In Which I Once Again Admit That I Am An Old Hippie And That Yes, I Believe In Peace And Love

I am feeling the exact opposite of the way I felt when I got back back from Mexico last January.
That feeling I had from staring at the Caribbean and letting my neurons be re-aligned from that water, that sky, that air- that Just Be-ing.

It just feels all gone and my neurons feel like they have fire ants in them, crawling up and down my spine, into my heart, my chest, my legs, my arms, especially my mind.

It's my fault.
I read the damn news. That's one thing I've done wrong.
Another thing is to fucking read fucking Face Book.
I stuck my shovel into a pile of ants yesterday when someone I know from long ago posted what I consider to be a crapload of untruths about how illegal immigrants are sucking up all of the tax money and services in this country while we "real" Americans are working our butts off to support them. "Like if you agree!"
I won't even get into it but I think it's a sign of something very deep and very angry and very bitter going on in a lot of people and honestly, I don't think it has anything to do with illegal aliens, but people do listen to those vomiting mouths of Rush and Glenn and those guys just push this shit about how our system is broken and I have to wonder what in hell that means. Sure, it's not even near perfect here in the Good Ol' US of A but when was it? and last I looked, the libraries are still open and so are the schools, even though they are severely underfunded and the interstate is still there and the Highway Patrol is lined up, pulling speeders, and the internet's working and honestly? I think a lot of people are still just completely mouth-opened freaked that we have a black president.

Which probably makes me as simple-minded as people who honestly believe that the problems in this country are due to illegal immigrants or gay people getting married or...whatever bullshit people can wrap their minds around to blame troubles on.

So anyway, I stuck my shovel into the ant pile and it did not go well. And these things never do. Facts have nothing to do with how people think and feel these days. I wonder if they ever did?
It's so much easier to simply select a target and direct hatred that way. To sum up the bitterness and anger in one tidy place, to think that if THAT changed, all would be well and we could be living once again in a Normal Norman Rockwell version of a dream that never really existed to begin with. To demonize a segment of the population which can't even begin to defend itself being too damn busy trying to make enough money to buy a loaf of bread, a bag of beans, a tank of gas to get from one tomato field to another.

It all makes me sick, this hatred and these lies and it makes me sick that we have lost our compassion and that we wrap our anger up in a flag.

Listen- one time when I was tripping on acid (yes, I admit it- I did LSD), I began to ponder the boundaries, the borders, the imaginary lines and circles which define not only where my property begins and yours ends or where one country begins and another ends, but also the very depths of the earth under the land upon which our feet are planted and I was struck by the absolute hilarity of how we humans spend so much time and energy defending these imaginary borders and lines and circles and how, in the vast reaches of time, these lines have no meaning, really, and how silly we are, trying to hold on to what, once we die, will be completely and utterly meaningless to us.

Oh. Don't get me wrong. I love my little plots of land but I am quite aware of the fact that despite the fact that Mr. Moon and I own pieces of paper which state that for legal purposes, we are the owners of them, that in truth, we are only care-taking them for the amount of time we are here. Can I own these oak trees which were here centuries before I was born and which will be here for at least another hundred years after I die? Will our property in Apalachicola even be here a hundred years from now, bordering the rising waters as it does?

I feel the same way about our country. We have made agreements among ourselves that on this side of this line we are REAL Americans and on that side of that line, they are NOT Americans and it is our duty as the REAL Americans to prevent those NOT-Americans from crossing and using our stuff.
I can't go there.
We are all of the human family and yes, we have a government and they have a government and blah, blah, blah but I can't help but feel great compassion for those who are brave enough and desperate enough to leave their homes, their families, to risk their lives to cross the border to look for work to feed their children. Would I be as brave?
I don't think so.

And see, this kind of thinking will get you in trouble. This kind of thinking will get you branded as all sorts of crazy stuff. And maybe I am crazy. And to tell you the truth- sometimes I just think I am.

I was told on Facebook that life is not all about love and peace and rock and roll. I was reminded that I do not work and have not worked for a very long time.

Honestly, I wish life WERE more all about peace and love and rock and roll. Or music of some sort. Because all that other stuff? The anger and the war and the military and the giant corporations which are really the ones, if we face the truth, who are running every damn thing are NOT working that well.

And no, I don't work. For money. Every thing I do is for love which makes me lazy and probably crazy, too, at least in the eyes of others.

Well. Another day where I can only really and truly take care of what is before me which is this house, this family, myself. If I am honest, I don't have time to worry about all of the other stuff. Not really. I don't have the energy, any way.

I am missing Mexico. I am sore need of re-aligning these old neurons once again. I am in sore need of being in another country where other families, not one bit different than my own, work hard to support and take care of what they have to support and take care of and where no one is throwing the damn flag in my face, no one is claiming that if I don't think this is the greatest country ever in the history of the universe I am some sort of traitor.

I need to shake the ants out of my soul, those itchy burning, stinging ants.

I need to stop going to Facebook.

I need to stop worrying about what other people think and believe. It is not my job to try and change them anymore than it is their job to try and change me. The only thing that will change me is time and trying to keep my own mind open to the undefined realities of the universe which are not already confined and circled with lines on a map.

Maybe.

Love...Ms. Moon