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| Italian anti-Fascist fighters, November 1944 |
Oh dear Lord. Please no one ask me what I think of the woman who identifies as a black person when, in fact, she's a white person. I just don't have it in me to join the discussion and will leave it to less exhausted finer minds than mine to figure it all out. I'm generally fascinated by these kinds of things, but lately I've felt nearly comatose and even bored when the newest wild story comes out. I know that says more about me than anyone else and is probably indicative of mild depression or at least a dissociative disorder, but it's the truth. I'm having a hard time not saying I don't care when people ask me what I think about anything these days. Ironically, one of the things I'll be working on beginning next week when I leave for my residency at Hedgebrook involves my own wrestling with identity -- both mine and my daughter's. Hopefully, I'll be out of this funk and able to organize my thoughts and care.
As I drove around the shitty this afternoon, listening to the interminable talk about the woman who identified as black but who was really white, I did think about my own ethnic identity -- how I'm one-half Italian, one-quarter Syrian and one-quarter Scotch English. If people ask me what I am, I tend to say Italian because I definitely identify more with my Italian ancestry than the Middle Eastern or northern European. I can't tell you why exactly, but I feel Italian. Yesterday's post provoked some really great comments, including Mary Moon stating that she'd heard Italians don't believe in God so much as God's mother. Ha! That's true of me!
I was also thinking about The Powers That Be today, mainly because I got a letter in the mail informing me that our insurance company, Assurant, will no longer be in the health insurance marketplace as of January 2016 so we'll have to start looking for a new individual plan in November during that open season which sounds like we're all going hunting (and wouldn't you love to hunt down an insurance company and hang it, stuffed on your wall?) but actually means you're allowed to enroll in a certain window. Insurance companies and the whole healthcare system in this joint are kind of fascist, don't you think? God, I wish I could say that I don't care, but I'm going to have to care and scurry around and do all the stuff that needs to be done, including making sure that Sophie's Providers are covered and that her drugs are covered and that we can afford the premium and it's all so exhausting and I just don't care.
On the other hand, I've been engaged with one of my favorite Realm of Caring people, Heather, on Facebook who has done an incredible amount of work with this medical marijuana thing. She's one of my heroes, to tell you the truth, and just a pleasure to know as a person. She's indefatigable -- probably not unlike one of those Italian anti-Fascist fighters even if she doesn't exactly identify as one. She shared my recent blog post titled Access Public Service Announcement where I took to task the head of the American Epilepsy Society who was just so dooooooown on that recent Dateline special. It turns out that I did a radio show back in April, and the doctor with whom I spoke was the very same one! You can listen to it here. She was equally as dooooooooown on the radio show, too, and Heather and I can't figure out why these people aren't more excited by our stories (Heather's son has been seizure-free with CBD for nearly two years!). I said would it kill them to express some enthusiasm and marvel a bit because they've been stymied so long? Then again, maybe they just don't care, and lord (or given my Italian identity should I say Mary) knows, I understand that.
*This post is a ramble, a wander and it might make no sense. Read at your leisure.
Complete tangent brought on by the word black. My neighbour has grandchildren that were adopted from Ethiopia about seven years ago. They are now 12 and 14 I think (or so say wrist bone assessments, no one knows for sure). Both of their parents died from AIDS in Ethiopia. Anyway, long story longer, their adopted mother it turns out is a cow and felt she could no longer raise them so they went to live in olympia, washington with their father. My neighbour (who is an American from Hollywood) told me that in more than 6 years in Canada, they had not one single racial incident. Within six weeks of being in Olympia, the boy grandchild was told by a woman in a store he was annoying by bouncing a ball, 'You are so lucky that Obama set you people free." This made no sense to him (or to anyone else really) of course and he said he thought it was MLK Jr. So now my neighbour has to go down there and explain to the children why two black teenagers, caught trying to steal beer, held up their skateboards when the police arrived so they would not be shot. When they were up here, people were lovely and asked where they were originally from and expressed interest. Down there, no one talks to them, no one asks them that.
ReplyDelete- Karen
There was an interesting discussion on the radio yesterday about this lady. Most people expressed the opinion that if you can select your gender, as is the case with transgender people, then why not your race? I had never thought of it like that. To be honest, who cares? More importantly, what kind of human being is she?
ReplyDeleteAs for doctors disliking the weed, I think part of it is they don't have control over it. That's just my two cents.
At some point, one has to retreat into a state of not not-caring, but of letting go of the stuff that sucks the energy you have to have for other things. You HAVE to. And it is a sign of health and of wisdom to do so.
ReplyDeleteWell criminy, I can see why you don't care about the woman who said she was black but was really white, when you have all that insurance stuff to deal with. I wouldn't care either!
ReplyDeleteI am now past caring too. It wasn't that I cared exactly so much as I was trying to understand it (maybe that's the same as caring) but now I have accepted that it will not be understandable to me, no matter how many new details I gather. Next!
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see your Scottish bloodymindedness, and combined with your acquired mindfulness of 'do not care = letting go = no attachments', this is another episode of "How we do it".
ReplyDelete(I've spent all day saying to myself: no, my parents weren't rabbits, but I do identify as a rabbit.)
I can definitely see your Scottish bloodymindedness, and combined with your acquired mindfulness of 'do not care = letting go = no attachments', this is another episode of "How we do it".
ReplyDelete(I've spent all day saying to myself: no, my parents weren't rabbits, but I do identify as a rabbit.)
I feel that way a lot - I just don't care. I too felt it might be disassociation or depression or something. Or it might be the arthritis in my knee.
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