Religion

My husband and I have been watching a TV show called 4400. Tonight one of the main characters said, "war divides, religion unites."

It's true. If you want  people to come together you get them all on board with the idea of God. President Regan understood that, well at least the groomers did, and they used that to get the votes. The second President Bush got everybody on the God train, as long as it was Christian bound, to support him to rid us of " the evil doers" that happen to be Muslim. 

The best helpers with changing the way people eat was religious people eating like the Bible said to do and eating raw fresh foods. Their influences have been the biggest help to the agnostic and atheist hippie granola crunch folks getting their message across. My raw milk farmer is one of those bible eating folks. Raw milk, pasture eggs, raw butter, yogurt, cheeses, etc... She grows her own veggies, raises her own meat, and lives the way she thinks God would want her to without pesticides for her garden, antibiotic regimens for cattle, and cooking milk to death. She is humane, sustainable, and clean. Religion was helpful for the whole foods movement.

Now I'm seeing  Christian and Jewish vegetarian groups besides the typical Hindu faiths. Environmentalists that are Christian or Jewish are being seen as well. Speaking about being stewards of the earth. Gay pride groups that are religious based are also popping up. 

When we are at war with people that are against us or our values we grapple to find unity and safety. Religion is that place  for many folks. Finding commonality we can set down our arms of war and embrace the olive branch of peace. Religion has a dark side but it can be helpful as well. It can help bring awareness to civil rights issues, animal welfare, environmental issues, and food safety concerns to the foreground quickly because they are already organized in their worship of God. 

Perhaps I need to put aside my cynical mostly atheist views and join my fellow religious brethren into peaceful reform of the world. 

Today

Today I shared myself with someone

Today I stepped away from my protective wall

Today I decided to keep my wall and acknowledge there is a time and place for hiding behind it

Today I decided to cry and let the tears bubble and flood as long as they needed too

Today I accepted the fact I'm still holding onto toxic sludge from my past

Today I shared myself with someone and they told me to let it go

Just the facts, ma'am

A little game is going around Facebook. Someone gives you a number and then you write that many facts about yourself that people may not know. More than a week ago I got number 7 and since then I've not written a thing. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. 

Me? Speechless? Yes, very much so. Why? Good question. I've been thinking about this over and over and what I came up with was I'm private. "Oh, no you are certainly not." You may say if you know me. Yes, I do say a lot on Facebook but really, do you really know me? Do you? 

I sat in a women's circle twice. Each time I never revealed myself. I am a hermit crab. I carry around my cool shell for everybody to see but don't you dare look in it andou certainly cannot come in. I try to open up and it always comes out sideways and awkward. I don't know how to do it. I opened up a little to a guy a few years ago. Never once was I feeling romantic feelings, never once did I think I gave than impression. He did. He thought I was into him and it scared him. He rarely talks to me now. I've even had women say, "uhm, I'm not interested in you." So, obviously, I'm not any good at conversing my inner self. 

Back to the 7 list; I keep going over and over what to say and how to say it. I realized I cannot do it on FB at all. I like some of the anonymity get on the blog. I think only Russians read it anyhow.

So, with all my social awkwardness I'm going to give my 7 list.

1. I watched my first porn when I was 10. I was left with my older cousin and he put tin the VHS player. It changed my world. 

2. I use to give Ken tattoos and stick diamond stud earrings in his mouth to give his teeth bling. Barbie got her hair cut short and would wear Ken's clothes. They had orgies with other dolls. Ken on Ken and Barbie on Ken and vice versa. 

3. I told my my friend I wanted to be a prostitiue when I grow up after watching a movie with one in it and she told my mom. Few days later we played doctor and I gave her a shot with a rusty screwdriver that punctured her skin. 

4. If I had been caught I would have ended up in juvi and a record, enough said. 

5. I saw a bunch of girls that had bullied me all fucking week walking ahead of me on my way home from school. I saw them looking back talking and laughing. I pulled my knife out of my pocket and opened it. As I walked by them the jumped me. I had one on my back trying to choke me. I reached back and stabbed her in the leg. They called me a "crazy bitch" and ran home and told my neighbor, a cop. He went and picked up my books. They made sure to throwing a trash can nearby. 

A week later one of those people had their cousin try to kill me by running me over with their jeep. I ran home by jumping into bushes and hiding behind parked cars. I got in the door and laid down on the floor so they wouldn't see me. The next school year, after another fight and a girl brought a gun to school to threaten me, my folks illegally enrolled me into another school in the county next door. Life changed but I was still treating school like a war zone. 

6. My great aunt was always giving my mom shit for being fat, btw my aunt is fat now. 

I heard her carry on about how my mom would be pretty if...

It was a baby shower so there were cocktail weiners and cheese cubes galore with toothpicks sticking out. When my aunt got up to use the restroom I went over and wedged a toothpick into the weave of the seat and then hid myself to see the fun. She came back and sat down and....SCREAM! I giggled and laughed in my hiding place. 

7. I'm almost 40 and I feel completely unaccomplished. I have a terrible time staying focused long enough to do anything. My world is in chaos almost 95% of the time. I rarely go out with people because I do tend to turn people off. I'm weird. I'm awkward. I'm an ADHD poster child that was never diagnosed. A child of a father that was never diagnosed. I always wonder what it's like to be THAT girl that everybody loves and always has people calling her up to do fun things. Instead I'm the that other girl from the wrong side of the tracks that no one calls. Yeah, it's that hermit thing again and I don't like it. 

