Hey, Wait, My Mirror is Broken

       I said recently that I was not going to rant in a particular post about what it's like to grow up and realize that your parents were much less functional than you thought they were, but would post it later.  Since my subconscious has apparently decided that I'm going to write a post today (or merely the clumsiness of declining eyesight) I guess I'm going to write about it now.  It's certainly been the biggest thing on my mind of late.

       I've always had a very....precise memory.  Granted, that has changed as I've gotten older and more abused.  Being in a car accident in 1992 and spending a week and a half on morphine (to which I'm seriously allergic) did a lot of harm to that, and being in another car accident in 1999 that caused spinal and brain damage nearly destroyed it entirely, but after 15 years of neurofeedback and neuron-repairing supplements and drugs, it has gotten about as good as it probably ever will.  As a child, I remembered entire conversations and would repeat them in detail upon request--at the intense annoyance of my mother.  I usually won arguments, especially when they involved previous conversations or promises made, because I would quote the entire conversation word for word, even when it made me look bad.

       So, OK, yeah, I could be an annoying kid.  I was right, and knew it.  Largely, I only made it known when I was at home, and when a dispute happened.  I didn't speak much at school. If I had done the same thing at school, they might have decided to advance me just to get me out of their hair.

       Gee, I kind of wish I'd thought of that at the time.

       I never would have done it, though.  I had far too much...unwillingness to be noticed.

       By anyone.

       I was a quiet child on the whole.  I was also an only child which, in retrospect, is probably a very good thing.  As such, I spent a lot of time playing alone in my room.  On weekends, I spent a lot of time playing in the neighborhood with the neighborhood boys, mostly because there was only one neighborhood girl (except the year when there was another one), and I wasn't very girly.  I rode a bike, I played in the creek, I climbed trees, we built forts, and I got into theological arguments with the boy across the street.

       Yeah, so I wasn't the most normal kid.  But I was generally quiet.

       I was never close to my mother.  Early on, she pushed me towards my father, making sure I learned to say "daddy" before I learned "mama".  I idolized him, and spent a lot of time learning, or trying to learn, all the things he did.  I helped him work on cars, work in the darkroom developing film and pictures, helped him with carpentry and furniture refinishing, helped him with the household electrical systems, helped him with the plumbing, and, in 1976 when he was let go from the firm he'd been with for several years and opened his private practice, I went to work for him as an office assistant.

       I tried to get close to my mom many times over the years.  She tried to teach me how to sew periodically--much to the distress of her sewing machine.  My hand-sewing was atrocious and not functional (though I did, eventually, learn to sew buttons on), and whenever she tried to get me to sew on her machine, I broke the needle.

       Needless to say, she stopped letting me use her machine.

       As I got older, and my mother went back to college, I spent more time trying to interact with my parents on their level.  One of the things I did was hung around and listened to them talk.  Alas, most of that was not talk so much as argument.

       I noticed fairly early that they often seemed to be having two separate conversations.  I learned a lot about philosophy (because that was my mother's course of study) and got to hear an awful lot of two separate viewpoints that were never...constructively compared.

       When I was 9, in early 1979, the argument was so bad that my mother packed a suitcase and threatened to leave.

       I pitched a fit.  I'd never pitched a fit like this before--in general, I didn't pitch fits, but now I did.  I demanded that she not leave, and screamed it so loud, standing in the driveway, that I'm fairly sure the neighbors heard me, and possibly thought I was being tortured.  To compensate, my mom and I went to see the Steve Martin movie The Jerk at North DeKalb Mall.

       I begged her not to leave, but on the most basic level I wanted her to go.  She was unpredictable, unstable, and did not seem terribly attached to me.  Yet instead of watching impassively as she drove away, I screamed and bawled to keep her from leaving.  I often thought, in the intervening years, that this had been an enormous mistake.  However, it made her happy, so she did not take anything that night out on me, and I did enjoy the movie.  In truth, I was afraid of her for a long time.

       When I was a teenager, I started seeing the instability as more of an issue.  I transferred to Open Campus and took psychology, and realized while I was taking Abnormal Psych exactly what was going on.  I consulted with my dad after I figured it out, and he confirmed it: she was paranoid schizophrenic.

