When Home is the Mouth of a Shark

Artist: Eleazar Velazquez

Mary Moon at Bless Our Hearts has written a magnificent post about the current POSPOTUS' administration's draconian policy of separating children from their parents at our borders. She included this poem by Warsan Shire, a British poet born to Somali parents in Kenya, East Africa. Such is the power of poetry that I've included it in my own and hope that everyone will read it and pass it along. I know that many of you reading my blog deplore my politics, my language, my view of this country. I hope you read it, too, and think deeply about it and about your own complicity in supporting the man you've voted into office and what he's done to this country.

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.

your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.

no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.

it's not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did -
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.

you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.

who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.

no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage -
look what they've done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?

the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child's body
in pieces - for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.

Warsan Shire

I agree with Mary when she writes, 

I wish that every ignorant, racist asshole who claims that "illegal immigrants" who try to enter our country to suck the tit of the Big American Eagle Good Life Without Earning It deserve whatever happens to them up to and including having their babies snatched from them (that'll teach 'em!) could be forced to read this poem over and over until they get a molecule of understanding and empathy. If that's even possible which I doubt. 

We the people need to stop this right now. If we don't, I imagine that we, too, the privileged of this country, will be leaving our own home -- that damp voice in our ear saying leave, run now, we don't know what Amerikkka has become.

CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES AND DEMAND THAT THIS POLICY BE STOPPED. VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE AND THE LIFE OF YOUR CHILDREN DEPENDS UPON IT.

WHOOOOOOO?

My Owl

And sometimes as much as we want to walk as far left as we can, we have to remember that some left is better than completely insane right. 

Mary Moon, from A Good Walk on a Pretty Day 

I wasn't much in the mood to vote the other day. I actually feel strangely (for me) dissociated from all political goings-on and certainly didn't much care whether Sanders or Clinton won the primary. I have felt much as my friend Andrew McElfresh's clever meme says:

Created by Andy McElfresh

I guess Bernie's "fuck you" to big money and his socialism probably most closely align with my values, but I'm okay with Hillary getting the big job and am not a little moved by the historic first woman president thing. Overall, though, I feel preoccupied by other stuff, and I guess that's okay, too. I have a 35th high school reunion coming up in the fall, and while I'm unable to make it back to Atlanta and feel disappointed about it, I'm also sort of relieved. I'm on this Facebook thread right now that is the first in what I imagine will be many to organize the event, and it led me to poke around a bit and read some of my former classmates Facebook pages. Mixed in there are some people who I will just say are mighty conservative, and their posts -- specifically about Trump and their support/admiration of/for him -- with enthusiastic comments from their friends -- made me nauseous. That anyone I grew up with, went to school with, chatted with, danced with, cheered with, sat next to or even liked can possibly support Trump as a human being and POTUS is just as unpalatable to me, I'm sure, as my views are to them, so it's probably a good idea to avoid any gatherings where there might be more than the usual numbers of Trump supporters than one might find in, say, Los Angeles.

Anyhoo.

I wish I could be wise like my totem animal up there whose head can swivel any which way, but I'm human and lean turn fall walk run to the left quite naturally. I was leaning toward Sanders because -- let's face it -- I'm a democratic socialist, but I'm all in for Clinton, now. I started this post with a quote from the inimitable Mary Moon whose post on the subject was just about perfect. You can read the rest of it here.

You thought we would never change

I didn't know what kind of photo would be a good lead-in to a post that includes my selection of country to live in should That Businessman Who Won the New Hampshire Primary go on and win the presidency, but yesterday as Oliver and I drove around the big shitty, we looked up and noticed this example of graffiti at its finest. Do ya'll have these McDonald's billboards everywhere in your little or big shitties that declare some big change that's coming? Evidently, McDonald's is about to change, and we sure don't know in what way. Are they going to be paying their workers as much as their executives? Are they going to use only organic, grass-fed beef? Are they going vegan? Are they swearing off sugar sodas? Are they going to stop exploiting third world countries? Are they going to work in earnest to reverse the travesty that is the American diet and food/agriculture system?

In any case, the graffiti artist known as Thrasher (according to one of my dear friends, this person unfortunately defaced her property several months ago) has answered the question quite well.

J.K.
LOL.



As I type this, I realize just how perfect that photo is -- you know -- the McDonald's, The Donald, etc.  for this post. Sweet Jesus, I wish we could just all text each other laughing emojis and text JKs and LOLs after yesterday's primary in New Hampshire.*

Remember back in the good old days of Romney/Obama when folks of a certain political persuasion kept whining how they wanted their country back?

Yikes. I know how they feel.

Mary Moon at Bless Our Hearts suggested we all start thinking about what country we might want to live in should That Businessman win, emphasizing that Mexico would work because of that wall that The Businessman would erect that would not only keep the Mexicans out but would also serve to keep those Americans that voted for The Businessman away from us as well. Hmmmm. Mexico? I'm still hankering for a trip to Bora Bora, to tell you the truth.  I imagine I could still work My New Job from such a remote location, and Sophie would love living in a little hut over the ocean. I do love this country, but I can't say that I love the people in it that would vote in a primary for such a hateful, ugly fool. There. I said it.

JK
LOL


Now I'm going to do a little research and see if McDonald's has conquered Bora Bora, yet. If not, you'll know where to find me.








