Life as Metaphor

i think it is a dysfunctinal concept dreamed up by Xtianity (and their new-age kin) to manipulate people into blind-faith & obedience to authority.

i personally, want G-d to love us conditionally... emotionally-loving us as part of Itself, is a given, no harm in that but let's take the Jewish-mythos angle here,just go ahead and ask the Angels if they are happy with the fact they are so "close" to HaShem that they are unable to act out of free-will and make "heavenly father" actually proud of them?..... sorry, but i'm glad there are "conditions" involved and i have the freedom to fuck up royally... thanks but no-thanks, to the Jezus-freakie-folk, i want my Daddy proud of me for more than the fact that i can read and blindly/unconditionally accept & recite a couple of sentences...

and do you want to "cheapen" something? just go ahead and toss it everywhere... pass those carte-blanche "all is forgiven" & "i love you sooooooo much!" cooing trippy-face mantras to the general public and watch all the words devolve and compost into huge piles of meaningless cliche...

i am a big love-love sort of folk in here.... spreading my beaming smiles and coo-coo to the loved-ones all around me, but i DO try and mind just what exactly i am saying and HOW i express it to people... it would devestate me beyond all belief to realise that my words of love had been so over-used and so random that they lost all meaning to the people who mean the most to me.....

and granted, i think there are many human-experiences that we all slap the same label of "love" onto (for better or worse) and i will admit right now that i am totally at a loss as to controlling my emotional-love for people myself, but i don't really mean the butterflies-in-belly when i tell someone i love them... i can get those sweet little moments of "awe" and Gd-in-all love-loves over much of humanity, but that does NOT mean that i would give them access to my body or possessions and commit to a future-relationship with them....

if i am in a relationship with a friend (even JUST a friend) there are an enormous list of actions that pass back and forth between us, and filter through my mind, swim through my blood, before i hear myself telling them again "i love you".... many many "conditions" involved...

we all have "quirks" as to things like sexual-love/attractedness, and i ain't going to pass judgment on another person's inability to commit to long-term relationship with someone based solely on appearance of face, or sound-of-voice, partner having "innies" or "outties", or even color-of-skin (oh well, it happens) any more than i would pass judgment on Ray Crumb and his boot-fetish.... we can't change our wiring to alter our emotions & sexual-response, not without a HUGE investment of time/energy and commitment (and i doubt long-term success of that sort of thing really)....

there are people who couldn't commit to being with me for any NUMBER of reasons.... a good many of them my own human-failings, and some of them just their own "quirks" that they needed from me that i just honestly could not provide them....

some of those quirks were pretty fucking odd if i do say so myself hahaha ;) a common thread through much of them though was my not adhering (consciously) to common-society's programming of what is "right" to be/want for myself and what is "right" to demand from the world we live in...

i am also basically too damn "whole" and un-needy and it scared off many men who saw our relationship as built on very shakey-ground i.e. i could get up and walk out any minute and how in the WORLD could that be called stable? (mind you, that only scared off the "men" (whether XX or XY), telling isn't it?) and as far as the women i have been involved with, we had much conflict over my not taking "roles" seriously enough... i like "pretty" and sorta-femme women but HATE tons of make-up/perfume/trashy-clothes, and no i did not want to lift weights, lower my voice, and cut my hair short (sorry girls).... but being "fluid" myself(s) again translated as being unstable/unreliable and our relationship being just to fragile... so the "girls" (again, either XX or XY) left me for more "solid" people...

okay, whatever.

i'm not even going to say that none of these people "REALLY loved me" because i don't doubt that they did, in their own way.. but we all have our own needs/conditions in relationships.... no way in fucking hell would i want to be with someone who was "tolerating" me there, just because of their feelings for me, even though i was not at ALL what they wanted in a partner... (been there done that, NEVER again please)

my own feelings aside, know what my conditions are to be with me? i want health.. for myself, my loved ones and this entire fucking planet & Universe... i make my choices for growth, healing and mindful/ethical behavior, every time i so much as buy CANDY in a store i am pondering over all that.... so same goes for my partners in life ("just friends" and otherwise) if someone craves only to be irresponsible and immature, i won't include them in my life, i won't ACT out of my love for them (i.e. let the fucker be lonely, i ain't callin him/her) i do not consciously reward mis-behavior in people, no matter HOW much i emotionally-love them... because when i DO reward that, and help them more-easily stay in that state of take-take-take/exploitive behavior, then i am basically like the spineless-mommy who spoils her child rotten with candy and then looks to the sky when her little girl has a mouth full of rotten teeth and diabetes.... fuck. that.

