we are alone in our conciousness.


feeble attempts at making connections go
unfulfilled;

we seek to remedy the inherent
lonlieness that accompanies the
impermanence and fragility that is
the human condition.




or, at least, to ignore it.

stuck. sticking to sensibility separated from "happy." [whatever that is.] stuck, sticking to pragmatism and other big words relying on false gods and oppressive expectations following through with plans unsuitable. stuck, sticking to need-to-pay-the-rent-with-the-job-i-hate can't-afford-to-go-back-to-school, i-need-this-to-keep-my-insurance, will-never-feel-whole-or-content. stuck, sticking to nothing. moving nowhere. experiencing nothing. stuck with a college degree that got me nothing. a job that gets us nothing. a city that offers us nothing. stuck, let go of dreams when they told me i should. let go of plans when they told me i should. let go of me when they told me i should. wholly fully truly awesomely stuck.

society

an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members.

those with whom one has companionship, companionship; company.

benevolent

characterized by or expressing goodwill or kindly feelings.

desiring to help others; charitable.

intended for benefits rather than profit.

health

the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor.

soundness of body or mind; freedom from disease or ailment.

care

protection; charge.

to watch over; be responsible for.

to act on; deal with; attend to.

society.

more

foer. just because.

"...the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and the burning buildings,


it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, i don't know, but it's so painful to think,


and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking bring me? i think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

from el&ic, page 17

"Even though I'm not anymore, I used to be an atheist, which means I didn't believe in things that couldn't be observed...It's not that I believe in things that can't be observed now, because I don't. It's that I believe things are extremely complicated."



"I turned on the radio and found a station playing 'Hey Jude.' It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how."


--foer

***

...

direction is arbitrary,
unless you're talking time.
traveling forward is the only true endeavor
that anyone can claim to be legitimate.
because rotating on a sphere in one of an
endless possibilities of galaxies
throws off one's sense of direction.
and when traveling in an eliptical pattern,
every direction is the same as every other direction.
clockwise verses counterclockwise,
north verses south,
east, west, up, down,
it's all relative,
none of it's relative,
and we have no clue as to who we are
or where we are
or what we are.

i read it somewhere...1.26 seconds. so what happens to those seconds? will we ever make up for them? will birthday minutes change?


will the end of the world come 1.26 seconds later than planned?
and what of the beginning of the next?

crazed.

nostalgia. longing for the past. comes from greek. returning home. pain, ache. idealistic. liberation. apparently, the act or fact of gaining equal rights or full social or economic opportunities for a particular group.


insane. not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged.
artist. not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged.
insane. characteristic of that which is not artistic.
artist.


health. the overall condition of an organism at a given time. soundness, especially of body or mind. freedom from disease or abnormality. condition of optimal wellness. community. similar character; agreement; identity. sharing, participation, and fellowship.



life. the general or universal condition of human existence; a particular aspect of existence.


existence. continued state of being.


liberty. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

happiness. contentment. contentment. satisfaction; ease of mind. satisfaction. fulfillment; gratification. the state of being satisfied; contentment.

what chance have i of a miracle?

i only want one day
one lousy day, that's all
of every day that's been before
since time began

i know my prayer's in vain,
but for a second i'll pretend
that i could start today again.

today in american politics.

amendments were made. civil liberties were depleted.

in the new bill on credit card regulations, oklahoma senator coburn's provision to lift ninety-four year old ban on ability to bring loaded firearms into national parks has been adapted.

bill to allow loaded guns into national parks. on credit card bill. true story.



and, not to be outdone,
virginia lawmakers passed new legislation that will allow employers to discriminate against employees and job applicants who are LGBT because of their LGBT status.

passed new legislation to remove the right to equal opportunity that all virginians had yesterday...because apparently current virginia legislators aren't big on civil rights.

my favorite.

they tali bans
and censor art for sport. they
snuck into our law schools and
hijacked the supreme court. their
money makes missiles, their labs created anthrax
osama was their pawn, and
evil is their axis, they're
skilled at killing innocent civilians,
because they've had lotsof practice from
hanoi to nicaragua from
vieqes to damascus, for
agua and oil,
gold, zinc and soil
they spread their views on cable news,


they call each other
george and dick and rudy
so next time you see a terrorist,
kick 'em in his booty.
it's not only your right as an american,
it's your patriotic duty.

brilliance.

"real eyes realize real lies"

why?

because i have an affinity for quotations, especially particularly good ones, and this book is so incredibly quotable.

from EL&IC by J.S. Foer.

"we could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened."


"just because you're an athiest, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are."


"in the end, everyone loses everyone. there was no invention to get around that one. and so i felt, that night, like turtle that everything else in the universe is on top of."


"humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with the lips. so in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are."


"the books had been buried, so i hid this time behind a group of trees, i imagined their roots wrapped around the books, pulling nourishment from the pages, i imagined rings of letters in their trunks..."

here's to a grain of sand.

"What would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a grain of sand and moved it on milimeter?"

I said "I'd probably die of dehydration."

He said "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?"

I said, "I dunno, what?"

He said, "Think about it."

I thought about it. "I guess I would have moved a grain of sand."

