Hola Everybody,
My Gawd! I haven't posted here in nearly a year! Sheesh! Well, I hope to expend a little more energy in cultivating this little blog spot in the coming weeks. Whoever's reading this (and those that won't): may you all have a safe and joyous holiday.

Hola Everybody,

* * *

Suffering is not Enough

 

People suffer.

And it’s not just physical pain – suffering in this context is much more than that. We all struggle with the forms of psychological pain: difficult emotions and thoughts, unpleasant memories, and their unwanted sensations and urges. We think about them, worry about them, resent them, anticipate and dread them.

The beauty of it all is that we also demonstrate enormous courage, deep compassion, and a remarkable ability to move ahead even with the most difficult personal traumas. Knowing we can be hurt, we still endeavor to love others. Even knowing the Cosmic Joke of our inevitable death, we still strive to find meaning. At times, we are fully alive, present, and committed.

The secret to life is mostly about how to move from suffering to engagement with life. The mistake is waiting to win the internal struggle with your own self for your life to begin. For the most part, my mission (and many of my blogs) is about living now and living skillfully – with (not in spite of) my past, with my memories, with my fears, and with my sadness.

My search has shown me that many of the tools we use to solve problems lead us into traps that create suffering. Frankly, we are playing a rigged game in which our minds, that wondrous tool for mastery, have been turned against us.

Perhaps you have noticed that some of your most difficult problems have become, strangely enough, more entrenched and unmanageable, even as we strive to solve them. This is not an illusion and it’s not your fault. This is a consequence of asking your logical mind to do something it was never meant to do -- suffering being one result.

This may seem a strange thing to claim, especially if you’re interested in overcoming some of your psychological issues. Generally, people turn to self-help measures in order to discover tools to solve specific problems: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, trauma, stress, smoking, to name a few. Overcoming these problems implies not just an ultimate goal, but also a goal to be reached in a specific manner.

For example, for the average person, overcoming stress must mean eliminating stressful feelings; overcoming smoking must first involve getting rid of the urge to smoke, and so on. But what if someone told you that many of these seemingly common sense routes to a better life are now known as risky and even detrimental by current psychological theory? Consider the following:

Psychological pain is normal, it is important, and everyone has it.

You cannot consciously be rid of your psychological pain, though you can take steps to avoid making it worse.

Pain and suffering are two different states of being.

You don’t have to identify with your suffering.

Developing an attitude of acceptance toward your pain is a step toward ridding yourself of your suffering.

You can live a life you desire and value, beginning right now, but in order to do that you will have to learn how to get out of your head and into your life.

What I am asking here is a basic shift in the way you deal with your personal experience. While some forms of change will certainly not be immediate, I can say that my experience and work has demonstrated that the role of these barriers to living can be changed, and sometimes changed quite rapidly.

The difference between the function and the form psychological pain takes can be compared to someone standing in a battlefield waging a war. The war is not going well. The person fights harder and harder. Losing is a devastating option; but unless the war is won, the individual fighting it thinks that living a worthwhile life will be impossible, so the war goers on.

Unknown to that person, however, is the fact that, at any time, he or she can choose to stop the war and begin living now. The war may still rage and the landscape may still look the same, but the outcome of the war is no longer important and what seems logical, namely to win the war before living genuinely, is abandoned. In stopping the war, you begin to live – now, this very moment.

The metaphor of a war helps us see the difference between what appears as a psychological problem and its substance. In this metaphor, for example, the war looks and sounds the same whether you’re fighting or simply watching. It’s appearance (form) stays the same. However, its impact – its substance – is profoundly different. In other words, fighting for your life is not the same as living your life.

The funny thing is that when you change the substance it often changes the appearance. When leaving the battlefield and letting the war take care of itself, it may even subside. I remember the 60s anti-war slogan, “What if they held a war and nobody came?” What I am saying is that if you want to live genuinely and with dignity, you have to focus on the substance and not the appearance of your problems. Learning to approach your pain in a fundamentally different way will quickly change the impact it has on your life.

What I am saying is that if you want to live – truly live – you have to stop the battle that’s raging inside your head. Happiness and genuine living is possible, now, this very moment.

