All I can do is acknowledge mine and know they are there in the present. Such acknowledgment, and even love of the characteristics of mine, such as a liking for some aspects of Western "civilization" in both old and new forms: literary culture, beauty, individuality, the power of women and LGBT people, the knowledge of my pagan and my classical roots, and the further knowledge of its kinship and descent from all other cultures, and the desire to be myself whether others like it or not, my own autobiographical diversity from my days as a nerd to my activism in the anti-apartheid and other solidarity movements, to my self-discovery as a transsexual who needs to love herself first and foremost in other to love others, the fact that I have a right to self-determination with the resources I have a right to: a household, friends, lovers and a community that does not wish to remove me from its presence. A guilty and hypocritical and angry adhesion to anyone else's liberation will not substitute for a realistic and human and honest respect for the aspirations of all.

Lastly, I hope that you, the reader, will embrace yourself as a powerful and creative person who can live imperfectly but with passion and self-acceptance. Organizations and groups can only be a means to this end. Usually, if not always, they will fail. The possibility is that all can respect the now, and see that all our needs are expressed and taken care of within it, no matter how difficult.

Just as I would not give up the last of what I had at the Church (my broom) to Kristianna, so I may not have asked her to give up the last of her resources -- her culture. We, in all our "groups" deserve to retain what is the most unique and most necessary to our survival as individuals and societies.

So, about that Negro uprising and the white angel: the knowledge that people of color are the future neither gives me the right to take away from the dignity and beauty of that fact nor the need to obliterate myself. I suppose this is a vision of peaceful co-existence. I think of the Celtic culture surviving under Roman rule. ????

I wish you would point out the inconsistencies and residual ignorance here. Possibly I am too suspicious. Possibly what is best is simply to cheer on the accomplishments of others as well as your own.

There is love and I believe that you will always make change dream.

Dreams are there to guide I who am free to feelings.

May you have a blessed day.

Addendum:

I have been looking for death as a liberation from the endless round of good and bad. I need to let go of feeling bad or afraid. I need to let go of treating myself like I'm drugged. I need to feel happy. Let it be.

I am frogged.