The Smallest Pawns in a Large Game

The cuts that are taking place thanks to sequestration are being reported much of the time in relation to large scale programs.  In terms of billions of dollars and the mass effect of the cuts.

But the reality of sequestration is far from what is being reported and being spoken about in the press.

It is instead a story of those in need being forced to go without.  The story of thousands of children, special needs children being told to do without.  Thousands of parents of autistic children being told their kids can go without the programs that they need to give their kids the things they need to get by every day.

There is a reason I mention that.  I have a niece and a nephew, both with autism, both who will be affected.  One is turning 11, the other is 8.  I spoke to my brother today, in passing.  My brother’s son is the eight year old.  The boy loves him some Teenage mutant ninja turtles and Spiderman.  He loves going to school.  He loves his teacher, whose name I forget.  Kisses her goodbye every time he leaves school for the day. I’ve been there to pick im up a few times from school.

He is autistic.  Without the help from his teachers and the school system, funded by the federal government, he would not be able to get the help he needs.

The other, my cousin’s daughter loves her teachers and her shows and toys as much as my brother’s son does.  And she needs them more. Though my eye in these matters is neither precise nor educated, she seems to be more affected by autism than he, and he is not just slightly affected.  Speech is affected.  As is thought.  As is emotional control.  As are almost every basic thing we non affected sentient beings take for granted. These kids work on this and more every day, with help from tireless hard-working teachers who give everything they can for these kids.

Apparently one of the first cuts going through in these parts is in education cuts.  So they are losing that, only part of it to begin with.  Half is what my brother told me when I spoke to him earlier today.

How many times can they turn their heads and pretend that they don’t see?

No.

They know.

They see.

These kids, and by extension “We The People” are pawns in a game of chess played by rich men for the control of the money and power, and of who gets both.  Because of that the face of sequestration should not be the face of corporations shutting their doors, bad as that will be when it happens, and it will happen. It is not masses of people made to suffer.  That can be refused, propagandized, compartmentalized.  Turned into something other.  Political will can turn any full grown adult’s pain into something to be looked down on, turned to advantage by the slick marketing of political will.

It is the face of a child asked to go without.

Asked to go without by the protectors of billionaires, by a rich man’s son for no reason other than the greed of adults who should know better.

Sleep tight, America.

Maybe, Just Maybe

Pic of the day:  Views of Kyoto – #5. Cherry-Blossom at Arashiyama, by Hiroshige Utagawa

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As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage.

Far better to live your own path imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly

Bhagavad Gita

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I have been seeking inspiration, or something not entirely unlike that over the last few days for my writing.  I have been watching a lot more movies than usual.  I watched Citizen Kane from back to front for the first time ever.  I had heard it was a great movie but was frankly not moved to watch it before I saw it for the first time a few days ago.   I watched Kon-Tiki.  I watched Gonzo, again.  I watched Matter of Heart, a 1986 documentary about the life and work of Carl Jung.

I’ve been going through ancient Mesopotamian history, specifically an audio-book whose written counterpart was written 98 years ago, in particular the myths of Assyria, Babylon and the Akkadians, with side references to most major cultures around the world.

Maybe it isn’t really a search for inspiration though, or not just a search for inspiration.  Because recharging my batteries might and might not equal a search for inspiration.  And that is what have been doing, recharging.  I could write but I simply haven’t been.  I’ve wanted to, but have been busy doing one thing or another and simply have not done it.

And maybe, just maybe, it is a search not for inspiration per se, but ideas, real ideas that can be regurgitated and retold into stories that I could write, and it looks just by gazing at the particular entries that I am subconsciously looking for something big, something deeper and mythic.  Perhaps because the story I was writing a few months ago, the New York cop/torture/terror story was missing something, something bigger, something deeper, mythic.

I’m really getting the itch to do this!

I’ve got my eyes on a few other movies and books.  One flew over the cuckoos nest (the Ken Kesey book not the movie) and Haxan (a movie from 1922 about the occult and witchcraft) are first on my list.

I’ve got my notebook ready.  I think it’s nearly time to start creating characters, but a little more inspiration/recharging/assimilating  and compiling information about the most ancient and well known of stories is in order, and if a book is going to come out of this a little more inspiration is definitely a good idea.

