Monthly Archives: July 2014

GO LOVE! Stop the Hate

As I’m scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed each day, I noticed an unusually high ratio of hate. Hate Justin Beiber? That’s okay. Hate Westboro Baptist Church? That’s okay. How about Democrats? Republicans? Atheists? Gays? Women? Men? Goldfish? That’s okay too.

I am all about personal freedom. I believe that every person is entitled to their own opinions, beliefs, and ways of doing things. What I don’t understand is why the hate of such ridiculous things? If you want to hate something, what about poverty? Hunger? Rape? Acid Attacks? War? Human Rights Violations?

These are things that should be hated. These are things that should not be tolerated, but we do. We allow it because it isn’t in our own backyard. It’s okay because it isn’t directly affecting most of us, thankfully, on a daily basis.

STOP HATE! GO LOVE!

STOP HATE! GO LOVE!

If you’re reading this, you at least have electricity with pretty good odds you have clean safe water to drink. If you’re reading this, you’re probably not worrying about soldiers breaking into your house, killing the man/men and raping the women. If you’re reading this, odds are you have at least a rudimentary education that taught you how to unlike the millions of children who will never witness these words. If you’re reading this, odds are you’re using some sort of electronics device that cost enough to supply an entire village for an entire year clean water, food, and/or medicine needed for survival.

The generosity shown by the United States when 9/11 happened, when Katrina hit, when, most recently, the tornadoes hit in Oklahoma, is amazing. That’s because it happened where we couldn’t ignore it. We couldn’t walk away because the victims of these tragedies are our neighbors, friends and relatives. They have faces like ours.

Think about this: The people in a remote village in South Africa, in Russian States, in China, in Singapore are someone’s neighbors, friends and relatives too. They have faces, but they don’t look like our well fed American selves. They don’t have the resources we do. They don’t have what we do, but that doesn’t make them any less of a human being.

Hate is such a nasty thing. It takes away from our compassion. It takes away from our kindness. It blurs love into a meaningless statement of favorites instead of being the action it is intended to be. Think about what you dislike. Now think about all the wonderful things we could be doing for each other right now in the name of love. Do not tolerate the abominations against humanity. Find a way to change the hate speak into love speak. It’s the only way the human race, humanity, will survive.

Division will Multiply and Add to our Subtraction

It is my hypothesis that we’ve forgotten our communities. We’ve forgotten, as a whole, that we’re in this together because the lines of division have been drawn between liberal and conservative, African American and White, White and Hispanic, old and young, healthy and sick, poor and rich. We’re told we have no common ground and that it’s every wo/man for themselves. With rare community exception this appears to be the “norm.”

We’ve forgotten our addresses as places to be charitable. We depend on the faceless churches to do what we do not want to do which is know our neighbor and lift them up with loving hands as we know in our hearts is right. We deny it because it’s easier to look away than to look poverty in the eye. We see the problem but rarely solve it because surely someone must be doing something about that already, right? You know, those faceless people that occasionally get a shout out by “DoSomething.org” or “Upworthy” or “Because I said So”.

We don’t have to be human, we just have to do what we’re told. We shouldn’t look at those homeless, starving, unhealthy people because they’re the problem. They’re lazy. They’re alcoholics and addicts. They’re people who deserve what they get because if they’d only tried a little harder, got a better education, given up the booze they would make it in this world. They wouldn’t be littering our streets with their hollow eyes, freezing hands and feet, or spitting blood onto the concrete covered in our garbage they took sustenance from for dinner.

But my further hypothesis of why we commonly look away from instead of towards a solution is that many of us know we’re but a paycheck or two away from the very same fate. Seeing our futures reflected back at us from the eyes of a hungry child is not something we wish to see in our own families. Seeing a homeless Veteran sitting on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign is not how we want to believe we treat our soldiers. Seeing a woman angry at her dire circumstance allows us the right to look away so we don’t have to see what we may become should the fates not smile on us anymore.