       It turns out that "figuring it out" when you're 16 is a whole different flavor of understanding from watching it become more and more obvious until the police take it into their own hands to have her evaluated and getting a formal diagnosis when you're 45.

       For one thing, no matter how clear my own deduction was, and no matter the (information) confirmation by friends with a much greater understanding of psychology than my own, the formal diagnosis made it much more real.  It's one thing to look at a situation and think, "Hey, yeah, this describes and explains the behavior very well." It's another thing entirely to look back over the past thirty years or so, after having a formal diagnosis, and say, "It's absolutely true.  She was schizophrenic.  How do I know what parts were real, and what parts were her delusion?"

       I guess I will never know.  I catch myself sometimes, in the middle of conversation, starting to tell a story from my mom and then stopping myself because I don't have verification from anyone else, so I have no idea if there's any truth to it.

       I will end this with the thing that she started talking about a few years ago that really started me realizing how....well, crazy she really could be.

       We were standing in the dining room of her house together, looking out the windows.  She started grumbling about the scrub pine at the back of her property and how she hated pine trees.

       Of course, I've always loved pine trees.  I love the way they smell, I love the bark, the pine cones, the fact that you can make a tea from the needles that will help with a cold, the fact that every part of a pine tree is useful when they die, but they're beautiful when they're alive.  I just love pine.

       I said something to that effect, and she started ranting about how they killed people, they were dangerous, they would make you shrivel up and die.  She gave an example (that I have not been able to verify, of course) of a family that had moved into a shack in the middle of a pine forest, and they had all turned black and died.  She was adamant that it had been caused by the pines, and would hear nothing of my statements about the bioflavanoids found in the needles, or any other benefits they might have, and refused to believe me even when I provided scientific studies. 

       I guess at that point, I really started to figure out that you can't argue with insanity. 

Food and Consequences

Yesterday, I was having a very bad day (for reasons that are not currently entirely relevant) and my best friend took me out to eat, just the two of us, to make me feel better.  He asked me where I wanted to go, and I just told him "Someplace different" which is a tall order, as we have been to a huge variety of places in Atlanta, and many of the places we haven't been are because of food allergies.

We decided to drive up Roswell Road because that is where we knew some Persian restaurants to be, or at least to have been in the past, and at least there are tons of restaurants there.

We found Persepolis, and opted to go there because we miss 1001 Nights that was off Roswell Road in Sandy Springs back in the late 1980s.  We recently tried 1001 Nights in Johns Creek in hopes that it was the same, but it was a hugely expensive, bitter disappointment.

Not so with Persepolis.

They start by putting a lavash on the table with a plate of herbs, feta cheese, radish and walnuts.  We had them take away the raw onion because neither of us can eat them.

The waitress, Maria, was friendly and knew the menu well.  When my friend asked her about a dish that he had had, and loved, and been searching for, since that one visit to 1001 Nights in 1988, she directed him straight to a dish that fit the description (which the owner of 1001 Nights in 2014 could not do), and one similar to it.  We ordered it with Chicken Barg, and were thrilled to find that it was exactly right.

There was also a drink that we were warned many Americans do not like because it's a bit weird.  It was described as a yogurt drink that was carbonated and had salt in it.  We decided, after a while, to go ahead and try it, even though it sounded like nothing so much as a salt lhassi (which is my least favorite kind of lhassi). It was called Abali Yogurt Soda.

We were pleasantly surprised, and ordered a second.

We spent a fair amount of time talking to Maria about foods from different countries.  She, also, likes trying foods from different countries.  We told her about Machu Pichu, our favorite Peruvian restaurant, and after my friend described a few of the dishes on the menu, she described similar ones from her home country, Mexico.  She, herself, had a strong desire to try Ethiopian food, so we directed her to our current favorite, Queen of Sheba.

All of that sounds like a food review, but the real centerpiece of the conversation was the spicing of the food, both there, at Persepolis, and at the different restaurants of other countries' foods.

I realized, suddenly, the big difference between American and English food (well, and much Chinese as well) and the foods of places like India, Persia, Thailand, Ethiopia, and the Middle East in general.

