Water Ceremony

Was kept awake for two hours last night by random thoughts, and body aches. As a result, I watched my UU church service on FB again. It was lovely. I didn't go as intended, because my foot was bothering me last night, after walking for a mile around my neighborhood. So I'm thinking that I should probably not over-exert it. I'm not positive, but I think I have a hairline stress fracture from running into my bedroom door.

Doctor: how many times have you injured your feet?
Me: Several, but it's not due to diabetes anything like that, it's a because I'm a clutz.
Doctor (laughs): Me too.

There's a reason I don't have a lot of furniture in my apartment. I feel I have too much as it is.

Anyhow, the service introduced the interim minister, Rev. Micah Mah, who is transgender (they/their) and from Pacific Southeast Asian ethnicity. So far? I love them. Their homily was short, inclusive, and not about them. A breath of fresh air.

In it, she provided a couple of interesting take-aways that resonated with me and I felt a need to share here before I forget them. First? UU several years ago adopted a new annual ritual - at the beginning of each year, UU's bring to their services water they've collected from their travels. The water is then collect in a basin, blessed, and used throughout the year for baptisms and other blessings, and the reminder is added to the next years baptismal water. (It's obviously boiled and sanitized first.). And it is blessed in "Water Ceremony" on the second weekend in September or the first weekend of the new congregational year.
( Star Trek and Water )

I've gone to several of them, but due to foot issues - and the fact that going to my church requires a lot more walking than my commute, I chose to give my poor foot a rest. The walk from the subway to my church is about fifteen to twenty minutes or about a mile. [As Wales puts it - my church is not convenient and far away. It was actually closer when I lived in Wales neighborhood, and she considers it too far away.]

For the meditative prayer - she asked that we pray for all those who do not have access to water around the world. For Gaza, for Flint, Michigan, even here in New York City. And everywhere else, including the homeless, the refugees, the prisoners, those who cannot pay their water bills. It made me want to go out and buy a bunch of bottles of water and go around handing them out to the homeless everywhere. The only problem is - I'm not sure if they'd drink it, empty it out somewhere, or litter. (Most of the homeless in my area are mentally ill and untreated for severe mental illness, that's why they are homeless.) I may consider doing it anyway. We'll see. It could get pricey though - bottled water is ridiculously expensive. It's why I use a Britta. [*I don't need nor want advice on this, please. I don't take kindly to being told what to do, it tends to make me do the exact opposite just to be ornery. I come from a very stubborn family.]

The Artist, the Media, and the Internet

Last night's random thoughts...which I'm thinking maybe if I write them down they will go away?

Condemning or Destroying Artists we don't know, who may have done and often have done terrible things, on the Internet

I've been pondering this for a while now and discussed it with Mother over the phone last night.

Everyone is capable of terrible and wonderful things. And oh so many have done both. Mostly forgivable, because people change, evolve, and make mistakes. Except of course for The Doofus or the Felon or He Who Shall Not Be Named - who we've decided is evil incarnate and there really is no good in him whatsoever.

Have you ever posted something either in blog, twitter, tumblr, on a fandom discussion board, on FB, anywhere on the internet - and had people come out of nowhere and attack you for it? Misconstrue what you wrote? Take bits of it out of context - and condemn you for those sentences alone, when they are part of a larger work and require the context of the other paragraphs to make sense? Or just misread or misinterpreted it? To the point - that you begin to second guess yourself? And wonder if you are insane? And consider deleting it? Or wish you could?

I don't know about you? But I have. Too many times to count. It's par for the course for a writer. You will piss folks off. The more you write, the more likely it will happen.

And let's face it - most people don't read posts on the internet, they skim. They are scrolling through - their eyes grab something interesting, and/or they see something that rubs them the wrong way, and because they can - respond to it. And sometimes with kindness, but a lot of times with hate. It's bad enough if you are someone like myself, unknown, not famous, and innocuous. It's a hundred times worse if you are a professional musician, artist, writer, etc - who has a brand. And makes your living writing songs, poetry, art, etc. Because then our bored and self-indulgent media grabs it, or some freelance writer working for them, and uses it to make their career.

I saw a documentary recently about The Brat Pack, and they went to interview the relatively unknown New York Magazine reporter who had casually coined the term - which resulted in the destruction and type-casting of various actors. Journalists have a lot of power, and often aren't wise about how they use it.

I was thinking about all of this last night - because I googled Amanda Palmer, and discovered she was ripped apart for writing a poem about the bomber/terrorist at the Boston Marathon. ( Read more... )

I wish I could say that Amanda Palmer is the only one who has been beaten up in this manner. But others have as well. It's almost as if - if you don't go along with the crowd, if you don't just write about the innocuous things you did daily, or the meals you fixed or squee about some fandom piece, or write a nice fanfic, or do what everyone else - you get attacked.

Artists get attacked if they step outside the bounds. Or get too successful. Or too many awards. Or too much attention. My mother said in Australia they called it "chopping down the tall poppies".

I wish people would think carefully before they do these things. ( Read more... )

The World Can Make Me Crazy...

It's a lovely day outside - blue cloud streaked sky, puffy white clouds, cool breeze, sunshine, crisp and warm at the same time - a happy day that I kind of wanted to frolic in and punch my fist through due to the inability to frolic.