Love,

Eddie

Happy Holidays Everybody!
I haven't been around much lately and I won’t be around much these next few days, so this is my Christmas offering to my Zaadz family. I post it with the humble hope that it will serve to bring a smile to your lips and remind you of the important things in life – what really matters.

People, especially co-workers, often ask me why I smile so much -- they wonder aloud how I manage to maintain a cheery disposition. I laugh because they apparrently don't know me well! LOL.

Sometimes things happen in your life that affects forever the very way you perceive reality. Some events are negative, acting as baggage for all your later interactions. Others are life-changing epiphanies that work to make life joyful.

Which ones do you cling to?

 ***

“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
-- Albert Camus

The Empty Boxes: A Christmas Story

            It was a year I would never forget: I was about 16, in the process of reading every “great book” ever written, helping put out an underground newspaper, and full of life (and hormones!). My sisters (to my delight) had many beautiful friends and our home was the center of activities for our vast network of friends and family. It was a time of change and turmoil: the Vietnam War was still raging and it seemed as if all the institutions we took for granted were being questioned. Marriage and gender roles were up for grabs. The strategies used by African-Americans and Latino/as in the struggle fore Human Rights were being borrowed by a wide range of groups: women were burning their bras and Gays were marching for their rights. In short, it was a time for change and the times, as the song stated, were a’achangin’.

            This particular year, however, was a difficult one for us: our stepfather was arrested and sentenced to a year in jail because of a scuffle with police. He was our breadwinner and that meant that our main source of income was gone. Compounding our financial difficulties was our mother’s pregnancy, she would eventually give birth to our youngest brother, Vincent, the following June.

            As  the oldest child, I had always felt a deep sense to “protect” my mother and siblings. I had to grow up pretty quick because it was expected of me to be more than a big brother, I had to be the power of example for my younger siblings. Somehow, I felt I should be doing something to contribute and it was frustrating. One day, without her knowing, I caught my mother crying and this disturbed me very much. My mother was a strong woman who managed to make her place in a world that was both hostile and violent towards her. If she was despairing that meant things were really screwed up.

            My sisters and I helped by working at a local supermarket after school. I worked delivering groceries and my sisters staffed the cash registers. Of course, me being the radical in the house, I was promptly fired for calling the owner an Uncle Tom and an oppressor of his own people. Things got worse at the onset of the holidays. We called a family meeting and we all agreed that, with the exception of our youngest brother, Edgar (who was eight), we would forego gifts for Christmas. My mother didn’t take this too well and it propelled her into her dark side, often succumbing to bouts of sadness interspersed with rage.

            We made do just as many other poor families did at that time: welfare augmented by small-scale attempts at entrepreneurship. Sometimes my mother would buy a bottle of rum, or some other item, and raffle it off at the Bingo parlor: if everyone paid in a dollar, she would be able to earn a good profit and still offer a decent prize. We also had an extended family and they would help as best they could, though they too were often financially extended and living from paycheck to paycheck.

            In short, it was getting to be a really sad holiday season. The house became less full, our situation served as a basis for shame and we all dropped off our activities with our friends and the ensuing quiet was disturbing. Then one day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, we took out the old artificial tree. We all share a warped sense of humor and my sisters and I started joking about how lonely the tree would look without any gifts. Soon we were cracking each other up, trying to out do each other by coming up with the most twisted reason why we should, or shouldn’t, put up the Christmas tree.

            In the end, we decided to put it up and, while playing traditional Puerto Rican Christmas songs, we slowly got into the spirit of things. Soon enough, the house rang out with laughter and song and friends were called up to come and help. I don’t know if my perception is clouded by bias or the passage of time, but I swear that that old tree never looked so beautiful. We really put our creative energies into fixing up the house too: we gift wrapped doors, put up mistletoes, strung lights on the windows – we created the best display on that Brooklyn block!

            However, we all laughed because the tree did look lonely! So someone, one of my sisters I think, came up with the idea of collecting empty boxes and wrapping them up as gifts. Of course, as is usual in the Rosario household, we took it to an extreme: our rather large tree was soon dwarfed by a mountain of elegantly wrapped “gifts.” People would visit us and comment on how “beautiful” the tree was and we would secretly laugh because we knew they were only saying that in part because of the many “gifts.”

