Well, It's Cryin' Time Again

This is just the worst.



So, I get a call today from the monsters at ConServe - you know, the lovely people who were advised I was suicidal and clinically depressed and went forward with my garnishment, after they "lost" my appeal information twice.

I haven't spoken to them to see what they want yet, though I've never known creditors to call for a kind or decent reason, especially when the government gives them close to carte blanche to collect. I woke up too late to reach them.






That's not the real problem. If they're taking even more, I simply won't be able to make it, and that's the facts of the matter and done deal. It's over. No crying about that because the decision is made.

But no decision's made yet! I don't even know what they want and I can't stop projecting how horrible the future's going to be - how very final. I cannot bring myself to believe anything will work out. I know I'm not destitute, and I'm grateful for that, but . . . I don't know. You've all listened to me for so long, and it's all getting us nowhere. No matter how much I try, I can't seem to get past this petty, self-centered, ridiculous fear. I know you all are tired of me, and that's part of it, too. You see, a lot of this is because I am alone - totally alone. Whether my fault, God's fault, nobody's fault I am alone, and push away more. Example, here are people all around me with real problems, demonstrable problems - Prop8 upheld, a brother diagnosed with Alzheimer's, lack of a job, lack of job prospects, children ill, spouses ill, parents ill and I'm wound up in this and feel such guilt and shame for it.


My problems are laughable, nothing. Even if they take more, will it really be a PROBLEM - or just my problem . . . who cares? This is silly for me to focus on this.


But I'm all I've got.


Even James - I should feel so happy for him - AND I DO - that he has a new job that makes him happy, challenges him, gives him prospects - and, naturally, takes up a great deal of time. I can't even find it in me to tell him, even all of you, how alone and afraid I've felt all my life and even moreso now. It's not fair of me. He has this job which is exactly right for him and needs his attention and skill to become permanent, and our schedules conflict and there's 180-something miles between us. I want this job to work out for him. Everyone, congratulate him and pray for the job to work out.


But, still, I'm wanting to whine to someone about my problems. I am alone. It's what I am. It's all I'm good at, and my selfishness and inability to see anything good in my own life - to focus on the Now, as Tolle would say, rather than sick fantasies of the future - mean that if I am forgotten and with good reason. I'm not weak, but how much more am I expected to bear, even of my own imagining? I'm not feeling suicidal, though I know all this is jumbled and strange, but it's always there for me - that the end is about to be reached, my load limit. The world doesn't care, our culture doesn't care, and I'm no good at forming relationships - I'm too self-centered and gloomy. I've had to come to the profound realization that, not only do I not trust God, as I said in a post below, but I don't even trust myself and my own abilities or even intentions and thoughts towards myself! Hell, DietofWorms was right - I am complete and total crazy, Whitaker Walt! What's crazier than living in Hell while everyone else seems so balanced and sane?

This is more like a journal entry, working out where I'm going, or what I'm thinking.


And, what I'm thinking is this man is an island because he's not equipped for anything else, and it's a mighty small island, with a mighty big volcano about to blow. It's not just the debt - though that is a real, material threat to survival - but so much else that I can't even express, because I feel like I don't even have a right to!

After Math

It's irrational to rail over what is. The Supreme Court in California bowed to the climate of hate around them; this cannot be changed.

Knowing where you are is the way to map where you wish to be. Simple math: 2+2=4.

Where we are is ignorance and hate - though our opponents deny both the hate and its true face, Fear - and where we wish to be -- I hope I speak for all of us -- is community and understanding, cooperation, toleration and growth.

Now, we plot the course.

Justice Has Failed

At least, in California.

I'm trying to say little, now, as my rage and despair are carrying me into black lands of hate. At the moment, for instance, I can see us becoming a Third World nation, guided by ignorance, prejudice and savagery. At the moment, I believe our only choice may be to take our rights - that democratic systems, being by definition guided by the lowest common denominator, are a failure. At the moment, I want them to hurt, to cry, to weep as Rachel for her lost children.

