Pandora’s Box

         Prometheus clocked me from the get, knew me for what I am and what I’m here to do. He knew Zeus was still pissed about the whole fire thing. (Gods! That bit with the eagle and the liver! That was pretty creative.) Even so, I love my brother-in-law. He’s been through a lot and I bear him no ill-will for trying as hard as he did to warn his brother against me.
          Epimetheus, bless him: I love him too. The rash way he welcomed me, bundled me up lock, stock, urns, and box and brought me home may have seemed like daring—may have seemed like love—but the truth is he had no choice. It is Prometheus who lives in the light that illuminates the path before him, while my dear husband must (like the rest of us) content himself with the murk of afterthoughts and “what ifs” and “Oh, shit! My bads.”
          I was created to weaken men’s knees and I came well-kitted to my task. From Athena I gained the quiet, non-lethal arts of needlework and weaving. Aphrodite, true to her nature, shed grace upon me: grace lousy with “cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs.” Bitch.
          Hermes, mindful of my purpose, and suck-up to Zeus that he is, gave me the power of speech (for which I thank him), but he laced it with “a shameless mind and deceitful nature,” condemning me to trade in lies and crafty words. It is he, as well, who gave me my confusing name. Does “Pandora” mean “All Gift” because “all who dwelt on Olympus gave each a gift, a plague to man”? Or am I (conceivably worse, considering what almost happened) “All Giving,” condemned by Zeus to bestow upon mankind all things “necessary for life”?
          It was thusly, given unwanted gifts and compelled to share them, that I, Pandora the All Giving All Gift, clothed and bejeweled by perceptive Athena, watchful Persuasion, and the ever-lovin’ Charities, if you please, was sent forth—a punishment ashamed of her punishing nature.
          Chock full o’ evils, I am a gag gift sent to an innocent world by a narcissistic dill-hole who is, himself, stricken with the very worst toxins masculinity has on offer, but I swear I’m not even sure it was me who. . . . But, honestly, does it matter? I’ll take the blame. Because whether it was I or Epimetheus who won the tussle over the lid—no matter which of us succeeded in prying it up—it was my box.
          Which makes you wonder, by the way, what that fucker, Zeus, had in mind from the beginning. I mean why this sick charade? Zeus, the All-Frickin’-Mighty, could have poured Sickness, Death, Taxes, Ingrown Hairs, and Binge-worthy Television onto the heads of unsuspecting mankind at any moment he chose. Why did he create me, the first woman, to fling around his horse shit? All-Mighty Self-damned Coward.
          But here I am, and here is Epimetheus. We were both curious and we were both conflicted. I mean . . . a box from Olympus! There’s gotta be something mighty interesting in there. And weren’t we dying to know what?! We were at it for hours—no help from our All-Mighty Father. Epimetheus’d convince me that, well look, I came from Olympus and I was heavenly (for all we knew then), but in the next moment I’d remind him that hey man, we just met and maybe I’m not all peaches and light. So we’d go back to thinking about it some more. After all, as I’ve mentioned, it was Prometheus who got all the foresight in the family—and he’d already recused himself from our childish interest in a matter he considered long past closed. He didn’t want me on the ranch to begin with. Much less was he interested in my box.
          Be all that as it may, I do know that it was me who slammed it shut. It was me who clapped down the lid just in time to save you from the full complement of horrors. I was the one who trapped the hope of relief in there.
It turns out that I had my own gift to give in that it was I who saved you from ruinous longings for a day when the multitudinous evils of the box will end. I saved you from desperate aspirations for a Some Day when our rulers will be just, humane. It was I, not Prometheus and certainly not Zeus, who saved you from the daydream that you, with just a bit of logic and eloquence, could get the world to see that no one need starve—not in Ogbomosho and not in Los Angeles.
          I saved you from hoping.
          Since you don’t have to hope for these things, you are free to have peace of mind and to “care about the environment” and to “give to the poor” and to believe you are healthy and beautiful living within the bubble of the artificial famine of wealth.
          But does anyone congratulate me—what praise have I received—for withholding that last gift? And, by the way, for ending the Golden age while I was at it?
          Sure, I get it. I was sent as a punishment: to the men who were the “Heroes.” To the men who were blessed to live in a time before women. Until I was shot down here by Zeus to perform the function for which I was created. I was made to turn men’s heads—and they willingly partook of the goodybag of horrors that came with me, mucking things up for everybody.
          It was from my box that flew sickness, plague, social media. . . .But I also saved you from hope.
          No one thanks me, but I assure you: you are welcome.