"Which would mean?"

"Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?"

"Which would mean you changed the Sahara."

"So?"

"So? So the Sahara is a vast desert that's existed for millions of years and you changed it."

"That's true!" I said, sitting up. "I changed the Sahara!"

"Which means?"

...

"I changed the course of human history."

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
page 86, J.S. Foer

i'm making lilith 2010 a priority.

you strut your rasta wear
and your suicide poem,
and a cross from a faith that died
before jesus came.

you're building a mystery.

i don't understand why

no one seems to want to ask
"how the fuck did we let this happen?"

we should be asking this of ourselves every day.

as we focus all of our attention for a few minutes on Haiti, before the next disaster strikes, we are apparently blind to the fact that we've been wholly ignorant to the state of a nation so close to our shores. ignorant to the fact that it represents a tiny per cent of the rest of the developing world that we've steeped in poverty as a result of our seemingly infinite greed.

climate change is undoubtedly the cause for the number of natural disasters that have hit world-wide over the last decade, disasters that are off the charts in comparison to those prior in our recorded meterological history which, even before the new millenium, were seen to be of increasing intensity.


and apparently no one saw this coming.
and apparently no one will ask "why?"

still, i don't quite understand
what's so threatening.
what it is that's so easily identified,
some
red flag i'm ignorant to.
because all i know is what i know
and
that's not much of anything at all.


we are buried

in a time when at once
our television sets blare bad news
and terror is a word in the vocabularies of our children
with eyes wide open to a world that is trapped in a
haze of chaos.

and i've got a room full of memories
i'd pay to forget.
walls built of regret. and guilt.
doors with hinges that refuse to give
with handles that stick
rooms filled with misunderstandings.

so it pays to have a perspective you haven't bought.
and i'm short on insight
but i'm pushing for change
while i push through walls of
quiet.

because they've got nothing to say to me.

earthquake in Haiti

an earthquake moved through Haiti tonight, just before 5 PM eastern standard time, about 10 miles west of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, one of the poorest cities in the world.

the people who are without power, hospitals, ambulences, rescue teams, food, water, shelter, and even communication need help ASAP.


TEXT "Haiti" to (90999) for an automatic $10 donation. Keep Port-au-Prince and the Haitian people in thoughts and hearts tonight...



how to help:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34834553/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show

no on H8

the trial began today.

fools, said i, you do not know.
silence like a cancer grows.
hear my words that i might teach you.
take my arms that i might reach you.

but my words, like silent raindrops, fell.
and echoed in the wells of silence.

and america doesn't have to answer to anybody.
unless or until
god (or the space aliens)
come to kick our ass.

the one and only brett dennen.

NYS Senate Votes No.

Today I watched as the New York State Senate debated live, loudly, and in color, whether a tax paying, working, loving couple has the right to marry. Regardless of my gender or orientation, or that of anyone else's, my rights as a New Yorker were up for a vote. All of ours were. Those of our friends and of our loved ones. 62 people stood up and decided for us, debating a bill that is concerned with a basic right that should never have been up for a vote in the first place.

The rights of the minority should never be subject to a vote cast by the majority.

And I'm not even a real believer in "till death do us part," but I cannot help but feel ashamed to be represented by some of the women and men who serve me as a citizen of America and a resident of New York.

Reading the results of a vote is far different from watching as politicians debate matters of their own personal moralities with disregard for the civil rights, and lack thereof, of the constituency that put them into office. I was deeply saddened each time I heard "No" as the roll was called.

Was this matter not supposed to have been voted upon back in June, before the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall, before the apparently threatening novel concept of almost-equality caused two of the state's democrats to defect and throw the senate into a frenzy, postponing the vote for six months?

Was the United States of America not an original signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights more than sixty years ago? The same document which reads:

Article 16:
• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.


Article 30
• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

I wonder especially why New York of all places? Manhattan Island holds in its herstory the Suffragettes' movement of the early twentieth century. Its streets embedded with the sights and sounds of the Stonewall Riots that launched the gay liberation movement in 1969 into a greater national conciousness. Home to Greenwich, the East Village, Alphabet City. Home to artists and misfits who sought out those neighborhoods.

The state whose borders contain one of the foremost LGBTQ friendly cities in the world is also home to a chamber of senators whom, in the year 2009, listened to the words

"Marriage Equality Act Fails 24-38."

Where did our left leaning majority go? Where did the rights of the people go? If not our state senators, will we ever see Obama make good on his promise to repeal DADT and DOMA? Or are we perpetually too focused on the war on terrorism, that we should never have started fighting, and the economy that spiraled out of control while in the hands of greedy aristocratic small-minded white men who allowed capitalism to run rampant, to even blink at human rights issues?


Why in 2009 does any legislator believe that certain constituents do not deserve the same exact rights as any other person?

We are all lessened when any one of us is denied but one fundamental right. Separate is not equal.

you don't know me at all.

You could have just propped me up on the table like a mannequin
Or a cardboard stand-up and paint me
Any face that you wanted me
To be seen.



What I'm trying to tell you
It's not gonna come out like I wanna say it cause I know you'll only change it.

"ashes" by andrea gibson