i am mental in my own ways (for instance, my mother-to-all delusions in here) but that being said, i think that i tend to have non-harmful dynamics with most of the people in my life... i am legally/techinically wrong to feel "i am their mother" to strangers on the street, but my loving each and every friend as "my child" does not diminish them in any way, does not dis-empower them (learning to be "a mother" at 5, meant my "children" were peers (horizontal from me, not above/below by definition, and i NEVER forgot that***)... i do not encourage any sort of self-harmful behaviors, and no matter how dependent our relationships might sometimes begin (i.e. me & my biological little-sisters, me & M, etc.) every single ONE of my adopted-kids learn from me that they are able to live on their own... walk for themselves.. not because i am their "legs", but because i see with my own eyes just what they have inside them and MAKE those little buggers face it too.. they ARE "strong enough".

- e.


*** edit: in all honesty, i probably use/see my use of words like "mother"/"child" with my peers just as they see/use the concept of a "good friend"... a neuro-linguistic quirk of my own (my idiolect), but my "friends" forgive me for it... yes? ;) - e.

more than i realised:

Harlem Arts School Shuts Over Financial Problems


and i think i figured out why i'm freakin *so* bad... aside from the fact that its just right up there on my list of the Failures-of-Humanity that we make our kids suffer for what us grown-ups FUCK-up...

when i was little ms. sweet-n-innocent, and living my quasi-cracker existence in wetlands of coastal Jersey, i was basically growing up surrounded by families of Bennys** & commuters who just decided to relocate to NJ and STAY there... Brooklynese was me mother-tongue...

New York wasn't another "state" to me, i could see it from the beach (day OR night)... it was just like another part of Jersey, one that you'd have to take a CAR or ferry to get to, but of all the kids i knew, a lot of us had parents/grandparents from there (some of them STILL there)....

talk of the old-neighborhoods were like fairy tales from teh Old Country.... heard about where the best food was, which neighborhoods were the most dangerous (usually the ones the speaker was from!) and heard everyone throwing around addresses as intersections... and btw, i was super proud that i could say my mother was from "Hell's Kitchen" (first, because it would get some "oohs" sometimes, and also because it was the only time i could say aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks without getting in trouble)....

i wasn't the smartest kid with geography, i thought that the Coneheads were from France, and that was right in the middle of America near Wisconsin, but i also had other little Juju "truisms" in my head... Jews come from Brooklyn (ONLY Brooklyn)... you *have* to go to China Town to get cheap clothes... and Harlem is where JAZZ comes from! ;D like this Mecca of Soul in my head (and heart) and i am sure i dreamt up many not-at-all-accurate fantasies of what it would be like if i could live up there with all the music ;)

okay i know i was lacking a bit of info in most areas of life (i was a kid!)... i got over it as i grew up... most of it, anyway... now i know that Moses didn't part the East River and that my mother is apparently from "Clinton" (the FUCK??) but i can't give up my dreams of Harlem... i *can't* .. i feel like we owe Her & her children (and children's children!) so much!

so how the hell could New York let this happen?! it feels like such a horrible "omen" to see ...

- Z.

EDIT: address to their web-site: Harlem School of the Arts to find out more about the school and perhaps make a donation? (come on, don't make me whip out my Jewish-Mama guilt-trip on you now)



** re: "Bennys"... in case you don't know, a Benny is the kind of human that is predominantly very light-skinned, wears clip on sunglasss, has a shmear of white war-paint going down their nose, big BIG hats, wears shorts with waist-band pulled up to their nipples and (if male) is sure to wear black-socks with sandels. they live "away" and come "down to the Shore" to get sun (apparently they live underground?) and also buy cheap plastic trinkets on the Boardwalk, to bring home as souvenirs.

have to share a thought regarding Robertson's recent demonstration of idiocy.

it reminds me of when i was on a mailing-list for translators/interpreters when Katrina hit us down in LA....

i remember how i read post after post from folks discussing how Nola got what it had coming, and that it served them all right for being so stupid to live so far below sea-level (and so on).. and they laughed at how greedy Amrika was suffering now (note: it wasn't the "greedy" who were suffering)...

i remember replying to them all with 4-letter-words that would make HaSatan blush head to toe (not very smart of me, but i was in a panic), while i screamed at the computer monitor and plugged ears when yet another chopper flew over me & Aaron's apartment.... (sound of choppers makes me shake really *really* bad)

but it taught me a valuable lesson: humans are STUPID.

if we are not there first-hand to really experience things for ourselves, we tend to be a bit out-of-touch... the farther removed (by miles, or mentally "distancing"), the less we grok.

and among these wannabe-know-it-all polyglots of that mailing-list, with IQs that would make Einstein blush (from head to toe) i found very little sympathy.

so much for thinking that our "brains" will save this world.. i think it will be our "hearts".