RIP U.S.A. ~ We Hardly Knew Ye

We have forgotten what we are. We live by the Bing! Of the microwave~O! giver of inadequate and unsatisfying meals we are helpless to improve upon~and we forget who we are, what we are, where we came from.

We are apes.

So why are we shocked and horrified by our sub-moronic orangutan leader? He won fair and square. He got up on his hind legs and beat his chest and twittered the incomprehensible aggression that thrills our simian souls.  So, ok.  He won our apey hearts.  Why worry?

[Self explanatory]

It is so now as ever it was. The power grabbers grab the power (because might does make right in so many ways) and the rest of us tremble in revulsion and fear, too afraid of losing the little left to us to challenge, to demand…to revolt.

Bing! go the Warm Pouches.  And we munch them gratefully because many of us (not all, gods forgive us, not all) live under roofs and have microwaves and wi-fi and satellite television and phones that can launch a missile but which we use to grouse about our local armies/sports ball teams and to gossip about the lives of the reptilian overlords (hi, QEII! Hi Willy and Kate!) who’ll rise up and crush we apes someday, just you watch.

Sometimes, too seldom, we can catch sight of a flickering beam transmitting desperately but erratically at the corner of our brains: “We can be so much better!” it blinks in the Morse code of our best synapses.  We can be great.

But such unpatriotic lights must be drowned immediately in Diet Choke and Snack Feed .

. . . .

Ahhh.  Blissful Non-think.

There, that’s right.

The fizzies and the carbs comfort us. We forget whatever we almost thought we might be thinking (or that we had dared think it all) and we wonder if the News is all last season’s repeats or whether we might find a new episode featuring a novel catastrophe or at least the latest comedy from the Orangutan-in-Chief. Hilarious, that guy.  [Or handsome, strong, and truthful depending on what side of the couch you consume your carbs from.]

O Bla De, O Bla Da.  Life goes on, brah (as the wise men rightly instruct us).  It goes on in a world in which the mad preppers are fat, sassy, and justified. They, the industrious oddballs, were hoarding T. P. long before doing so became a thing.  Clear win.

You there, standing forlorn and inadequately wiped in the middle of the paper goods aisle at Mayar crying “this isn’t an intestinal virus!”~arms spread, appealing to the gods of consumer panic~are so mainstream. The hipsters have your Charming and even your Brawnly and Cleanix. You are helpless now in your wrongness. You had your chance to stockpile MREs and M-16s, but did you? You did not. And now you are a bleating old man who has missed the most important millennial trend: prepping for the viral/zombie-or-whatever apocalypse.

O!  The Humanity!

But hey: if you take the long view (as do I) you see that nothing really matters. At all. (Hi, Freddie!). Nations rise under apes of vision, apes with fancy beliefs and noble aims.  And they fall under bloated orangutans who cannot even rise to the heights of the Pallinian word salad we use to so smugly deride.

The United States falls, nay, plummets as we burn our tongues on the gourmand fare too-freshly Bingged! and mouth-burny from the microwave.

Fewer than 300 years~the City on the Hill not even in living memory as a concept~and any lofty goals of equality and justice we ever did truly believe in are exposed, spread-eagle if you will, suffering and dying in broad daylight as we idly gaze at the drama through the kitchen window waiting for the next Bing!

The United States of America is jumping the shark. An orangutan bulging out of his golfing whites is heading up the ramp and I doubt he’ll make it over.

Because Donald Trump is not Fonzie.

Ya Know….

The sun is shining.  Today was going to be a beautiful day.

Then:

He is actually killing people now.  Can we have our country back?

Crying Wolf

The wind is a Wolf out here. Just as ravenous. Imperious.

But wind and time and sheep don’t fill my days. They claw and mock and kneed them.

My first wolf-cry brought elation—then numb despair. The pitchforks that came running up my lonesome Hill, so erect and eager, were too-soon sorted into an indignant contingent of headshaking tsk-ers trudging back down into their cups of gossip and a phalanx of good men backing my father as he fathered me on such topics as civic duty and veracity. 

They don’t know what I know, see what I see. Hear what I hear up here. 

They don’t know what the howling loneliness does. 

The second cry was true, but when they came they didn’t believe what they saw. The eating, yes. That made sense. But the savagery? Only a beast. Not a wolf, precisely.

As they rode their worried faces down into town, Father fathered me on penitent patience, looking inward, the benefit of solitude that the community was affording me. 

Now they don’t come when they hear the Wolf Cry, which is a pity because who will save the sheep? 

Entropy

Not unlike the United States of America, I have been degraded to the point that the detritus at the core of me is waste that may as well be flushed. It clings to the side of the bowl (bless it), but the brush assails it with dogged enthusiasm and inevitably it will yield.

