Oh man…Humanity (Today’s Observation)

This is the first post of what I intend to be an ongoing observation of human behavior, as I experience it.  While it may be triggered by some true events and interactions with humans, be it in flesh or pixel form, I am taking great care to be very generic, so if you think it’s about you, have the sense to keep that to yourself and your anonymity will remain safe and you have nothing to defend in a public forum.  This isn’t about you.  It’s about my processing of my world.

OK, enough with the disclaimer, which I guess will have to go at the bottom of each of these…..

As I logged in to write this with another thought, it said ” beep beep boop…” as the loading screen.  I had to LOL about the fact that these days computers type out sounds and people say, “L O L” or worse, “lawl,” instead of actually laugh.  What the HELL is going on?   And yes I did actually laugh audibly in meatspace tho it was more of a punctuated “Heh!” than a laugh.

Unfortunately, now I’ve forgotten what I was going to write.   It was during a discussion with my husband Quai, that the idea fired off in my head to write this series, at which point I got excited and almost stopped listening to him.  I asked him what I was talking about and he could only remember the things he was talking about, which I find pretty funny in itself.  We could both work on our listening skills.  Anyway, as it happens, he recorded the entire conversation. I had forgotten he had talked me into that idea sometime last week, because he thinks he can cull our conversations for some interesting podcast segments on his kink radio station.

I guess I’ll have to listen to that and remember what I was thinking, but I’m not really worried about it.  I’ll remember it or think of something else.  There is no limit to my thoughts in this area.

Next time!

Positive Feedback Loop: Hope–Options

Options create hope. Hope perceives options.

When this loop is feeding back in a negative way:

When we feel we have no escape, no recourse, no redo, no options…we lose all hope.

When we accept that there is no way out, when we believe there is no way but down, when we lose all hope, we no longer are capable of perceiving any further options that might present themselves.

But what if there is an option? One decision, that can …

Reverse the direction of the loop to positive:

Decide to stay open to the possibility that there are options, even if none can be seen currently, keep looking for something that can be shifted or nudged to set into motion even more options.

When there are options you are again driving your life. Make your best choice and stay open to more. Now you have hope, and are increasingly resilient and able to see and respond to opening doors, potentially even transforming hope into the knowledge that you are creating more options with every movement.

If it’s Illegal it Must be Immoral…

Not necessarily. Think again.

That’s black and white, absolute thinking and where I start to get into trouble with people, because my mind always wants to say, that logically, we are all different, so different, in how we perceive the world, and there are so many contexts and complex conditions where the same act (killing someone, for example) would have different moral connotations.  To not consider the greys, to stick to a rigid fundamental way of thinking, such as in fundamental religion, only results in massive wells of guilt in the individual that ultimately expresses itself, in often far more destructive behaviors than the original “rule” they might have broken.  Your God’s laws and your individual country and state’s laws (which vary by religion and location) are not appropriate, fair, “moral” or just, for every individual in every situation. ((This also applies to D/s relationships when you think about it))

I understand why we need laws and rules in our various cultures and communities; it prevents chaos, or at least is supposed to. I have laws at my kinky cafe simulation in Second Life (a virtual world) because I’m trying to create a specific culture and want to attract people of minds that appreciate and also support my vision for it.  So I get it. And my vision for this cafe has my own personal morality at it’s heart, so I also get that my rules could be subjective and arbitrary for someone else. However that morality is based on the concept of respecting and learning from differences, and so is inherently non-rigid in spirit.  And more importantly, there is no moral judgement from me if what we want for the cafe is not what someone wants to experience for themselves.

The problem with rigid fundamental absolute thinking is that it is just plain illogical when applied to real situations. Take “Honor Your Father and Mother” which seems to be somewhat common morality in many cultures and religions, to be respectful of those that bring us into the world, and “Thou Shalt Not Kill”  which respects human life and is certainly a basic law in many countries and a big one in Judeo-Christian tenets, yet what if your parent tries to kill you, or orders you to kill someone else, such as to enlist as a soldier, or take revenge for a perceived injustice or to protect against someone that threatens your family or self directly?  In that moment which morality, rule, and/or law does the fundamentalist follow?

In order to accept absoluteness for themselves, morality fundamentalists (of any kind) cannot accept anything else for others; they cannot accept that what they believe is bad for them can be OK or even good for someone else, regardless of the circumstances.  They live by the principle, “If you know who the ultimate authority is, and you know what it’s rules are, then you can just follow them and be safe.”  And when fear is the whip used to push that message, safety becomes one of the main goals. Safe from hell, safe from harm, safe from judgement, safe from pain, safe from despair, safe from each other, safe from the bad guys, safe from ourselves, safe from confusion, safe from thinking.