All of those other countries use spices in their foods, not just for heat, not just for flavor, but because those particular herbs and spices are soothing and/or stimulating to the digestion.  Granted, if you get too much heat it can cause heartburn, but generally, if your food is properly balanced with herbs and spices, you will find that your foods will make you feel better rather than "I feel like crap, but it was worth it."

Think about it.  When you eat Texas Chili, pizza from New York or Chicago, fried chicken, or any of a number of other "American" foods, all of which are either too oily or too spicy, most people get heartburn.  If you're willing to try them, if you eat the more pungent dishes from places like India and Ethiopia, you may find that your digestion "cleans itself out" within the next day, but either way, your digestion is happier for it.

Remember the words of Hippocrates: "Let your food and drink be your medicine. "

Misogyny On The Half-Shell.

I saw this article posted on Facebook, and it pissed me off.  I wrote a response to it, and then realized that I feel that it needs a wider, or at least different, audience.

Here's the link to the article so you, gentle reader, can know precisely to what my numbers are referring:

6 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT THINK ARE HARASSMENT BUT DEFINITELY ARE

Yes, that's right, the title for the article was written in all capitals, as though the name wasn't hysterical enough.

Here was what I commented on my hapless friend's post.  I may lose friends for it, but it's how I feel and I refuse to be bullied into feeling a certain way by anyone:

This whole notion of what's "harassment" is, to my mind, becoming absolutely stupid.  It's like women are determined to be victims even when they're not, and it makes me feel bad about being female. 

Before I itemize my problems with this list, let me clarify: I have been assaulted three times. Well, four if you count the one that happened when I was 7.  Never raped, but not for the lack of men trying.  If I had gotten irate every time someone followed me, stared at me, cat-called me (and yes, even though I'm 45 and 110 lbs. over-weight, that does still happen), wolf-whistled at me, propositioned me, and everything short of actually touching me, but if I'd taken it as serious I'd have locked myself in a closet decades ago.  Instead, I chose to ignore the stupidity (including the abuse when someone took amiss that I had ignored them) and learned self-defense. 

1. Johnny Rotten once told me to smile because I was leaning against the stage as he and PIL were setting up for a concert.  I was 17 and very depressed.  He was trying to cheer me up.  On Fantasy Island, every episode Mr. Roarke would tell all his guests, "Smiles, everyone!   Welcome to Fantasy Island!"  Based on that, Julian has, for years, said that to EVERYONE.

Let's not forget free speech.

2. I've never had a man tell me "God bless you."  I have only had women say that to me.  Nonetheless, even though my atheist soul cringes at it (I was an atheist for 15 years before I ever started thinking I might be a Druid, back in my late teens), still, people have a right to say what they want.  Free speech and all that.

3.  Compliments are never actually wrong.  Doesn't matter why you do it.  If you get offended because someone complimented you, you've got issues.  You don't have to take it to heart, but getting pissed off about it is just stupid.  The "implications" listed are assumptions of the really bitter recipient.  I wonder how many men were asked about their motives with this?

Also, free speech.

4. Yeah, OK, staring is creepy.  However, ignoring it is easy unless you have issues, in which case, once again, that's your problem, not the problem of the person staring at you.

Hell, it can feel creepy when your cat stares at you.  Also, I've seen women stare at men in the same way.  It's not necessarily voluntary on the part of the starer.

5.  You can speak to anyone you want.  I've been harassed by lots of women speaking to me that I didn't want to have a damned thing to do with, and I've seen lots of women do that to men.  Just get a spine and either ignore them or tell them to go away.

6.  OK, THIS is a problem.  I've even seen men become physical when ignored.  However, they also do this to men who ignore them, so painting it as just a sexual harassment thing is sexist.  Honestly, if you continue to ignore them (since what these people actually want is for you to get upset at them, to start something) they will just go away.  I've been proving that for years.  Hell, I got out of being mugged because it scared the hell out of the guy trying to mug me because I ignored him, and he had a gun on me.

In essence, this list comes across as being even more misogynistic than the behavior it itemizes.

It's Hard Going Back to Someone Else's Home, Too

       They say you can't go home again.  I suppose that's true, but only in the sense of the old saying, "You can't step in the same river twice."  It changes, you change.  It may be home again, but it's not still home.