And all of that is futile, pointless. It may be, as I suspect even in the best of times, that the majority can never be relied upon to make the right decision - they must often be forced to better themselves. However, undertaken in revenge, it is valueless. It may be that religion must be removed from any consideration in public decision making, as, it seems now, all religions create nothing but mindless aggression and self-divestment of responsibility for doing harm to others. But, to throw the baby of spirituality out with the filthy bath-water of sectarianism is the mistake of Marxism.

I don't wish to hear how they are human, too, and we have to love them. Keep that to yourself. I will come through my anger and don't need to be patronized. And, please, don't give me any rationalizations if you are one of them for supporting this brutality - I don't buy it and your real self doesn't, either.

There's a Reason Many of Us Have to Keep Away From the Everyday Realities

Because we begin to get depressed and angry about the standard-operating-procedure of humanity and what it's doing to everything, including humanity.

I've finally figured out, I think, that it isn't that I don't want to be human - just that I want to be fully human. That is what allows me to become so absolutely furious when I hear "Well, so-and-so's only human." Yes, they are. That's why they should have done better.

When we act from emotions, rather than using our emotions as tools, we fall below humanity. Fully human means that we recognize that our emotions are there, that they are necessary and that it is vital to deal with them. In reality, we fall below humanity because we allow our emotions to sweep us into reaction. Even when we calmly and rationally explain why we did something, we are most often simply using our incredible minds to justify emotional, kneejerk response. We liberals are particularly given to this.

We fall below human because we fail to recognize and study the only creature that can possibly make a true difference in our existence - each individual's self. We open our mouths and put them in drive, pretending we're trying to know one another, and, in truth, we only want to avoid knowing ourselves. Religion is useless, philosophy is useless, science is useless, because these require human operators to be useful - being fully human is more than being a highly-physically-evolved primate. Without self-awareness-and-reflection all our elaborate structures are doomed to fail, because each of us is trapped in our personas - our heads - without bothering to become aware and compensate for that. We are taught that emotions are our friends, our guides, to express ourselves, with no deeper understanding of what that means or what responsibility comes with it. We use psychology as a weapon against others, because, after all "I'm okay!" But, you're not. You're not even fully human yet. You are not awake.

The world, civilization, humanity is rapidly unravelling. We must learn to be good humans before we can learn to be good Christians or Muslims or Jews or Americans or . . . anything else.

Watching Star Trek and the ACC-14 Brought This Back to Mind

Godfearing

Every now and then, if you are sincere in sitting - in Zen - you have a strong, disturbing, even disappointing realization.

I had noticed that my breathing seemed to be shallow, as if I were actually constricting it, and many thoughts drifted by as a result. Unless you have had the experience, you know I can't explain a "process" by which it happened, but a realization hit me:

I was constricting my breath to "get small;" to be unnoticed. What I didn't want to be noticed by was the Universe . . . by God. My whole life has been lived like some rodent, scurrying, asking for nothing, never putting forward, so that I wouldn't be noticed.

Why?

Because (and this was the real shocker), I'm afraid of God. Not awe, or wonder, but distrust. You don't say or think those things you're afraid of, because He will hear you and know what to do to hurt you. You don't enjoy things, because then He will take them away in spite. He'll look after you, preserve you, keep you going, but only for His amusement, and, when He is no longer entertained, you die. His chief form of entertainment during that life seems to be designing new "crosses" for His creatures. None of this, understand, is my conscious understanding of God - if it were, this would've been no shock - but the gut reaction, the deep down phobia of a cruel, selfish, terrible, cold Universal Mind that takes the little we have. In my subconscious, God is a hateful child standing over an antbed with a magnifying glass, and it's mighty sunny out. So, my insides tell me, just stay quiet; don't let the Universe remember you're there.

This is not the intellectual image of God I have - nor even the considered experience. I've lost much, yes, have little, yes, but it is what it is. In most of my "bad" experiences, my "bad" traits I've managed to find lessons, strength, or, at least, endurance.

Is this how others consciously see God? Just knowing it as an instinctual worldview is horrid enough!

More Actually Important Stuff

Colin Coward is threatened - like schoolyard-bully-fists-clenched threatened - by one of these "holy" bishops the Reasserters yammer about. Note the particularly "holy" moment when the bishop responds to Colin's question about a possible cause of his wrath. Perhaps it was just one of those "cultural" things that Colin didn't understand . . . oh, wait . . .