*I'm talking about the results of the Republican primary, of course. If you're a new reader, you should be aware that this is a COMMUNIST site. As for the Democratic primary, I'm not ready to commit but am leaning toward the one whose name rhymes with Flanders.

Two Good Things

Sophie's turned the proverbial corner and appears to be responding to the new strain of cannabis.  I'll provide the details if you leave a question in the comments below, but for those who are still struggling with getting cannabis or using cannabis, know that patience is in order and that much tinkering has to happen. I still believe that this natural plant medicine is vastly preferable to anything offered by pharmaceutical companies, and I'll be able to write more about it as I learn more (which is a given very soon because I am starting a new and full-time job in the cannabis information business). More on all of that at some other time. Can I hear an Allelujah? 

Within one week of switching to this new strain, Sophie's seizures, which had become near constant and were characteristically worsened by a virus, have dropped down to -- well -- next to none, and that's with a full moon shining in the Los Angeles night sky. I, too, was reduced to a wreck or to a sort of full-figured wraith, transparent, despairing. It was like days of old around during the last few weeks, the days before cannabis when I plead on my knees to a god in whom I had no belief. My night-time psychotic self had returned, the woman who lies in bed churning over years past, convinced there is something I've done wrong, a dark hours before dawn narcissist. The boundaries between Sophie and me are porous at best, and if I were to be totally honest, I'd say my identity is so entwined in hers that there's no getting out. Singing the blues, really.

when my baby doing bad, I turn sad.

Speaking of blues, Mary Moon suggested that I attend a house concert last night featuring a friend of hers, Spencer Bohren. It turned out that the house was literally in my neighborhood and about four doors away from the original house we rented when we first moved to Los Angeles eighteen years ago.

This man could sing and write and play and spin stories and spun me into a mesmerized state. I talked at length to his beautiful wife Marilyn, also a friend of Mary's and felt as if I'd known her forever. I also sat on a couch next to a legend -- Harry Tuft -- considered to be the godfather of folk music in the Rocky Mountain region and whose center was visited and revered by people like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and the Mamas and the Papas and all manner of blues and folk musicians. Holy mackerel! He introduced himself to me and said it'd been a long day, that if he fell asleep I was to poke him awake, and when I told him that I wouldn't do that, he told me that he had narcolepsy and I very well should. Spencer dedicated the first song to Harry, a Bob Dylan tune, and Harry whispered in my ear that it'd be amazing, and it was.  The whole night was amazing, a perfect cap to and for a week and a woman turned glad from bad.

If you want to listen to and buy Spencer's gorgeous music, go here.

Fight the Power as an Italian or at Least Wander Around It*

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.

Silenced Women, Books and Poetry

via The New York Times

I've been listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's novel The Signature of All Things on the recommendation of our dear Mary. To be honest, I was not a big fan of Eat, Pray, Love but have always admired Gilbert's writing and speaking, her take on life and her gentle demeanor (I saw her once, live, with Annie LaMott). Her new book is read by Juliet Stevenson, the great English actress, and perhaps part of the love affair I'm having with the story and the writing is due to Stevenson's exquisite interpretation. I think, though, that the book is just plain interesting and beautifully written. I generally take forever to listen to an audible version of a book -- I have a hard time staying with the story and don't think my ears are as connected to literature as my eyes, if that makes sense. In any case, though, I'm getting toward the end, unable to listen to it in my car because of some lurid details that I don't want the boys to hear, and I might even lie on my bed and finish it up -- just lie there and stare at the ceiling with earplugs in my ear. 

I'm struck, over the last few days, as I immerse myself in listening to this story of a late eighteenth, early nineteenth century woman by just how constrained women's lives were for most of written history. The constraints were so pervasive and affected every aspect of their lives, including sexuality -- maybe especially sexuality -- until very recently. And then I think about how women are shamed and silenced even today, sometimes spectacularly but more usually, silently and subtly -- even by themselves. I can honestly say that I've felt stifled over the last couple of days, perhaps over-aware of my opinions, my outspoken-ness, my sharp tongue. I wonder if men feel this way regularly, whether they feel the need to second-guess their intentions, apologize for the way they deliver their thoughts or feel "less than" because of them.

Although I can't begin to fully understand it, I think Emily Dickinson was hinting at these things -- at anger and constraint -- when she wrote this poem.

Here's the poem for your eyes:


My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--


And here's the poem, read by Juliet Stevenson (!) for your ears:


Emily Dickinson - My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun by poetictouch

It's the hands

Mary Moon posted this photo and this story today on her blog, and I'm not embarrassed to say that if I were the type lady who swooned, I would have swooned. The hands of that man entwined with the hands of his namesake just do me in. In fact, I've been percolating a post about hands -- Sophie's hands, my son Henry's hands, Oliver's hands, my father's hands, Clinton's hands. I've got a little more meat for that post, so stay tuned.

Doc Watson, President Obama, Bob Dylan and Mary Moon

If you had told me in 1973 that in my lifetime I would live to see a black president put a prestigious award around the neck of a 72-year old Bob Dylan on the same day that Doc Watson died, well, hell. I don't even know what I would have thought but it would probably have been something like, "Far out."Which, actually, would have been pretty appropriate.

Ms. Mary Moon from Bless Our Hearts