       I've discovered a new level of this.  I find myself in the awkward position of moving into the house my mother built 11 years ago and had been living in ever since, until a month or so ago.  While ordinarily, this would just be, "I miss my mom.  It's so weird here without her" or so I gather from listening to other people...

       ...this situation is entirely different.

       I have known for about 30 years that my mother is paranoid schizophrenic.  She wasn't diagnosed.  I figured it out based on her behavior and my abnormal psychology class in school.  It made her behavior make so much more sense, but didn't make it any easier to deal with her.

       My father left her because of it.  He had also figured it out (the man did have a degree in psychology, after all), but rather than making any real effort to get her help, or even being upfront with her (which probably would have accomplished little other than one of the usual ugly arguments), he abandoned ship.  He made sure to wait until I was an adult rather than a) taking me with him or b) leaving me with her.  I suppose I should thank him for that one, small favor.  However, running away never really solves problems, and it left her to fester in her insanity for years.

       Fast forward to about 2007.  She's living in this house that she had built in the small, North Georgia town of Blue Ridge, and has been for four years. We have just moved out of Athens (read: run away screaming) and have nowhere else to go while I look for a new job in Atlanta, and a place to live.  While we're there, of course, she wants to spend quality time with me, talking.

       She talks about the folks at the First Baptist Church, and how they insisted she put a key in a fake rock outside in case she locks herself out, and how one of them stole that key.

       She talks about how the folks from the Master Gardeners, of which she was a member, insist on coming into her yard and planting invasive weeds like dog fennel and blackberries.

       She talks about how the women in the Merry Makers, a social group of women her age and older, have started to make nasty comments about her.

       She talks about how a woman in her Sunday school class was claiming she never lived on McConnell Drive for all those years, because...well, that part got weird and involved.

       She talks about how horrible the folks at the CVS are, and how they deliberately charged her for someone else's stuff.  She's angry when I suggest that she confront them, calmly, about it.

       She tells me that one of the women from Merry Makers, who is also in her Sunday School class, during the most recent Merry Makers meeting puts her thumb on a liver spot on my mother's face and presses, hard.  When I ask, she admits she did nothing about it.

       As you can see, this could give you a skewed viewpoint on a place.  Even though I knew my mother was paranoid schizophrenic, on some level I always compartmentalized that, thought it was a "sometimes" thing.  I always tread lightly around her, knowing at any time she could explode at me, but I never really took it sufficiently seriously, at least in some part because I couldn't take a diagnosis I had come to myself seriously.  After all, I was 16 when I figured this out.

       During our month there (yes, that's how long it took me to find a job and an apartment for our little family of three) my best friend/life partner learned the meaning of something he'd never experienced before: anxiety.  He knew the feeling of uncertainty that comes with living with someone that unstable, with that little grip on reality.  He understood me a lot more after that.

       We couldn't move into our new apartment fast enough.

       Fast forward another five years, to early 2012.  After a series of catastrophic occurrences in our lives, we found ourselves, once again, moving in with my mother while we looked for a new place to live.  This time, though, the scale had changed.

       Now she was telling me about the neighbors across the street breaking into her house on a regular basis.

       Telling me that they had broken in and stolen cheap items to make her buy more things to benefit local businesses (now how's THAT for a bizarre rationale for theft?)

       Telling me that they were stealing her internet.

       Telling me that they had stolen her cell phone.

       Now, this time I was still employed (and commuting 85 miles to work every morning, and back to her house in the evenings), so finding a new house was an imperative, and I'll admit that I jumped at the first place that would rent to us.  Maybe not the best decision, but I could not live with that much longer.

       As the next two years progressed, I heard more and more about these thefts.  They were happening daily, often multiple times a day.  Her keys had been stolen, copied, and returned.  Her cell phones had been stolen--she would buy a new one and it, too, would disappear.  Her house phone was stolen.  Her house phone was being tapped.  Her internet was being tapped.  (No, she did not have wifi.)  The neighbors were bringing their cat into her house, putting it in the basement to relieve itself, and then either leaving it, in which case she had to call the Humane Society to have it removed, or taking it home with them.

       Now the "red-headed lady from the bank" became an issue.  She was messing up my mother's accounts, had not changed the account number when the check books had been stolen (oh, yes, I didn't mention the repeated theft of purses, which were then returned.)  The lady from the bank broke into her house and mixed up her papers, mailed her taxes (which weren't ready), and took DVDs, leaving a thank you note for them.

