What Right?

I feel like this one is going to need about ten different disclaimers... and I'm not even sure that I am going to make any sort of a point... but here we go.

First of all, I know that no man and no woman is without fault.  Just as no nation is without an unsavory underbelly.  Let's get that out there right off the bat.

I'm not naive, nor am I uneducated or unaware.

And I've been reticent to get involved in the political postings on Facebook, or on twitter, or in the news.  I'm happy to chit chat with people in person about the presidential race- where my sarcasm, facial expressions, and occasional fury will not be misread.

Next, I must say that I have never been ashamed of my Americanness.  I have never once been ashamed of my background as an American, nor as a woman, nor as a child of a forward thinking, intellectual, hard working middle-class couple.  I have never been afraid to argue with angry foreigners- or angry locals for that matter.

But I just read this article.  And I'm sick.  I'm sick for a lot of reasons- but largely just I'm sick- and a little worried.*

I have always run on the liberal side (*cough* understatement).  Obviously.  And I have always always believed that America's most fundamentally empowering right is our Freedom of Speech.  To this day I consider that right- adopted in 1791- to fundamentally set the US apart.  Seriously- I'd have been on Flynt's side in 1988.  I believe that any idiot with an opinion has an absolute right to express said opinion.  ABSOLUTE.  Nothing is as precious to me as my freedom of expression- a freedom that is poignant and part of my birthright as an American.

(To be fair- I will argue with you if I think you are an idiot who is expressing idiotic, zealous, or otherwise jacked-up notions.  That goes without saying.  Just because I believe you should be allowed to say it, does not mean that I will agree with everything you say.

It's just that I will try hard to let you complete your statement, out respect for that most honored First Amendment, before I bite your head off.)

And here's where it gets sticky and tricky and not a little troubling for me.... because the thing is... Donald Trump and his merry band of morons are saying things that are mean.  And not in a 'you hurt my feelings' kind of way, but in racist, misogynistic, and too-many-to-name-phobic ways.  Which is, and I stand by this, his right.

However.

Trump's freedom of speech is breeding a freedom to hate amongst his supporters.  And it is breeding a willingness- gleeful desire, even- to pass judgment on what should be private and personal.

Some examples?

Women who seek abortions (should abortion be deemed illegal) should be punished?  Sure.  Right.  Except that my body is my domain no matter what.  I have every single right over it that you claim have over yours- and in no world am I going to forfeit those rights.  And in no world am I going to allow someone else to decide whether or not I will carry a child and whether or not I am to be punished for that decision- a decision that is heartbreaking, powerfully difficult, and PRIVATE.  Furthermore, if you actually think that you have some right over my body- that's almost comedically sad.

Oh.  And if I'm going to be punished for an abortion, you're sure as shit going to be punished for a vasectomy.

Next?

No more Muslim immigrants?  Now you are judging, and making horrifying rallying cries about, something that is deeply personal- and PRIVATE.  Come on... freedom to practice religion is a constitutionally protected right in the United States.  I mean... and there are some very very strange religions out there.  What gets to me, though, is that he's calling for a ban on all Muslims.  Which doesn't just mean 'Muslim.'  It means French, German, Belgian, English,.... the list goes on.  Because Muslim is a religion, not a nationality.  So now we have enabled a lot of ignorant people to judge and hate a lot of good people who are citizens of our allied nations.  These are not people who fall under some uniform label- with each as good or bad as the other.  And thinking that- expressing that as fervently as Trump is- smacks distinctly of the Nazi Anti Semitism of World War Two; it tastes the same as Ethnic Cleansing did during the Bosnian War.

Yeah.  I said it.

What's next?  Trump calls for a ban on immigration and for the widespread deportation of current Muslim-Americans.  This is a slippery slope of nonsense.

Except that it's not nonsense when it's a slope that could lead to the American Presidency.  It's not nonsense when people are buying into xenophobia; not when they are buying into ethnic/religious/gender superiority complex.

Those are not the American standards.  Those are not the rights or freedoms protected by the documents that founded our nation- nor are they the hopes and dreams of those men who penned said documents.  Those are the standards of fear, hate, assumption, and mis-education.

