Randy: That’s two different ideas.
Me: No it’s not.
Randy: Yes it is. You told me one story idea, then you just went in a completely different direction. Completely different story.
Me: No it isn’t.
Randy:…
Me: I had the thoughts at the same time.
Randy: You have completely different thoughts at the exact same time? No wonder you never sleep.
Me: Well, I didn’t have the thoughts at the exact same time, but one did lead to the other, so it’s the same story.
So, here it goes, my story has nothing to do with rabbits or holes (another thing that will drive Randy nuts. Haha).
I just want you to decide if this story goes down a rabbit hole and is actually more than one story as Randy claims or is this one story?
Or, and this is the camp I am in, does it not matter at all?
In the spirit of fairness, if most of you agree with Randy, then I shall do my penance and write bad poetry about something in my house.
Anyway, I stayed home from work today because I have a head cold, it snowed last night and roads are bad. Also, I spent days dealing with the wrecked car bullshit. I need a break.
I checked my Facebook memories (Oddly enough, according to my memories on Facebook, I stayed home from work on this exact day last year as well. I must have a hard time entering February.)
I found this quote in my memories:
“You,” he said, “are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.” – Emilie Autumn
My first thought: Wow, do I feel this.
My second thought: Okay, jingle brains. Who wouldn’t feel this?
What human is going to read that and go “Oh, yeah, not me. I’m completely false.” ?
And we’re all in pain.
Pain is part of the human condition.
None of us get away with never feeling physical pain. None of us get to go through life without mental pain.
Not that we’re all writhing in pain
all the time. But most of us carry at least some all the time, whether it be mental or physical. Or both. Pain just is. We can all identify with that.
I’m sure, though, this quote means different things to other people.
I read this and am reminded of a professor I had during my brief time as a college student. She said people who don’t have rose colored glasses to look through are usually more depressed.
I don’t think it is a flaw to be able to dismiss or distort some of the atrocities we see every day. I think that is the brain saying “Oh, yeah…how about we look at the flowers instead.”
Well, it’s certainly been a while since I’ve made a Walking Dead reference.
Reality is a weird concept to me.
I mean, I know our realities are what our brains reflect back to us.
Our realities are what our brains allow us to see.
I don’t know what you motherfuckers are seeing. I probably don’t want to. I am also fairly certain you don’t want to see what I am seeing, either.
With that being said, who is better off?
The people whose brains protect them as best they can and allow them to function? Maybe.
- We still need us, though.
- We need the people who didn’t manage to snag a pair of those glasses.
- We need the people who point out how horrible things are.
We’re the ones who look at them even though it hurts. We’re the ones pointing it out to people who are able to glance away. Because we can’t look away anymore.
For instance, the Virginia governor.
I get people saying “it was 35 years ago. He’s a changed person.”
Thirty five years is a long time and I fully believe people are capable of change. For all that is holy, we have to believe that, because if it isn’t true, then I’m not seeing much hope for the future.
Those of us who are paying attention, those of us who are waking up to our own privilege, those of us who can’t look away, we understand why the governor must resign: Trump’s administration legitimized racism.
We are in a precarious stage and it is imperative we move forward in the best way.
That does not include having a leader who chose to behave in a racist manner as an adult. We cannot. We have to make a clear and definitive stance against racism.
Nothing less. No concessions. We must denounce racism.
Does that mean there is no forgiveness for people who want to be different? Who want to grow? Of course not. But it’s probably best you don’t run for office. At least, not right now. Maybe, 20 years down the road, we will be ready for the “I used to be a racist but have seen the error of my ways” candidate. But, right now, that can’t happen.
I thought about all the stories I read about our brothers and sisters being racist douche twizzles and thought they would probably identify with the Emilie Autumn quote as well.
I don’t think any of us think we’re evil.
I mean, I find it super hard to understand people who aren’t sickened by caging children at the southern border. I can’t understand people who aren’t for all people in our country having access to the health care they need. I will never understand why anyone would believe they have a say over another human’s actual body. But still, I completely believe that they would identify with that quote.
That makes me feel an uneasy kinship. In a manner that no matter what, we are stuck here together in this moment of time. We have to live together. We’re going to have to find ways to feel kinship with each other.
However.
That kinship will never include brushing aside racism.
That kinship will never include “seeing both sides” when it comes to racism, misogyny or xenophobia.
Never.
That behavior must die. Those ideas and words must die. We have to reject it without compromise.
Okay. Now, be honest. Is Randy right? Rabbit hole? Or no?
Also, when I write the bad poem, should it be about the new kitty statue or my ridiculously old gas stove?
Photo courtesy of skitterphoto
Emmmmm, I find this rabbit hole tremendously logical and linked and shit. No bad poetry needs to be written (unless you really feel the need, of course).
Thank you. And I rarely feel the need for poetry. Except for Limericks on Twitter.
Oh I’d love a poem about the new kitty statue! Or one of your lovely pictures, as penance isn’t required. We are all linked and you make sense to me. i needed this today, thank you xoxo
Thank you!!! I think I will do the kitty poem.
No bad poetry needed. Lol. I absolutely understand that 35 years can change a persons thinking. However, I think you need to lead with that darkness, so that people don’t stumble across it by accident. But then again, I also wouldn’t want someone to use it as “look at how wonderful I am. I overcame being a racist douche-canoe, aren’t I just a perfect role model now”? I DEFINITELY feel like anyone in politics should completely open their lives to be inspected. No one is perfect, but morals say a WHOLE LOT about your decision making skills.
Exactly.
Makes perfect sense to me. Sorry Randy.
