Keep Warm

12-25-08



Keep Warm

Let's all look at the big picture. Because I started this with one particular person in mind but suddenly my list of who I hoped would read this looked like those pictures you see of Santa with his long list of names on paper unrolling, and I realized it's meant for every one of us.

Please though, be forgiving. It's 3:49 am and although I'm mighty tired, me believing that we are here for one another's benefit is the only real hope I have -- so although this isn't as fleshed out as I'd like, I'm posting. And although I may sound preachy -- yes, no, maybe, I don't know -- believing we are here for one another's benefit is the only real faith I have.

***

Maybe it's like an addiction in that you don't give it up based on others' suggestions that you do so. "It" being a negative perception of yourself that you can't shake. "It" being that you see rejection as failure. Rejection is not failure; rejection has as much to do with the "editor" as it does with the writer. This goes for all relationships.

You don't give up the negative perception, you don't quit the self-loathing -- not because you don't want to, of course you want to believe you are beautiful/handsome AND smart AND good -- but because YOU are the only one who can make you believe it for certain. Like giving up cigarettes, or any other "substance" we know is not good for us or has control of us, we can only quit when WE decide we've had enough, and we really have to want to quit more than we want the comfort of what is killing us. We have to want to choose life, but we have to first realize that we are dying -- and that we are fully responsible for that act.

Loving yourself is like that. Once you realize that NOT loving yourself is killing you, you can learn to survive by loving yourself, but to love yourself you have to respect yourself and to respect yourself you have to demand that others respect you as well as do things that others (whom you, yourself respect) find respectable. Gah. That's an incredible amount of expectation.

If you abuse someone, that is not loving, and doing so allows them to retalitate, to disrespect you in return, with, in their mind, good reason, because you've disrespected them.

If someone abuses you and you allow it, that, too causes them to lose respect for you. So even if you are not the type of person to retaliate, if you are, instead the type of person who tolerates abuse from others, you still lose because you'll continue to be mistreated no matter how tolerant or forgiving you are. No one respects someone who doesn't respect themselves enough to command respect, at all times, from others. Even if it means being unpopular. Even if it means going "unloved" because really it does not. It means you are loving yourself by accepting no less than any other human being deserves.

If you are abused or are in an abusive relationship, whether it be with yourself or with someone else, stop it. If you can't stop it, get out. You may not have the life you thought you were going to have. That doesn't matter. You'll have a life that you cherish. You'll have a life you're happy to open your eyes for in the morning (okay, you'll have bad days too, but you get the gist). If you don't stop others from mistreating you, and believe me, mistreatment can be as subtle as snide, condescending remarks or as in-your-face as a fist, if YOU don't decide that you want happiness, you won't have it. And unhappiness will become a habit. It will begin to feel like an old familiar coat you don't want to throw out because it conforms to your body so well. You are so used to it.

Everyone will see how worn out you are, like the coat, but you won't notice until you are no longer warm.

I know, loving yourself is not as easy as buying a new coat. You've found that out by now, I'm sure. You've tried all the consolation prizes. There are none. You've discovered where the real love begins. With your own action.

Pretty Cozy

I feel lucky that for me poetry releases the demons (where will they go now?). Writing what eats at me. Demons. Well, this particular one, anyway.

Oh, and I know. I'm asking questions again. I can't escape myself.
On second thought, me and me, we're pretty cozy. I think I'll stay.




Christmas Tree in the Background, 2008

I think there is no you for me.
And if there is no you for me
to praise, I'll revere, instead, the land,
water, weather and every human hand
that worked to move this food to our table.

But if there is no you for me to pray to –
no force or lack of force to hold
accountable for misfortune’s consequence --
who will be my God? And what
should I replace you with?

Who should my intent be aimed toward
if there is no you?
What can I appease? How shall I
entice goodwill to bestow itself
on lowly me and my neighbors

who ask that I pray them into wellness
when they are ill.
If you aren’t there to hear?
Here to hear?

And if there is no you then
there is no him
either. So who is starving babies there
wherever I am not
while we're here filming baby's first
birthday cake?

Room at the Inn.

Room at the Inn. 12-16-08

Even though I am no longer a practicing Christian, even though terminology would classify me as an agnostic-atheist, every December I unwrap my nativity scene and display it where anyone who enters my home can see it.

What does this mean? And likewise, what does it mean that I've left my Virgin Mary, mother-of-God statue on the lawn where I placed it when it was given to me twelve years ago when we moved in? Hypocrite.

What does it mean that I thought I could let the wild rose bramble and honeysuckle vine and Rose of Sharon obscure it from view as a rebellious act -- but that after a little while, I couldn't carry my rebellious act through. Or wouldn't.

Wouldn't obscure that image, that portrayal, that representation of a woman who for all intents and purposes had absolutely no choice but to accept her fate and be forever painted as the "Madonna of the Streets." A pregnant virgin. An oxymoron. A prostitute? Raped? Abused? Just a silly horny girl with no form of birth control to resort to? Who WAS this Mary?

And who was this Joseph hero, this man who came to her aid, who saved her honor, maybe even more possibly, her very life and the life of her unborn child? What was in it for him? He certainly couldn't have predicted the love that would reign down on him in exchange for his devotion and belief in Mary.

To symbolically defy all the Casey Anthony's and Susan Smiths' and Andrea Yates' of the world, all those who do not cherish their children, all those who do not cherish women simply because they are women, to symbolically refuse the ideology of all the sexist men who think women are disposable little earworms, for all the young children whose brains aren't developed enough to recognize the sacrifices their parents make for their sakes, for me -- so that I can continue to speak my mind openly without fear of retribution (manners help) and so that I can remember to honor my own mother, and hers, and hers, I leave that statue.

And every year I display the trumpet-blowing angel, the wise men, the camel, the donkey, the lamb, the boy, the shepherd, the mother, the father, the newborn. For what reason? To honor humanity. To honor our humanity in an always difficult world. To show honor to those, especially, who do not fit into our subjective social ideals. To honor our ability to seek out, to surround ourselves with and to live peacefully among trumpet-blowing angels, wise men, and all the creatures of the earth. To honor our sensibility to aid others and to accept aid; to let others in, and to honor the humility that comes with knowing that others will love us and help us, despite our differences.

Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can't Shake

Yes, exactly.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can't Shake

The thing is, not everyone thinks as you or I or even the next person does. While some people have shy and modest personalities, other people are exhibitionists at heart. It's not as if these women have no other means to pay their mortgages or rent, right? Millions of women do it every month, and they are not models. So not only are these women earning great sums of money, those who enjoy attention or exhibitionism are having that need filled, as well.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can't Shake

I agree with this and many of the other more liberal posts regarding this issue. I am not "into bondage" but it doesn't mean I can't understand it, in theory. I have never been inside a strip club but the existence of these establishments doesn't bother me. I don't know why sexual expression has such negative connotations to some people, or why it frightens and/or disgusts them to the extent it does. I would rather my son see a hot sex scene in a movie than someone getting his face torn off.



I remember finding my dad's Playboy and Hustler magazines under the hamper in the bathroom. I was probably only nine or so, but thrilled, enthralled. I had never seen such female beauty. I'm a female, not gay, but there was a beauty in those women much like that found in the works of great sculptors.



All this fuss over cleavage and skin. All these people who crave homogeneity, as long as what we are homogenized into is what they decide we should be.



But they don't think that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Long time coming.

Bad to be good.

The book is always better than the movie, right? Well, let's hope the movie does the novel justice. But I do kind of doubt it will. So would you be bad to be good?

Old Poem, Newly Recorded

Me, reading poem published in Mudfish.