Grown Ups Don’t Tell

Words mama and daddy never say…

Little girl, no one cares what you get. Awards in a box. Degrees in a drawer. The boss man, the next door neighbor, the postman, ain’t no one going to care about what you’ve done, what you’ll do. The self is what’s on their mind. 

Miracles. God’s intervention. But no one likes to talk about the non-miracles. The times when God’s head seems turned away. Doesn’t it say just as much when a God chooses not to act? Inaction has powerful revelations, too. Ask the bodies of dead Jews, gypsies, gays, of women called witches and burned at stakes…Why didn’t God CHOOSE to act, to create a miracle when whole worlds seemed to cry out, to ask for God to come down from on high. And after all these years, the history, the atrocities, it isn’t enough to say God is a mysterious being, can’t go understanding the incomprehensible…then don’t be giving credit for the good if you can’t give credit for the bad.

Lives are webs woven of experience and lies, and to find anything of real truth is a difficult, but deeply cherished thing.

This is a world of the Lost. Life didn’t go their way. And they fill up on tv, internet, drugs, and drink to make it better. To feel a lot of nothin’. When you find solace in one of these things, don’t be fearful, find a new way, get out, run, curse what everyone else has become. 

These are things that go unsaid. Don’t know why. Had I known this a bit younger, how different things would have gone. No use in crying, it can’t be undone. Just keep an eye to the future, weave it how I see fit. And in my pocket the fading words of Isadora…”You were once wild here. Don’t Let them tame you.”

Krishnamurti: On Fear

While on holiday, I took along several books, but only managed to break open Krishnamurti’s book On Fear. The book is filled with excerpts from talks and Krishnamurti’s journal entries on the topic of fear. It’s a small read, but I still haven’t finished it. But I did want to post some excerpts that I found poignant. Likely there will be a near future post where I take what I’ve read and apply it to my own personal fears, breaking them down to notice the full extent of their nature, though really all fears are just fear regardless of the manifestations they undertake. 

 

Page 15

So there is in our life this constant state of comparison, competition, and the everlasting struggle to be somebody – or to be nobody, which is the same thing. This, I feel, is the root of all fear, because it breeds envy, jealousy, hatred. Where there is hatred there is obviously no love, and fear is generated more and more.

Page 40

But a word brings fear or pleasure into being through association and remembrance. We are slaves to words and to exasmine anything fully, to look, we must be free of the word. If I’m a Hindu and a Brahmin, a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican, or a Presbyterian, to look I have to be free of that word, with all its associations, and that’s extraordinarily difficult. The difficulty disappears when we are passionately inquiring, examining. 

Page 43

Fear ceases only when there is direct contact…To die means that you have to die every day, not just twenty years from now. You die every day to everything that you know, except technologically. You die to the image of your wife; you die every day to the pleasure you have, to the pains, the memories, the experiences. Otherwise you can’t come into contact with them. If you do die to them all, fear comes to an end and there is a renewal. 

Page 45

You know fear is also used to civilize man. Religions throughout the world have used fear as a means of controlling man. Have they not? They say that if you do not do certain things in this life, you will pay for it in the next life. Though all religions preach love, though they preach brotherhood, though they talk about the unity of man, they all subtly, or very brutally, grossly, maintain this sense of fear.

Page 47

Most of us are very conservative. You know what that word means, you know what it is to conserve? To hold, to guard. Most of us want to remain respectable and so we want to do the right thing, we want to follow the right conduct, which, if you go into it very deeply, you will see is an indication of fear. Why not make a mistake, why not find out? But the man who is afraid is always thinking ‘I must do the right thing, I must look respectable, I must not let the public think what I am or not’. Such a man is really, fundamentally, basically, afraid.

Page 48 

But the difficulty is: when there is fear, we do not create. A person who is afraid can never find truth or God. Behind all our worships, all our images, all our rituals, there is fear and, therefore, your gods are not gods, they are stones. 