       She was so convinced that she was convincing.  I started believing that she was having her house robbed regularly, and was unsafe.  I shopped for security cameras, but she said she didn't want them.  I suggested them later, and she was all for it.  I suggested she get them from the alarm company, and she said they cost $500, then when asked later, $1,500, and on another occasion, $5,000.  Being a busy head-of-household, I didn't have time to check these figures, but it was clear she didn't really want the cameras there.  Then she started insisting that the son of the neighbors had worked for her cable/security company and had been fired, and was breaking in and changing her security code and vandalizing her computer.

       She decided to sell her house.  Since most of our belongings had been moved into her basement (and it was an awful lot, because we kept inheriting large amounts of furniture and other things from dead relatives), so we were forced to remove ALL of it from her basement as soon as physically possible.

       I finally got it all done, and decided it was time to take a break from my mom.  She'd been calling several times a day, had told me that she hadn't seen me, or my son, in "months" every time we went up for a load, even though we'd been there anywhere from a week to a day before, and it had become emotionally as well as physically exhausting.

       She sold the house at about the same time as I finished.

       She didn't go to the closing.

       I got frantic calls and emails from the realtors involved, and one real estate attorney.  It seems the real estate agent representing my mom went to her house and knocked on the door, trying to get her to the closing.

       My mother screamed at her through the door to go away.

       Fortunately for her, they decided that she was senile and merely required her to return the earnest money rather than suing her.  For her part, she told me she just "decided I don't want to move.  I built this house, and I'm going to die here."

       I stopped talking to her at all at that point.  I told myself I was going to give her three months, for my own sanity, and to hold my frazzled little family together.

       That was back at the beginning of November.  Unfortunately, she called over and over again to the point that we had to change the ring for her number.  I didn't answer her calls for over a month.  When I did, I explained that she had used me up, and I needed her to go away.  That was a bit before Christmas.

       I was contacted by my cousin towards the end of February that my mother had been taken by the local police (because she had been calling them multiple times a day for more than three years, and they knew, just as I did, that she was paranoid) to a mental hospital in Dalton.  He gave me the number to contact them, and her, and I did.  I thanked him for letting me know.

       The upshot of all this is that my mother was forced to agree to go into assisted living if she wanted to be released, so she did, and I have ended up with the opportunity/necessity of moving into her house.  It's been....uncomfortable.  After several years of viewing Blue Ridge through her eyes (because they were the only ones I had there), I am finding that everyone in town has been nice, and understanding, and has asked after her and is concerned for her well-being.  They all say she was sweet but confused.  They also say she told them that her daughter and grandson have not visited her in years.  When I tell them how much time I had been spending visiting her, they all shake their heads, and tell me they hope she's feeling better, and taking her medication like she should, and what a good daughter I am for looking after her affairs.

       I've had to reprogram my feelings about this place.  I had doubts from the beginning of the veracity of what she was saying, but if you hear the same thing long enough, some part of you will start to believe it, no matter how unlikely.

       Going back to the house for the first time after I got the keys from her and my uncle at the assisted living home felt...different.  It was as if a shadow had been lifted from the entire house.  I don't really want to move up there, but it will perhaps not be quite so onerous as I had feared.  I'm still going to be commuting 174 miles a day, round trip, but at least I'm not moving into the den of thieves I had been warned about.

       I'll just be moving into a place far, far away from where I want to be.

       Now I just need to re-evaluate my entire childhood, and every story she ever told me about growing up with her family.

       But that's a vent for another time.

Not Pollitically Correct - But Only Because Your Culture Is Demented

       Writing this will probably make me incredibly unpopular but I feel that it needs to be said. Whatever else one can say, it’s all true. I will say that this may be considered Not Safe For Work, not for any reasons of entertainment, but because I intend for it to be completely accurate and honest, and that might make it somewhat graphic.

       From 1976 through 1978, I walked daily to the Annex of Apple Tree Daycare Center in the middle of Southland Vista Apartments, a walk of about a mile from Briar Vista Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia.

