getting to know you

George is back home. Been busy catching up, growing, cloudbursts, sunbursts, living, transitioning into unto within whereas who knows. But mainly I wanted to say I skinned his blog and put some sound samples up. 'bout time someone round here did that. Now, if I can get a new pic and figure out how to put the permalinks in, Im'a call it done.

talk at ya soon.

search and destroy

There was, not so long ago, quite a dialog in blogland about anger. I'm trying not to focus on anger this 3:17 in the morning, when I should be sleeping, so much to do, so much to keep up with, and the plague of the locuses chirping away outside.

Instead I'm thinking more about anger's natural outlet: Destruction. There is, I think, no greater power than destruction. Destruction reduces creation. So, then, destruction is the natural enemy of creativity.

But still, there is so much I could destroy, I wouldn't know where to start. It's in my genes to do this. Family members have murdered business partners and been sent down the river for it. Lives and families have been destroyed. And in a covert way, on the other side of my of my family continuum, destruction is even more powerful because it is executed covertly. Many have died in my family, in my life, and not all by accident. In fact, even without a physical murder weapon, destruction has laid waste and left dead bodies strewn across upstate New York graveyards. Some of us are walking monuments to destructive forces. Give me a steamroller anyday.

So I look at my inherent ability, and inborn proclivity, to destroy and wonder why I don't do it. And I think, then, maybe I have done it, by trying to avoid destruction, thereby playing into its hands. And that makes me want to search and destroy all the more. The power surge I feel just thinking about unleashing my wrath is, well, pleasant. No, it's not disturbing to me at all. This may not be a good thing. What should I run over today, what should I reduce to rubble, and what should I save? Myself? Well, yes, there's that. No power surge in that though.

And yet, when the wave passes--the pure DNA based understanding that I could easily smash the tallest castle to dust with my mind, that my thoughts and the manifestations of those thoughts could so over power another human creation, that my strength of voice could leave another human being a drewling mass of flesh and not much more--oops, I got carried away there, sorry--as I was saying, when the wave passes, some odd sense of peace and joy take it's place. A greater understanding of all I've been so angry about. I jump to another level of understanding.

And I can't decide whether it's because I've resisted the urge (and in many ways have not been allowed) to destroy something, or because I've already exercised it here, in my blog/voice/mind and need not act it out. No matter how you cut it, destruction is a force we must keep in check, because when the whirlwind starts, self-destruction is often the end result of that large load of anger.

Shame Blame Insane

One of the first damaging emotions many of us learned is shame. I remember its roots in my early life, remember the earliest lesson in human creation even: shame. It is one of the worst feelings, isn't it? Fear and shame run deep in me. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" What is that to tell a child? Lessons of unlove=lessons in shame.

I remember my grandmother, my mothers' mother who stayed with us for months on end, coming into my room one cloudy afternoon--a staunch Roman Catholic ultra uptight and nervous woman, enough baggage to fill a semi. I was there on the floor, doing what I always did: drawing on something. That day it was my Barbie, naked, and of course Malibu Ken was with her, sans swim trunks, and me, at probably 8 years old, outlining their forms on plastic flesh, circling Barbies breasts, wondering how do they get like *that*? And Ken's buldge, curious, but mostly noticing form, form and shape, lines and space, the abscence and presence of *body*, the hills and valleys, indentations, all the time drawing and circling, until Barbie and Ken looked like they had just returned from an outing at an obscene tattoo parlor.

When my grandmother happened upon me, by surprise of course, she said, "Shame on you! Look what you're doing! Give me those dolls!" Memory stop. Full stop. Left with no memory of events following the moment but a very strong memory of feeling shame. I'm sure she took them to my mother, who probably set them aside, never said anything to me about it, instead most likely remembered her own shame: reflect the mirror, shame be with you--and also with you.

The other memory I have of second generation shame is directly related to nakedness, an early love for it, for liking to sleep without a nightgown if I could--or at least without the very modest "underpants" I had to wear. I didn't know anything other than I really liked the feel and smell of cool, ironed, perfect, air-dried, cotton sheets against my skin, especially on hot nights. So I got away with what I could, which meant a nightgown, and if I could, nothing else.

Who should happen upon me in my state of euphoric disrepair one night--yes, Grandma, with her reaction: "Look at you! Don't you ever go to bed without underpants on--shame on you!"

It wasn't until this week that I figured out what she was worried about. She wasn't worried about my nudity as much as what I might be doing without those panties on. And you know what? I wasn't doing anything except exploring the magical feeling of cotton on skin, of cool on hot, of smooth on rough, of skin on fabric, lulling me to sleep. And regardless, should shame be the reaction to a child in wonder? It was the mighty sword that kept me in control, covered, hidden, stuffing curiosity and wonder in place of fear of retribution.

And yet, I don't blame her. Unless we unlearn the unhealthy pieces of what we learned, we cannot know. And if we let our moral compass be guided by fear, not love, that is our destiny--that was their destiny. That is not my destiny.

she gets beautifuler and beautifuler

rain rain go away, nothing to do but shoot pics all day.