No need to consider all those complex variables, perspectives, and intentions that logic demands we examine.

We Have Fucked Ourselves in the Ass…

…and, whores that we are, we have not yet pulled it out and done triage. It simply pays to keep it stuck up there. Oh there’s those helpful cuckolds that slip in some lube so it seems less painful, but in the end, no pun intended, no I am not laughing, we are just fucked.

We = Humans

Fucked Ourselves = Global warming or hatred among humankind, if we poison ourselves out or cause the Earth to destroy us like the blight that we are to it, or just simply blow each other up or wipe each other out with germ warfare (we ARE creative in our ways of destruction, gotta give props there), in the end, we gone, brothas and sistas.

Cuckolds = Those valiant but ultimately humiliated individuals and organizations and countries that are trying, pretty much powerlessly (at best, too little too late compared to the powers that be combined with ignorance and apathy) to save our asses.

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Walt Kelly, I Go Pogo (comic strip from the 50s)

Exerpt from: http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm

“Walt Kelly first used the quote “We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us” on a poster for Earth Day in 1970. The poster is shown above. In 1971, he did a two panel version with Pogo and Porky in a trash filled swamp. This is the only example I know of with a balloon, indicating Pogo responding to Porky with “YEP, SON, WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.” In 1972, it was the title of a book, Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us. …I had the version shown to the right produced for the Waycross, Georgia Pogofest in 1998 as a brass plate on a wooden plaque.”

Fear, and The Cost of Protection

(A sunny Saturday afternoon conversation with my husband Quai resulted in this post)

Once you conquer your fear of death
the only thing stopping you from taking a risk
is fear of the pain that will result

Every day is full of pain for people anyway
because pain is part of life

Building a fortress around your garden will cut out all risk that comes from “out there”
meanwhile what you seek to protect dies on the vine
Separated from sun, water, food, attention, vital nutrients…
thriving stops, decay sets in

There is risk of pain and loss inherent in not building a fortress
(a fortress even made of intangibles like avoidance or the broader impact of things like lifestyle)
but the loss of freedom and growth is the cost to life when you choose to build protections (not take risks)

The will to live and the will to grow/thrive are synonymous and all living organisms possess the seed of it
It is the nature of life to complete it’s birth/growth/death –it’s life cycle

Only humans fear the mere concepts of loss and death
Animals experience it, but the fear is in the moment, it is not anticipated
It springs from the inherant will to live, the survival instinct

The preditor and prey rest and drink beside each other before and after the hunt
with full knowledge of the other’s nature
They do it with awareness but at the same time, at peace, without fear

Having the will to live and fearing death are not synonymous
Once you conquer your fear of death, only fear of pain is left

Like This BLOG!

I just felt a need to say that.  That’s pretty much all for now. Thanks 🙂

Ren

P.S. I won’t get mad if you don’t.  

Terra Coughs and Sun Sneezes…

This structure of dependence on technology and fossil fuel that the most “developed’ countries have created is simultaneously changing the game plan (think global warming) far far faster than we can possibly develop technology to respond with.

The Earth shakes, the sun spots become active, the glaciers become mobile, the water rises, the food dies, our skin bubbles cancer, and our life-lines to the world: our information and technology, just sputter out. There, and then gone.  We love coming up with movie scenarios about how easily our infrastructures could collapse.  But we don’t need to look far to see real examples of what happens when nature bites, or oil is spilled, or levies (politics) fail.  It’s some really scary shit.

You know that feeling you get when you lose internet for a night? Or lose power altogether? Imagine a total blackout.  Even for a day, a week, a month. It’s easy to be overwhelmed thinking about the cascade of responses that would likely happen next, not the scariest of which are mass panic, greed and general chaos. Our civilization is truely fragile. Our value systems and our character would suddenly be challenged to the breaking point. And I predict most of us will break, to varying degrees. As it is we can barely be civil with each other. How about when our technology fails us on a grand scale for any reason?  A globally warmed “natural” disaster, an overzealous extremist with nuclear fire power…

And it’s looking like “when,” not if. Damn. Yay, America, still dragging your heels in ceasing to do harm or doing anything really constructive! And don’t call me unpatriotic. I would love it if my fucking country finally did the things I really stand for and I could be proud of our policies and leadership.  I wish.  Really. I still hope.

I really hoped even more that the whole 12-12-12 thing would rock us all right into an evolved global human conciousness.

Nope.

“No Cigar, Mr. President.” (spoken in my best Marilyn/Monica)

——–

Ren climbs off her rant box, empties a can of lighter fluid on it and back hands a lit match in it’s general direction. She walks off without looking back, heading toward a quiet evening of pixel porn, conversation, and music making, not in any particular order.

 

Aging

“I’m not going to miss out on the experience of being 50 just because other people are uncomfortable with it.”

