Not anything to show for it

When is it time to stop chasing your dreams? Over the many years, my dreams have changed, but none the less I kept pursuing some dream. Now, it seems the more I pursue, the farther they move away from me. I did manage to finish college. Its amazing that is means nothing to me now, after fits and starts it took me 43 years to do it. I thought it would mean something to my employer, but once you have a label it’s too hard to get rid of it. So I have been looking elsewhere for some company to recognize my talents. Over a year now, and nothing. Is it time to stop looking? I need to have something more challenging. Other dreams I want to pursue are dependant on being able to make more money. To join a dojo and gym; buy an oboe and take lessons again; and be able to visit the major waterfalls in the world: any one of these dreams is out of my reach.

My will is winding down; I am losing the desire to keep up the pursuit. My body keeps zigzagging through the side effects of medication, so I alternately feel good or bad. I want to think of retirement as my new dream: but that would be living at a means that says; I have worked all my life with nothing to show for it.

a memory

I cried the last time
Buried you deep in my heart
So deep I can’t cry

Is this a thought experiment?

I have only been reading only a few blogs for about a year and a half. Unfortunately I had not gleaned the unspoken etiquette and the responsibility I have to the blogger. I had been engaged under another pseudonym, in a discussion with Jeremy Pierce of Parableman in response to a comment he had made at another blog. I was disturbed by his views that I linked to Jeremy Pierce’s post in my comments at Figleaf’s Real Adult Sex. I thought that it might be important to look at his view within the context of the post. I was sarcastic in my comment. I was surprise that he would respond at this blog, and I responded in turn. I realized that something wasn’t exactly right. I had not thought to post here and redirect the response here. Since I still have something to say, I’m better late than never.


At Parableman, Jeremy Pierce has written an essay “Degrees of Slavery and Degrees of Rape.” I have issues with both, but my current gripe is about “degrees of rape.” This is partially how he comes to that point.

If rape, then, depends on consent, then whether something is rape will depend on something that may be a matter of degree. Rape, then, is like what I'm saying is true of slavery. A forced sexual act is more strongly rape than a merely psychologically coerced sexual act, and psychological coercion itself is a matter of degree. If there's any degree of coercion, isn't it that same degree of rape? It should be if rape is coerced sex, and that's how most people define it, at least those who accept date rape as rape.

When a rape occurs, usually the people involved are the only ones at the scene, very seldom any witnesses. So to determine if there is a rape, along with the forensic evidence, if any, the only other thing is to prove who is telling the truth. A woman may lie and say a rape occurred, when it hasn’t. I think these are the instances in which Pierce’s degrees fall. I do think a woman knows when she consents. I don’t think it’s a half ass thought. It may happen in an instant when she changes her mind. I believe the body changes and its responses are not hidden. I can not believe that verbal and visual cues are missed, unless one is under the influence. We do not have to determine what monolog is in her mind at the time. It is not the responsibility for the man to determine this either. At that moment the woman says no, the man should be able to control his libido and back off. I believe both of them know when he becomes coercive.

I not sure what he meant in this opening statement. It sounds like a thought experiment.

The argument is intended to undermine my view by showing that it leads to the ridiculous conclusion that murder, rape, and genocide happen all the time and aren't really wrong when they do except in the extreme cases that we usually call murder, rape and genocide.

After reading the argument I feel it is Pierces’ belief. He continues to defend this argument. What else am I to believe after reading this?

So I think (3) is the correct view about degrees of rape. It is exactly like slavery in its admitting of degrees (in two different ways!), but that's not problematic. It's in fact what we should expect. So why is it an argument against my claim that it entails the view that rape comes in degrees? It does come in degrees. I'm biting a bullet on this, but I don't think it's a very hard or fast bullet to bite. It's just sort of hanging out in the air waiting for me to gobble it up, and it's made out of chocolate.

Read the entire essay

My feeling about this argument is that this definition of rape seems to undermine the current definition of rape. It’s personal to me. I have had experiences that at this time I am not able to discuss in public. I also remember when all one had to do was to bring several other males to court and say they all had sex with this female. I am not using men and women because this happen to a thirteen year old girl I knew. The only time I knew of statutory rape sticking was when the girl’s father was a policeman. In order to prosecute, quite often the woman had to be near death. I fear the idea “degrees of rape,” becoming a normative attitude. I believe it would harm more women and relieve society of its responsibility to teach children the responsibilities of being sexual persons.

Options?

In the sixties where every assumption was questioned, friends and I would discuss the morality of suicide and the conditions where this act would be morally right. At that time being a young person and lived often in angst, I felt that if you felt there was no purpose to living was reason enough to kill your self. My belief has somewhat changed, but I accept that there are some conditions suicide can be justified; like terminal illness or this case I read about. In India an elderly woman of 90 jumped into her husband’s funeral pyre. This is now an outlawed Hindu tradition called Sati. At one time it was expected that a wife follow her husband in death. I feel if there is a coercive element in this story, then her doing this would be wrong. At ninety I think you understand when your time in this world need not go on. When perhaps the last friend, your husband, has left and what promise is there for the future. You have given all to your children and there is not anything more that you feel you can contribute to your community, why wouldn’t suicide be an option for you?