So.  Here we are full circle.  I believe in the First Amendment Right to Freedom of Speech.  I believe in it enough that it could be considered my very own religion (which is also protected under the First Amendment).  But right now, that freedom is a scary thing.  It protects- rightly so- all of the cruelty any one person can spew out at any given moment.  When that person is the presumptive Republican Nominee for President of the United States...

that freedom is a very scary thing.




*I read all the comments, too.  And I do agree that tweeting is not necessarily valid or professional journalism.  But I also think that his reactions were and are valid.

Obsession iConfessions

So let's just deal with the first bit, first.

I have a lot of music.  I have an iPod in which that music lives.  I love my iPod.  My iPod is dying.  Let me not get into the all-encompassing drama that is my Apple world at the moment.  Let me stick with the iPod.  A couple of months ago I posted, via Facebook, my confusion and deep distress that Apple is apparently no longer manufacturing iPods.

What. The. Fuzz.

A helpful friend when I exclaimed "what am I gonna do??' responded with something along the lines of "that's what a smart phone is for, Kate."

What. The. Fuzz... Again.

Here's the thing- I don't want to use my phone to listen to my music.  Don't get me wrong- I get it. I get the usefulness, the helpfulness, the super streamline-ed-ness of having my phone as the maestro of my mobile music experience.
But I don't want it.  When I'm walking  the dog, running, playing around town or grocery shopping, I want my tunes.  I don't want my phone.  Except for a few, I don't actually want people to be able to get to me all the time.  All. The. Time.  I want to lose myself in some jams, do my thing, and go away for a little while.  I don't want to be getting text messages, Facebook messages, emails, reminders, news updates, blah blah blah...  I deal with all of those things enough all day every day.  I just want my music.

Which brings me to this little jewel of an obsession.  iPod does still exist!  I'll take the Touch, 128GB (yes I do have that much music, you nay-sayers), in Gold or Space Gray.  And FREE ENGRAVING?!?! Yes Please!  What will mine say?

The Last Waltz.

Wow, that was a long lead-up to my first obsession.

Next up- the way sea air smells when the sun warms it.  We don't get a lot of sun in the winter months.  Sometimes (despite the fact that we are currently technically at about 18 hours a day of daylight hours) we don't get a lot sun in the summer months.  But when we do, the sea smells of salt and life and movement.  It smells like my childhood and maybe a little like the future.

These guys are dropping a new album and going on tour.  Who's got two thumbs and really wants to see a show?  This gal.

This guy is coming back this summer.  Which is exactly around the time my attention will be utterly torn away from my husband and my dog.  (There is this teenage girl inside of me that is screaming THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!!!)

Booze Traveler.  Not only do I love the premise, but Jack Maxwell is about as charming as travel-show hosts come (full disclosure- I have not googled him because I don't want to find out that he isn't actually as charming as he comes across.  A girl can dream, right?).  It's a fun take on what has become a stuff genre- the 'travel and partake in eating customs' becomes the 'travel and partake in the drinking customs- oh and then eat something to kill the hangover'.

An old school train to and from a mystical, ancient, place.  It's overkill, it's crazy, it's a lot of dough dropped on the rail- but it's happening.  In July we go to Peru.  In not enough time, we'll go from Lima to Cuzco to Machu Picchu and then do it all in reverse.  It will be a hectic trip- except for those four hours on that ridiculous train.

And finally, a shout out to an obsession I've had since the day I started traveling.  Lonely Planet comes in second to TS Eliot on my 'Biblical' List.  They have a website and an app.  But this is me.  And I love the books.  I love dragging them around the world with me; bookmarking, highlighting, dog-earing them; dropping them, propping them open, letting them fall to whatever page they will.  I have too many of them.  And there are new editions coming out all the time.

For now, that's enough.  And until next time...

The Bones of Things

There is something morbidly comedic about the basement of a chapel in the Czech countryside that has been decorated with bones.  Human bones.  Lots and lots of human bones, in fact.  The comedy might come from the legend of the half-blind monk who was first put in charge of "taking care of the bones" (he formed them into a crypt, naturally) because he really wasn't suited to anything else. It could also come from the family crest made entirely of aforementioned bones that hangs on the "wall" there.  On it, there is a human bone bird eating the eye out a human bone King skull.  It's weird- but so cartoonish and absurd that it becomes gloriously macabre.

