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How do you spell relief?
Aug. 2nd, 2006 09:55 pmI find I can't even think about this conflict between Israel and Hezbollah without wanting to cry, scream or tear my hair out. Or all of those things. Perhaps also rip W a new one. But what else is new.
The only think I've been able to focus on is the disparate panoply of pronunciations for one of the key players in this war. In fact, thinking about that keeps me just a little bit sane during the continuous barrage of news from NPR and the BBC.
So, forgive me if this seems flippant. But seriously:
[Poll #784507]
The only think I've been able to focus on is the disparate panoply of pronunciations for one of the key players in this war. In fact, thinking about that keeps me just a little bit sane during the continuous barrage of news from NPR and the BBC.
So, forgive me if this seems flippant. But seriously:
[Poll #784507]
So this is why.
Feb. 1st, 2005 03:34 pmThis is how it is. You get up, you go to work. You do what you have to do; if you're lucky, you do what you want to do. You eat. You exercise. You make love and do the dishes and drop the kids off at school.
You keep going.
I wake up early, but doze until nearly ten. It's the first day of February, which I conveniently forget; perhaps the knowledge would have gotten me out of bed sooner with the fond realization that January, the dread month, is finally over.
I drag myself around. I clean up a bit, fix breakfast, write a journal entry. I get ready to leave for Krav practice for the first time in a week and a half. Last week was eaten up by sickness, snowed under by a hail of Kleenex.
Finally I have the ambition to work out again, or at least I have the ambition to get into the car and go try to do so. I'm dreading the class the way I dreaded the classes I taught yesterday: the depression, then, nearly trapped me in the bed for the day.
But yesterday I managed for three hours to talk about literature to a bunch of kids who, with a few exceptions, couldn't care less and thank me with their blank stares, and today I manage to get out on route 93 and head for Roxbury. I'm even on time. At about ten minutes before noon I'm just outside the tunnel, waiting to get off at exit 18.
At 12:30, I'm still there.
It's enough that I'm infuriated by having to sit on the highway for this long. It's more than enough that I've dragged myself out of depression and sickness to go do some cardio and kick some ass, a proactive step to make myself feel better. But the worst of it is that the whole time I'm listening to NPR, and the reports are as follows:
A conservative talks about how a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage should be higher on Bush's agenda, and the reporter takes him seriously, in fact doesn't challenge him at all. Bush's approval rating is lower than any second-term president since Nixon, yet he still takes the November election as evidence that he's been given a mandate by this country to effect change. Meanwhile, as they're still counting the ballots from Iraq's election, an insurgent group has taken an American soldier hostage and says that they will behead him within 72 hours unless the U.S. releases its Iraqi prisoners. In slightly lighter news, the makers of the Oscar-nominated documentary Born into Brothels (subject matter self-evident in the title) are interviewed about their program to rescue children of prostitutes in India, themselves lined up at age 13 to continue the tradition, from their plight.
It's another day in goddamnfuckingparadise.
So I turn around, I go back home, I'm pissed off that I've wasted an hour and a half driving and that meanwhile the world, the country I thought was mine is, as usual, falling apart, and I'm thinking about where I would move and how I would work if we passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, if we overturned Roe v. Wade, if in four years Dick fucking Cheney secured the presidency, if we go to war in Iran, Syria, Korea...
And I hear a report about an all-male ballet troupe who performs female roles on pointe and in tutus, with no attempt to conceal their maleness, and I laugh a little. I go to the gym and get on the elliptical machine and burn for 25 minutes, in high gear, my rage and helplessness. I read an amusing article about Johnny Depp in Rolling Stone (The New Yorker isn't available today and I didn't bring it from home).
And I go home, and shower, and go to the cafe and write, and I think, this is how it works. This is why it works. This is a few million people, feeling helpless, feeling rage, feeling the same way I'm feeling and knowing that the only thing to do is chop wood, carry water. Keep going.
This is how the status quo holds on, this is how the politicians get away with what they get away with, this is how a government strips its citizens of its freedoms, bit by bit, and legislates the hell out of our lives. And this isn't me telling you to get off your butts and do something, this isn't me getting up and being politically active, this isn't even me going to a demonstration or writing a letter to my congressperson. This is me seeing that it's pointless.
This is me, just trying to live my life.
You keep going.
I wake up early, but doze until nearly ten. It's the first day of February, which I conveniently forget; perhaps the knowledge would have gotten me out of bed sooner with the fond realization that January, the dread month, is finally over.
I drag myself around. I clean up a bit, fix breakfast, write a journal entry. I get ready to leave for Krav practice for the first time in a week and a half. Last week was eaten up by sickness, snowed under by a hail of Kleenex.
Finally I have the ambition to work out again, or at least I have the ambition to get into the car and go try to do so. I'm dreading the class the way I dreaded the classes I taught yesterday: the depression, then, nearly trapped me in the bed for the day.