I have been working in my own community to establish a garden where the people I live next door to and across the street from can work elbow to elbow with me to create sustainable food for our families despite circumstance. It is my belief that if we work together we can make a difference in our lives. But sadly, there is little hope here. Without a torch to light the way, without strong voices calling them out to join the fray, we will remain in the darkness of poverty, starvation, homelessness, and the stigmas that are attached to those solvable issues.

FOSTER: “Y’all just get my compassion thing a throbbin’ but you forgot the one thing that drives EVERYTHING in America, MoNeY! God love you for your innocence but if already rich old white men can’t get richer it ain’t gonna fly.”
•
CHAPIN: “Need way more people like u around”
•
ERRETT: “You should write a book Mare… Excellent writer”
•
BAKER:

Lilo & Stitch – This is My Family.
•
MARTELL: “CHAPIN, the thing is, we’re all these people. We just need to do the right thing. You’d not let your own child starve, why someone else’s offspring. We all bleed red. We’re all one.

FOSTER, you can’t eat money, you can’t house someone in coins.”
•
FOSTER: “Oh I couldn’t agree more, I’m just saying the prevailing feeling amongst the right wing is “I don’t care about a bunch of brown kids” “lazy old vet should get a job” “I got mine, why should I care about you” it is a shame money becomes an issue when the subject is basic human dignity but to so many it is.”
•
MARTELL: “There are 535 members of Congress. There are 317 million Americans. Allowing this to continue is an abomination to humanity. We the People of the United States, not who has the most money. If we stood united and refused to allow people to destroy our unity and humanity, we, ALL of us, could make the changes necessary without violence, without anger, without hatred, but with love. Love won’t feed a child, that’s fact, but the hands that make that food with love can.”
•
FOSTER: “From your mouth to God’s ears my good friend. I am not cynical just resigned to the level of cruelty that about half the people in this country are capable of. You can find them every Sunday morning in pews across the country, right next to the ones who would wish things were different.”
•
MARTELL: “Wishing doesn’t solve anything. Waiting for someone else to do it doesn’t solve anything. Claiming good heart while your neighbor loses everything in foreclosure because of family illness or loss of employment doesn’t solve anything. It’s only when we use our hands with love towards one another that we’ll be following any common sense. If it happens to one of us, it can happen to all of us. We need unity back in our community. Without it, we’re no better than those 535 members of Congress, or the VA that allows our soldiers to go without care, or the family services that allows children to go hungry or the department of immigration who destroys innocence because of an imaginary line drawn on paper. This should outrage us. This should piss us off. This should be addressed by We The People because I don’t want to wear the label of executioner of humans. It’s morally wrong.
P.s. I don’t care which religion you follow or don’t follow. This has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with love.”
•
LOONEY: “Read this entire conversation, I couldn’t say anything better. I’m proud of the spiritual aspect and the integrity that you’ve grown into, my daughter. A wholeheartedly agree that the loss of community is a symptom that plagues us. Families no longer live in the same house or even in the same town/city. Therefore the so called breakdown of the family -IMHO-has as much to do with geography as much as lack of commitment to many things.”

Girlish Ribbons: TRIGGER WARNING

This may cause some discomfort who have suffered from trauma and further, may cause discomfort in those that have not experienced this. In my personal life, I feel raw and violated due to circumstances of which I have no control. I am regarding another time in my life when I felt this way because currently, I’m unable to deal with recent events without turning to past emotions for reference. I am strong. I will make it through. I will win and succeed because that’s my destiny. In the mean time, I write not so pleasant and work through the not so pretty.

Before cutting was glamorous and utterly common
I showed my wounds without spilling bloody ribbons
I displayed my afflictions with self-violence abloom
Tacked to my flesh in kaleidoscope bedrooms
Begging for love, praying for forgiveness on my knees
With my eyes looking upward into those of my savior
With a little “s” and his little “o” appreciating my prayer
I rejected that which defined my “child”hood
Defined my worth from knee to waist, absorbed my youth
Sponged in sweat, punctuated with a God I knew didn’t exist
Because if he did, he surely wouldn’t have taken my sacred
And violated it upon the altar of evil in the name of my father
A likeness of god himself, would he? I did not believe.