- Jules & Co.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/nyregion/18about.html?_r=2

okay, i'm exaggerating.

(sorta)


- Jules & Co.






(thanks leswamp, for the link)

(stolen from M.'s LJ)

some quickie-transcription from your b'loved crunchy-green chick with hypergraphia:

quoting "the Future of Food" (1:28 hours, documentary at link)


------------------------


NARRATOR: in the past, there were public institutions that supplied the farmers objective analysis of new technologies.

"universities started playing an important role in asking questions about this back then in the 70s... but soon enough it was evident that we did not want to have universities asking questions.... so there was a big influx of money, from industry to support research at universities.... and that lead to research that was favorable to the development of the industry... and publicity that was simply promotional.... of the technologies" - Ignacio Chapela.

(unidentified speaker): "the reality is that, in our ******* university system, and certainly in the US dept. of agriculture... there's a small tolerance for people doing research that directly challenges the conventional wisdom..."

"its ridiculous, the recent work that we done, on the movement of trans-genes in corn, in the ******* of diversification, was run on 2 thousand dollars, compare that to 25 million dollars, coming the other way, in exactly my college, and that is the only piece of work that i know is actually happening" - Ignacio.


(sorry about bleeped-out words there... our hearing is bad and because i was watching this at netflix, in the "watch now" option, i couldn't turn on any captioning - J.)


NARRATOR: the Biotech industry aggressively attacked scientists whose research questioned the safety and impact of genetically modified crops... renowned scientist, Dr. Arpad Pusztai (Ar-pad Push-tai) was suspended 2 days, after discussing his research that raised questions about the depressed immune systems and growth of rats which had been fed genetically modified potatoes...

Cornell University researcher John Losee found that when caterpillars of the monarch butterfly were fed BT (bio-tech) corn pollen in the lab, 40% of them died unexpectedly.. his research was denigrated by the biotech industry...

Nature magazine retracted Ignacio Chapela's paper, after publishing his peer-reviewed work.... biotech enthusiasts challenged the interpretation of his findings....

"biology was a very diverse field of inquiry, but because of the advent of this technology we are seeing a narrowing down, and a trimming off of all those branches of biology.... just to the benefit of this one side.... and i very much want to fight against that... just as we are losing genetic diversity, we are losing intellectual diversity, that we are going to find very very needed in the future...." - Ignacio.

i just heard from Mame that the rabbi Holzberg and rebbetzin (Rivka)'s 2 year old son has escaped with one of the staff...

please pray for the safety and release of the family and all hostages being held in the city....




EDIT: i called around to double-check on the young boy, and so far all the chabad i was in contact with have said that he was actually reported as being "safe", removed from the house by Sandra Samuel...

if i hear otherwise, i'll let you know....

- e.

----------------------------------

Rabbi Kotlarsky's email asking for Tehillim:

B"H

For the past few hours we have been unable to reach Rabbi and Mrs. Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, the Shluchim to Mumbai, India, where terrorists attacks have occurred.

The reports we are hearing from there could be better.

It is a time for Tefillah. Please say Tehillim for:

* Gavriel Noach ben Freida Bluma
* Rivkah bas Yehudis
* Moshe Tzvi Ben Rivkah.

All those who can go to the Rebbe's Ohel and ask for rachamei shamayim are requested to do so.

We hope and pray that we will hear good news very soon.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky

i have a battle that i must settle with a friend, so do me a favor and give me *your* answers to this question:


[Poll #1301660]

TAKE NOTES:




dignified, archetypal, hypnotic.







charming, honest, modest.







inviting, alluring, warm.







primal, chilling, innocent.









clever, dark, humorous.






sharp, elegant, timeless.






http://qilora.livejournal.com/profile

UGLY UGLY UGLY.




this ends our art-lesson for today.

as you were.

- Z.