       Now, 99.99999% of the time, this was a completely safe exercise, and no one ever worried about kids walking there. However, there was one occasion that might make some people kind of nervous about allowing their children any freedom. In fact, I think this particular case should make parents feel empowered, especially if they've taught their children any kind of ability to think and reason.

       On this particular day, I was walking to daycare with a friend of mine (whose name I remember, but whom I will not name because there is always a chance that someone reading this might remember her, and I feel that it would be an unfair invasion of her privacy). I seem to recall that the weather was warm and pleasant, though it was about 35 years ago, and I think I can be forgiven if the details of weather are not fresh in my mind.

       We had walked past the pony farm, crossed Briarcliff Road and continued to the left, turned up Southland Drive, and then turned left into the apartment complex, as we did every day. In fact, I could retrace those steps now if the terrain had not been forcibly changed so drastically—Southland Apartments, later Tempo Vista Apartments, have not existed in several years, and the apartment complex that resides in that location now is, in fact, at a noticeably higher elevation.

       About halfway between the entrance to the apartments and the Annex, we encountered a young man, probably in his early 20s (at the time, I was certain he was about 24, but I was eight years old, so I’m not sure how accurate my judgment was in such things). I remember that he was adult height (which meant somewhere between my mother’s 5’ 7” and my father’s 6’ 2”) with light blond hair and large, wire-framed glasses. Well, after all, it was the late 1970s.

       He approached us, and asked us to come with him. We were trusting, and he seemed nice, so we followed him. He took us into one of the copious clumps of juniper bushes that dotted the complex. We frequently went into these clumps of stinky, prickly bushes because they grouped into nearly perfect little forts we could hide in and play. This was apparently what he had in mind.

       Once we had all crawled into the clump of junipers, he sat on the ground cross-legged and bade us do the same. Then he proceeded to unzip his pants and pull out his penis.

       He started out in lecture mode, explaining to us what this part was, and what it was for, while he, in 3rd-grader parlance, played with himself. Of course, I already knew what he was telling us—I was precocious, and I had a same-age male cousin with whom I’d grown up practically as a sibling, so I’d seen all the parts, and I had asked lots of questions about where babies came from, so I had a general idea of how that worked.

       Of course, after a couple of minutes he ejaculated. The two of us, at 7 and 8, giggled a bit and said it looked kind of like a volcano.

       And then he did the thing that made me think about it for a few hours: he told us not to tell anybody about it.

       Now, I will be the first to admit that I was a headstrong but relatively obedient child. I also had to be given a good reason to be obedient—I didn't just automatically do what any adult told me. Well, this adult had just told me to do something, but he was a complete stranger, so I had no reason whatever to do what I had been told. However, I did not tell the “teachers” or other “authorities” at the daycare center (because I did not trust them, and later events were to bear out my lack of trust in them, as earlier events already had), and I did not tell my parents that day—I told them the next. I’m fairly certain he never even told us his name. If he had, I would have told my parents. Instead, I told them that he looked a bit like John Denver.

       Well, to me, then, he really did. But I was eight years old, and it was 1977.

       My friend moved after that. I don’t know why; perhaps it was because of this event, though that never occurred to me until today. You see, I rarely gave this much thought over the years, except as an interesting chapter, another anecdote that I rarely share with anyone, and have shared with very few people over the years.

       It really never bothered me, except briefly, when I was 17. That mostly seemed to be because I thought it was supposed to. After all, that’s what they always say when a child has been exposed to sexual experiences, that they’re “scarred for life.”

       Except that I wasn't.

       I started hearing about child molestation in the news probably not too long after that. I generally understood what it was, and vaguely associated it with what my friend and I had experienced. I failed to be devastated by it even so.

       The thing is, if you teach your children about sex, and that they have power over their bodies, then they can know what they’re experiencing enough to know to avoid it. Don’t just tell them to avoid strangers—I have met, at every age, the most amazing strangers, and had I not, I would not have made them as friends. Tell them what kinds of behaviors to look for. Teach them that they have the power not to obey an adult they do not know. Teach them to think for themselves, and to reason rather than rationalize.

       If I had been ignorant of sex, if I had not thought through the process of whom to obey and whom to ignore, if I had just randomly trusted any adult with truth, I might be a messed up, sexually confused or repressed or obsessed person. Now, I may not be the best adjusted person in the world—I was already, before that happened, painfully shy—but I've never had issues with sex (other than those involved in being painfully shy, but that’s part of being shy).