The Queen of Heaven

The halls of the House of Heaven are adorned with blood of Her children
Refused the white alabaster once crested with silver, gold, and lapis lazuli
Now flowing with the blood of Her prostitutes, their pearls crimson with chaos
Surrender is refused, rejected, removed from the battle to prove submission
To offer power in glorious vestments rising from the throne of iniquity with grace
Descending into redemption with the drip of silk slithering with sequins suspended
The Queen of Heaven requires no sacrifices because She IS the sacrifice to death

Inanna Mine

She is the lioness with thorns in her feet, dripping orgasmic lust into her champions
Revealing and reveling in her descent to retrieve her consort, her soul, her spirit
Upon the landing in front of the gates of her Dark Sister’s kingdom, she is bared
With defiance only a sister can offer to the darkness within, she stands demanding
Intolerably thrusting her power of persuasive requests until intervention is required
She lays the last of her rosettes, her eight pointed star, at her sister’s feet
Bargain struck, The Lady of Uruk returns to her battled halls in the House of Heaven
The seven gates of the underworld reversed, laid bare of masks and protections
Enthroned within power, she alights with her scepter, a hook shaped twisted knot of reeds
She remains victorious over death, over the underworlds within, over the rape of her holiness

 

Natural, un-enhanced womens breasts in a red satin bra with black lace edging and diamond detailhttp://theanjananetwork.net/2014/02/10/the-boobs-crave-acceptance/

Headlights, bazongas, baby-feeders, titties, jugs, knockers, ta-tas, boobies, whatever slang term is applied, breasts have been my focus since I was a very young girl. My maternal grandmother had enormous boobs for her 5 foot frame. My Aunt Helen was even more blessed than her. My mom and my aunt had average breasts — not too big, not too small. To me, as a child, I looked at breasts with admiration and wondered what my body would look like when I started to “bloom.”

In sixth grade, with special permission slips signed, I was taught through filmstrips and a rather dry lecture, about the changes my body was about to go through. I learned about menstruation and it horrified me that I was going to bleed from “THERE.” Every month? What the hell were they thinking?! That wasn’t going to happen to me. I was also taught that I was going to grow “public” hair which I proudly came home from school and told my mother about. After her initial shock wore off, she explained it was PUBIC, not public. To this day, I’m terribly amused at the irony.

“They said my boobs are going to grow. Is that true?” I asked my mother as she bustled about the kitchen.

“Yes, it happens to all women’s bodies. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small, but all women grow breasts,” replied my mother matter-of-factly.

“Will I get as big as Aunt Helen?”

“Probably not,” said my mother. In retrospect, mom still feels like she lied to me that day. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she did.

My friends called me flat tire in the fifth grade because I didn’t have boobs. They made fun of my body and I let them. When my breasts started budding during my sixth grade year mom bought me my first bra, a white trainer. I felt as humiliated wearing it, as if my friends were barraging me with proof of their ideas about my body.

The first day I wore it in public, it was under a short sleeved white sweater that had little knit flowers adorning the front. I was mortified when my friend Kim Tarpley told me she knew I was wearing a bra. Up until that point, I could believe in my mind that I was a boy. When it dawned on me that I wasn’t a boy, I realized I was a girl. It was noticeable after I’d taken off my coat in the hallway outside of Mr. Martinez’s classroom.

EVERYONE COULD SEE THE BRA! I ran to the bathroom and promptly removed it, hiding the ugly white declaration of womanhood in the sleeve of my coat before entering the room where I would sit for the rest of the day in misery, terrified that someone would discover my secret.