Being

The self, what brings it into consciousness? There are times that I wonder if every thing out side of my mind is a projection. There is no real universe. I only think that others are experiencing that same thing. They too are part of an illusion. Could I be the lone entity? Could my mind conjure all thought and create an entire universe? I only see the edges. I would not have to possess all knowledge.

Eros

That binding love, carnal love, of the senses; that moves through your stomach and makes you shiver at the thought of him. No other love is a substitute. At times this love has no significance, and at other times, I have been overcome with sickness. You can do without, I’m told, but I wonder if those who say so, have in their character to need as much as I do.

Origins

We all like to reinvent our history. We embellish, omit, and tell little lies to put forward our image. Our face to the world, which we think people will like. We also like to think better of ourselves and sometimes we begin to believe our revised history. Sometimes no harm is done and sometimes events from the past can destroy our face. If over time, those witnesses of those events disappear; then we will never lose our face. We will be safe, our image intact. The world will always like our face.

We are being told now that only the African is responsible for his brother’s slavery in the Americas. Our brother initiated the trade, with the help of his neighbor, the Arab. We should be grateful that we were brought to America; because we have benefited from being a slave in America, than if we had stayed with our brother. With a little embellishment, omission and little lies; our African face is being lost to the world.


For all things, thanks and praises must be given to thee, the European; and for our salvation of three centuries of slavery, Western Ideals.

I wish to remember beauty

Mountains and Rain

Somewhere on I-40 between Ashville and Knoxville

Computer as Toaster

I like technology. I like most gadgets and tools. I like things that work. I like software that does what it is supposed to do. I like computers that don’t crash.

I am not a geek. I do not have to know something about everything and all the jargon or every piece of technology since the nineteenth century. I am a technical person, who uses tools and knows a fair amount about what I do. I do not expect everyone to know what I know and I do not feel they are idiots if they don’t.

What is it about people who work in the computer industry, that think everyone should know what they know? Do they know that some people want to look at computer use as easily as putting bread in a toaster? I do. I do not want to know every acronym, so that I may find software the fits my needs, or do I want to have to learn programming, so that I can do simple things on my blog. I don’t want to have to join user groups, support groups or join group therapy to be able to use computer technology. Oh! One other thing, I don’t want to be thought of as an idiot because I don’t want to do any of these things.

Vanity

I don’t want to be twenty, but to be fifty or even fifty five, that was before my [AD]Polycystic Kidney Disease, began to shape my body. The kidney’s cysts became much larger, and I was beginning to be asked if I was pregnant. Now they are huge, from under my chest to below my navel, they are not as large as these, yet. No, they don’t remove your kidneys when you have a transplant. They put the transplant in the lower left or right of your abdomen. I can’t wear skirts or certain styles of dresses, I truly love clothes and shopping. I miss the thrill of finding the markdown, markdown. I have to buy what fits and sometime my middle outgrows what fits way too soon.

I was filling out one of those profiles for an online match and it asked you for a description of your body type. There is no type to describe me. Out of shape is an understatement. To keep my kidney, I had to take massive doses of Prednisone and I blew up. Gained a lot of weight and water, then when I lost the weight, 50 lbs., nothing snapped back. I’m still losing weight and my belly’s more prominent. I can work off some of the fat, and I might try to have my kidneys removed. The catch is the surgery. At this point it would be just for vanity. Would it be any worst than a tummy tuck? Since the last surgery is still fresh in my mind, I am not anxious to find out, but I still want my fifty-ish body back.

If I seem edgy about that "little" bug, it’s because with a compromised immune system, it could become very serious.

Update: October 16, 2007 The image of those kidneys are not of any person that I am related to. This is not the original web page they were linked to. I linked to the photo of that person's father kidneys. I thought I had to make it more clear than my post has, since I have gotten so much traffic from this image. Thanks for visiting.

20th Century Child

I was born at the eve of WWII into a world of anxiety, before Hiroshima.

The world of annihilation was just a push button away. “Duck and Cover” my motto at 7.

At 11, the Soviets pushed their way into Hungary, and at 17 the missiles are at our door steps.

When we began to be proud at 18 and looked forward, our President was assassinated. The clouds of anxiety, creeps in to the back of my mind and I just became an adult.

At 19, I remember looking at Vietnamese Buddhist monks burn themselves with gasoline in protest. At the time, I thought of this as a noble protest. It was their singular final act. I did not think that suicide would ever become a means to kill others.

Two events occur the year I’m 23. The most devastating to me was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Now assassination is becoming part of our vocabulary. Two month later Robert F. Kenney is dead and his assassin is from Jordan a Palestinian refugee. The enemy changes, however slowly and we don’t notice.