There, finally I have voiced my 7. I release it to the ethers and let it go. Goodnight. 

Veterans Day

Today Facebook is filled with people posting stories about veterans, pictures of grandfathers from WWII, fathers from Vietnam, and pictures of themselves. All this once a year hubbub got me thinking about the veterans and lack thereof in my family. My husband's family is full of them. My husband, both of his parents, his step-father, and one of his grandfathers. Both of my grandfathers were in the military.   My father was not and luckily was never drafted, yet his number was up next. They called the draft off just before my dad's number was called. My dad was pretty much a "worthless hippie." He had an Afro and bell bottoms. His friends all had nick names. I grew up knowing and hearing, Crazy Tim, Stupid Sam, Fat Dan, and Sticky Turtle. They each had their own stories. My dad tried to shield me from his friends. He did not want me to be like them. Strung out, broke, and dying young. Most of them are dead, dying, or in prison. One grandfather, still alive, never made it to war for his stint in the Navy. He spent most of his time getting drunk and getting in trouble. I don't have any war hero stories to share about him either. To this day he says he is a vet for his benefits but he mumbles and waves away any gratitude civilians give. My other grandfather, my dad's dad, did see action. Frontline Battle of the Buldge action. The kind of action that made him adamant that none of us never join the military. The kind of action that he refused to speak about sober, the kind of action that changed that man forever. A change that is still rippling throughout the family to this day even though he is no longer here. 

My grandfather saw his best friend killed. He screamed Tom, my grandfathers name, and then his bottom jaw was blown off. That was the only story we ever heard. Basically, if you read Naked and the Dead you will get the gist of his ordeal. After the war ended and he was still stranded in Europe he got thrown in jail. Why? Some Germans, they had to share space with the enemy since the war was officially over, were mistreating some American soldiers. My grandfather jumped in a jeep and purposefully ran over a German that couldn't get away. My grandma said if the German died then my grandpa was going to prison in Germany and most likely for life. If the German lived he was going to stay with the Americans and spend time in a military prison and be dishonorably discharged. Lucky for me, the German lived. Otherwise grandma would have had children with someone else. 

War changed the course of our family. Even though neither of my folks were ever in a war zone the effects from our veteran elders made an impact. Distrusting of the government. Lack of religion. Short tempered. Fearful. 

Tom said more than once that "all wars are started in the name of god."  No good comes from war and  no good comes from religion. That was the underlying theme. Unspoken yet very much there. 

Today is Veterans Day. A holiday where most veterans are still working while non-vets get the day off to  lounge and not knowing the true cost of what a veteran means. 

Going creatively crazy

I bought some much needed supplies and then some. I bought several canvases and tubes of paint. I even bought something I've had my eye in for a while now, a coarse medium that makes the canvas feel like stone. Today I played wight. I applied a thin amount onto an already painted surface and I just applied yet another layer. Tomorrow I am going to paint the rough surface. I'm going to toy with it by adding paint to the material and then apply it to the canvas. I'm so excited. I wish it dried faster than it actually does. I'm seriously impatient right now :) 

Werewolf

My friends and family have gone mad for mythical creatures of our imagination. Vampires and zombies are America's favorite gruesome nightmarish villain that somewhere deep within our shadow selves we know we are those vile things. I've never liked either one of those ghouls of darkness. I hate the idea of sucking blood from a neck or being undead and eating brains. It's all so vulgar. I keep wondering what makes those people long to watch and read about those creatures. What was inside them that they craved to know more and hear more. I thought that perhaps they were secretly evil or mentally disturbed. I couldn't understand it. I still don't. Why? Well, because I connect with a different creature; a werewolf. 

This got me thinking. What makes me attracted to one and repulsed by the others? I have been giving this some thought. Vampires consciously choose to take life. They relish in taking it and also in turning a human into one of them, the undead blood sucker with immortality. Zombies are unconscious autopilot killers. They are going through the motions and not knowing what they are doing because they are more that undead they are actually just animated death. Werewolfs know they are going to change once a month, think menstrual cycle. Many choose to lock themselves away to keep from harming others during this time. They are vicious and mean during the change, yes, but they turn back into normal loving and sometimes meek humans. Werewolves tend to be represented as the quiet human, that might even be skittish, and turn into a massive beast that fears nothing. Even if the werewolf is hurt they revert back to that scared howling animal I pain. They fierceness is temporary and  just a facade.  They change is out of their control and if they could stop it they would stop it. They are conscious living beings that transform unwillingly. 

This is why I cannot relate to people that worship, love, watch, enjoy, and are fascinated with vampires and zombies. I wonder what is in their psyche to enjoy that? Do I enjoy werewolf movies? No, I cannot watch them. I feel sad watching this human morph uncontrollably. I said I can relate, not enjoy. I purely empathize. 

Art

I've been having a whole bunch of fun with art lately. I keep attempting to get the boys interested by bringing in different methods. What happens is they give a feeble attempt and then get up and leave and never return. I used to feel really disappointed but now I look at the bright side. I get to have all the fun and share equipment or watch them waste materials. I have given them the experience and it didn't capture them as it does for me. That is ok. I will continue to hone my skills as they move away from the projects I present. I will keep bringing in new projects.  

This week I taught them block printing. We made pictures on the styrofoam meat trays ( clean and sanitized.) I bought a brayer and ink and we made prints. This week I bought linoleum block and cutters to make a permanent blocks so I can teach them how to make them for  Tshirts. I want to get a screen printing kit and make tshirts like that as well.