I told my mom I was wearing the bra she bought me, but we both knew I was lying. I didn’t want to become a woman. I didn’t want to be a girl. I wanted things to stay the same. I fought against the changes in my body, ignoring what I could, telling the other girls who proudly proclaimed they’d started their periods that I had as well so I wouldn’t feel so alone. My period didn’t show up until just after my 15th birthday so I’d been lying about it for three years before I could reveal the truth.

Why did I want to be a boy at that age? How badly did I want to be a boy? I remember telling my sixth grade student teacher (I’m sure it was after a shameful boob incident) that I didn’t like being a girl.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be a girl?” She asked me gently. She had a Dorothy Hamill haircut that was coffee brown and smelled like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. When she hugged me to her polyester blouse, I started crying. Love’s Baby Soft coated my cheeks when I’d settled enough to talk.

“I want to be a boy because boys don’t get hurt.” I sniffled. She handed me a tissue.

“What do you mean boys don’t get hurt?” She asked rubbing the comfort circle between my shoulder blades, as her face tilted towards mine in concern.

I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to explain that girls have men that do things to them. I wanted to tell her that it happened to me. I wanted her to make it all better. I wanted her to wave a magic wand and make the changes in my body stop. I wanted to stop the clock and become the more powerful gender. I wanted to be a boy because of the horrible things I’d experienced at my father’s. I wanted to be a boy because my brothers and dad were strong and nobody could hurt them. I wanted it so badly. I wanted the freedom of running around without my shirt on in the summer sun. I wanted to love my body like I used to do.

Instead, I shook my head, sobbed some more with wadded tissues in my hands, “I don’t know.” I finally replied.

Summer came and to my horror, so did boobs. I don’t mean that I grew into my body gracefully. I went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning with boobs that Dolly Parton would be envious of in seemingly an instant. My mother recalls how horrified she felt as I grew out of bra after bra on a weekly basis. I eventually landed on DDD’s on my 5’4” frame.

Okay, so maybe it was by the beginning of 8th grade, but it really was rapid, sudden, and I felt enormously ashamed. I could no longer hide the fact that I was a girl.

No matter which shirt I wore, bathing suit, blouse, dress, I couldn’t hide them. There they were as proud as anything screaming womanhood at the top of their…well, cleavage. My Aunt Helen tried to offer advice and solace, but I just looked down and wondered where the hell my feet went. She tried to guide me to select bras that would both support my “gift” and not dig into my shoulders so badly. I didn’t want to talk about it. In retrospect, that was a pretty large elephant sitting in the room. It felt like my body had betrayed my wishes to be a boy.

I felt self-conscious because nobody, and I mean nobody, had boobs the size of mine. Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t look at another girl/woman’s body and not wonder if they hated theirs too. When a boy/man looked at me, I felt like my boobs were the only thing they saw and that their thoughts were impure. I felt like a lunch buffet in front of sex-starved men. When girls looked at me, I heard their thoughts: “SLUT! WHORE! BITCH!” My entire identity became my boobs. I hated them.

At twenty I married for the first time. To spice up our sex life, we rented a video camera and taped our intimacy for future review. When I watched what my body looked like while involved in “The Act,” I felt such shame, not because I was having sex with my husband, but because my boobs dangled down in awkward heavy teardrop shaped pendulums. I felt repulsion towards my body so strongly that I decided to have a breast reduction done.

Halloween rolled around in 1991 and while my friends were planning their sexy costumes, I was planning to reduce my boobs to a manageable size. I didn’t feel fear of going under the knife. I wasn’t worried that I could die, in fact, at that time I felt it would have been the preferable choice. I wasn’t alarmed that it took a team of professionals to talk the insurance company into paying for the surgery for my overall health. The only thing I was wanted was for my boobs to match Marilyn Monroe’s size — a C-cup. My mother and my grandmother drove down from Michigan to Indiana to take care of me when the surgery was done. They were there when I was wheeled into surgery and there when I came out.