       Two years after this happened, I learned that a couple of kids I knew had been experimenting with sex. It was common knowledge (though it is possible that it was not true—I have tended to assume that all people were truthful, though I eventually learned better), and no one really thought much of it other than, “Wow! They’re brave!” for having engaged in an adult activity that none of us considered doing. We figured, and I still figure, that if an activity is truly consensual—that is, not only do both or all parties involved agree to engage in the activity, but they also know the full ramifications of the agreement—then there should not be a problem for anyone.

       If anyone ever wonders why I don’t get as loud about the sixth grader who had an affair with a teacher as other people do, this is why. Heck, a twelve year old male already has pretty strong sexual urges from what I know of boys, and they need a non-violent outlet. Testosterone poisoning is an ugly thing. Masturbating and having sex are good ways to prevent it. Just….try to avoid demanding an audience of strange elementary school girls. Their parents probably aren't as smart as mine were.

The Spinning Plate Trick -- All Fall Down

     I have discovered why I dislike straight fiction, “popular” fiction, why I so prefer science fiction and speculative fiction (which are not always one and the same.)  It’s not that the “popular” fiction never has themes of science, or the future.  Quite to the contrary, there have been some very futuristic straight fiction books. 

     No, my problem, my issue with the straight or, more properly, “popular” fiction is the aim, the goal, the tone, the tenor.

     For, you see, while science fiction, like all good fiction, presents a problem, it also seeks ways to solve the problem.  From my experience with straight fiction, the goal is largely not to solve the problem so much as survive the problem, or merely to chronicle the collateral damage from the problem.  Science fiction has always been a genre about solving problems, not just for immediate use but for the future, for the long term. 

     So is this it?  Is this the difference between Fandom and Mundania, between the Rainbows and Babylon?  The search for, the willingness to find, solutions?

     And is this what has happened to Fandom as we once knew it?  To science fiction?  In our flurry, fury to be Accepted, to be a part of Society, the Status Quo, have we given up on solutions, on solving the World’s Great Problems?

     On Thinking?

     I was always proud of my particular subgroups, subcultures—not in a big, glaring way, but in a quiet way, acknowledging the good—for seeking solutions rather than dwelling in, wallowing in, the problems of the world.  Yes, those problems should be acknowledged, but they should be solved, not held as examples of…..of anything.

     “But” you say, “you can hold it up as a bad example!”  To which I reply, “That’s still an example, and the word ‘bad,’ or the implication of ‘bad,’ is easily ignored.” 

      We have plenty of bad examples in the world.  Darth Vader.  Darth Maul.  Natural Born Killers.  Storm Troopers.  The One Ring.  The Eye of Sauron.  Mr. Smith.  General Custer. 

     How many of these symbols of evil is either coveted or idolized?  What does “bad example” mean to a generation who all seem to want to be over six feet tall and menacing, and dependent on a respirator? 

     What has happened to our Fandom?

     Oh, I know, those Storm Troopers who come out in force—and yes, a lot of them have more impressive costumes than even Lucas did for Star Wars back in the 1970s—are not bad people; some of them even go out of their way to do good works.  To a certain extent, it doesn't matter.  That’s like saying, “Oh, those SS troopers weren't SO bad….that one group of them saved a kitten from a burning building,” or “Darth Vader spared his daughter, his son,”  It’s a good deed in a morass of death and destruction.  The evil they represent is still there, represented by these images.  There is still an undercurrent, even if it's not on the surface.

     I’m not an absolutist, a dualist.  However, there is so much evil in the world, in the media, in literature and movies and television, and there is no balance for it.  The News spouts evil; the television dramas spout evil, the straight/popular fiction novels spout evil, and none of those sources, not one of them, seeks to solve the problems presented.

     Damn it all, we need solutions!

Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi

     I started this blog six years ago with the purpose of making myself write in it on a daily basis.

     Yeah, that worked out well.