            It was our own little private joke.

            I have to admit that, while things were extremely difficult that year, I can’t remember a more joyful holiday season. Soon the house sang once again with the sound of young people engaged in the daily activities of life. We came to believe that the tree radiated joy and that it attracted people and it was true that many people would come and visit. I guess maybe everyone else was having a hard time and the joy in our house was sort of like a warm fire to ward off the chill of winter in America. The tree became almost like another family member that we tended to and nurtured. People would visit and you could tell immediately that the joy was infectious! The “joke” was a constant source for new comedic material and we would create even more elaborate “gifts” to put at the base of that tree.

            A huge Christmas Eve party attended by everybody-and-their-mother capped that holiday season. The owner of the supermarket where my sisters worked contributed all the ingredients so that my mother could make her famous pasteles (a Puerto Rican meat dish). All our friends and family attended and the party lasted well into Christmas morning. I don’t think it snowed that Christmas, but I remember that that party became the basis for a legend – a story time delight to be recounted for years to come. It became a marker for community events as in BC and AD: Before and After the “Christmas Party.”

            The party itself was rambunctious – more rambunctious than normal. The reason why poor people can party is because they know intimately the ups and downs of life and whenever the opportunity arises, they party with an almost religious fervor. Of course, there was plenty of drama that Christmas Eve! Someone was caught playing his wife dirty, a woman was accused of being a husband stealer, old jealousies and rivalries were re-ignited, and quite a few made fools of themselves. There was my step father’s aunt, who insisted on flashing her panties at everyone and poor old Frito who would never live down the fact that he got so drunk, he pissed on himself.

            In short, a good time was had by all.

            Finally, Christmas morning came, and it was time to clean up the house and dispose of all the “gifts.” I began collecting all the empty boxes to throw them out, but our mother stopped me.

            “You can’t throw out the boxes!” she yelled out, an alarming note of hysteria in her voice.

            We looked at her and decided she finally lost it, but then we saw the smile on her lips. Eventually we had to tear through all the empty boxes in order to find the real gifts my mother had embedded into that huge pile. I will never forget my gift that year though I have had many “richer” Christmas’ since: it was a digital watch with an LED readout which were fairly new and trendy at the time. I know it didn’t cost much, maybe $5, but I wore that watch for a long time and treasured it dearly.

            Why write about this, you ask

            Well, for one thing, the experience taught me a lesson that was the greatest Christmas gift of all: that you always have a choice with how to respond to adversity. Yes, the fact remained that we sometimes were hungry and our clothes weren’t the best. There were times we went hungry and we couldn’t afford even the basic school supplies. However, we learned to face these hardships with humor and a strength of character. That year could easily have been much worse, but facing our hardships in a realistic but joyful way – that would stay with us for the rest of our lives. For me, this is the taste of life itself.

            The One Taste.

            So, when you see me smiling, try to remember where that smile comes from: it comes from the knowledge that the material gifts are usually empty in and of themselves. I smile because I know the pretty boxes are empty but my heart is full…

            Merry Christmas! May you all know true happiness!

 -- Edward-Yemíl Rosario © 2004

***

[The above is an edited version of a story from my unpublished memoir tentatively titled, Puertoricanese: Ataque de Nervios and Other Stories. Please, if you feel moved to share this story, feel free to do so, but I ask that you attribute the story appropriately – with my name attached. Otherwise, I will have to sue your broke ass! LMAO!]

Healing: Forgiveness

Hola Everybody,
I'm not feeling well at all, must be my "man-period." mIt's harder for us guys to realize our periods, cuz we don't bleed... but we get them nonetheless...

I wrote this a while back, I don't have the energy to write today. Have a great day everybody!

***

“Growth of the soul is our goal, and there are many ways to encourage that growth, such as through love, nature, healing our wounds, forgiveness, and service. The soul grows well when giving and receiving love. I nourish my soul daily by loving others and being vulnerable to their love. Love is, after all, a verb, an action word, not a noun.”
-- Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.