I woke up groggy from the anesthesia. My breasts were bound to my chest with bandages and I could, no kidding, see my feet. I tried to sit up to see if that changed, but fell back immediately weakened by the residual effects. I had drains under my arms that were uncomfortable. Did I mention I could see my feet? I ached all over. It hurt to breathe, but not like when you have a cold and you’re struggling to get a lungful of air, just achy deep in my chest.

When I got home later the next day, I laid on my couch while my mom brought me lunch. By the third day, the bandages had been removed at the doctor’s office, my mom had returned home, and I got to see what they looked like for the first time.

They weren’t pretty.

I had stapled wounds that wrapped from under my arms around my chest with only a two inch gap of unmarred skin between my breasts. I had stitches around each nipple that itched so badly I thought I would go mad while healing. I had no sensation on the bottoms of my new breasts. They looked like a Frankenstein experiment gone bad. But you know what? The mutilated remains of my former boobs made me feel a sense of power.

I was no longer defined by my boobs.

I had control over my breasts. They were but a symptom of my self-loathing. For the first time since I was called a flat tire when I was in the fifth grade, I felt like I could be okay with my boobs.After that problem had been eliminated, I started tearing down other parts of me.

I realized that my boobs hadn’t been the problem at all. It was me.

I discovered that I wasn’t just my boobs or just my vagina. I wasn’t just my physical person. I was more than that. I became an “I am” kind of gal. I am a woman. I love being a woman. I love the way my body looks, wiggles, giggles, shakes, and moves when I do. I love the way my breasts fluff out my clothing. The cleavage I see when I look down makes me happy. They may not be perfect in someone else’s eyes, but they are mine. They are a part of me. They are beautiful.

My Gerber servers, holy grails, whoopee cushions, humpback whales, flying saucers, traffic stoppers, super big gulps, double whoppers, pillows, billows, Don DeLillos, soft-serve cones and armadillos, chi-chis, balloons, whatever you want to call them, my breasts are wonderful and I’m glad I’m no longer defined by them. Further, I AM glad I am a woman.

(Slang terms for breasts found in the final paragraph are found at: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=99+words+for+boobs)

Graphic Language: Safe for Work

After an injury left me unable to walk at will for over a year (first I broke the foot then the nerve grew around the artery), I became a vicariously alive person because I lived on Facebook. It became my window to the outside world. I commonly spent 8-10 hours a day more or less monitoring the lives my friends with greater mobility were experiencing. I watched, commented, thought, read, and digested their lives like a good bowl of popcorn with occasional seeds to be discarded. As time passed, I noticed patterns.

I noticed the trending topics by the shared news stories, quizzes, videos, and other miscellaneous clutter. For clarity, I do visit traditional news sites, but honestly world news is hard to witness without me feeling bad about my first world problems and shame that I find them so important when I’m not on day 15 without food or fresh water.

Doctor Who and the T.A.R.D.I.S.

Doctor Who and the T.A.R.D.I.S.

I check about once a day on the world news and I subscribe to a local news site for more immediate happenings. The patterns, because I’ve been watching for over a year are pretty obvious to me. For example: Normally, if there is a death of a beloved public figure, how long they remain in my feed is usually an indication of how widespread their actions are revered. Maya Angelou stayed in my feed consistently for nearly two weeks before the fervor died down. That dude from the Fast and the Furious…Paul Walker, stayed up for about a day, minus one of my friends who is a dedicated fan of the F&F franchise. Trends, although sometimes disturbing, helped me to gauge topics of conversation when I did get to go out in public.

One of my primary complaints against Facebook are quizzes. Quizzes are popular because most people that take them religiously are usually working on who they are, who they want to be, and in order to do that, they need definitions of their starting point. I won’t sit here and shallowly say that I don’t take those ridiculous quizzes that were probably written by junior high school students (Yes, I’m mocking myself here), but they aren’t psychological evaluations. There is no reason on this earth I need to know what type of cheese I’ve been in a past life according to my aura color that I learned by discovering which animal I was murdered by when I was a fish.