But yesterday I managed for three hours to talk about literature to a bunch of kids who, with a few exceptions, couldn't care less and thank me with their blank stares, and today I manage to get out on route 93 and head for Roxbury. I'm even on time. At about ten minutes before noon I'm just outside the tunnel, waiting to get off at exit 18.
At 12:30, I'm still there.
It's enough that I'm infuriated by having to sit on the highway for this long. It's more than enough that I've dragged myself out of depression and sickness to go do some cardio and kick some ass, a proactive step to make myself feel better. But the worst of it is that the whole time I'm listening to NPR, and the reports are as follows:
A conservative talks about how a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage should be higher on Bush's agenda, and the reporter takes him seriously, in fact doesn't challenge him at all. Bush's approval rating is lower than any second-term president since Nixon, yet he still takes the November election as evidence that he's been given a mandate by this country to effect change. Meanwhile, as they're still counting the ballots from Iraq's election, an insurgent group has taken an American soldier hostage and says that they will behead him within 72 hours unless the U.S. releases its Iraqi prisoners. In slightly lighter news, the makers of the Oscar-nominated documentary Born into Brothels (subject matter self-evident in the title) are interviewed about their program to rescue children of prostitutes in India, themselves lined up at age 13 to continue the tradition, from their plight.
It's another day in goddamnfuckingparadise.
So I turn around, I go back home, I'm pissed off that I've wasted an hour and a half driving and that meanwhile the world, the country I thought was mine is, as usual, falling apart, and I'm thinking about where I would move and how I would work if we passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, if we overturned Roe v. Wade, if in four years Dick fucking Cheney secured the presidency, if we go to war in Iran, Syria, Korea...
And I hear a report about an all-male ballet troupe who performs female roles on pointe and in tutus, with no attempt to conceal their maleness, and I laugh a little. I go to the gym and get on the elliptical machine and burn for 25 minutes, in high gear, my rage and helplessness. I read an amusing article about Johnny Depp in Rolling Stone (The New Yorker isn't available today and I didn't bring it from home).
And I go home, and shower, and go to the cafe and write, and I think, this is how it works. This is why it works. This is a few million people, feeling helpless, feeling rage, feeling the same way I'm feeling and knowing that the only thing to do is chop wood, carry water. Keep going.
This is how the status quo holds on, this is how the politicians get away with what they get away with, this is how a government strips its citizens of its freedoms, bit by bit, and legislates the hell out of our lives. And this isn't me telling you to get off your butts and do something, this isn't me getting up and being politically active, this isn't even me going to a demonstration or writing a letter to my congressperson. This is me seeing that it's pointless.
This is me, just trying to live my life.
(no subject)
Nov. 3rd, 2004 11:37 amI don't really know what can be said.
I think I'm going to be sick.
I'm off to teach classes, wearing all black.
Good night, Irene.
I think I'm going to be sick.
I'm off to teach classes, wearing all black.
Good night, Irene.
Let's hope so.
Apr. 14th, 2004 10:25 amSometimes Rob Breszny's smart.
Or at least encouraging.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): After you damage a fingernail, it grows
faster than when it's in its normal state. Scientists have proved this,
though they don't understand why it happens. I have observed that a
similar phenomenon often occurs in people who have experienced a
psychic wound. They ripen emotionally with amazing speed, blasting
through inner obstacles that had kept them enslaved to the past. I predict
that you will soon begin responding in this way to your recent hurt.
Or at least encouraging.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): After you damage a fingernail, it grows
faster than when it's in its normal state. Scientists have proved this,
though they don't understand why it happens. I have observed that a
similar phenomenon often occurs in people who have experienced a
psychic wound. They ripen emotionally with amazing speed, blasting
through inner obstacles that had kept them enslaved to the past. I predict
that you will soon begin responding in this way to your recent hurt.
Cathartic rant, with a call to action.
Mar. 21st, 2003 02:08 pmThis morning in the elevator I saw someone with with a secret smile I recognized: that smile of someone who's just left the bed of someone he's mad for, or who has a date later with a massive crush. It was a smile I missed having, and I almost asked him about it, but felt it was obvious. He carried it all the way to the 15th floor.
I was in bad shape last night, and when I awoke--filled with that vague, crippling sadness--but I slowly worked myself out of it, until, upon arrival at work, I felt better. I have to be careful not to let it creep back in on me tonight.
This morning, I was sitting at the front desk with no computer--I couldn't log in because the person with the password was out. I wanted to see how I would do without its glare, its draw, its addictive properties. I was twitchy for a while, missing email and LJ, and the collective weight of everyone else's sadness.
And I wondered if that was in fact the problem: am I being dragged into the mire by being online so much?
