The Good Old Days: “We’re Drowning In It!” #SoCS

I have a headache. I don’t know where to start.

It hurts, threatening to burst under the weight of it all.

It’s just another speech on the US 2016 election campaign. Still, underneath that, there were parts that were all, essentially about human decency.

Michelle Obama spoke and I listened and I felt the familiar stinging of tears starting to form in my eyes.

I put off listening, as Facebook’s newsfeed blew up with people sharing the speech and lamenting its sincerity and harsh reality. Finally, after a bad day of becoming choked up on New York Times Modern Love essays about children and adoption, I thought, “why not?”

Every day I can’t believe it. The days are constant: International Day of the Girl (which Michelle mentions), World Sight Day, Blindness Awareness, White Cane Awareness and people can never seem to settle on the correct word order for some of these. But I guess it doesn’t matter what you call it. We’re all just trying to get by and to be heard and valued.

I see less and less and yet it’s what I hear that I can’t believe.

I hear things on my television
screen
that I can’t believe I’m hearing.

I doubt my own hearing, one of my strongest remaining senses.

I feel vulnerable every time I walk out there, a visually impaired woman with her white cane. Am I standing out? Or am I invisible?

Michelle Obama Speaks Out

The line she spoke that most caught my attention and left a lump in my throat, my eyes burning, and a ringing in my ears was: “We’re drowning in it.” I believe she was referring specifically to sexism and misogyny. It’s no big deal to most people, most times, but it’s always there, somewhere. How much does it matter?

Women should feel it. Men should feel it. Over and over again, people talk of daughters, sisters, wives, mothers. What are women, even myself, what are we supposed to think? What lessons have young men learned? What do those calling themselves politicians think they’re doing anyway?

I even doubt my ears here in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been in charge for one whole year now, since the last time Canada’s baseball team made it to the play off’s. I had hope then, as someone finally starting to feel somewhat better about the state of my own country, hope for a future where women’s rights, all rights of people might continue to improve, that we here could be a living embodiment of what is possible. Nothing but a naive girl’s silly hope?

His reputation as a feminist has only grown here and around the world. But then I think about possible leaked tapes, recordings, information in the future.

We believe forward-thinking men in politics like Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama are decent, would never treat women so disrespectfully. Then I imagine a time in the future where I will hear, with my own ears, something that could shake my confidence in these two men as concerned fathers and sons and husbands. Maybe they aren’t who they claim to be either. Power. Is it all one giant power trip?

A black man ran the country that supported slavery, segregation, and the targeting of black men as criminals. A woman may soon run a country where women who were black couldn’t even vote fifty years ago. This must represent change and growth, but not all want it, require it, hope and pray for it. Some attack and demonize it.

As for progress and decency, men in positions of power and capable of making sweeping and lasting change, I don’t want to be let down in that way, not ever.

But how sure can I be? When may the other shoe drop, the floor drop out on me?

I appreciate varied viewpoints and healthy discussions, but I too shy away from disrespect, inhumanity, bickering, anger, discrimination, the refusal to see beyond the nose on one’s own face.

I don’t call myself a believer in feminism lightly.

I try to find a balance. This isn’t easy.

I have not suffered at the hands of abuse by men in my own life, but I feel a wider societal pressure. I know only the most decent men in my own life. My father. My brothers. Those I have learned from about love. Those I have loved. We all make mistakes, say foolish things in a moment of weakness or ignorance, both male and female. Goodness can still thrive.

I’m just afraid to believe what I hear. Perceptions are realities.

13TH

I wasn’t around during slavery, but what slavery still occurs, and what can I do about it, if I happen to see it or if I hide from that which still exists?

How free am I personally? What am I a slave to in my own life? How dare I even ask, even think?

The 13Th Amendment. The 19Th Amendment. What can 100 years, 150, what can that passing time do? How slow is change really? How far have we really come with rights for all? What is truly being amended? What am I seeing, hearing, witnessing, neglecting to admit about this time I’m living in?

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-13th-doc-trump-20161014-snap-htmlstory.html

I recommend 13TH. It covers a long timeline of events and not just the small snapshot of time we’re currently living through. It’s not easy to see back into all the preceding time, into anything other than noticing the glasses on our own faces, even mine where no more literal glasses sit.

Trump. Hillary. Bill.

