The End

I'm in Oregon right now taking care of my grandfather and visiting my step-grandmother, Corky. I was really bummed to come out here since my best friend came home the same day I left. I felt shitty about leaving but also felt shitty about not wanting to leave. Being here has sparked a lot of thought in me, and it's a thought process I'm afraid to possess. Death.

A few weeks ago, I ran across this television show on the sci fi channel called Ghost Hunters. It's alot to think about, not only on the spooked level but also in the sense that thinking about death really isn't something most of us humans love to think about. Of course there are exceptions: the "Ghost Hunters" in the show, most hard-hitting religious people, and others who might have somehow made their peace with death. But let's be honest, we're afraid to think about death because we don't like trying to solve a problem we know is currently unsolvable. Being in this house, especially at night or alone (as I am now) causes me to think about death even more. It's a strange feeling, being here alone. There's something about being here with all the old furniture and still artwork that makes me feel a bit unsettled at times. My grandpa was in WWII, he was in the AVG (the Flying Tigers) and his den, where I am sleeping, is decorated fully with memorabilia and old photographs from his time in the war. Corky's collection of artwork is displayed all over the home, much of it is absolutely beautiful, but right now I feel the following eyes of a little girl and her dog who are resting on the wall. We brought Henry, my dog, with us up here this time. I read or heard somewhere that dogs and babies have the ability to located ghosts much better than grown people; Henry lay in his bed, staring at the same spot in the room for a long time. He had interest and complexity in his eyes. I am becoming more relaxed in this old home but there are still moments where I feel, for lack of a better word, quite spooked.

Ghosts and 'spirits' have always been things that have pondered me greatly. I can't remember the first time I started thinking about them but my fascination with life with humans after death began to really grow in middle school, as most girls' do. In seventh grade, I got an Ouija board for my birthday and I found a large attachment to the thoughts this game provoked. Seances then followed, the visiting of accordingly haunted places, wanting to have a sighting, scary movies... inside this girl who so badly wanted to have a connection with another world was a girl who was truly scared of knowing the answers to the questions she was asking. Now, five years later, I try to avoid thinking about the entire subject. There is no doubt it is extremely provocative but I am trying, for my sake, and clearly I have not been all that successful.

However this element of death has not been the only concept to rest in my ever-questioning mind. The whole idea of death is so tricky to me. Cut off: that's it. Life goes on without you, isn't it crazy? The end. Game over, did you win or did you lose? How many points did you have when you peeled your hands off of the controller? And I am sitting in this chair thinking, I'm going to die. I should be so lucky to reach 91, like my grandpa will on Friday. So what am I doing home alone? I should go spend time with him before it's too late. But my brother is in Canada and could die on his way home. I can't call him to tell him that I love him because calls up there are so expensive. Wait. Why are we worrying about money when there are much more important things to worry about?
I need to think some more about this.

The End, for now.
(Now, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could say that about life?)

My black, gay and disabled kid named Dave

A friend of mine asked me today if people who would chose to have a straight child over a gay child are homophobic. I automatically said no, which surprised me. I thought about this scene in the movie, The Family Stone, where they're all at the dinner table: the mother, the father, the two brothers (one with his partner and one with his fiancee), the two sisters, etc. They are talking about fashion or something when the mother says, "You know, I secretly wished all my kids would be gay. That way I'd never look like a wreck and I'd never make terrible curtain choices." The whole table laughs except for Sarah Jessica Parker's character, the fiancee, who replies: "That's terrible. I don't know why anyone would wish for their child to be gay; it's like wishing for you kid to be black," the other son's partner is black, she looks embarrassed but she continues, "Being gay is really had to do, I just don't understand why someone would wish another struggle on their child." Well of course the family retaliates but thinking about this got me to thinking even more.

