necessity has no law

-william langland

a few of you know, most do not, that my dad was jumped by a gang when i was six, about a block away from my home. he spent two or three weeks in a coma and survived with mild brain damage and a few psychological issues.

i haven't really thought about how that event affected my life. i refused to think that the thoughtless actions of a few idiotic street thugs could even touch me.

it actually made things extraordinarily difficult for my family. my mom and dad had never gotten along, but after the beating, my dad became very emotional and easily angered, and also clinically paranoid. my mom could never understand why he changed and blamed his character on an unwillingness to be well. there was a year and a half were i didn't speak to my dad because of an emotional burst he had towards me, even though we lived on the same property. i'm a sensitive girl, not the kind of person who could be immersed in such a stressful home environment and NOT be affected by it.

but i don't blame the gang members. my family suspects that my dad was a target because he was fighting gang activity in our neighborhood. he was making business harder for the gang in its own ghetto.

necessity has no law. the people of the ghetto are there because they are denied the resources they need to live safely and comfortably. life in the ghetto is a constant competition for resources, and if the average man can't get what he needs by honest work, he will turn to fists and guns.

i don't blame the people. i blame the system, for denying secure shelter, food, and safety to groups of people based on their bad luck to be born into those groups. i blame a society that expects the poor to secure their resources on their own, without making as much help available to them as is needed.

what happened to my family is unfortunate, at first glance. it is mere chance that it happened to us- we just happened to be in a desperate neighborhood, with desperate people in a desperate time.

i inherited an indomitable tenacity from my mother, a need for independence and strength, and a love for justice and independent thought from my father. i have not allowed the system to make me its victim. it has influenced my family, making them afraid of its oppression and vigilance, and they have fallen victim to its empty symbols of wealth and prestige.

i feel uncomfortable claiming superiority over my parents, but i have so far been able to escape these extreme approaches. i can see the flaws in the system, and how they affect humanity. i can see what is useful in the system and what must change if we want to keep our society from self-destructing. i am using what resources and influences i have come across to subvert and re-create the system to work for those who came from necessity, but were not as fortunate as i.


there's no silver lining in a terrific thunderstorm, but that storm will disperse eventually
when it does, the Earth will be nourished, anew
you can abandon the land in fear that thunder will strike twice
or stay and cultivate the new Earth
and reap the benefits of your labor

I want goodness. I want sin.

But I dont want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger,
I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
-the Savage, Brave New World

I never really understood what this quote meant. I only had a vague idea, but it rang true to me.

I watched the movie Milk today, with Ken. Harvey Milk was an amazing activist/politician that was the first openly gay man to be elected to any major governmental office in the United States. The movie depicted Milk's fight for office and for gay rights until the moment of his death, when a former colleague, angered when denied his former office, murdered both the mayor of San Francisco and Harvey Milk. I have a heartache right now, like seriously. I held my breath for far too long and probably came close to breaking a few bones in Ken's hand. The movie was just... amazing. His life was amazing.

I've been thinking about ignorance lately, about how many privileged people in this society choose it as a way of life. Like the Matrix (phil 6H =D ). The choice is subconscious, and it is an easy one to make and a hard one to choose against. It seems that most every element in our popular culture and media encourage the people to choose ignorance. We are encouraged to not think for ourselves, to not feel with all our hearts, because it is too difficult, too passionate, too true of an existence. I have been fighting to choose against ignorance for years, but I haven't quite escaped the desire for the empty 'comfort' that ignorance affords those who choose it.

Harvey Milk lived with a sort of abandon. When he was faced with a decision between running for office for the billionth time (with a very good chance of being elected) and losing his lover, he choosed his cause. It was difficult, but he was devoted. He recieved a postcard before going on stage to speak at a rally that threatened him with death if he were to stand in front of the crowd and speak, but he went up and spoke anyway. I was on the edge of my seat, holding my breath, hiding behind my hands and waiting for the gunshots to ring when he finished his speech, still alive. He was devoted.

