(from an unfinished older post)
Today I was talking with my friend, Maya. We were exchanging family history. You know, how my Great Great Grandfather Hans Christiansen emigrated from Denmark for religious freedom and how on my mom's side, my one extra-great Grandfather Forester was one of the merry men of Sherwood Forest (i.e. Robin Hood), and even helped to coerce King John to sign the Magna Carta. Of course, I never know how much of this is true and how much is the master storytelling of my grandfather. It's all in good humour, though.
Then it was Maya's turn. On her dad's side her linage can be traced to Jamaica. Her mom's side, though, can only be traced back four or five generations. Slavery. I don't know why it hit me so hard. It hurt me to know that my own blood relative would own
I think that moment was the first time I really understood racism. Not the racism of those days, but today's racism.
It's like this song we're singing in choir about how wrath of God. It's a fun song, and it usually doesn't have much meaning for my skeptic self. "For he the Lord our God / He is a jealous god / and he visiteth all the fathers' sins / on their children to the third an the fourth generation of them that hate him." Happy stuff, eh? I definitely don't think that there's a god spanking the sinners and all their kids for everything they and their fathers have done wrong. But it is true that some wrongs just don't erase themselves, even after several generations.
Slavery is one of those wrongs.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
I Bleed Because I Love
So after I answered various questions about how I have not, in fact, paid anyone for sexual services in the past year, I was given my little test tubes and waited in the queue to bleed.
The day is Monday, January 28, 2008. The event is my first ever blood donation. Yes, it's true, and i have the yellow smiley-face wrap to prove it! This was a moment of indeterminible excitement for me. For every previous blood drive I had either been too young or... well I guess I was just too young. But still! I had been looking forward to this for weeks, and it was beautiful. Yes, it is bizarre to have a great metal cylinder protruding from your arm and sucking the blood out of your body, but it's a happy kind of bizarre, you know? Like, "Blood, my dears, you have served me well. I am proud of you. Now serve someone else!" It gave me this burst of energy, like I felt for the first time in a long time that I was actually doing something worthwhile. Like I was finally saving the world, one squirt at a time.
The day is Monday, January 28, 2008. The event is my first ever blood donation. Yes, it's true, and i have the yellow smiley-face wrap to prove it! This was a moment of indeterminible excitement for me. For every previous blood drive I had either been too young or... well I guess I was just too young. But still! I had been looking forward to this for weeks, and it was beautiful. Yes, it is bizarre to have a great metal cylinder protruding from your arm and sucking the blood out of your body, but it's a happy kind of bizarre, you know? Like, "Blood, my dears, you have served me well. I am proud of you. Now serve someone else!" It gave me this burst of energy, like I felt for the first time in a long time that I was actually doing something worthwhile. Like I was finally saving the world, one squirt at a time.
Conscious Cafe
It must have been just under a year ago when all the BMA touring groups met in Carnegie, PA, just out of Pittsburg, to help clean up one of the shops. They were still making repairs from the Hurricaine Ivan damage, which had blanketed the town in about five feet of water. The building was nothing when we were there last year. Completely bare and in need of serious repair.
Now a year later and we come back to find that this place is ________________ (gah! can't find a word to describe it!). It's a coffeeshop, wifi hotspot, used bookstore, town living room, and community service center all rolled into one perfectly aestetic building. I don't know what happened to it. I just know that it's perfect.
Run by Andy, a big friendly man with a big friendly beard, and his wife. Along with B (Beatrice, 25-ish and very warm) and Paul (the man is Bobby McFerrin incarnate, I'm telling you).
So, Conscious Cafe was built for adults and business meetings. The surprise was that it has become the town's teen hang-out spot. Once the cop came in the place, and he was utterly astounded, because he had arreseted half these kids before, and here they were learning to work together and watch eath others' backs. Learning to be true citizens.
I'd like to work at a place like that someday. Why not next year?
Now a year later and we come back to find that this place is ________________ (gah! can't find a word to describe it!). It's a coffeeshop, wifi hotspot, used bookstore, town living room, and community service center all rolled into one perfectly aestetic building. I don't know what happened to it. I just know that it's perfect.
Run by Andy, a big friendly man with a big friendly beard, and his wife. Along with B (Beatrice, 25-ish and very warm) and Paul (the man is Bobby McFerrin incarnate, I'm telling you).
So, Conscious Cafe was built for adults and business meetings. The surprise was that it has become the town's teen hang-out spot. Once the cop came in the place, and he was utterly astounded, because he had arreseted half these kids before, and here they were learning to work together and watch eath others' backs. Learning to be true citizens.
I'd like to work at a place like that someday. Why not next year?
Daddy
In actuality, I never really had a daddy. Sure, I have a biological father. We share a house, 2/3 of a name (his is Edwin Ernest Christian II, whilst I am Edwin Peter Christian), a love of music, and a bunch of genes. Our young'n'hood pictures are even practically identical, save for the lack of colour in his. Yet despite all these common traits, I have many times felt a great distance between my father and I.
He is my dad. Not my daddy.
I believe in openness (see "Get Naked! A Social Experiment" in the future), but I will not use that as an excuse to gossip about other people, no matter how true the stories are or how close the person is to me. So I'm not going to complain about all the things I've been mad at dad about. I can speak for my own problems, though, and I truthfully say that the one person I have struggled most to Love, no, the one person I have hated, has been my father.
Because sometimes I feel hurt. Or cheated. Or that mum got the raw end of a deal. There are things that I have had such a hard time forgiving, even things that aren't his fault. He does care for us, and tries to show his Love. It's just a pale misfortune that the main way he shows Love is by buying stuff. Which would be nice, but since I've claimed an anti-consumerist attitude, it's almost like I've become anti-my-father by default.
It is sort of a constant truth of nature. It's often hardest to love the people who you are closest to. You see this story every day.
But I've decided that I don't want it to be this way. If I am to become an advocate of Love and Peace, I need that to come down to my every action and interaction. Maybe the situation isn't ideal, and maybe my dad will never be the perfect family man, but I'm okay with that. He's my father, and I choose to Love him.
So this is my resolution. To learn to truly Love my father. Not only that, but to respect him and his opinions, and to really like him. Because he is a good person, I choose to see the good in him. I will treat him like a friend, so he can be a friend.
He is my dad. Not my daddy.
I believe in openness (see "Get Naked! A Social Experiment" in the future), but I will not use that as an excuse to gossip about other people, no matter how true the stories are or how close the person is to me. So I'm not going to complain about all the things I've been mad at dad about. I can speak for my own problems, though, and I truthfully say that the one person I have struggled most to Love, no, the one person I have hated, has been my father.
Because sometimes I feel hurt. Or cheated. Or that mum got the raw end of a deal. There are things that I have had such a hard time forgiving, even things that aren't his fault. He does care for us, and tries to show his Love. It's just a pale misfortune that the main way he shows Love is by buying stuff. Which would be nice, but since I've claimed an anti-consumerist attitude, it's almost like I've become anti-my-father by default.
It is sort of a constant truth of nature. It's often hardest to love the people who you are closest to. You see this story every day.
But I've decided that I don't want it to be this way. If I am to become an advocate of Love and Peace, I need that to come down to my every action and interaction. Maybe the situation isn't ideal, and maybe my dad will never be the perfect family man, but I'm okay with that. He's my father, and I choose to Love him.
So this is my resolution. To learn to truly Love my father. Not only that, but to respect him and his opinions, and to really like him. Because he is a good person, I choose to see the good in him. I will treat him like a friend, so he can be a friend.
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