From the Bizarre Pick-up Lines Department

So. . . . Although I am very vocal about my Native American Ancestry, I pass as white.

At the Speedway today, I found myself chatting with the cashier about haircolor. She had some janky homemade job and I, sadly, am currently rocking the gray brought on by recent travails.

A black guy entered the store, and with all of the consumer products on offer at the most common of Indianan convenience stores, his eyes went straight to my to tits.

I wrapped up my conversation with the cashier and left. The man said something to the cashier in the tone of voice that told me I was supposed to hear what he had said, but (as is my way) I simply breezed out the door.

Out by the pumps he came sailing past on the way to his car and said “That car just fit you perfectly, don’t it?”

“I gotta get ’em small,” I played along, going about my business.  Thinking that was that. Turning my back on him, as I do all men these days.

“Can I ask you a question?” he persisted.

I was shaking off the nozzle. Screwing on the gas-cap. So I felt breezy, on my way out.

“You can ask. I might not answer.” Even when I’m not trying, my tone is too-often catnip to men. I once had a friend accuse me of being on auto-flirt.

I turned around to face him as I was getting around to the driver’s side, making it clear that I was here to listen to his answer, but not to stay.

He approached close enough that he didn’t have to shout and said  “Do you believe in reparations for black Americans?”

Ha! How many times, I wonder, has this line worked on the bleeding-heart white women he had me lumped in with?

Opening my door, flinging my purse onto the passenger seat, I laughed.

“Yes! But they have to pay the Native Americans first. My people were genocided. Yours are still around.”

And, I noticed as I plopped in, inserted and turned the key, he was retreating. Befuddled. Impressed.

There is your lesson for the day on making assumptions about identity.

Always educating, me.

Why We Need Squirrels

In a time in which discourse is reduced to demented babble from our reptilian overlords triggering desperately sarcastic and demoralized rants in response from the miserable hoi polloi, what is the use of words? Of writing them? Of attempting to deploy them to make sense of our world? Of telling the Truth?

The Reptilian in Chief

“The truth is out there.” It has already been told. The truth has been told ad nauseam about whatever interest our sad and beautiful world holds for people from other worlds. And about what power does to peace right here at home.

From as far back as we have words written by we commoners (those few of us able to obtain the materials to record our thoughts and opinions and dreams~along with the even more expensive commodity of the time to compose upon these materials) we have had adjurations to be heard. We have had heartbreakingly naïve and sincere descriptions of The Situation as It Really IS with rational, practical, and fair suggestions for improvement.

To no avail.

The Truth has been told so cogently so often that it is become as superfluous as squirrels.

Every now and then we feel a sorrowful fascination as we stare at the Truth squashed by the side of the road. Sometimes we have to choose between saving ourselves or running it over. It can happen that we run it down by pure mistake and feel a sort of wretched guilt over having done something that no one will hold against us and that is not illegal. Because we know it must be wrong somehow.

And there are those who aim for it, speeding up to smash it before it gets away. These people whoop in glee as they throw the car in reverse to hit it again. If you spend your life as one of these people(?), amongst fellow travelers who offer you high-fives, you lose the humanity that allows the rest of us to realize that even though squirrels and the Truth are not useful as adornment or wealth (or anything else we need or desire) their existence in our midst is at least harmless and at most improving in ways that we may not fully understand~but which we feel when we violate them.

Got ‘im!  Dead as my Soul!

 

Photo Credit for Trump as Reptilian

Hipster Homelessness

 

Hey! Google! I’m promoting your brand! Watch this space for where to send the money.

I am a late adopter of technologies, trends. Having grown up in the, like, Valley~or whatever~as one of the girls un-ironically volunteering to be gagged with a spoon, I am the inspiration for Moon’s song, the movie (shot at the Galleria, Oh My GOD!), and the otherworldly persistence of our culture’s attachment to the acronym OMG, along with our like, lingering tendency to Totally say, “Like” all of the TIME as we add random inflection in our speech (and, like, DEFINITELY raise our tone at the end of every sentence so that it sounds like a question, or whatever?).  In short, I grew up AS the trend and have a deep phobia-level fear of being (or even, like, sort of appearing to be) Mainstream(?) OH. MY. GOD!

So I came late to this new, like, Earth-loving, anti-capitalist tiny house/homeless trend. And, sadly, I’m not doing it to be cute.

Dammit.

I am, like Moon and every other true Val, the perfect consumer. My bo-ho style fools the Millennials into believing that I am some sort of Gen X version of a Baby Boomer hippie, but the truth is (and has been for quite some time) that my “vintagey” look has been carefully, consciously, and conscientiously cultivated from an impoverished childhood in the, like, Valley~where I HAD to create my own style to survive.