The hijacking of airplanes, the Israeli wars and its day to day dealings with terrorist, and then Munich, the Israeli Olympic team dead. This is too much to contemplate at 27, I ‘m starting a new life. God Damn It!

At 32, I listened over the radio, the takeover of the B’nai B’rith Headquarters in DC. An Islamist group, home grown. Interesting

Over the next years, the bombings in Israel and Oklahoma; of embassies, ships, and airplanes; and the World Trade Center (the first bombing); meshed together and became the background noise of our lives.

This didn’t instill any fear because our lives had started in fear. Can’t survive living in constant fear, but at 56 the destruction of the World Trade Center Buildings brought back the anxiety I had at 7. The world is only a push button away from destruction. It was surreal.

The victims, the unbearable loss

The ghostly fallen towers

Anger and anxiety, I felt.

Annihilation, I want.

Yesterday

I said, “I feel better than I have for years.” I felt that I would be able to keep a new job, start going to the gym and maybe take classes in Iaido. This morning I woke up and some bug had gotten in my system and is not forgiving. Bad stomach cramps and the runs. Today I ask myself, could I take this kind of time in a new job? Will the time I can not function come too soon? I think of retiring and wish for the goddess to bring me someone who will take care of me.

Maybe tomorrow, I will feel like yesterday.

Happiness is...

Soli lent par les percussions juniors a manquepas.

Conakry, Guinea

Happiness is djembe!

UPDATE: Want more music like this? It's in French, but it's easy to figure out.

Summer Love

Luscious green, moist leaves
Almost sticky to the touch
Smoky, humid sky

Her looking at him
Orange sunrise and shirt brushes
His body, her soul

Hot, hot, hot, cool sheets
Cotton, lightly starched and ironed
Ignites the senses

Lightning’s musky smell
Honeysuckle and grass
Meld into their scent

Like rain, sweat falling
moisture forms vacuum, bonds skin
Implodes, like thunder

Walk into midnight
Silver shadow glows softly
On transparent web

Dog days take our breath
Burn our feet, our eyes, our lips
Our escape, pine woods

The rhythm of love
Summer’s song haunting lyric
Sways, weaves through your mind

Shorter days, it’s done
Sunset shrouds the horizon
Spinning swirling leaves

The giving of small gifts

I appreciate these gifts when I get them. I did not realize how much until recently. They give me a felling of joy and the sense that I am belong in the world. There are persons who instinctively know what gifts to give and generously give them. A person like me does not know when or even what to give. I need to learn how to be more observant, to be more generous and understand that a small gift just may be silence.

Five of Nine

In some ways even though I do not have any prosthesis, I do have a part that I was not born with, in that sense I feel as a progenitor of Borg. I’ve assimilated another. I do wish the kidney had been artificial, being part machine would probably be more healthy. No fear of rejection and taking powerful medications. Medications that not only wreck havoc with your immune system, give you the usual side effects (you know the ones on all the TV ads), and weakens your bones. I have lost too much bone, more from the meds than aging. For a while I had to walk with a cane. With lots of calcium supplements, I do get around much better now and don’t feel as much pain. Took the doctors too damned long to diagnose, go figure.

In my mind eye, I am aspiring to be Seven of Nine, the Borg who has left the collective. I want to be as strong, intelligent and sexy. I see myself at 61 doing dangerous things, superhero things and most brilliant at everything I do. I want this amazing affair with lift the earth kind of sex. In reality, I’m a couch potato. Why am I’m not grateful to just be alive? Because I need to live my imagination, I just have a window of time, not of death, but to the next dialysis, whenever my transplant fails. There is no guarantee that I will out live my kidney. There has to be more for me. Problem is, I have to figure how to do this. I hate doing things by myself, because everything gets amplified emotionally. Seeing couples, younger people, or better looking people; all my little green voices tell me how lonely I am, how old I’m getting, and how unattractive aging is.

I became a singular person during my last marriage, I can’t really say how this happen. I have never been an outgoing sort of person, but I had had a few friends before. I want to begin to move out into the world, but I don’t want to be stuck in groups, that are seniors only, people with the same opinions, or some group that does some repetitive activity. This blog may or may not be a chronicle of this goal, but it will be what I’m thinking. I may do nothing.

No miracles for this colored girl.

What was I thinking? I had not gone through a really life threatening operation. The kidney transplant had problems, didn’t expect miracles, it all seem like weird science. When the ordeal was done it would be a new beginning. I had to finish college and try to find a new job. Three years later I have graduated, still have no new job, but I had thought just maybe I would find someone to share my life, a partner, that I had not defined. Then I heard his name, could that be him, out of the past and I got in touch; hoping that fate would treat me kind, that I would not ruin the opportunity and I could deal with any outcome. What was I thinking? A fairy tale reunion, like those events on Oprah; I forgot who I was. No fairy tale ending and I couldn’t deal with it, so I wish I could dance to djembe drums to exorcise the unrequited love and desire and to become part of the rhythm and dance until all emotion is wrung out of my body. I want the trance of Vodou.