Either way both morbid, funny, and morbidly funny.

The Sedlec Ossuary itself is an unusual place- where people throw coins in the empty eye sockets of the long dead.  As though they think these skulls have some amazing supernatural power. As if.

As though if we wish on or to the dead, we are somehow tricking the spirit world into forgetting us a little longer- or at least bribing them to.

But then the Bone Chapel is really just a function of it's location.

There are a lot of bones in the Czech Republic.  Bones of buildings, ghostly bones of societies. Wooden bones of dancing, dangling marionettes, metal bones of window bars- metal bones of selfie sticks dropped, tossed, or trashed (thank you for not shoving that in front of my face, annoying self-involved tourist). It's bones on top of bones here: democracy, communism, monarchy; revolution, spring, boldness, sourness of time.  I find myself looking at everything here in terms of skeletal structures: as though the city itself is skin: strong yes, but sloughed off every so often.

I look at the ground here as I walk- in part because I trip all the time on crooked cobblestones and in part because I am thinking all feet, all the tiny phalanges and metatarsals, that have hit this particular pavement before me.  And of how many will after.

I think about who the bones of Prague- Praha, who the bones of Sedlec, and all the hundreds of millions of bones spread around the countryside and slumbering in cemeteries, belong to.  Who keeps them, whose they were, whose they will be as time passes.  Who will take care of the bones that built this place?  Who will remember it all?  All the bones, all the stories, all the ages and faces?  All the time, the history, and passion?

Yes, Prague makes me think about bones.  But why is that so morbid (and it is)? Bones are the pieces of us that are left the longest once we no longer are.  Bones are the proof of history, of living, of the passage of time and migration of place.  They are the strength of the body- moreso than muscle and flesh- because they are the structure, the foundation, the solidity at the core of it.

But yeah.  Still morbid.

And Until Next Time.

Freedom of Speech, Part Two.

A couple of years ago, I struggled with writing and publishing something that I knew would hurt someone.

You can read about that here.

And now I'm struggling again, with writing and publishing again, and what is and what isn't allowed anymore.

I've always been painfully, abundantly transparent in what I write and why I write it.  I take a no-holds-barred stance on my words.  If I'm thinking, feeling, needing them, they're going to come out.  Possibly in person, probably in this blog.  I have written about illness, loss of love, loss of goodness; I have written about books and knowledge and poetry and music; I have written about pain, happiness, secrets, sorcery, and travel.  I have written anything and everything I have wanted to.  Except for that one post that still only exist in my mind and my heart, I have committed myself to openness and honesty- most especially when I write.

But here I am.  Here I am now, in this life that I have, that I have chosen for myself.  And it's a good life.  I have people around me that are good people, people I love, people who are good for me.  I'm living in a place as wild and petulant and changeable as I am.  I care about things; I invest myself in things; I am in what most people would identify as a 'happy place.'

And yet I still struggle.  Every day I struggle.  Badly.  Some days are exponentially worse than others.

Lately I find it's hard for me to look myself in the eye- it's hard for me to look at myself at all- without feeling the current of badness tug at my psyche.  I have a beautiful life that I finally and fully appreciate- but I still struggle.  It's no laughable struggle either; it's not struggling over what shoe to wear (although I have been down that road a time or two) or what really bad Netflix to watch; it's all out tug of war for the health and well being of my brain.

And yet here I still am.  Struggling, in a happy place.

And scared to write about it.*  Because what right do I have to write?  About sadness and madness and the seemingly inevitable creep of self abasement and loathing?  About the stretches of time when my mind goes blank because blank is better than bad?  About the pain and frustration that comes from, once again, turning against myself?  About the fear and the loneliness that is a direct result of the aforementioned illness, knowledge, and secrets.  About the isolating effect of all of the above.

Not only that, but what right do I have to write about the pains, ills, and grievances that so many others have?  Am I toeing the line, the hard line, of complaining?  Of bitching and moaning and just generally woe-is-me-ing?

What sort of right do I have to write any of that?