      In six years, I have posted 11 posts--this one will make 12--and they have gone from being writing practices to being writing practices and chronicles in the life of someone with an unusual outlook mixed with some political ant-hill-poking.  I know that political poking does not seem to fit with my chosen name, The City Druid, but, to the contrary, I feel that it is my duty as a protector and advocate of balance and the natural world to poke fun at and generally expose those things that throw the world out of balance.  That, and sometimes I just get a bee in my proverbial bonnet and have to gripe about it.

     It is my hope that some of this will make people think.  Of course, that only happens if they actually read what I have to say.  I consider that likelihood fairly low, but I have, on one or two occassions, gotten feedback from readers, so I know at least every once in a while someone does take a look.

     Typical years have seen no more than four posts per year, and those are generally done with gaps of about three years in between.  This has not been by design, but due to a simple fact of my life: I am, due to events and circumstances, extremely scattered.  In fact, this post alone has taken me weeks to complete.

     Assuming I actually complete it today.

     As I have said in previous posts, I have viewed writing as my ultimate vocation since I was eight.  Unfortunately, life does not always care what you want or how you feel.  In fact, John Lennon had something very pertinent to say on that subject: Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

     I have given up a lot because of "life happening."  Largely those things have been reading, writing, having free time, and spending time with my family.

     Interestingly, I just read a book that stares deep into the eyes of this subject.  The book is a relatively early Upton Sinclair book called "The Jungle" about the meat packing trust of Chicago around the turn of the last century.  It is an eye-opening book, and yet.....

      ...and yet, one can see the parallels between the early twentieth century labor force, between Jurgis' discovery of Socialism, and the modern disaffection with the work-a-day world of, as the Godfathers put it so succinctly in their song, "Birth, School, Work, Death."

     Granted, most of us, at least in the United States, have life much better than those poor meat packers and other immigrants in the book.  However, in basic form  things have changed relatively little.  Yes, we have a national minimum wage.  However, the things that haven't changed are perhaps somewhat disturbing.

     Immigrants who come here without going through due process (which process did not really exist in 1904, when this book was written) still will live a dozen or more to an apartment, with the adults working in shifts so that they can pay rent.  Now, though, much of that money goes back to the home country.  The extent of vermin I do not know, as my family came here centuries before immigration was viewed as an issue by anyone besides the Natives, and I have not spent a great deal of time among such recent arrivals.

     On a more consistent note, it is well-documented that a person who works a minimum wage job (which such undocumented immigrants frequently do not--they often make less) does not make enough money to support himself, much less an actual family.  The response to this, of course, is a push to raise the minimum wage but, rational or not (and it is not), businesses frequently use this as an excuse to raise prices to cover the increase in paid wages, and thus we have irrationally spiralling inflation. 

     Upton Sinclair did not just write a work of fiction, with dark and horrifying flights of fantasy.  No, he spent time in Packingtown in Chicago, and followed immigrant families to see how they managed.  This book has fictionalized what he saw, and describes it through the personage of a Lithuanian immigrant and his family. 

     It also paints a particularly vile picture of the meat packing industry, and in fact inspired Theodore Roosevelt to the passage of the Food and Drug Act because of the unsanitary conditions (as well as inspiring him to refer to books and journalism of this sort as "muck raking", thus coining a phrase that fallen from use in the last couple of years).  I am not so certain how much improvement there has been in the industry over the intervening century, though I do know that some of the same things go on now as then.

     Perhaps the most....ironic part of the book is the Ultimate Goal that Sinclair has in mind, which is to convert the People to Socialism as a clear solution to the Evils of Capitalism.  I find it ironic at least in part because of all the Science he brings forth, and how much of it is, in the long run, from the perspective of more than a century in his future, is hogwash.  Also, his understanding of people is naive.  However, he is somewhat prescient with regards to some of his technological predictions: we do, in fact, have automatic dishwashers now that wash, sanitize, and dry dishes for us, though we do have to put them away ourselves. 

     He paints the usual Utopian picture of a life wherein humans have minimal labor that they must do to maintain the world so that they can engage in intellectual and creative work.  This is a wonderful notion, but one that very few are actually prepared to see happen.

     OK, I've pontificated enough, and to relatively little purpose other than proving that, while I can write on demand, writing on demand does not necessarily equal quality on demand.

     I suppose that's enough for today and, given my history, probably means you'll see me again in 2016.