Here’s how I got to the point of making that statement…

So it’s a new year, and I’m 50.  (That happened in October but I’m still figuring out what it actually means to me.)

Naturally, this is an adjustment and I’m thinking a lot about my age. Odds are pretty pretty good that I’m past the halfway point of my life. Typically, a deeper awareness of the inevitability of one’s mortality usually comes to us via some kind of health wake-up call, regardless of how many friends or family have gone ahead to the happy hunting ground.  (love that metaphor for some reason…hehe…sounds like C.A.R.P.)

I had a bunch of problems with shortness of breath and dizziness over the holidays and I’m grateful I didn’t have a lot of gigs scheduled because I would only have had to cancel.  But I passed a pulmonary machine test, 95% blood oxygen in fact, no signs or elevations that indicate infection or inflammation in my blood work, no diabetes, chest xray was clear (thank you Universe) tho they did hear a bit of wheezing, I’m pretty sure now it was my “volcano” vaporizer that was causing or at least exacerbating/compounding whatever is going on.  She’s still sending me to a pulmonary specialist, even with that confession.  This week I have a nerve conduction test in four limbs for suspected nerve compression and also a bone density test and something else…losing track. heh.

But the point of all of that is that they discovered inadvertently, that I have hypothyroidism.  They don’t come right out and say, “You have hypothyroidism,” although probably if I was in the office getting the news instead of phone I would have been handed a pamphlet called “Hypothyroidism and You.”  I’d put money on that one.   Instead they have a nurse tell me, “Your thyroid is low, which pharmacy can we send the Synthroid to?  Come back in six weeks to be monitored with another blood draw.”  That’s it. I gave it the name all by myself.

Okie dokie, so according to THE INTERNET it’s most likely an autoimmune thing where my body will just progressively destroy my thyroid tissue and doctors will compensate with synthetic thyroid for the rest of my life.  Groovy.  But I’m actually freaking GLAD there is a reason for feeling so shitty all the time that you can do something about without creating more symptoms from side effects (unlike FMS) and equally fearful that this treatment,too, will prove not to make any damned difference at all.  I had been given it therapeutically in the past by different doctors based on symptoms alone, before having the symptoms set blamed on candidiasis or fibromyalgia.  But not one of them ever told me how to take the hormone so it would actually be absorbed, and no one ever said they wanted to monitor it. I didn’t have insurance so after a few weeks or when the first bottle ran out I would not get more because I could not discern enough difference in how I felt to justify the cost.  But as it turns out if you don’t take it exactly right and for at least 6 weeks it can’t be absorbed or reach a therapeutic level.  Sigh.

blah blah…I won’t bore you with anymore details on my health picture right now, but anyway…hmmm…hypothyroidism.  (Took my very first pill last night. I woke up feeling very strange–what I think people mean  when they say they “rested.”  Placebo effect? Seems too soon to feel such a dif … ) Which brings me back to my original inspiration for this post…

I’m aging. I’m aware of it. I’m working to make peace with it.

Part of the struggle is changing my interpretation of different labels.  Like “submissive” for instance.  When I picture in my brain a submissive…well fuck me…what I see is a skinny 20 something on her knees.  Not a fifty year old woman with sore knees. When I imagine thin, someone, me, that loses the weight I need (not just want) to lose, I imagine myself in my 20s, or 30s….again…not the reality that significant weight loss at my age makes you look significantly older, not fit and young.  When I think of singers that actually perform the kind of music I write and like to sing, my music which ranges from comedy to smokey to downright comehitherandfuckme, I again picture youth, and what youth usually means, such as energy, no chronic pain…things I haven’t had access to for most of my life., but still, like everyone else, associate with successful performing female musicians (especially those just starting out), espeically ones that create and try to express erotic ideas/content, which I do. No matter what else I accomplish for the rest of my life, I cannot be young ever again.

Accepting my age  also involves accepting and forgiving myself for the unnecessary damage I have done to my body to age it faster and write my fate for the second half of my life.  I cannot undo the damage of sunburns to my skin that now tries to kill me (I’ve already had a melanoma), nor whatever I’ve done to my lungs from that 8 years of smoking cigs or 30 years of smoking cannabis off and on might have done (for both treating physical pain, depressions and anxiety, and yes, for fun). I can’t undo the damage in my knees and feet that carrying too much weight my whole life has done.  I probably can’t remove any sludge I’ve already deposited in my arteries, or the carcinogens I knowingly ingested because I liked how it felt or tasted (like char-grilled meat).  Add heredity.