Reagan, like Trump, an actor/performer. Nixon, known, as Hilary Clinton, to be a liar. What really changes? What can we count on as the years pass us by?

I hear suffering. I feel it more and more as I age. the echoes of ghosts long gone. I recognized all their voices at different times.

I hear what I hear. I doubt what I hear. I know what I hear and wonder who may have isolated each clip, what it meant, as an overall statement of any intention. I believe it has all contributed and brought us all to where we currently are.

I did not need anyone to Tweet those selected Trump clips, used to illustrate a wider point, to know how awful I’ve felt at having heard them myself over the last months. I already felt ill upon hearing them.

I know much of the history. I know how humans have treated other humans. I felt my headache worsen as 13TH went on, but I watched the documentary all the way through.

So then why exactly did I put myself through that pain?

What else should I do? How else should I handle what I can’t un-know?

Politics. Pride in one’s home. Culture. Religion. Propaganda, all of it?

It is more than six months since I really last wrote about these things here.

In The News and On My Mind: Supermegafragilisticexpialidocious

I thought that the 2016 summer with unending stories in the news about the US election would never ever end. But it did and here we are. Less than a month to go, thank God! But I am so tired and I know I’m not alone. Speaking up is seen as “incendiary” and immediately turned into a political opinion, when really, all I’d like to make is a human one. I don’t write about it on Facebook, trying to be sensitive to my American friends. Here on my blog I feel somewhat safer, but I can’t agree with the sort of patriotism Americans often speak of, like Michelle in her speech most recently: that the US is the greatest country in the world.

I regret to say this Mrs. Obama, but go ahead and say whatever you need to say, to feel better about things.

I shake my head at such love of one place, run by capitalism, socialism, whatever you want to call it, from whichever country you reside in. Globalization. I am not a politician and never will be, but I care about not only myself and my family, but my country, and all others. I care about people, no matter where they live.

I love Canada fiercely, but I can’t just keep hearing people speak of their own country being the best, as pride gets us nowhere. I am lucky to live here and yet I fight to find my way. Canada has treated people just as poorly as any other country.

I stand on the border of my Canadian, English-speaking province and into the French-speaking province next door and I feel the wind on my face and in my hair. I smell the river. I hear the cars. I trust my senses in that moment, but rarely do I trust all else I’ve seen.

All politicians are caught saying things, things that have furthered their political purposes at one time or another, eventually revealing true intentions or previously held beliefs, hopefully altered. I don’t know how they really feel. Suddenly, thanks to an actual reality TV star coming this close to winning, it all feels like a huge reality show, like more and more politics and entertainment are melding, like we can’t tell them apart and there is no going back from that.

Human lives are at stake and 13TH makes that point extremely well. This isn’t a game. Or shouldn’t be anyway.

I can hardly believe what I’m seeing/hearing, but I suppose sensible people have always thought that way, and yet what was really done about it? What will the answer be now?

The thought that any one country is “the best country in the world” or that there ever existed “the good old days” is false to me, no matter the intended meaning behind either stated belief.

The “good old days” spoken of weren’t quite so good for us all. I just hope we can stay afloat going forward.

This Is Bogus, #SoCS

I have a beef for you.

SoCS

I was surprised with this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/23/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-2315/

I thought, immediately about my mom’s beef, which is one of my favourite things she makes, and she makes a lot of delicious things.

I thought about how weird we all found it when our favourite Swiss Chalet, chicken restaurant, started selling rotisserie beef too. Weird for my family, yes, as that has been one of our favourite family restaurants and they are known for their chicken. They have sold hamburgers and fish and chips for a long time, so not really so weird. I tried the beef a few weeks back. Not as good as my mothers’ but still tasty.

But then one of my favourite movies of all-time came on the TV and a beef began to form, the non red meat kind.

Big Daddy will always remind me of a double date I went on, back in high school, and we went to see this one, one of Adam Sandler’s best.

It just recently came on NetFlix and I was happy then, but I can’t pass up a movie when it comes on television, even with the annoying commercials, which should be beef enough.

Then there’s the second most annoying part of movies when they are aired on TV and that’s the deletion of all swear words.

Butt instead of ass.

Of course, it’s a young child in the main role. In the film he says “assholes” and in the dubbed version he says “jackasses”.

Are they horrible stage parents, neglectful, who let their kid actor child say bad words?

