ramble on, monday.

'Never let being comfortable get in the way of having a great experience.'

We are a nation full of ourselves and full of some kind of need for infinite comfort.  There aren't many chicks I know who will get down and dirty in the actual dirt.  Also, we seem to think that it's okay for all of our food to be produced by somebody else we'll never meet. One of the sad and obvious ways I can tell the class system (read: monarchy) is still alive and well. No matter how many times the 'commons' come together to overthrow an over indulged autocrat, they still seem to pop back up. SO MANY HEADS. Why? Because everyone wants their shot at having more than everyone else. Because humans are selfish, greedy creatures who, at the moment, are being told that it's okay to be selfish and greedy.  To be on top, to be first and to sell it for the highest profit so one can exploit others who haven't 'made it'.

None of our inherent kindness, generosity or ingenuity of spirit are being asked to come out and play. That would make us moral, and we would have to admit that our diamonds are covered in blood, our chocolate tainted with the ghosts of children who never tasted it and that our food is carrying the hunger of hundreds as they work the fields for less than a penny.

Acceptable risk. Acceptable death. Acceptable to whom? Which of your children will you sell to a mine today, so that the rest of your family may eat? That kind of talk gets me labeled as a 'bleeding heart'. It's meant to be a derogatory term, just like 'dirty hippie' and 'treehugger'. Labels. Judgments passed upon me by those who would not be judged. I'm not a Christian. In fact, I'm pretty much an atheist. But that does not, for one second, mean I don't believe everyone on this planet is connected by a mutual energy. It means I understand why praying en-masse is powerful, and why some people feel they've been touched by the Almighty, or have been spoken to. It is the power of humanity, come together in a symphony of peaceful desires, loving thoughts and desperate entreaties for help.

When my daughter was placed in my hands and I saw her face, I knew that it was time for me to admit I don't like the world the way it is.  I don't like it, and I don't want Ro to think the death of a child or the rape of a country for natural resources under the guise of assistance or war is 'acceptable'. I don't want her to believe she is entitled to more because of her intelligence or beauty, or her connections. I want her to realize that we are born needing love and that never changes. We are children until the day we die, but are often programmed to forget it.

It would be wondrous to me if women were just allowed to be.  To be feminine, but to have their masculine qualities as well.  I feel the same for men. Men who never became the amazing people they could have been because of labels like 'fag' and 'sissy' when they evidence their femininity. We are handicapping our amazing populace. We are removing the possibility of progress and invention. We are electronically numbing ourselves to the reality: we are a country of haves and have nots. The haves don't care.  Do you?

ellipses, you jerks.

...

Typing. It's a satisfying exercise, and most bloggers feel they've had a special day when the click clack doesn't slow or stop. Do you write every day, with your fingers and a utensil? How long do you go without actually speaking to a person. A day? A week?

I will admit, ten-12 years ago, when the internet was young and I was just an against the grain kind of kid, that typing was my preferred choice. I do not say things properly -- always blunt to the point of tears, cruel to the point of kindness, my foot always rammed quite far down my throat. When I am composing, however, I can give my brain time to assemble some of those nice words I know into something even nicer. Something to lift the spirit, brighten the eyes or quicken the pulse. I would rather type to some people I know than speak to them.

But I noticed that typing all of the time was not helping with my social difficulties. I became increasingly impatient with conversations, with people in general. Didn't stop me. I just moved my online activities to online gaming platforms, where everyone had problems talking to other people. My parents tried to make a big, serious deal out of it. They were constantly talking to me about what a problem I was --about how many problems I had. At the time, being on the internet was a prescribed period of time and that often came late in the evening, after other things. My 'nocturnal lifestyle' was a problem. I didn't see what was so great about being alive, at all, during the day.

Being outside never spoke to me, because the outside was never detailed to me as very important. It existed, it was nice to look at, my grandparents had a cottage I was expected to swim by at summertime, and sometimes one sat around in it pre-dinner. The internet, on the other hand, was a place of free thinkers and of new ideas. I never got bored, and was challenged to use my brain daily in poetry and writing forums. I've never had the same exchange again.

Cut to now -- being on the internet never stops. Your avatar hums away on your integrated personality profile where all of your secrets and faces are laid bare. I remember putting your own face to screen was pretty much just not done. Now, we show it all. Sure, we think it's just to people we know personally. The reality is, of course, that faceless humans look at/sort/file/mark for review our personal information all day every day. You google it, instead of reading about it. You link it, instead of talking about it. You pin it, instead of holding it or even doing it.  You tweet it, you twit, as if anyone really cares. It is a 24 hour maelstrom of one upmanship and look at what I'm doings.  Even this opinion is online.

I dare you to go outside today, find a space that has good air/sounds/feeling and just sit there. Sit there and listen to the earth that was here before you and will be here after you are gone. Listen to what it is saying to you, as you are its child. It misses us. And as our empathetic receptors are diminished every day by invisible, electric miasma, as drivers swerve in and out of slow traffic with no regard to the lives going on in other cars, as parents absently smack their children while their faces are glued to personal devices, spouses cry alone at night, though their partners are just a few feet away it becomes increasingly clear that we, the children of the earth, very, very much miss it.

So, sit outside today, and don't bring your phone. Turn your phone off. Turn your computer off. Turn your wireless things off. Just cut the hum, and see if you don't feel just a little bit better. Oh, and if you see anything on the ground that doesn't belong there, for the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, pick it up and put it in the bin.

xo

poor old michael finnegan. begin again.

Day 23. In the dirt, looking up again with my winds hovering somewhere above me and everything has been point form notes. My attention span is limited.  It has been a long time for me, since I needed to write a sentence longer than a few words. You know, a few words to fit into a facebook chat/message window? Six years, I guess, have passed since I signed up for facebook (and ultimately deactivated my account). The internet is becoming the place where you put your favorite version of yourself up for the world to see. Or view. The world we've come to live in is highly scrutinized and judged. Your measure in 'likes' and 'shares'. I haven't written anything solid in as many years. This is partially due to the miraculously devastating and simultaneously exultant happening of my daughter -- but also to facebook.  It's only just lately that my early mornings have become quiet and solitary -- similar to before, but not the same. Never the same. And yet, I have been using them -- still -- to look at what is going on with other people I seemed to know, once. Or at least, we used to speak to each other. Now we linktalk, cutandpasteconverse and brb with pretty much everyone we know. I feel like my eyes are getting old, looking at screens all the time (like I'm doing now), and for this reason have been mostly writing in pen.

I pledged to write every day, as my usual resolution. I've made it every year for as many New Year's as year ends, weekends, Tuesdays and birthdays as I can remember. Some years, though, it never happens. Not even once. Those years are bleary and shaken things, hanging onto some scrabbly rock in the windy back-corners of my mind. Each one just as dripping with maudlin concrete assurances that it's gone, gone again, gone for good. It's around then I cut my hair, or meet someone new, or start taking 3 am walks in abandoned places -- just for a change of pace. Variety is the spice of life, after all, and what is a writer at all, if not someone to help you to live vicariously from your sofa reliably, and with feeling?  But is it fiction, I am feeling?

I have something boiling up inside of me right now and I feel the motivation to write for the first time, in a long time. For now, I will simply state that it's suspect to me that I can't fully delete my facebook account. Everything is kept on file, including my password, should I choose to come back soon. They can put me through the entire sign in process and get me a new password if that happens, I'm okay with that. But, no, they hang onto that stuff. I don't think that's right, and I think it's shady when facebook seems to declare up and down that it has its users privacy rights strictly at heart. I want a full delete.