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That’s it from here, America  G’night.

And We Spoke

I am sitting several hundred of miles from home, with my wife.

We are both sitting at a small kitchen table in her parents house, the house where she grew up from infancy.

Her thoughts I cannot read, she reveals nothing, but she seems more relaxed, less tense than she has in quite a while.

I sit, uncomfortable, at the same table, opposite her.  A medium sized metal chandelier above the table, light blazing brightly.

I am a bit more tense, for a variety of reasons.  This is the first Christmas without my father, and I am away from home.

But my wife had not been up to see her parents in nearly 2 years, I could not say no when she asked to come back to her childhood home for Christmas.

She is that important to me, that I would spend my Christmas away from brothers and my mom, who must be having a really hard time not having dad around this Christmas.  We all loved that man, deeply.

I almost welled up there when I was writing that.

I called mom yesterday, and we spoke for several minutes.  She seemed fine, but she was also running around, being busy doing last minute shopping for some reason. Maybe she just needed something to do.

I called her today, but she did not answer.  She is supposed to be over at my older brothers house now with his wife and two children.

They’ll have a good Christmas together I think.  Mother and son reliving Christmas’ past, while children create similar memories with their parents.

My wife and I will have a good Christmas together I think as well.

My mind will go back across the years to home where my wife will reminisce about the place she is in, and hope for a better future.

Something we all hope for, most assuredly.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Two Hundred Eighteen Words

Pic of the day:  Head of a Peasant Girl, by Kazimir Malevich

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Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells
in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

William Cowper, The Task (1785)

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Viddy of the day:  Plato’s Cave (animated version) circa 1973, narrated by Orson Welles.

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There are a great many better people than I who have written on the subject of the horrors that befell the poor people of Connecticut on Friday morning.

There are also a great many better people who have written on guns and gun control, and mental illness, and what can be done to make ourselves safer.

I know not what to do or think to be honest.

Mute horror can be the only reaction.

There are times that insanity cannot be helped or stopped, no matter how hard we try.

Gun control, as much as it may help in some way, will not bring the dead back to life.

Nothing will.

And that powerlessness is the problem.

Everything that we are as humans screams to be able to do what we cannot.

To save those who were lost.

To fix that which cannot be fixed.

So we sit, and ask why,

And find no answer.

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That’s it from here, America. G’night

Ten Minutes (Let Her Be)

She wants to be alone so I let her be. 

She and I can be in the same room at the same time, only a few feet apart and still be essentially alone.  She buried in her “work”, and I in mine.  Nevermind the simple fact that neither of us is actually working, nevermind the fact that both of us are not actually trying to ignore one another, at least not on the surface.

She has a new toy that she is deeply enamored with, and is fighting with the damned thing, and after fits and starts seems to finally be winning.  She seems to be unhappy with something or other and begins cursing at the thing and threatening it.  I giggle mirthlessly at this, I know I’d be doing the same thing, but I keep the giggle short and entirely to myself. 

I am lost in thought while aimlessly looking at bloomberg news checking up on E-mail, as it is that time of day.  I notice in my e-mail that I received a response back from someone regarding a job.  I go to see what I have to do to contact them.  I have to call them before 5:00pm.  I look at the clock and begin to curse a bit myself, if only in my head.  It’s 10 minutes after 5 at this point.

I get up from the computer, curse the thing as I turn it off.  I came back from a run about 30 minutes before this and I get ready to do some light exercise.  She looks at me as I get up to get ready to sweat some more and announces that she doesn’t need distractions and not to bother her. 

So I don’t.  I know better that to temp a hungry shark.  I don’t even acknowledge her and begin to work.  The first set of squat thrusts has me out of breath but it feels good.  The shirt I am wearing at this point, a fresh one as I have changed since I got back from my run, bounces around on me a bit and looks a mess after just one set, like the damn thing never wanted to be on me in the first place, so I tuck it into the faded and partially bleached shorts that I’m wearing. 

She’s cursing the new toy, her new phone actually, and I go and do my second set.  Better than the first.  The first set always hurts my shoulders, I couldn’t tell you why, except my shoulders have been a mess since I was around 20, and that was a lifetime ago…

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night