    I once saw a cartoon and it said: “We have seen the enemy and it is us.” It was funny in a truthful manner: if we make a mistake we stubbornly blame ourselves, for example. If another person has hurt or harmed us, we demand an apology before we forgive. Today I will try to show how we create stress by not forgiving. More importantly, I will attempt to explain a simple exercise we can all use to heal stubborn, self-destructive attitudes. Forgiving is accomplished by releasing criticism and switching vengeful thoughts and feelings to forgiving ones. I have actually used this to rid myself of negativity involving a particular individual recently.

    However, before we get into exactly how to forgive, we need to examine the issue of the lack of forgiveness a little further. Unforgiving attitudes lead to physical reactions. Specifically, the streee caused by anger puts us into what is known as the “fight/ flight” syndrome. This is a state of being where our defensive mechanisms are on full tilt. Adrenaline is pumped into our bloodstream, our eyes widen, breathing becomes shorter, and the heart rate goes up. What often happens is that our ratinale side gets hijecked. The thing is we rarely need to run or fight so the hormones create a chronic tension and fatigue in our bodies.

    Psychologically, we are also harming ourselves. If we are blaming others, we may feel angry and build a case against them. This may lead to arguments or silent hostility – both serious obstacles to communication and harmony. Other options are to deny and repress our righteous anger, which results in either depression or physical problems like high blood pressure.

    From a spiritual perspective, lack of forgiveness is a problem too. For my purposes today, I will define spirituality as being in touch with inner feelings of love, peace, and well-being. Chronic anger, depression, or anxiety blocks out these positive feelings to the point that we may despair at ever feeling good again. What is the way out of this vicious cycle? The answer is simple – forgive! Forgive yourself, forgive your friends, perhaps even forgive your enemies!

STOP!

    Stop right now and examine your emotional reaction to the idea of forgiveness. Don’t analyze it, I don't want to know what you're thinking (it only makes my dick hard! LOL!) -- just try to feel your reaction to the above. Did it get your back up? Did your belly flip? Did you think, “Why should I forgive?” Did you think that you don’t have this problem? Or, on the flip side, were you almost too eager to forgive others but have reservations about forgiving yourself.

    Let’s examine these reactions. If you got angry and wanted the other person to apologize first, you are in a state of conscious, righteous anger. You are hurt or angry and putting the blame on the other person. You are certainly harming yourself more than you are harming the other person. You are feeling “right,” superior, and entitled to your grievance. This unforgiving attitude worsens the situation in all its aspects and has negative physical and psychological consequences.

    Do you think that you don’t have a problem with forgiveness? If so, examine your thoughts and bodily sensations more closely. If you have areas in which you think you made a lot of mistakes, you may be suffering from self-hate or lack of forgiveness. Have you been avoiding someone else? You may be judging them negatively but denying it. Are you depressed? Then you are almost certainly denying anger and guilt. You may be judging yourself and others and not letting go of the emotions involved.

    Are you willing to forgive others but having a hard time forgiving yourself? You are probably denying your anger at others and blaming it all on yourself. Perhaps at this point of your life you can see the patterns and desire a change, but how can this be accomplished? It’s actually easier than most people think.

How to Forgive Yourself and Your Enemies

    The first part of the forgiveness process involves awareness. You first have to be aware of what emotion you are experiencing before you can release it. This is not as easy as one woulf think. Actually, it is easy, but what happens is that too often we don't know the difference between feelings and thoughts. This is why I've chosen a body-centered exercsie.

    So get quiet – sit comfortably and follow your breathing for a few moments. Just breathe normally. Get in touch with your body – your bodily sensations, for you actually feel your emotions through your body (not in your head!).

    After a little time, ask yourself what emotion you are feeling. The basic emotions are fear, anger, and guilt. Then, tell yourself it is OK to feel any of these emotions. After a few minutes, ask yourself if you are willing and able to release this emotion. If the answer is yes, affirm, “I release this emotion now!” Then watch it release. This may take a few moments.

    It’s very important to understand the difference between expressing, repressing, and releasing emotions. Expressing involves acting out emotions – as in acting angry. This often feels good momentarily but it offends others and doesn’t resolve the feeling.

    Repressing involves holding down the emotion – stopping yourself from experiencing the full range of the emotion. This leads to depression and bodily pain and does not lead to resolution.