Freedom of Speech.  Freedom of Expression.  Those rights that I hold most dear are the rights that are most dangerous to me right now.  Open the floodgates and the waters will overwhelm.  Let me use my words and with them I will drown you.

It's a terrible power and an overpowering yearning, this simultaneous need for- and fear of- the blunt abruptness of the written word.

And what right do I have to wield it?  Or feel it?

Until Next Time.



*Which never works- inevitably I find myself coming up with increasingly terrible ways to ease these struggles and assuage my own palpable frantic negativity.

It's April 22 Somewhere... -or- A 'The Bob' Top Ten

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time (at least longer than a year), you'll know that I sometimes refer to my beloved father as The Bob (I sort of always do).  And you'll also know that April 22, in my book, is akin to an intergalactic holiday.  It's The Bob's birthday.  And this year, The Bob is turning 65.  With that...

Originally I waffled between two different titles for this post:

"On His Birthday: Why My Dad is More Awesome Than Yours."

or

"Top 65 Reasons The Bob is The Bob."

I decided to scrap both ideas.  First, I thought the one might be offensive.  Second... I thought maybe no one would actually read fully through either one.

So instead I give you a mix of the two:

Top Ten Reasons The Bob is Awesome.

Much less boldy argumentative... and a lot shorter.  So here we go.

10)He's put up with me for a really long time.  If you know anything of me, and my personal history, you know that I'm no cupcake.  Nor am I a pushover, wallflower, dainty, candy-ass creature.  I know what your'e thinking... "welllllll... he's sort of to blame for at least a little of that dysfunctionally brash personality of yours...." I mean, half of my DNA is his, so he sort of has to put up with me, but there are things that even a circus strong man, or the Pope would have walked away from.  Not The Bob.  Nope.  The Bob as dealt with flying tupperware, minor curbing, moves across the country, near death encounters, and Henry.  And that's not even scratching the surface.  Still.  The man is there for me.

All.  The.  Time.

Which qualifies him for prevailing awesomeness.

9)Was once escorted, by police, off of the grounds of the International Court in The Hague.  Go ahead, challenge his awesome now.

8)He can still do more math than most people I know.  I think he can still do more math than most people he knows.  In his head.  And is always right about it.  And he knows a lot of engineers. (I'm not going to mention his almost encyclopedic grasp of English Grammar.  Also, apologies to anyone I just insulted.)  That is to say, he's brilliant.

7)He once killed a man.*

6)The Bob taught me how to swear in at least four different languages not too long after I mastered the phrases "Mommy" and "The Bob."

5)He has jumped every battery of every car that anyone in our family has ever owned.  Possibly except for his own.  Which is weird, but also another example of his mechanical mystical awesomeness.

4)He has more tattoos than most sexagenarians.  Seriously.  (Oh and yes, that's a real word).  And he's getting even more before you do. ***

3)I'm pretty sure he was once mistaken for the International Spy Carlos.  Which he may be (see number 7).  But you'll never know, now will you?

2)He's a Hollywood Legend.  Few people know this- but both the characters of MacGyver and The Most Interesting Man in the World are based off of The Bob.  It has something to do with his intellect.  And his beard.

1)He's The Bob.


And with that, a very very Happy Birthday, Daddy.  If I could be there I would.  Fo. Sho.

The Myth, The Legend, The Bob

*With his bare hands.**

**Just kidding- but he does have a poker face that could deliver that line and leave no room for doubt.

***One is of Chuck Norris.****

****Once again, just kidding.

Dinosaurs

Until you've been on the edge of extinction, you've got no idea what it means to be alone.  The meaning of alone only comes on the brink of singularity.  When the room full of people is just a room full of people.  When everything else falls away and it's just you and every single doubt in your mind; when nothing justifies the ends- the means are the means and that's all.  

Alone is hard to be, but it's a tolerable hardness.  It's a hardness that you can grow accustomed to, given enough time and enough thought; enough silence.

And just when you begin to near that edge of extinction, there is a point when every silent tear means the world- but only ever to you.  Isn't that the point of silence?  Like everyone, my eyes hurt when I cry.  And that's when I cry more: for relief.  Because I finally feel all the tiredness that I usually keep beaten back closing in on me. 