How does the movie community get away with that, but we can’t let those words be said when the film arrives on television?

As for Adam Sandler: he can’t say “piss” when he sees how much of a puddle there’s in the bed-wetting scene. They dub over Adam Sandler’s voice completely, replacing “that’s a lot of piss” with something about lake Michigan. In that case, to me it sounds like it’s not even Adam’s voice saying the words. They must have gotten someone else to say that one, assuming we wouldn’t care or notice. I notice.

He’s allowed to tell the little boy to “shut up” still, but he can no longer shout “horse shit” like he does in the McDonald’s scene.

They can’t talk about testicles. God forbid you use the proper names for things, but using women )the “weaker sex”) to prove a point about not being manly and that’s just fine.

This made me wonder, again, about our society and what it deems appropriate.

We have violence, with a warning, or a later airing, usually after nine at night.

As for a movie playing in the middle of the afternoon, well it’s perfectly fine for the old man in this one to say to Adam:

“Bring it on Woman!”

It’s meant as a name he’s calling him. I could call that sexism. I could say that, although subtle and less shocking in the moment, it could be instilling the wrong kind of beliefs and feelings in young viewers, or even making such name calling okay for adults too.

In the film, the little boy learns bad behaviours from Adam’s character, until he starts teaching him better. We are afraid of teaching our children words, we think are inappropriate, “ass” for example. Then we go ahead and teach them to use “woman” as a negative name to call someone.

I am not saying one thing is worse or better. They are not the end of the world either. I just don’t understand our priorities sometimes. I don’t know what the right answer is.

Just my beef for the day. Interested to hear other peoples’ and I am sure there will be some, as this is a common use of the word. PErhaps I should have delved into the whole vegetarian debate instead.

Sweet Child

Oh well…there’s always next time.

Human Rights Day 2014: Fragility

“Nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could.”

Sting, Fragile, YouTube

When I hear this version of the above song I always think of the IMAX film Sting wrote and performed the soundtrack for.

Starring my beloved dolphins: it was about the ocean and I sat in a theatre in Niagara Falls several years ago and was in awe.

The music and the lyrics touched me and moved me, not just because the enormity of something like an ocean dumbfounded me, but because I felt so completely tiny and insignificant in the vastness of everything.

The idea of the ocean has always beckoned because of all this, because I love it so much, but on a day such as this:

The United Nation’s designated HUMAN RIGHTS DAY, December 10, 2014,

I want to highlight Sting’s words and specifically the line from above.

I feel so small and insignificant on days such as this, but I especially like the theme of the 2014 Human Rights Day: everyday should be a day for human rights!

I wish I could shout this to the world because I know what I say here will only reach a minuscule segment of it, but I write this anyway.

I wish I could shake the world into finding respect for all human beings.

After thousands of years of the horrible things humans have done to one another and after two world wars.

The UN declared December 10th Human Rights Day in 1950, highlighting this with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

How many lives have been lost and human rights infringed upon since that time?

Whether it’s all the division and unrest in the US right now, in the midst of several disturbing incidence between young black boys/men and white law enforcement.

After what happened here in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, with the senseless killing of Nathan Cirillo on Parliament Hill.

Or in addition and by expansion, with ISIS and in the middle East.

The admissions of the CIA and their torture tactics revealed.

Whether it’s the growing racism in countries in Europe, all these years after such blemishes on our world as the Nazi regime’s atrocities.

Racism. Terrorism. Sexism. I don’t care. I want it all to stop!

Discrimination of Native people in my own country in the past and still now in the present.

, the helplessness and uselessness I feel living still as a woman with a disability in the 21st century.

Or all of the above.

I want more for us all. Much much more than the status quo.

“Nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could.”

I repeat this line from the start of this post because I can’t help tearing up when I think of it or hear it sung and my heart hurts so much, which leads me to write this now, as it’s all I have to do to even attempt to quell the hurt I feel.

I hear variations of the above stories I speak of, on the news every night, and I want to reach out and shut off my television, not wanting to hear any more.

I feel like I must fight for my rights and I know others are fighting more desperately for theirs.

It’s on days like this when I am just so so sick and tired of fighting.

Be kind to one another. Please!

As tough as a large portion of our world thinks they are and tries to portray themselves to be to the rest of us, I know the title of this song to be true.

Fragile. That’s all we really are.