    Releasing is the middle ground. By recognizing, accepting, and affirming release, you are consciously moving toward forgiving yourself. You are allowing yourself to have normal human emotions, release them, and move on. You can then affirm forgiveness of yourself for having these emotions, making any mistake, or hurting yourself or anyone else.

    Some people prefer to start by forgiving themselves. Others prefer to begin by forgiving others. It doesn’t matter, just begin and keep accepting, releasing, and forgiving until you feel more peaceful. This inner peace will eventually lead to more feelings of health, vitality, and comfort. Your relationships will improve. Even finances will improve as you learn to let go, release, and forgive everyone.

    If this sounds too easy or farfetched, try the process daily for three weeks. See if it works for you.

This is the doctrine at the heart Buddhism. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center – no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned flotsam floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA.

Your intellect, dear reader, is chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your spouse leaves with the kids and the money in the joint account, or the economy fails and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some village idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor, or you realize you're consigned to live in Armpit, USA. To name this amalgam of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re truly a deluded species.

We are in a trance from birth to death. Bust the balloon and what are you left with? We are left with what we most fear, but what is truest...

Emptiness…

It’s not only us – this radical doctrine applies to the whole sentient world. Dependent origination is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, I admit. Nevertheless, it does have a compelling point: stop for two steps... still yourself... listen – in other words, meditate just a little – and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very foundation of your existence turn out to be no more than bugs in your software…

Smooches,

Eddie

I have to admit some uncomfortability in submiting today’s post. My uncomfortability comes from writing on a topic that affects mostly women and, as a man, I feel an awkwardness. However, codependency does not affect women only – there are many men addicted to relationships. In addition, cultural shifts in recent decades have seen a corresponding shift in the way men and women fall into dysfunctional relationship patterns.

If I were to attempt to reduce gender roles to two specific questions (always a dangerous thing). I would say that the essential questions for men are “Do I fuck it, or do I eat it (or does it eat me),” while the essential question for women is “How do I relate to it.” It is this essential approach to life that, in my opinion, is at the root of women's susceptibility toward codependency.

Codependence and voidance of pain go hand-in-hand because codependency is an addictive behavior that attempts to do just that: avoid pain. In the process of avoiding pain, what generally happens is that a lot of suffering ensues. I believe that there are forms of attachment that we confuse for love. The psychotherapist, Robin Norwood calls it “loving too much,” but I can’t call this form of attachment love, because it’s not about love, but mostly about fear amd clinging to sufferring.

If being in love for you means being in pain, then you are not in love, you’re codependent. When most of our conversations with friends are about our significant others, their problems, thoughts, and feelings… and nearly all our sentences begin with “S/he… ,” we are not in love, we’re codependent.

When we find excuses for his moodiness, bad temper, cruel sarcasm, and attempt to become his therapist, we are not in love. If we read a self-help book and highlight all the passages we feel would help him, we are not in love, we’re codependent.

If we find ourselves not liking his basic characteristics, values, and behaviors, but we put up with it thinking that if we make ourselves more attractive and loving enough he’ll change for us, we’re not in love, we’re co-dependent.

When we allow our relationship to jeopardize our physical and emotional health, and perhaps even our safety, we are definitely not in love.

In spite of all the pain and dissatisfaction, codependency is such a common experience for many people that we begin to believe that it is the way that intimate relationships should be. Most of us have excused codependency at least once and for many, it has been a recurrent theme in our lives.

Addiction is a frightening word that illicits images like the heroin addict sticking a needle in his arm, leading a path to certain self-destruction. Most of us don’t like the word and will resist any attempt at applying the word to the way we relate to our significant others. But too many of us have been “man/ women junkies” and before we can free ourselves, like in addiction, the first step is to admit the problem before we can begin to recover from it.

If you ever have found yourself obsessed with a man/ woman, you may know intuitively that the foundation for that obsession is not love but fear. We who love obsessively are full of fear – the fear of being alone, the fear of being unworthy or unlovable, the fear of being ignored, abandoned, or destroyed. We give our love because it is a desperate hope that the person with whom we’re obsessed with will take care of our fears. What happens instead is that our fears – and our obsessions – become even stronger until giving love to get love back becomes the driving force in our lives. And because this strategy will never work, we try – we love – even harder.

