In You I See Me

Sit here and feel like shit. They say that the world doesn't revolve around you. But when you're sitting alone how can't it? The world revolves around you. It turns because of how you feel it feels because of how your mood turns even if only in your own eyes. Sitting alone you are the world to yourself and the world is you. Everything good and everything bad sits plainly beside you, floating in and out of thought. Regret conquers rejoice. Rejection conquers relief. Remorse conquers even the most stalwart and resolute of good intentions.

You sit and dwell and don't like what you see. The times you've bent and broken to life, to people, to your own doubts and fears. You don't like what you feel and you don't know how to fix it. You sit alone.

I've seen it, if once then a thousand times. You sit and dwell and the world closes in. No light in your day, no stars in your night, just grey. A great mass of swirling grey that pulls you and tugs you and fills you to the brim. It consumes you and turns you into something less than you. You are hopeless and forgotten and while your days do not end your part in them does. You walk but do not move. You see but do not look. You've become something you're not. Nothing.

Days pass, and nights pass too and nothingness fills you. Everything passes you by and everyone without even a glance. Your days are not numbered, not over, but they might as well be. The clutches of hopelessness and fear grasp about your neck, they sicken you with their touch, they pull you down into them regardless of how hard you fight. They are your end if only an end did come.

Days upend and nights fill with tumult. You don't know where you are. What you are. You don't know where to begin. You are not yourself. You don't know who stares back at you in your reflection. You are so fake you are an affront to fakeness. The world says be yourself and then tells you that what you are is evil or wrong. Be yourself so long as yourself is what we are.

But let me tell you this, a certainty that I know: That you are not alone. We are never alone. We are the same you and I. Two halves to a disjointed whole. I've seen what you've seen. I've been what you've been. I've felt what you have felt. I know what it's like to see the world through the lens of a camera, from the outside looking in, forever unable to impact it or to immerse in it. Know that it passes. Know that you will, if you try, be the person, the exact person, that you so want to be.

The road is difficult and many fall along the way. But together, all of us, we can make it. Together we will be free.

It's Been A While

I know it's been a while since my last post. This semester has turned out to be busier than I had anticipated. Much busier. For instance. I teach at a local high school from 7:30am to 2:00pm 5 days a week. Then, on Mondays I go to work from 4:30pm until 10:30pm. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a class at 2:30pm and on Thursdays I have a second class at 5:00pm. I tutor at another local high school on Wednesdays at 2:40pm until 5:30pm! On Fridays I work the same as Mondays. On Saturdays I work then too. Sunday I have to do everything that isn't done for the next week, including all work for my two classes and all work corrected or created for teaching. Fun huh.

Beats the hell out of me when I'm going get to have any fun again. Probably never. At least that's how it looks now. If I even get dinner with friends anymore, that's pushing it. I'm the bad guy because of it too. I'm the bad guy because I have so much to do that I'm being apparently very anti-social and very rushed. I'm the bad guy because I'm focused on helping my students pass instead of getting out early. Clearly I'm the bad guy.

So it's not my idea of a great time or whatever, but it isn't my fault either. I can only do my best. And sometimes, unfortunately, it isn't good enough for some. I know that I have to find a way to smooth out the wrinkles of this semester. It's tricky, but I am trying.

Clarence Thomas is Awake at the Inauguration

From this photo...

A New Year

So we have the beginning of a new year, for many a new semester, and a new president. This is a time of new opportunities to get things right a second time around and get new things right the first time. We have the ability to right our wrongs and right others wrongs.

What does this mean to us personally? It's simple, albeit something that will leave a bad taste in many people's mouths. We have to forgive. We have to forgive every person who voted for BushCo once or twice, or even three times if they did so do that this time. We have to forgive everyone who voted for McCain. We have to forgive everyone who didn't want Obama to be the Democratic nominee. This is a time for unity.

We must repair the fractures that exist in American society. Take lessons from the way that the Bush Administration (and others past) have run this nation on the basis of partisan politics and partisan thinking and actions. We have to find the strength to let go the feelings of hate or disgust we may still harbor for anyone in this nation no matter their background and no matter the reason why we don't like them in the first place.

One of the hardest things a person has to do in life is to look into the eyes of a person who doesn't think that you have a right to your opinion or your beliefs or your life and tell them that you will respect their right to think that. It is their right. Every bigot and every misguided person (in yours and my opinion) have the right to believe everything and anything that they want. However, the line is drawn when they try to make others believe it and or try to use these beliefs to affect policy which discriminates against us.

I repeat: This is a nation which enjoys the freedoms of speech and personal thought. In this nation you're allowed to be gay without government interference and you're allowed to be a homophobe. You are allowed to be racist and you're allowed to be Black or foreign or whatever. You're allowed to believe or not believe any religion of your choice. Freedom to exists in both instances and in both directions. Freedom is not a matter of right and wrong. It's a matter of learning tolerance.

Further, learning to accept that people don't like you and don't like your way of life or your opinions and beliefs will garner us all equality. Equality isn't about forcing everyone to believe everything that you do. It's about allowed people to freely think what they want.

Once we are able as a society to feel comfortable in the fact that we will not be shunned for our beliefs or actions, we will not feel as if we have to fight for them. We won't need to lash out at those who have different beliefs and we won't need to shun them in return.

If all homophobes or racists or whatever need to not be that anymore is knowledge about the groups that they are against, then clearly we must start with allowing them to hold their beliefs. It's a compromise. They believe what they want and we believe what we want and no one will judge each other for their beliefs or opinions. Period. Remove the fear of the other group and we remove one of the roadblocks to the knowledge that they need in many people's opinions to accept gays or Blacks or whatever. When groups do not feel vicitimized they are more willing to listen and more willing to accept the views of others.

So America, what we have to do is forgive. Forgive everyone for everything that they have done. We need to start anew with a mutual agreement for civility. What will come of this, I do not know. But I do know that with civility we will be happy, all of us, even if we don't all agree.