There is a uniqueness, an aliveness, to prodding your own boundaries and pushing them just so you know.  There is a strangling reality to finally realising that you're broken; that the exhaustion is closing in.  And that you might not be unbroken again. 

Unbroken is hard to be.  

Kitchen Tongs*

*Still make me twitchy.

When I lived in New Zealand (I say lived, but it was only for a month when I trained to become a yoga teacher) I very nearly severed the tip of my finger from the rest of it.  To make a rather convoluted and quite silly story very very short... I did it while helping to wash dishes left from our last dinner as a group.

With a pair of kitchen tongs.

That's right.. with a pair of dull, largely useless for cutting, exceptionally helpful for depositing large bits of foodstuffs onto plates, kitchen tongs.  I stood at the soapy sink and watched as the water turned a particularly menacing shade of pink, then dark pink, then red and thought, 'I really don't want to take my hand out of this sink.'

But I did.  And, as I avoided watching the top bit of my fleshy finger flop around, I set my mind to developing a healthy distress of kitchen tongs.

Which brings me to this morning, putting the clean dishes away, and noting with dismay a pair of tongs on the top shelf of the dishwasher.

It's funny, what sticks in your head.  I'm 31 years old.  For those 31 years, I have largely been mostly afraid of spiders, giant squid, and child birth (you can thank the Discovery Channel for all of those).  But then there are these other things- these things that haunt you, much to your chagrin, and cause you to get a little bit queasy when you least expect it.

I mean... really?  Kitchen tongs?

But then there are other things, more serious things.  I get a different kind of queasy when those other things come to mind.  Things like loss; like the memory of separation; the violence of grief.  There are other things that kick me in the chest like a prize-fighter and leave me reeling.  These are fears and nerves and terrible emotional triggers that have only developed as I've experienced them; only as I've adventured through my existence.  I suppose that's the trade off: if you're living, engaged in life, experiencing the world around you, you run the risk of 'it' crippling you.  For a second, for a lifetime, for as long as it takes to get stitches- whether those are mental or physical- you are held at something else's whim.

I can deal with spiders these days; I've not yet come face to face with a giant squid; I'm not touching the topic of child birth.

Like those, like the rest, it's all day to day- memory to memory-

Kitchen tong to kitchen tong.

The Yellow House.

Today, for the first time, I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  I have been to the city enough times now that I really have no excuse for waiting so long.

Except that maybe it was worth the wait.

Today I saw, really saw- witnessed, studied, carefully calculated- a piece called "The Yellow House."

It is the kind of image that stays with you.  

At least with me.  

I've never really identified with Van Gogh- not really.  Give me Degas and his dancers.  Give me Sargent and all of his portrait subjects.  Give me Monet and his studies of women with umbrellas.  These, to me, were the men of their ages- they were the gifted ones.  The important ones.  The dancers are strong in their femininity; the subjects unusual in their individuality; the women powerful in the wind and the world.  The artists are great in their art.

Today Van Gogh was added to that list- for the mysticism of this homestead.

There is something about this piece, something so utterly captivating to me.  I keep a journal of every place that I travel- a literal scrap book of receipts, business cards, brochures, buttons- things I find on the street, things I know will remind me years and years later of the (mis)adventure's I've had.  It's a little silly and a little time consuming, but it's worth it for the future remembrances.  Anyway, I've been made fun of more than a few times over these journals, but every now and again I write something, some snippet of an experience, that I cannot replicate anywhere else:

I fell madly in love with one piece in particular: "The Yellow house" or "The Street."  It's so beautiful and haunting... like the image of a place I never knew I wanted to visit or live- a place in my memory that I've never been to or seen before today.  I want to see that place for real.  I want to stand where Van Gogh stood as he saw the house on the street corner and desired it.  I desire this place. 

And even though it's nothing now (the house suffered during World War II and was later demolished because it was so inhabitable), it's still something.  I look at this painting and the saturation in the yellow and blue of it engage me; the density of the brush strokes enliven me.  I look at this painting and will myself to disappear inside of it- so that I can breathe in the mustiness of an old French building; so that I can smell the fresh air and coffee and bread made by hand; so I can run my fingers along soft wooden tables and chairs; so that my memory can match my imagination.