The cycle continues…

The concept of co-dependency has its roots in the treatment of addicts and is understood as a set of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. An interesting finding on preliminary research conducted in this area is that while not all codependent persons grew up in troubled families, their partners nearly always came from severely troubled families in which they had experienced greater than normal trauma/ stress and pain. By struggling to cope with their addictive mates, these partners were unconsciously recreating and reliving aspects of their childhood.

I think it’s worthwhile repeating my initial statement here: I don’t mean to imply that codependency is a “female” phenomenon, but due to the interplay of social conditioning and biological factors, men generally try to find external ways to avoid their pain. We try to protect ourselves through external ways: work, sports, drugs, hobbies, sex, etc. While for women, because of cultural forces working on them, tend to become obsessed with relationships – often with a damaged and distant man. These cultural forces have shifted somewhat, so you will find more men relationally addicted and more women seeking external means of avoidance.

Below I have listed characteristics of a person who is in the process of recovering from codependency (adapted from Robin Norwood):

1. S/he accepts herself fully, even while wanting to change parts of him/ herself. There is a basic self-love and self-regard, which s/he carefully nurtures and purposely expands.
2. S/he accepts others as they are without trying to change them to meet her needs.
3. S/he is in touch with her feelings and attitudes about every aspect of her life, including her sexuality.
4. S/he cherishes s every aspect of herself: her personality, her appearance, her beliefs and values, her body, her interests and accomplishments. S/he validates him/ herself, rather than searching for a relationship to give him/ her a sense of self-worth.
5. Her/ his self-esteem is great enough that s/he can enjoy being with others, especially members of the opposite sex, who are fine just as they are. S/he does not need to be needed in order to feel worthy.
6. 6. S/he allows herself to be open and trusting with appropriate people. S/he is not afraid to be known at a deeply personal level, but s/he also does not expose herself to the exploitation of those who are not interested in his/ her well-being.
7. S/he questions, “Is this relationship good for me? Does it enable me to grow into all I am capable of being?”
8. When a relationship is destructive, s/he is able to let go of it without experiencing disabling depression. S/he has a circle of supportive (not “enabling”) friends and healthy interests to see him/ her through crises.
9. S/he values her own serenity above all else. All the struggles, drama, chaos of the past have lost their appeal. S/he is protective of him/ herself, his/ her health, and well-being.
10. S/he knows that a relationship, in order to work, must be between partners who share similar values, interests, and goals, and who each have a capacity for intimacy. S/he also knows that s/he is worthy of the best that life has to offer.

I write the above as a person in recovery, who knows exactly how we fall into these relationship patterns because it has been part of my own history. So I write this from a foundation of my own experience and my research. I put it out here for you, the reader, to use or not use – it’s up to you.


Besos,

Eddie

"... his big dog will fight/ When you rattle his cage/ And you'll be sorry that you messed with/ The U.S. of A/ 'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/ It's the American way... " 
-- A hick named Toby Keith

• At the start of the 20th century, 10%-15% of war casualties were civilians.
• During World War II, more than 50% of war casualtiers were civilians.
• By the end of the 20th century, over 75% of war casualties were civilians.

When I look into the eyes of this child, I wonder what he was doing on September 11, 2001. Was he even born then? Who is/ was  he? What was his name? I look into his dead eyes and I feel shame and I wonder if we really do think there is any time where his death, or the deaths of children like him, is ever actually justified. I wonder about people who believe this...

... and I have to sneer derisively at the image of some flag-waving yahoo talking about America kicking ass...

... because, more likely than not, it's this child's ass we kicked. It's this child's ass, and tens of thousands like him, we kicked... I wonder about such people... and I feel ashamed because in some way, I've had something to do with that child's destruction -- we all do...

Those of you who read this blog already know I live right by what is now called "Ground Zero." My building shook when the towers fell...
I walked the streets in that aftermath, covered with white powder -- we all did...

Quietly...

Some were injured, others were in shock, some were crying…

I watched from my roof in horror when I realized that what I thought was debris, was actually people choosing to take thier lives by jumping off the Towers...

We all lost someone that day, there isn't a New Yorker that wasn't somehow connected by six degrees to the loss of that day. I too breathed in the fumes and developed what eventually became known as the "Downtown Cough."