🙂
No poetry required. I think you’re just using the initial concept as a vehicle that drives the main idea. I think alot of great writers use this approach. Sometimes when I read pieces that use this method of writing it kind of reminds me of those Russian nesting dolls, and I am amazed by the skill it takes to write this way. So, sorry Randy, no poetry this time! Unless the spirit moves you Michelle, then might I suggest a poem about our current president where every line ends with “suck my dick Mr. President “?
Maybe just EVERY line.
I’m firmly in the it-doesn’t-matter camp, which I guess technically means I disagree with Randy, but I also really want to read a bad poem about the new kitty statue. To make it really bad it should be written in doggerel.
And I’m not just in favor of the governor of Virginia stepping aside because of the importance of denouncing racism at this point in time. I also think he and others like him need to think about how we’ve benefited our whole lives from white privilege, and that stepping aside is a valuable use of that privilege. Stepping aside allows room for others who aren’t like us to have a chance.
Also, totally unrelated but perhaps related: I’ve heard that when you’re down in a well or other hole and can see the sky you can see the stars even in the middle of the day. Maybe there’s something in that.
I agree so much with this.
It has been my personal experience that husbands are often incapable of seeing things that are right in front of them. Like logically connected story threads, or the staple gun, that they accuse you of moving, that was, in fact, right there on the shelf that they’d somehow emptied of almost everything except the staple gun, in a baggie, with staples.
We’re having the same week, different houses.
That being said, the world could use more bad poetry.
Well, I AM good at bad poetry.
One of the skills of a good writer is the ability to link two seemingly separate things… or thoughts… and turning them into a perfectly logical piece of writing. You did that. Great job! (Sorry, Randy.)
Thank you!!!
Nah, you’re good. If you feel like writing the poem anyway, perhaps make a video of Randy rapping it?
Whether or not Ralph has matured as a human being into someone who can do the job he was elected to do, he has cast doubt on his own believability and worse, all of those people who worked their asses off to get him elected are now regretting their work, effort, and contributions to the political process, and will most likely think twice about that level of involvement in the future.
Dude needs to apologize to them, Virginia, the country, and go away for a while.
The whole “they’ll never find out about all of the skeevy shit I pulled” mentality has to go. They will find out. Your constituents deserve to know.
I’m the only member of my immediate family who wasn’t born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and the only male in my family who didn’t grow up racist. I have seen it up close and personal; the otherwise seemingly mentally healthy men who for some reasons I’ll never fully understand feel they have to denigrate people they don’t even know because they look different than they do.
My dad and my brother had what it took to eventually lift themselves up out of that way of thinking, for the most part, but I would not have voted for them for governor.
Yep. I’m glad you rose above. Randy did the same. He was raised in a small town in Indiana. The whole area is not known for acceptance.
More of a train of thought that blasted right past the station than a rabbit hole…
But I feel you. Has he resigned yet?
No. And most of my trains of thought are like this.
Yeah, he’s got to go. So, rabbit hole of my own. It’s not dissimilar to one of the most disheartening things about the Bro Kavanaugh stories. For these guys, dressing up in blackface, or getting hammered and half-raping a young woman, wasn’t even a big deal to them, so of course they forgot about it.
Either we keep the high ground, or we don’t. I’d like to keep the high ground.
Right there with you.
I get the hole but it is in the sand with some people’s head in it! No poetry needed unless you are so inspired.
I am rarely inspired to write poetry, only because I suck at it.
Kitty statue, no question.
Haha. Okay. I will work on that
I’m torn.
On the one hand, I followed all of that and waited—with bated breath, no lie—for the inevitable tangent, the rabbit hole, the random bit where you would go careening just slightly off-topic and tell us about how this somehow tied in to your plan to start a new pizza chain because the local place always burns your crust and the other one marks your house as half a block outside their delivery area. Or whatever.
But no, all of it was connected and made perfect sense.
On the other hand?
I reeeeeeeeaaaally want the bad poem. About your new kitty statue staring at the old gas stove, and maybe judging it? (even art cats are judgmental fucks)
Haha..I think I will. I need something silly.
As someone who ALWAYS wears those rose colored glasses, I love your posts. I still want to believe there is good in everyone but if not, the optimists and the worriers can start a revolution.
Thank you!
Makes total sense to me and the train of thought takes a perfectly logical track and therefore…..no rabbit hole. Sorry Randy. But you could always write us a kitty poem anyways….. 🙂
I think I will. It would cheer me up.
I really want to read a poem about your ridiculously old gas stove!
I do think they are two different thoughts. Because the idea of being real in a false world… I mean get why any American who is active on social media sees the world as false. I’ve basically eliminated myself from Facebook because it is volatile and depressing. But the world I live in – over here in South-East Asia – is amazingly real. Not that there aren’t problems, but I do not believe I live in a false world at all.
I do believe racism has no belonging in any kind of a world and should be rooted out. Two very different thought, imho. Sorry!
i think it’s both a rabbit hole and a logical story. because i can see both perspectives. the people with the rose-coloured glasses are the ones who have the unhealed traumas of the past, for whatever reasons. and/or suffer from some sort of scientific means of unevolved “lesserness”…it could be malnutrition, or a childhood illness, or any of another number of reasons that we now know causes lower cognition (lead poisoning, anyone? cultural programming against breastfeeding?). but as successive generations all over the world get better overall, they *demand* better, and that includes more people taking off those rose coloured glasses. and that includes forcing more people of older generations to come to terms with their various traumas, such as being giant flaming sacks of shit.
or maybe i just made a rabbit hole.