Page 59

Fear and love cannot exist together. In this country there is no love. There is devotion, reverence, but no love. Devotion to your guru, to your gods, to your ideals, is self-worship. It is self-worship because you have created your guru, your ideals, your gods; you have created them, thought has created them, your grandfather has, and you accept this because it satisfies you, it gives you comfort. So what you are devoted to is yourself. Swallow that pill and live with it! 

Page 71

Thought is responsible for fear; also, thought is responsible for pleasure. One has had a happy experience; thought thinks about it and wants it perpetuated. When that is not possible there is a resistance, anger, despair, and fear. So thought is responsible for fear as well as pleasure, isn’t it? This is not a verbal conclusion; this is not a formula for avoiding fear. That is, where there is pleasure there is pain and fear perpetuated by thought; pleasure goes with pain, the two are indivisible. 

Page 76

What brings this division between you, your wife or your husband, and your children? Division is disorder. Muslim and Hindu, Jew and Arab, Communism, totalitarianism, and freedom. These opposites are the essence of disorder. So what brings about disorder in our relationships, with the most intimate and the not so intimate? Have you ever thought about it?

Page 84

Fear itself, not the various forms of fear. See how we break up fear. That’s part of our tradition, to bring about a fragmentation of fear, and therefore be concerned with only one type of fear. Not with the whole tree of fear, but a particular branch, or a particular leaf of it. The whole nature, the structure, the quality of fear – in observing that very closely, in the very watching there is the revelation of the causation – not you analyzing to find out the cause but the very watching showing the causation, which is time and thought. 

Page 85

So thought and time are the central factors of fear. Thought is not separate from time. They are one. These are the facts. This is the causation of fear. It is a fact – not an idea, not an abstraction – that thought and time is the cause of fear. It is singular. 

Page 86

The self-interest in our life is the cause of fear.

Reflections on “Conversations with Anti-Abortion Protesters”

I seem to possess an insatiable urge to know, to understand, to feel and yet go unnoticed if possible. I’ve been awestruck by the human condition. So often I find myself slightly removed, as if watching a Discovery documentary on the tele. I can’t help but notice their habits, choice of words, how one reacts in the context of the situation at hand. I’m eternally studying.

I sought them out without knowing what I’d unearth. Waking up late, I assumed it’d be trying to find protesters out in midmorning, but there were the Gardners on a congested street corner next to a Burger King and Carta bus stop. Kathy pushed baby dolls in a stroller, and John toted a laced bonnet plastic baby across his chest. At the sight of them, I felt compelled to know them. It didn’t matter that I’m Pro-Choice. There was no intent for debate or quarrel. Something in me wanted to be witness to their story, and if they had not wanted ears to listen, surely they wouldn’t be such public advocates for their beliefs. So I grabbed a small notepad, pen and my camera, and walked to Kathy to shake her hand. And so the hour began…

John is the fire, all consuming is his passion for this cause and his lord. Kathy the quiet woman of few words that concedes the spotlight for him. She’s heard these stories for years. Seen John trial and error for seventeen years. And he barely stops for breath as he speaks, trying to get out the stories and memories as if time is dying away. They stand in the heat, and drivers honk in concurrence to their signs or yell for choice. And now I’m seeing the documentary from another perspective, I have treaded on the ground of the other, and to strangers, I am automatically affiliated with the Gardners.

My plight, my purpose in this was to expand my horizon of knowledge. I no longer wanted to stop at the black and white line of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, two sides that speak through painted signs. I wanted to crack the visage of stereotypes and propaganda from all facets in this complex social issue and see those that hide beneath the umbrella terms of these stances.