I had to walk daily through police barricades and checkpoints for months after just to get home and I did it because I didn't want those who are twisted enough to destroy in the name of ideology to win. If I ran in fear, then they would win... so I stayed there in my apartment despite the urging of friends and loved ones to stay somewhere "safe"... It was my own little act of defiance.

I smelled the "smell" everyday... the smell no one wanted to talk about: the smell of burning flesh mixed in with only God knows what was emanating from the toxic pile where once stood the Towers. It burned for months... and we know now that the whole area should've been closed off...

I facillitated quite a few groups in the aftermath of 9/11 and I heard a lot of anger, much grief, shock, and disbelief. But I also saw people coming together in heroic ways in that most crucial defining moment in our history...

Stores opened their doors and put out tables with free water

Strangers took to helping those who were injured... consoling one another...

People embraced one another...

Strangers took strangers into their homes if they were displaced... 

... and on and on -- the stories of that day are now forgotten as politicians basked in the limelight of news cameras. Time voted a person as "Man of the year" -- but the real people of the year were the people of New York City...

I hoped that the more noble aspects of human nature, as exemplified by my fellow New Yorkers, would hold the day, but time has shown differently.

I despaired that the actions of my fellow New Yorkers would be buried in an avalanche of the bullshit jingoism passing off as patriotism that would surely follow. I despaired that our leaders would exploit this to deepen the culture of fear and hate.

I heard many people express outrage -- wanting to punish those who were responsible... but more often than not, I heard people expressing my own fears that politicians and the powers that be would exploit the tragic events of 9/11 as a pretext for thier own, not so noble, agendas. All this immediately in the aftermath of 9/11.

In the days that followed 9/11, the NY Times would publish snap bios of every person who perished in the Towers. It was a way to insert a humanity behind the tragedy, a way to discard the anonymity. My people, my fellow New Yorkers who died in the Towers, were just regular people who had lives, dreams, hopes.

But what about this child?  Look into his eyes... is he alive? Dead? Did he have hopes? Or did he, like many other children, just cared about playing with his friends, getting birthday presents, eating his favorite sweets...

"War is fear cloaked in courage."
 -- Gen. William Westmoreland

Many, in their rush to wave their flag and puff themselves up into a patritotic fervor, wouldn't give two shits about this child. Many, in the comfort of thier suburban enclaves, would say that such is life, that if that child's death means we save 100 of ours, then that child's death is justified and -- shit -- let's nuke the whole lot of them - fuck the towel heads.

The irony is that the people who flew those airplanes into the Towers that bright, sunny, beautiful New York City day, felt the same way... fundamentalism, fervor, and rabid ideology of any kind leads to destruction, in whatever flag you want to dress it up...

I'm here today to give testimony to that day -- that on September 11th, 2001, we New Yorkers were a power of example of what humans, driven by compassion and courage, can accomplish. I'm here to say that knee-jerk, "Yeehaw!" type false patriotism desecrates the memory of that day... I'm here to bear witness that waving a flag and talking about kicking ass was not what we were doing in those tragic days...  we were reaching out to one another, tending, healing...

I'm here to hopefully bear witness that this child was human too...  he was a boy, he lived, he had dreams, and he laughed...  and perhaps he died needlessly because we failed to hold our leaders accountable and allowed them to go to war under false pretexts in the name of fear and hate... all the while waving flags and talking bullshit about kicking ass... well we kicked this child's ass, didn't we? We really showed him, and 1000s of others like him, didn't we!

Well, I'm here to say that you can do this, but don't do it in my name... don't do it the name of 9/11... because it's disgraceful and shameless...

Not in my name...

"Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood."
  -- Mahatma Gandhi

Hola Everybody!
OK! It’s Friday... Thanks to everyone, as always, for the thoughtful responses
to yesterday's post. I don't ask that anyone agree with my opinions. I
do demand, however, that people make an effort to read before
commenting!

People who refuse to abide by this rule will be intellectually spanked and not in a nice way...

LMAO!