I have my cause. I have not devoted myself. Camus wrote that there is not one cause that is worth dying for, but I think he's wrong. If I choose ignorance- if I choose decieving comfort- I will not be able to fight for what calls for me, what calls for my devotion, what calls for my life.

At a few parts in the movie, scenes where Milk raised the spirits and hopes of his fellow activists, when they moved thousands of people to stand up and fight for their lives, I was overcome with emotion. I automatically detached from that emotion; I worried that the emotional make fools of themselves by letting that true feeling show. And I chose to cry. There's a fight within me that will not die, I can choose to let this fight loose on my causes, or keep it trapped until it makes its captor its victim.

I need to fight.

get up and dance around the room, my eyes are on you

woke up to pounding rain today, so i fell back asleep for a few hours. rain always puts me to sleep.
unless its in s.e. asia. whenever it rained there, i either watched it or stood out in it. warm rain was suchhh an oddity.

went to yoga at the gym. tevy and sophie know a girl that says its 'against her beliefs' to go to/teach gym yoga. i wonder what those beliefs are? i'm still in a post-yoga glow, even though it wasn't as great as some other classes i've done.

came home and COOKED. so today, my name is Chef Marilyn =) made mashed potatoes with kale

yumm potatoes and kale...

found recipe online

3 medium butterball potatoes , chopped with skin on (farmers market)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 bunch kale, large stems stripped and discarded, leaves chopped (farmers market)
1/3+ cup warm milk
freshly ground black pepper
some Parmesan

boiled potatoes about 20 min, till soft. in pan, sauteed kale with olive oil and garlic. mashed potatoes with milk when potatoes where cooked. mixed in lil salt and pepper. mixed kale and potatoes, drizzled with more olive oil, sprinkled with more pepper, added parmesan cheese

actually used wayyyy too much olive oil, according to the recipe, but it tasted guud. coulda used more garlic, more parmesan, maybe some chopped nuts or something crunchy.

Watchmen

It seems strange that there has not been more publicity on Watchmen. Maybe there has been, but.. I haven't watched TV in a year and haven't seen commercials, and most of the people i talk to don't really read comic books. Sometimes I feel like a hermit, trying to escape the culture that is built around me.

There's a chapter in Watchmen that describes Dr. Manhattan's view of space/time, it mimics Kurt Vonnegut's plot style in Slaughterhouse Five, a recent favorite of mine. Dr. Manhattan wonders if the universe is really just a watch without a watchmaker, alluding to and doubting the conclusion of Paley's Teleological argument. i dislike the teleological argument. i like determinism. although, now i've read somewhere that the findings of quantam mechanics make determinim impossible. i hope that someday i will get to understand why that is so. right now, i kindof like determinism.

the art in Watchmen is AMAZING. vannalyn, you need to read. before the movie comes out. move on it!

this is the best panel i could find online. read it in person, if you can. hit up a comic shop if you can, its worth the expense.

an itch to write

it is wednesday, february 11th, 2009. the spellcheck is telling me that i need to capitalize wednesday, february, and must put a space between the words spell, and check. i refuse!

its going to be valentines day. i've been feeling like writing warm, gushy things lately, but. maybe its the whole western 'dont show emotion in public'.

my myth prof (morse) today started talking about matriarchal societies today, and i said that my anthro prof (novotny) had said there where no matricarchal, only matrifocal. morse went... "ahhh, novotny..."

read a myth (which, by the way, is something that tries to explain how things came to be. i think. they can be true, or most likely untrue). anyways. read a myth from the Gnostics, which were kindof related to Christianity. it was sooooo difficult to understand, i'll have to attack it on a day i've slept and eaten well and with post its, pens, a notebook, and a couple of cups of coffee. It held that the God Christianity follows isn't really the most powerful god, but really a god that developed out of the shadow of a Goddess named Pistis-Sophia, who is light and wisdom, kindof. I think.

I am readin the comics Watchmen and The Last Man. graphic novels are a new sortof reading for me. art and text together. alot of the Watchmen's art is soooo brilliant. I want to make a huge print of a few frames and cover my walls with them.

I need to better my photo skills and drawing skills, so this isnt all text anymore. It hurts the eyes!