Song In My Heart says it waaaay classier than I did! Seriously, it inspires me to be less vulgar. It's fuckin' exquisite.

There are many and many more to be prayed for. No, James, it's not bargaining, it's making a legitimate demand.

I don't mention Roseann, because I assume we're all still praying for her. Yes? YES?!

Pray, too, for the Reasserters who are behind all this misery and distress in the AC, and for Rowan Williams - mainly that they'll go away, or we'll go them away, and they'll find better places to serve God in what way they can.

ACC, Covenants, Schisms, and Other Miscellania

Here's the deal: you know what my communion is? St. Pat's and it's parishioners, my friends, my family, you guys. The rest of the world, that's their business. I'm not going to help someone or not help someone, care or not care, donate, withold, win, lose or draw because someone is in my group or not in my group, a "communion." If that is what we need for church then Christianity has failed utterly. Close up shop, liquidate the assets, turn out the lights, it is over. I'm sick of it. I'm not going to be a good "christian" (trademark, patent-pending) I'm going to be the being I was made to be to the world. The people who help me, I'll "hold" with bonds of love and I don't need a name ending in "Global, Inc." for them.

Here is the lowdown, the final analysis on all the important points in this Anglican Communion as I see it:

ALL THE VARIOUS FACTIONS OF THEOLOGICAL DISSENT -
Fuck 'em.

THE ACC AND ITS SPIRITUAL/ECCLESIAL AUTHORITY -
Fuck 'em . . .

THE RC (how appropriate) COVENANT -
. . and the covenant they rode in on.

Now, LET'S SPEAK OF THE TRULY IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS OF THE PAST WEEK:

James and I went to see Star Trek, and I can't recommend it highly enough! Yes, there's lots of action, but the (very few) complaints I've seen that the movie abandons all philosophical and scientific themes and explorations is simply not true; rather, it expects you to infer and work out for yourself the philosophical/technological ramifications of the storyline - in short, these people seem to be complaining the film isn't pedantic enough. Perhaps I really am that brilliant that I picked up on stuff that others need to be told, but I don't think so, and the film ended with James and I sitting up for the next three hours spurred to discuss philosophy, ethics, morality, love, hate, death, the nature of the soul, scientific discovery and its present horizons, speculative fiction and human relationships in general.

I don't think we said more than two sentences about how cool an action scene was, though we both liked Sulu's katana and the extra-atmospheric "skyjump."

On other fronts, I'm beginning to realize the valuable gift of this crush on an actor and the general realization of my need for a partner/lover. Detachment has two sides, the attempt to become like God, and the attempt to become God. My need reminds me, and keeps me from the trap of Pride in which I would attempt to become God. I now include Jackson Rathbone in my prayers, as I am grateful for that grounding - that humanizing.

My azaleas have been a glorious riot of blossom this year. Katzie was ill for a few days from eating some weed in the yard (I have more weeds than actual grass, but it's like a wild garden until early summer). I've turned the compost heap and it's good compost, full of earthworms. My brother is doing much, much better. The weather is become hotter and dryer, but not yet the bitter stickiness of summer - still that dry, silent breathing that is somehow meditative, even when the sweat is dripping under arms and down backs.

And, all that is the important things, the community. The rest is just government.

If We Just Want Abuse, It's Cheaper to Join an S&M Club

I totally concur with the moratoria proposed by Lionel Deimel.


Look, this is enough. We're financing abuse, not just of us, but of those in the very same provinces we claim to be staying in this to try to help. We're financing and empowering their lives being made worse.

There's nothing wrong with pulling the purse-string card. If it doesn't work, well then, admire their fortitude and dedication and move on. We need to override our bishops if they won't withdraw from the Anglican Communion's blatant hypocrisy and totalitarianism - especially in the person of Rowan Williams, who will make himself a Canterbury Pope if we give an inch on this and destroy Anglicanism for good - just call me Cassandra, because everyone still believes he's an honorable, if misguided man, and no one believes me that I can see quite clearly the deceit and selfish ambition in him.