Another strike against Facebook are the graphics (that I also shamelessly share). If I feel they apply, I normally don’t even think about why, I just share. It started me thinking how I really see myself. If I strip away my bravado, my superhero cape, my wild clothing, my humor, and my (I hope it is) clever writing, who am I? How would I be described if I dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow? What will be my legacy?

My Mama says I am

My Mama says I am

I remember in a writing class I took where it was drilled into our heads: Show don’t tell. Over and over I’d get papers handed back to me with red marks screaming that insult at me. I hated that teacher with the keen passion that only a young student can despise said instructor. But those words held far more wisdom that the murdered works of my lame attempts at writing in junior high school.

Those words have become more of a life lesson for me. I can tell you all day long who I want you to see me be. I can wave my fancy feathered fan in front of my naked body allowing you glimpses of who I really am. I could rip off my spiritual bindings while groaning with effort and continued fear that I’ll not be seen as I wish but through someone’s eyes that perhaps doesn’t see me in as kind of a light as I shine on myself.
Show me who you are. Don’t just tell me with cutesy graphics and clever slogans because those are the thoughts of someone else. Using them to describe who you are limits a person to mediocrity, labels, and acceptance of someone else’s beliefs. Quotes help us to understand how things work to some extent but that’s accepting that the author thinks like each of us does. One thought may match but that doesn’t mean it’s the very definition of who you are.

I don’t want to be remembered with someone else’s words on my lips (ironic, isn’t it?) but with my own actions a reflection of my spirit. I do not intentionally set out to change the world, it just happens because my intent is to be like a firefighter, fully engaged in whatever I’m doing. I require blazes of activity to spark up via conversations, actions, laughter, outrage towards injustice, or by committing random acts of kindness (again with the irony!) I want to be remembered as someone who mattered to someone else as much as I matter to me.

Wave it and bring it

Wave it and bring it!

I’d like for someone to make a graphic about me that reads, “Man, if only you’d known her. She was a fireball like none other. She’d crack jokes so fast you’d swear she Googled the answers then turn around and poke your conscience into action regarding a noticed injustice. And even though she gave up a lot, she wasn’t a quitter. She’d fight to the bitter end if she believed in it and without even realizing it, you’d be right there with her not questioning because she was trustworthy in action and word.”

P.S. I just posted another graphic I identify with and just completed a quiz about how bitchy I am. My intentions are good, I swear!

The Coffee Hours Symphony

Our personal music composed itself
on the breezy breaths of our being.
Our eyes blinked in metronome
as we witnessed our lives quietly,
the creak of a knee as it’s repositioned for comfort,
the crumpling of the cushion’s fabric
the way the richly creamed coffee we share
is sipped and swallowed with sensational delight
eliciting murmurs of approval.
You spoke truthfully to me with words
that had no letters, no order, no punctuation,
But every meaning I needed was there.
I heard you. I understood.
You are not alone.
I let out a deep sigh.
Your eyebrow quirked upwards
making a question mark of your eyes.
I smiled half way lost in our song
because it has been sung so often
brought up familiarly during times of great loss
And yet this symphony remains blank of content
consolation filled with the tunes we know by heart.
You place your mug on the table with a wobbly balance
reaching out your hand to hold mine.
Your eyes remove the question reassure me the answer,
that you’re with me; I am not alone.

