Why I Don’t Write
I’ve been trying. Actually I’ve written quite a lot that I haven’t posted because every time I start writing lately it seems to turn into a rant. I’m knee deep in Civil Rights and the (American) Revolutionary War (I’m writing lesson plans…) and I am hating humanity right now. And I’m tired of complexity. I want everything to be stupid and simple the way I was taught, when the Patriots of America were the shining heroes and the British were the wicked step-sisters, and the Revolution was a glorious and wonderful moment and the birth of a nation and blah blah blah blah bullshit.
I’m teaching about war. Real war. Not shininess and love and sparklers and flags. War. Conflict. Politics. Neighbors turning on neighbors. Ideologies. Violence. Alliances and treaties and maneuvering… I’m teaching about a Revolutionary War in which there were patriots and there were loyalists and there were a shit ton of people in between. In which there were women fighting when their husbands fell, in which there were Native American nations divided, some fighting for their own cultures, lands, rights against foreign invaders, some trying to adapt and blend in with the invading cultures… some trying their best to maneuver alliances for whichever side they felt would benefit their people most.
I’m teaching about a war in which African slaves and freedmen fought believing they were fighting for a future, for a new ideology, a nation founded on “all men are created equal.” Or at least 3/5 equal, right?
I’m teaching about a war where colonists were violent to the soldiers and the soldiers were violent back. Where there were no simple answers. Anywhere. And where the war wasn’t about maps and strategic battles, it was about blood and pain and dying and horror.
And I wonder why I can’t write a blog post without ranting.
I don’t want to be sad anymore. I think if I don’t rant, all I have left to talk about is sadness. It’s just… eternal. I have moments now when I actually smile or laugh or maybe approach something like feeling good, but it’s always ripped away pretty quickly by another wave that comes crashing down. It’s like building sand castles in the tide. A little moment of happiness, then reality washes it away and you sit there for a while just letting the water rush in and back with each wave, not trying to rebuild because you know it’s hopeless… but eventually you do anyway. You build up a little something… Even though you know the next wave will take it. And it does. And you sit for a while more, washed in salt water… Then you build again… even though you know… because somehow you can’t stop yourself… even knowing they’ll be destroyed again, you grasp those moments of joy.
It’s better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all.
It’s a cliche and all, but it’s also an ideology. I believe in it. I don’t believe in living wrapped in bubble wrap so I never get bruised at the cost of also never being hugged, kissed, held… It’s a two way street… you have to feel the pain with the joy… or give up both. I’ve never believed in the latter… I’ve always believed in the former. But fuck if ideals aren’t a whole lot easier to rattle off in campy cliches when everything is going right than when it’s time to face the less pleasant side of that two way street.
And it’s my fucking blog, why can’t I be simple if I want to? Maybe I want to bubble wrap for an hour. Maybe I want to say racists suck and should be dropped off the planet and not have to have that little voice in my head saying “There are no simple solutions to complex problems… Simplifying humanity is what gets us the KKK…”
Yeah, saw an awesome photograph tonight of a bunch of Klanspeople in full garb with CHILDREN, also in Klan robes and hats… It was like watching a train wreck. I couldn’t look away. I stared at that picture until the fear that I would throw up on the book (it’s from the library) finally broke my paralysis and I closed it and put it in my bag and then put the bag in a cabinet, as if that picture is going to leak out of the book and poison me or something. And it’s a good book! It’s about the Children’s March in Birmingham in 1963. But that one photograph…
There are no simple answers.
Nothing is simple.
But is it okay to indulge once in a while? To just hate for just a minute before the 500 other factors come in? Before I think… How many of those people were raised by their parents to hate? Can they claim it is their culture and their value system and they have as much right to teach their children racism as Christian parents have to teach their children Christianity? Hell, Christianity has got some hate in it, too, and then there are the fundamentalists who are nothing but fear mongering and extremism… Nobody is taking their children away… Then again… Has anyone anywhere ever raised their children to be perfect human beings? It would require us being perfect ourselves, having no judgment, no prejudices, no quirks of personality that we pass on to our children. None of us have that. Do we? So do those people have as much right to teach their children their beliefs as I have the right to teach my children mine?
Is there a higher code?
You know what’s ironic, I was listening to this Republican speaker today… talking about how government health care is the government making decisions for our bodies… and in the next breath talking about how the government needs to ban abortion unilaterally. And does nobody see that, I mean, regardless of your political affiliation, there is a fundamental lack of logical consistency between those two positions. Either the government has the right to intervene in our private lives, in our bodies, or it doesn’t… At least acknowledge your own inconsistencies. I’d actually respect a politician who did that. At least acknowledge your own illogic. But nobody does. Everybody just rattles along like the world is a simple and linear place. Everybody waves their flags and sparklers and calls the Revolution “the birth of a nation” and sings songs about Paul Revere (but how many people know he was actually arrested by British troops before he finished his ride… oh and he had two other people riding with him, as well… Yeah, that’s not in the poetry, is it?)
I’m back to ranting again.
This will be the third post in as many days that I don’t publish.
Sigh.
Why does everyone think they can make the world fit into little tidy boxes? And why can’t I let myself think that way once in a while, too! Everybody else does it! Everybody else gets to be narrow-minded and self-centered and not think about any other position than their own… Why am I always the one who has to try to see the other side, who has to try to have compassionate understanding for even the fucking KKK… Not that I wouldn’t wipe them off the planet, but I can at least contemplate that they might be more complex than simple evil demons that I want to make them.