Now… for a word from our [un]Common Sense Blog sponsor…

[a hushed voice intones over dissonant strings in the background as a camera pans over important looking documents…]

On June 16, 2004, The 9/11 Commission reported that it found "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Even so, as of September 2004, 42% of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

[music changes to rowdy Heavy Metal… as a mob of people body slam each other in their rush to buy Christmas gifts in September… ]

 

***

As we all know, bloggers just love to post quizzes, surveys, challenges, etc., etc., etc. Whether we do this because they are actually fun or because we get brain freezes that obstruct our writing abilities [cough], hasn’t been decided.

But just to show that I can be part of the herd once in a while (even if only to sexually prey on the female portion of the comatose 42% noted above), I’m going to add my own little quiz! In reality I adapted (read: stole) it (scanned) from a completely off-the-chain, totally incorrect, "in-yo-face-muthafucka" book titled, “ego trip’s Big Book of Racism!” These folks are too fuckin’ much! Highly recommended!

Answers? MONDAY dammit!

“…It’s been test proven that tests don’t always play fair. Bigotry is a popular pastime. And it still is. Now for the first time ever comes an opportunity to level the cultural playing field once and for all, and ponder the intriguing question: What do you get when you put Joe Clark, Mr. Hand (R.I.P.), and Jaime Escalante in a room together? (Answer: Three esés the hard way – even harder than Chinese ‘rithmetic.)”

 1.      Are you a racist?

A.     Yes

B.     Probably

C.     Definitely

D.     All of the above

 2.      You ain’t Black. When you see a Black person, you:

A.     Feel guilty

B.     Smile… nervously

C.     Say, “Slap me some skin on the Black hand side, baby-baby.”

D.     Run

3.      You a Honky. When you see a person of another ethnicity, you:

A.     Get crazy horny (You one horny Honky.)

B.     Expect to lose your job… soon

C.     Inform him, in an extremely polite tone, that deliveries are at the back entrance only, José.

D.     Run.

 4.      Finish this sentence: The Blacker the berry…

A.     … the sweeter the Jews.”

B.     … the more rotten that shit is. Throw it away.”

C.     … the darker the daddy.”

D.     … the better the chance it’s Wesley Snipes at an after hours wine-tasting with his ganjah-smoking mellow, Woody Harrelson. (light anotha).”

 5.      You can always tell a Latino/a family by:

A.     Counting the chickens

B.     The decibel levels

C.     Trying this simple trick: Yell, “Migra!” and if they run, they Hispanic.

D.     The red furniture

 6.      The development of science has allowed a great many advantages in our dail y lives. These improvements are moving at an accelerated rate. However, as far as you know, Orientals talk “funny” because:

A.     Godzilla got them hella shook.

B.     Their tongues are slanted too. (Ay ya! That’s racist.)

C.     Too much MSG. (Mangled Speech Gene.)

D.     They hate your ignorant ass and are doing it to fuck with you (better known as “ancient Chinese secret”).

 7.      The phrase “Peace in the Middle East” is poignant because:

A.     They sure do kill a lot of muthafuckas out there.

B.     It rhymes

C.     “Blessed in the Midwest” don’t sound right.

D.     It will never happen.

 8.      A Caucasian male leaves for work at 7:00 on Monday morning. He lives on the west side of town, about ten miles away from his destination. He arrives at his office at 8:00 AM. On the other side of town, a person of color also leaves home at 7:00 am. He or she arrives:

A.     Late

B.     After a quick stop at the boodah spot, right on THC-CP Time.

C.     Wednesday

D.     At the unemployment line.

 9.      A cracker is:

A.     A delicious, flaky, sometimes buttery, waferesque morsel.

B.     One of them Rice Crispies niggaz.

C.     Not to be confused with the monster from Clash of the titans. D.     You, you dumb-ass cracker!

10.  “BMW” stands for:

A.     Black Man’s Wish.

B.     Better Move, Whitey.

C.     Bitch Made Whiteboy

D.     Bought My Wife, too.

11.  Who would you vote off the island first?

A.     Clint Black. (He’s White)

B.     Barry White (He’s Black)

C.     Rita Moreno (she’s Boricua)

D.     Tattoo

 12.  Saddam Huseein looks like:

A.     He’s so dam insane. (Get it? Good)

B.     The President of the swarthy Gentlemen’s Club… for Men

C.     He’s quick to get in that ass