If a seventeen year old boy is presented with this question, the guy to whom my friend had asked the question, no doubt he's going to say straight. A barren couple in the fifties or sixties would rather adopt a white baby than a black baby, not for their own comfort but for the baby's. Does that make them racist? When I imagine myself as a mother I automatically imagine myself with a girl. Does that make me sexist? I chose a black ipod over a white one. Do I not like white? Our choices and preferences are not by any means our wants or our needs. That is what I was thinking. But here's the other aspect to it: science has gotten so intense that mothers who choose to do insemination can choose the sex of their baby before actually being pregnant. Women who go to sperm banks know a lot about their sperm donor so that they can pick the best genes for their child. The latter seems more ethical, for that's what it's all about right? Pairing your genes with the best genes and having children... but does a woman who does the selective choosing and none of the searching really benefit? To me, both of these still seem completely inhumane. Gay, straight, black, white, boy, girl, whatever.

Bottom line is they're your kids. You should love them no matter what, right?

I dropped a rock in a lake just to watch the ripples.

I watched a Charlie Chaplin movie today in history about the perpetual spiral of industrialization. Good ol' Charlie played a man in a factory who screwed bolts on some metal plates which were moving past him at a rapid speed (however for some reason everything seems fast in a silent movie and it reminded me of that I Love Lucy episode). His bodily reflexes become reliant on that motion: turn and spin... even on his break his arms are continuing those motions. I am having one of those days where you can't stop the factory in your head. I'm sure you know the one. Thought, ponder, thoughts, etc. I don't know how I plan to sleep tonight.
I'm sitting in my
What the hell, Dad? What's with the attitude today?
Friday sleepiness. I changed the background on my computer the other day. And just as I wrote this, I imagined your, the reader, I imagined your reaction to this. But it is important. It is of substance. Let me go on. I haven't talked to my um.. ex? best friend? since March, when she stood me up at my show. Ouch, right? Yes and now somehow I'm at fault. Don't let me get into it. Seeing her picture made me happy when I signed on. No longer. Loser sees the fucking default of the moon. And I see this as I turn on the computer to wright.
I am beginning to realize that everything has a link to its neighbor, to its principle/principal (which homonym shall I use...?), to its Nation's enemy far, far away but held too close for comfort. I read somewhere about a theory stating that everyone is related to everyone by a connection of six people. So by a connection of six people or less, I know President (Lovely President) Bush, I know Christina Aguilera, I know Ryan Gosling. Okay, let me try one: I know my friend, Kelli (1), who worked at a famous movie theatre and had a boss (2) who deals with a lot of movie premiers at the theatre, which, I guess, are ran through the movie's publicists (3), who know the producers (4), who know the actors (5). Me to Will Smith in five people. (And it goes on: Will Smith knows a lot of people, and that's six.) So there we go, it's seemingly factual. My dad said something to me about five minutes ago which made me a little angry. I am still a bit upset about it and my ore has suffered. I lost my posture, I feel a little bit more weight on my chest. I'm going to bed soon, but what if I carried this out into the world? Say I walked down Telegraph with this changed demeanor. A woman smiles at me and I don't smile back, but she knows I saw her. This effects her greatly. And on and on six people out. Another six people out. Have I soon effected the whole world with a plague of unhappiness, the feeling of weight? Have we turned in after a send-out of unhappiness hence generating the "Generation ME" theory? Fuck, what have I done? Ripples upon ripples of sickness.
I think that sometimes education burdens people in the sense that when well-off, American people hear about issues in other nations, in other poorer nations. Take Darfur for example. A man from Sudan came to speak to my school about the problem in Africa. The upsetting, hurtful and violent magnetism between the Muslims and the Africans. An amazing speaker. I really wanted to do something. But what could I do? So I educate others, hoping this will help and thanks to me, I trigger their own restlessness on the subject. So these people respond in the same way: six people out, and so on. Ripples upon ripples of angst.
What can we do to improve our connections?
What can we do to help our members of this club: the human race?


Help me understand.