Get Naked

It would seem that my expectation of spiritual nudity is met with skepticism or anger
Put trust in this vision (which is your own, undiscovered), you’re in no danger
Who you are without labels or signs arranges itself with the setting in your mind blurred
Protecting yourself with the clothing of shame, guilt, and fears of the unkind word.
Set them down. Remove them. Take them off. Unlock the shackles of expectations
Release your shame. Discard your guilt. Turn away from fears; your lamentations.
The ugly words displayed, rescinded of power, like rejected clothes on a clearance rack
The ones returned without receipts, the embracing of personal worth, you get full money back.
Turn your heart on full blast, your eyes gleaming with anticipation like kids on Christmas
Get up off your knees where you’ve been held in fervent prayer to be esteemed as religious
Align your eyes with who you are created to be without excuse, with your modesty lifted
Rip open your shirt like Superman, bare your “S” to declare and expose everything you’re gifted
It’s only then, for those who seek, that you will find a secret world steeped in personal happiness
It’s not for the weak or blundering who hide behind their timid veils of charity waiting for their bliss
It’s for the holy warriors that take on social norms with scratches, bruises and courage as their battle swords

Unexpected actions from injury

Last night I went walking through my neighborhood in an effort to exercise. The night was cool, punctuated by firecrackers and painted with darkness where the streetlights don’t quite reach. The route I’d chosen has a medium grade hill which I wanted to take advantage of so my thighs would tune more to my personal music. I was having a text conversation with my mother-in-law and walking fast enough to hear the groans of protest in my muscles.

When I got to the corner of my street, within eye-shot of my home, my ankle decided to throw me forward onto the asphalt tearing a nickel sized dime deep chunk off my knee, slicing my thumb, and wrenching my back. As I rolled over to sit up, I held my knee and breathed a Peter Griffin for a good while as tears rolled down my face.

A car pulled up in the intersection and two young men asked me if I was okay. Through my tears I explained that I needed to get to my husband. They asked if I could stand. I wasn’t sure since I hadn’t attempted it yet. I was still trying to get my breath. Then they got out of their car and as if approaching an untamed animal they said, “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to help you up.” One on my right side, one on my left, and they lifted me rather easily to standing. A few test steps and I thanked them as they walked back to their car and left.

Other than a nasty gash and a wobbly ankle, I was okay enough to walk to my house and get doctored up by my husband and neighbor. I’m no worse for wear but, in my world, walking and chewing gum are not recommended.

The only thing that really bothered me of all that was their approach of me. They were non-threatening Samaritans reassuring me as I sat in the dark on the street huddled with injury but that they had to even identify themselves as such felt wrong. It felt like they shouldn’t have to introduce themselves as if at a job interview just to help an injured female party.

Yes, I understand why they did it. Yes, I understand society’s rules about approaching another human when you intend to touch them. Yes, I see all of that, but they were reacting appropriately to a fellow human. They weren’t invasive, just cautious. I hate that it were necessary.

I’ve struggled a lot with Love Thy Neighbor on a personal level lately. I’ve written, spoken, and thought less than stellar horrible reviews of where I live. With snipers on my birthday descending on a gun wielding neighbor in the next building and bandy rooster posturing about who is the biggest and strongest among the children and the adults, while adding in a sprinkle of drug addicted/using/dealing people and the imagery is stark.

But.

The young men who stopped to help me get on my feet, my young neighbor who saw me crying and immediately called for his mom to help me, his mom who came jumping over the wall when she saw my injury and her subsequent doctoring, with the assistance of my husband, of my body demonstrates to me that Love Thy Neighbor isn’t just a phrase. It’s a purposeful direction of a human’s attention that creates a supportive network of kind hearts helping one another in times of need.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is hope hidden in my neighborhood, I just haven’t unlocked that door yet. I’ll just have to keep trying.

Did you hear the one about…?

 

Let me coax your lips a bit to peak interest at an amusing anecdote.
Let me tease your cheeks higher without using a comb (unless you have a beard).
Let me crinkle the corners of your eyes like cellophane gels colored with humor.
Let me witness your laughter rolling around on your tongue,
snorting a bit up the back of your nose, peppered with a touch of “NO WAY!”
Let me tickle your giggler with half-assed ideas
baked into our conversations with all the sprinkled puns and frosting
we can stuff into our groaning bellies and leaking eyeballs
that drown in our gasps for air, revived by our knee slapping.