And though I am heartbroken that I will never get to go there, it soothes me to know that it was there, for a time.  And forever, in that painting.

That Kind of a Day.

At something like 10:00AM Central European Time, I had a text on my phone that said "Look at the News. There's been a bombing in Brussels."  At 10:14AM (or so), I had an email sitting in my inbox which said something similar to that.  My first response back was

"Oh shit."

To put this into some sort of temporal and geographical context, from Stavanger, Norway to Brussels, Belgium (as the crow flies) is something like 564 miles.  I've merrily driven more in a day.  Belgium is in the same time zone, it is on the same continent as my adopted home base.  That established, in two days I will fly to Amsterdam- also on the same continent and within the same time zone.  Amsterdam is, however, a lot closer to Brussels than Stavanger.  

I'm traveling soon to a place that is substantially closer to an act of terror than I currently am- within a tight timeline.  

So when the texts, emails, and random alerts came through, so did the reality check.  But not because I'm flying, or maybe not flying because of international air disruptions, or whatever.  But because of so many other small things.  Well, not all small.  My family is Belgian- I still have family living there and I myself have been there many times.  I have been through Brussels, my husband works for an organization that is headquartered there.  Brussels sort of seems like everyone's international backyard.  It is a place that I have a fondness for even though it's a little behind-the-scenes and a little run down.  Let me rephrase- it seems like everyone's slightly-less-than-savory Uncle's backyard. 

But today... today I scroll through Facebook, and there's little- if anything- posted about this bomb that was detonated in the Brussels' Zaventem Airport.  Or the one detonated in the Maelbeek subway station.  These bombs that killed dozens and injured hundreds.  Add to that the moment when some CNN talking-head referred to Brussels as a "rat's nest" of terrorism... and I'm a little more than a little distressed.  

And that's when I start to seethe.  Because in lieu of being able to physically help, I can anger for help- I can want for it with all the power in my insignificant being. 

Because everyone counts.  Everywhere counts.  

Someone I know brought up some statistic he saw today that ranked nations in terms of housing "known terrorists".  This was meant to be a rebuttal for my screaming tangent over the aforementioned "rat's nest" comment.  Apparently Belgium stood at the top... which I took (probably not what he was expecting) not necessarily  as a bad thing, but as an indication that Belgian authorities have apparently identified more terrorists living within their borders than some other nations.  I'm willing to bet that if all terrorists were "known terrorists", there would be a far more... umm...  (looking for the word, looking for the word, looking for the right word)... obvious distribution of top-ranking nations.  

Today has been that kind of a day.  The kind of a day that I have not had in a long time, not personally.  The kind of a day that flip-flops back and forth between anger, mistrust, disbelief, grief, and a different kind of anger.  It's been the kind of day when everything gets under my skin more than it should because everything counts. 

Every single thing counts. 

So for a heartbeat, hats off to Belgium.  Because they should be. 

The Haunting.

Sometimes I wake up and think of everything I have done wrong.

To be fair, in my mind, this ranges from breaking hearts (not terribly frequently) to indulging in ice cream after a day of doctors visits, frustration, confusion, and stagnation.  To me, everything I have done wrong narrates my life in my mind.  Everything I have done wrong has lodged itself in my brain enough so that new neural paths are hard pressed to forge.

To be fair again, my mind is not a friendly place.

Sometimes I think of everything I have done wrong and it reads like a litany of self abuse.

Today I'm thinking of the things I have done wrong in light of the things I didn't know I had done wrong until they went that way.  I'm thinking of the things I did that led, inexorably, from moment to another to another to another

To now.

Cryptic enough?

(And if you're reading this, The Bob, I did not forget the period.  I left that sentence hanging for a reason).

There is  delicate line between what we do right and what we do wrong- between right and wrong.

Sometimes I think about all the people who regret knowing me; the people who wish they wouldn't have known me.  Not that I'm vain or self-absorbed enough to think they are many.. but everyone has someone that they wish they had never met.

And for someone out there, that someone might be me.

It's not like I don't have those people.

We

All

Do.

Those people, the memories of who we were when we were with them, are strong ghosts.

They are the ghost that keep the company of all the ghosts of the things that I have done wrong.

And sometimes when I wake up, they haunt me.