And that’s just the health stuff.  There’s also the whole “omg…what have I done with my life?  Who am I?  What does it all mean?  I was supposed to have done X, Y, and Z by now. Oh God I may NEVER do X, Y, OR Z!  Where do I really belong in the world? Where am I going? Wtf happens AFTER this?  Will there be enough money to get to that point without undo suffering?”  It’s actually pretty similar to the first time around when you are in your early 20s thinking of all that, but minus the “it’s late or about to be too late” and the “OMG I’m actually going to die some day, probably from a disease!” factors.

Then there’s how people treat you.  It changes.  “The Golden Girls” did not help, in my opinion.  I’m not entirely sure “Desperate Housewives” did either.  I no longer think Cher is actually human so I can’t use her as an example either.   Well at least it opened the door to sex after 50 being a plausible concept, and even made it OK if it’s a bit sexy, kinky even.   But I guess I still don’t feel represented.  I tell myself there are others that might feel that way so maybe “I” can represent that for them.  Maybe that’s my role, my place in music’s underground.  But I have had people call me “Ma’am” lately.  Shivers.  And another musician wrote to me to say, “wow, you’re old. I’m sorry for you.”     I think pity or thinking I’m just “cute” for trying is the worst thing you feel coming at you.  And then down the line you also get to be considered increasingly useless and in the way.  Can’t wait.

So I’m putting a stop to this bullshit line of media induced thinking right here.  They can dish it up but I don’t have to ingest it anymore. I am sexual and erotic and musical and outspoken and full figured because I am, not because I have permission to be from society.  I welcome society to embrace me or go fuck themselves, whichever it might enjoy most.

I’ve always said, “I don’t want to lie about my age. I want a medal for every year I pull off.”   I’ve never meant that more. Because I’ll tell you something…
Aging takes courage.

Respect, Ren

Preparing to Die – A Life Affirming New Year’s Message

The best way to prepare to die, is to live well.

By “live well,”  I mean do the things daily that you would do if you were told your death was imminent and you wanted to prepare to die.  You would have information for your loved ones in order and accessible.  You would tell them you love them. You would try to make amends and say you were sorry where you could. You would perhaps take risks you never had the guts to take before.   If we live this way everyday we will always be prepared to die.

Live well.

When my mother was passing away in hospice she said, “I don’t mind dying, but there are so many things I haven’t finished yet!”  She was 83 and in the 43 years I got to be her daughter on this planet, I never heard her turn down a project.  When she said that I just held her hand and laughed, and said, “Mom, if you had another 50 years of perfect health granted you right now, you would be saying the same thing at the end of it.”  She laughed with me and I think that gave her peace.  It gives me peace.  There’s a few things I need to do, accomplishments like record my music, the only tangible thing I have to give, my legacy, if you will, is my music and whomever’s lives I have touched, in good or bad ways.

I don’t want to spend my life fearing death.  I choose to embrace it by accepting that death is an inescapable reality for every single one of us and by being my complete and authentic self every moment of every day. That means speaking what I feel, taking risks, accomplishing as many goals as I get lucky enough to get in before then, and leaving people better off for having known me, and not wondering how I felt about them, or without my forgiveness.

May each and every one of you really live this year, starting with this moment.

Respect, Ren

Thoughts of this Season – It’s going to be OK

I hope you are all having a great holiday.   Whoever this post reaches, it was intended for you.

Thoughts on enjoying this season, especially as it comes to a head this week with family, travel, and parties:

1. Pace yourself; in all the excitement and doing for others, remember yourself. You are precious to others so take care of yourself.
2. Be grateful for everything, even the things that annoy you every year.  When those people are gone you will miss even those things.
3. Think about what you actually remember and cherish from holidays of the past, whatever it is you celebrate, whatever your culture and traditions.  Some feelings and memories stick with you years later…let that be your guide this year for what you choose to value and let go of trying to make everything “perfect.”  There’s never enough time for everything,  so pick those things.
4. Make a commitment to carrying what they call “The Holiday Spirit” into the new year for as long as you can, which in truth, is just one of kindness and helpfulness and giving…and an openness to the possibility that we’re really all OK, that we are all forgivable.  Maybe you could choose a charity to champion in some way this coming year.  Anything.  No matter how old or young or challenged you are you can experience the great feeling of helping someone, or perhaps giving the gift of forgiveness to someone that is suffering and in need of it.  Just suggestions, I’m sure you can think of something. 🙂
5. Consider that going into debt buying gifts and making things “special” cannot fix relationships or “prove” love.  That requires communication and willingness to really listen to each other in ways you may not have been willing to before. Think about what you are really trying to achieve before spending money you can’t really afford to spend and consider other ways to express your feelings, like spending time just having fun and playing like kids. Isn’t time the most precious thing we have to give each other?

Be well everyone, stay safe and grateful and remember that it’s going to be OK.  Maybe even better than that!

With Respect and Blessings of the Season,

Ren