What I found was a man of dedication and passion. He is no couch potato advocate, cursing at the socio-political world through the safety net of a house and a glass fronted box. Three days a week he is out, he is active, he hopes to change the minds of a world he thinks is lost, even if it’s one person at a time. I was more concerned of Kathy, who’s short history of active participation with her husband surprised me. I waited thirty minutes for John to rest his tongue so I could delve into her story. Where had she been for fifteen years while he attended protests, wrote letters, and stood on town corners? Why so invisible for so long? But I could get so little from her. All she spoke of was killing babies is wrong, and the pictures, and the women who changed their mind, her family. She told me that she has a niece who is addicted to drugs but decided abortion is wrong and had her children, though they no longer speak to a mother whose bond is best with alcohol and highs. It seems her mission stops at having the babies, but who helps raise those babies up to women and men? What resources are they promised and actually given? There is so much entailed with the idea of not just “giving” life but “sustaining” life, “nurturing” life.

I tried to play with that idea awhile, hoping she’d bite. Why no other avenues for this activism? But she only cited counseling onsite at clinics, hoping women changed their minds at the last minute. I thought, “What about pregnancy prevention? Free birth control for women?” It seemed the only prevention of importance was abortion prevention, as I found adoption is somewhat looked down upon as well, though still preferable to the alternative.

And the Feminist in me was wanting to shake her. I wanted her to think beyond John, beyond biblical. What do you, as Kathy Gardner, think of this situation? But asking a person to strip herself of the contexts that link to her identity and thus, analysis and understanding of the world, is somewhat impossible. She organizes her cosmos around her marriage and religion, and it is the functions of her life, it is the story she is a part of, and I wonder if she realizes she could write another tale to be protagonist of.

When my friends asked what I did with my Saturday, I got various reactions to sharing that I interviewed and photographed anti-abortion protesters. My Pro-Life friends seemed surprised, but I think more so in the fact that I didn’t debate especially since I’ve likely debated the issue with these friends. And I do not deny that I get quite impassioned…excessively analytical…irked…loud…sometimes resorting to name calling and hanging up the phone. Other friends have enjoyed being audience to me in full debate mode, never seeing me more on point and countering with well thought reasons. My Pro-Choice friends were equally surprised and more so perplexed. I did get some automatic detesting responses directed at the protesters, but like I’ve stated, the point was the go beyond the idea of them being the “other” and seeing who they are, putting names to the faces, hearing the lives of the people that hold the signs.

I will say that this is likely territory that will never be resolved though. There is so much diversity in both the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice worlds in regards to advocates and people. I barely dabbled into the schisms within Pro-Life activists and groups when Kathy discussed her disappointment with another group in Columbia. But what is likely the decisive factor is the perspective in which both sides come from. Pro-Lifers usually take their view based on religious beliefs and texts. Pro-Choicers, I think, attempt to remove religion as a “rational” framework to determine if things like abortion are right or wrong.

Personally, I believe all social issues are not conducive to a black or white mentality. There is too much room for the gray, too many variables that cannot be controlled. I made the decision to be Pro-Choice because I believe there should be options, especially to be more adaptable to the myriad of scenarios that can result in pregnancy. I think about what rights I feel I deserve, and why would I deprive anyone of those rights? The answer is, I wouldn’t. And I dislike that often it is misconstrued that Pro-Choice is Pro-Abortion because it’s not. Pro-Choice just has to heavily advocate for an option that Pro-Life denies, but in the end, each choice should be considered thoughtfully, and each choice deserves equal consideration. And each choice will lead to a series of consequences and emotions that often aren’t focused upon with birthing, adoption, and abortion. I fear that it is to often considered the end of the situation when the choice is made and executed, but in reality, the choice made is only the beginning to whatever that decision entails. And that is a part of the process that seems seriously neglected after all this time.

The Lotus Uprising…

This new blog is meant to be the unapologetic expressions of an artist, a young woman, a human being. Raw. Emotive. My Truth.

It is an uprising in thought. To awake minds. Foster a schism. Introspection on public display.

Here, I will lay it all down. To sleep. To grow restless. To birth inspiration. All in hopes that I am a lotus rising, through the muck, to find myself, to find what is purifying to my soul. A mere spotted reflection, but I’m polishing the mirror as we speak. Beneath the distortion is all I seek. To have the veil lifted. To SEE.

Darshan…