I did however take a walk. A brief one - to Met Fresh, to pick up fruit and vegetables, and alas more dark chocolate, which I so don't need. I feel like a kid with a stash of chocolate. I got my blood sugar down to 117, only to have it shoot up when I had two small squares off a bar of intense dark chocolate. I'm annoyed, as you can well imagine. The foot for the most part is okay, just a bit stiff. It hurts if I press something against the top of it, not the bottom. So I have to wear soft shoes or shoes that don't have a top pressing against it too forcibly. I've been wearing my purple all birds sneakers, with are flexible and soft on top - made of wool and bamboo fibers. Also softer sandals. Sneakers don't work.

The blood sugar will even itself out. I'm going to have to ask the doctor to up my dosage of Metroformin or something. My blood sugar was fine when I had a higher dosage, albeit more side-effects. IBS is an issue regardless. Just have to stay clear of grains and carbs and dairy and acidic foods... Mother told me she is having fried chicken tonight. I'm awash in envy.

More random thoughts from last night - that would not let go of the brain, even after three meditations on the Calm app, one on the headspace app, and a sleep story on the Calm app about an adventurer who does Extreme Sleeps around the world. (I actually think this is non-fiction.) This one was traveling to a small village in the Artic Circle, trekking with a colleague to a Glacier, and sleeping in her sleeping bag in the Glacier, under the stars, in her toasty sleeping bag. I didn't envy her - that is not something I would enjoy doing. I don't like camping to begin with, and sleeping outside under the stars - I find to be very distracting. I wouldn't sleep a wink.

The random thoughts...sigh..I've realized over time, the following:

1. Not everyone will like me. This is a given. Not everyone will like you either. It's not specific to me. And they won't like us for reasons that honestly have nothing to do with anything we've done, or would do. In fact their reasons most likely won't make sense at all. They just don't like us.
It may be a psychological tic. We may have rubbed them the wrong way somehow. We may remind them of someone who abused them or hurt them through no fault of our own. We may have inadvertently insulted a friend of theirs. They may have heard something nasty about us and believed it to be true. Perhaps someone who injured us, twisted the story around and made it out that they were the injured party - and made us out to be the bad guy. It may be out of envy, jealousy, or resentment. It may be because we have something they wanted or inadvertently achieved or won something they felt they deserved. Or took something away from them. Or caused them to be injured in some way by helping someone else or awarding someone else. Or took the last available item from the store self - that they'd been hunting for for days or months even. Any number of reasons that we are unaware of.

But not everyone will like us. Some may even hate us. Damn. That sucks.

2. I struggle with personal pronouns. I like to use the personal pronoun "you" to indicate people in the general sense, including myself, and in blog posts and conversation - but unfortunately, the English language being what it is - people have a tendency to think it refers to them "personally" and get upset with me. I've had two conversations this week - one at work and one with my mother, in which I had to stop the conversation and explain that no - I wasn't accusing them of anything, this was meant generally.
You'd think I'd learn, but nope.

I don't even remember the conversations - just that they went off the rails because of my inadvertent use of the personal pronoun you. My church tells everyone whenever we do discussion groups or circles to use "I" statements not "you" statements, so apparently I'm not the only one who struggles with this. Maybe I can go back to using the word "one" instead? I mean there are instances in which the personal pronoun "I" doesn't quite express the thought accurately?

Language is frustrating. ( Read more... )

I've been playing the NY Times word game connections? And it demonstrates if nothing else does the multitude of meanings and uses of words. The trick of the game is to pull together words in sets of four, based on their similarity of meaning or something similar about them. It's a critical thinking game for wordsmiths. Also it helps if you know things about sports, I tend to fail the ones that group things by Football or Golf terminology.

Take the word soul for example?

Merriam Webster lists multiple meanings for the word - no wonder we couldn't agree on the definition. The discussion we were having for a bit of context - back on LJ? Was on whether a vampire's soul was meant to be conscience or a religious spirit, or a connection to others, and if it had much bearing on whether they could be redeemed in the Whedonverse. And some fandom debaters decided to hijack the discussion by making it about whether or not souls actually exist per their personal religious definition of the world soul.
Basically they turned it into a philosophical conversation on their interpretation of the word soul. Which is all fine and good - except not when the rest of the folks aren't on the same page and are still defining the word within the context of the original discussion. Not within the context of whether or not a soul is just a religious context - that's a different discussion entirely. It's also known as "hijacking".

In Merriam Webster - soul can mean:
( Read more... )

I remember on various discussion board forums, folks cautioning people to write carefully from time to time. But they didn't caution to "read carefully". ( Read more... )

3. I've learned that people will resent, envy and be jealous of me for reasons that honestly make no sense to me whatsoever.

There's a great song about this, that I listened to on a repetitive loop during the first year of the pandemic.

Relay by Fiona Apple from her album Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Not to be confused with The Who's song of the same name, which I didn't know existed until I hunted Relay on youtube. The Who's song is less memorable, no disrespect to The Who - I love the Who, but that's just not one of their memorable songs.

Worse? Some people will act on these emotions - and scheme to take you down, because in their heads you didn't deserve it or was in their way, or entitled or some such nonsense. This is bewildering.

I was rather shocked when it happened to me. I discovered that not one but two work colleagues who I had befriended and trusted, one a close friend, way back in 2001, had done just that, conspired with my insane bully of a boss to get me to resign or fired - albeit separately, and resented each other for doing it. They tried to undercut each other - and me. How did I find out? They told me. First about each other, then later confessed about doing it themselves. They weren't very bright. I look back on it now - and find the whole thing absurd.
( rather long story )