If we won't make a clean break from this, the moratoria - imposed from our side - are the best option. The Anglican Communion's already dead.

This is why I say emotions are bad. I no longer see Christ in Christianity. The Reasserters are quite right: most of Christianity opposes TEC and it's liberality. I follow Jesus, and I just don't know who it is Christians follow anymore. Yet, I can't cut myself off from church, because I need those folks. I can't walk away because of my attachment, so, I stay and give at least tacit assent to wrongdoing in the AC by the ACC.

Passing, Passing, Rage Subsiding . . .

It seems that my Spring Pon farr is finally passing. The all-consuming drive to be with someone is fading - for now. Perhaps I do deserve that happiness, and I would accept it if it just falls into my lap, but if I involve myself, it's an impossibility, so to desire is more painful.

It's fading, and that's good. Emotions are bad.

Still, I find Jackson Rathbone beautiful and fascinating, so I'll allow myself another pic:

I like this one because it shows his little "I'm lost . . . " tattoo right. above. the. beltline.

A to the Q

The wonderful Elizabeth Kaeton asks, "Do these men have no shame?"

No, Elizabeth, they don't. It's the snake-oil that they hope to sell that'll keep 'em soft, plump, and oily.

As for the Covenant - and the ABC that goes with it, the conservative provinces that nobody could be brothers to, and the Reasserters we should've put out of the church through the process of excommunication - I think I heard it best expressed on Commons Question and Answer during the John Major regime:

"THROW THE BUGGER OUT!!!"

Dixit Insipiens

Joe the Plumber takes time to make his views known to the world.

Is this John McCain's new running mate? YOU BETCHA!

In part, this paragon of democracy and the results of an underfunded educational system resulting from such democracy says:

People don't understand the dictionary—it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we're supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we're supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they're people, and they're going to do their thing.

Isn't it a wonderful country in which a moron like this can lecture the rest of us on using a dictionary?

BEFORE YOU SAY "NO" TO ABORTION,

THINK OF THE FUTURE CONSEQUENCES

White Smoke!

Our Senior Warden has announced that we have a new rector, who will begin at St. Pat's in August.

He is Fr. Jay Weldon, and is currently at Grace Church in New York. One of his sermons is found on the site, as well. He impressed the search committee, impressed the congregation with his liturgical and homiletic style, and even managed to hold his own in an email exchange with me. We're looking forward to he and his wife, Alison, becoming part of our family, and their youth will be a benefit to a church just taking a breather in a brand new phase of its life.

Explanation for the Regionally-Impaired

A lot of folks seem to be confused by my bouts of extreme melancholy, tortured self-doubt, and general depression.

Part of this confusion seems to arise from the idea that that's "not what Southerners are like." I understand this mistake. Television and a grinning baboon idiot of a president from Texas - which is southern only by virtue of its many transplants from the South - have planted a vision of the Southerner which shows us as determinedly cheerful, obliviously good-natured, and, by-and-large, too stupid to know how unhappy we should be. Even young Southerners believe that is the "truth" of Southerners.

This is undoubtedly true of some - the, let's call them, Sunshine-belt Southerners. These are those found in "Steel Magnolias" and "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Tobacco Road," etc. That's a valid image, but it neglects an equally-strong strain in Southerners.

This other strain is "Southern Gothic" - that's what I am. Don't forget, Poe was a Southerner, Faulkner was a Southerner. Anne Rice gave us a Southern vampire. We come from dysfunctionally-functional families with many secrets (even from ourselves) and a grim belief that happiness, especially in love, is not for us - we are not worthy of someone who would be worthy of our expectations. We are - to put it bluntly - mind-bogglingly fucked up from an early age - sometimes aided by mild inbreeding - and either become mad or dead if we are, as I am, deeply introspective. We go with our strength, the only thing we know how to do, and that is be either unhappy, or determinedly disconnected from our unhappiness to entertain others.

Song

There are a few reasons for posting this.

First, it is beautiful and one of my favorite pieces, Eastern or Western.
Second, it in no way reminds me of a pitiful, disgusting need to be held, loved, or cherished by another individual, or of a particular individual. It is beautifully serene and detached.