Much like the endless viewing of CNN can solidify, and make impossible to shake, the horror of an event like 9/11; or like multiplication tables and religious dogma are force-fed to us and thus branded into the flesh of our minds forever, indulgence in daily weeping and praying and ranting and exposure to immense screaming bandwidths of information--pro-war, anti-war, every possible perspective, every conceivable possibility, every reality and paranoia and utopic vision--it weighs me down. It fills me with imparseable facts, a complete spectrum of opinion from which it is impossible to glean any truth, and a full gamut of painful emotions. Add to this that most of the people I read on a daily basis are friends of mine, whose opinions and feelings I care deeply about, all of whom are hurting in one way or another--inconsolably depressed, impotently angry, soul sick, numbed into quiescent indifference--of course it's going to affect me.
I'm upset about the war. Of course I'm upset about it. It's a cycle of upset: I'm crushed that we're over there, unjustly, bombing a decimated country; I'm frustrated that I can't feel more for people I am so far away from, and that my pity and horror means nothing coming from my place of privilege. I feel guilty for that same place of privilege and feel I have no right to any opinion about Iraqi or any other suffering. And then I feel so angry at my government, for only allowing their voices of greed and hatred and superiority to reach overseas, for making their voices of pomp and condescension, their ridiculous ideas of themselves as Saviors of the World, represent me, while my small voice of dissent and outrage and pity and sadness is crushed into a poor caricature of America to the rest of the world.
But that's not what's making me this depressed. I've shut off the wail of the world before; I can do it again.
It's my friends' voices.
From the most ardent peace activists to my least political and ambivalent friends, everyone is feeling this, everyone is frustrated or feel helpless to do anything, everyone's dreams are being haunted, everyone is overwhelmed and depressed and angry, and most of all, everyone just wants it to stop.
And I believe that this energy is not just cumulative but exponential, that all of this surfing and reading and very collective grieving is creating a cloud of fear and doubt and hatred and suffering, that we need to reach out to each other and spread some kind of positivity, that, whether I believe in it or not, we have to work some kind of magic, if not to stop this war, then at least to stop us all becoming casualties of it.
We are a community here, there's no doubt about that. Singly, we're all carrying our own wounds. Collectively, we're bleeding to death.
Is it time, perhaps, for us to fight our own war, against this darkness that's swallowing us all, day by day?
I was in bad shape last night, and when I awoke--filled with that vague, crippling sadness--but I slowly worked myself out of it, until, upon arrival at work, I felt better. I have to be careful not to let it creep back in on me tonight.
This morning, I was sitting at the front desk with no computer--I couldn't log in because the person with the password was out. I wanted to see how I would do without its glare, its draw, its addictive properties. I was twitchy for a while, missing email and LJ, and the collective weight of everyone else's sadness.
And I wondered if that was in fact the problem: am I being dragged into the mire by being online so much?
Much like the endless viewing of CNN can solidify, and make impossible to shake, the horror of an event like 9/11; or like multiplication tables and religious dogma are force-fed to us and thus branded into the flesh of our minds forever, indulgence in daily weeping and praying and ranting and exposure to immense screaming bandwidths of information--pro-war, anti-war, every possible perspective, every conceivable possibility, every reality and paranoia and utopic vision--it weighs me down. It fills me with imparseable facts, a complete spectrum of opinion from which it is impossible to glean any truth, and a full gamut of painful emotions. Add to this that most of the people I read on a daily basis are friends of mine, whose opinions and feelings I care deeply about, all of whom are hurting in one way or another--inconsolably depressed, impotently angry, soul sick, numbed into quiescent indifference--of course it's going to affect me.
I'm upset about the war. Of course I'm upset about it. It's a cycle of upset: I'm crushed that we're over there, unjustly, bombing a decimated country; I'm frustrated that I can't feel more for people I am so far away from, and that my pity and horror means nothing coming from my place of privilege. I feel guilty for that same place of privilege and feel I have no right to any opinion about Iraqi or any other suffering. And then I feel so angry at my government, for only allowing their voices of greed and hatred and superiority to reach overseas, for making their voices of pomp and condescension, their ridiculous ideas of themselves as Saviors of the World, represent me, while my small voice of dissent and outrage and pity and sadness is crushed into a poor caricature of America to the rest of the world.
But that's not what's making me this depressed. I've shut off the wail of the world before; I can do it again.
It's my friends' voices.
From the most ardent peace activists to my least political and ambivalent friends, everyone is feeling this, everyone is frustrated or feel helpless to do anything, everyone's dreams are being haunted, everyone is overwhelmed and depressed and angry, and most of all, everyone just wants it to stop.
And I believe that this energy is not just cumulative but exponential, that all of this surfing and reading and very collective grieving is creating a cloud of fear and doubt and hatred and suffering, that we need to reach out to each other and spread some kind of positivity, that, whether I believe in it or not, we have to work some kind of magic, if not to stop this war, then at least to stop us all becoming casualties of it.
We are a community here, there's no doubt about that. Singly, we're all carrying our own wounds. Collectively, we're bleeding to death.
Is it time, perhaps, for us to fight our own war, against this darkness that's swallowing us all, day by day?