Thank you, Google! I rely on your images! I’m not mad anymore! Call me!

Oh, my, God, you guys! I spent my “mall time” scouring Goodwill in order to avoid being without the tasty duds and yet not MAINSTREAM(!) Not because I could not even afford, like, Jordache~or whatever~(I mean, it’s like cool, or whatever, but I just saw Stephanie AND Jennifer in the same Reebok Hightop Aerobics! I mean, like, I was so EMbarrassed for them! They both asked where I got these knee-hi brown suede lace-up boots and, I mean, it wasn’t in, like, Hot Topic?! I’m sure!)  

Anyway. . . .

Point is, I would rather stay at my current level of quiet impoverishment in this comfy little flat (zero mod cons) in an amazing neighborhood. (Yep, I Thrift Shopped my apartment and got an impossibly gorgeous flat amongst proper Earners because who wants to live without a washer/dryer within the confines of your very own home (instead of ALL THE FUCKING WAY IN THE BASEMENT)? Me. Yep. I prefer it this way.

So…. Turns out that I am on the wrong side of history here. Turns out I forgot to become a billionaire (choosing, instead, the glamorous life of a Ph.D. in literature and a sad tendency to choose shit men~all while (as I mentioned) utterly failing to, at any time, become a billionaire.

To be fair:  No one told me when to run.  I missed the starting gun. 

I sooo hear you. I am soooo out here.

Also to be fair: I was so busy being cute-on-a-budget that I completely and utterly failed to realize that I had A FUCKING LOT further to go to become a billionaire then did my cohort of friends who had, like, Reebok Hightop Aerobics, two whole parents (who actually seemed to like, LIKE them~or whatever), and dinner every night (which, I mean, they totally puked up, of course, but I mean. . .you see what I’m saying, right?).

Point being: I’m becoming homeless against my will and to my surprise. What happened to all that “Be a Good Girl…. Work hard…. American Dream…. Cream Will Rise….” Ad nauseum, barf?

I did my part.

But because I’m a woman from a genocided culture, raised in poverty, and proudly rocking the mental illness that some studies show can be attributed to the role genocide plays in the health and well-being of kids raised in poverty (you reckon?), I’m going to be very, very grateful if I can pull off this hip, new Silicon Valley sort of homelessness and be able to buy a VAN (that I will totally park DOWN BY THE RIVER!) before I am forced to simply unfurl my sleeping bag on to the urban sidewalks with the rest of my ilk.  

Stay tuned!

I’ll keep writing as long as I don’t die or become immobilized by my inability to afford my meds, tra la la.

 

 

 

 

 

A Malenky Slovo With Nadmenny Chellovecks: or Pascal’s Wager Accepted

I “came out” to my family as an atheist when I was a child. Here’s what I told them:

It may be that I am incorrect. It may be that when I die I will be confronted with supernatural beings who will demand answers for my arrogance in having ignored their mandates to live certain ways.

To those beings I will say, “I apologize. I see now that I was wrong. I had every opportunity to listen to those you sent to tell me the truth of your existence and expectations, but I wasn’t able to ‘believe’ because of the intelligence you gave me. I thank you for that intelligence. It has been the single thing I have been most proud of and have gotten the greatest use of throughout my life. I thank you for it even if it is now the cause of an eternity of torment.

“This is the only life I know for positive sure that I’m going to get, so I’m making it count. I WANT to be kind and do good works. HERE, in THIS life. Because I think it will make this life better for everyone, not because I’m afraid of what may or may not come after this life.”

Believe it or not, the novel A Clockwork Orange (NOT the film! The novel! And make sure it has 21 chapters! Don’t get the corrupt American edition!) is great at teaching this concept. It’s author, Anthony Burgess, was (is?) a Catholic. Spoiler alert: The message of the novel is that “God” gives us free will~which means we have the free will to behave like church ladies OR Reality TV Show Stars and that it is ungodly–it is AGAINST God’s WILL–to tamper with that choice for another person.

In short, the message of the novel is that someone who tries to force another person to behave one way or another is WORSE in the eyes of God than someone who rapes, maims, murders, etc.~because the rapist (et al), has God’s okay to do all that (having been given free will), while evangelizers do not have God’s permission to play god (i.e. “Justice is Mine, sayeth the Lord.” “Judge not lest ye be judged,” etc., etc.)

Life With M.E.

Here are a couple of things I won’t be getting up to anymore:

1.  Sex.  Not only do I have M.E., which makes the whole sex thing an interesting but ultimately exhausting-seeming abstract concept, but I also have Burning Mouth Syndrome.  So….Yeah.  All-in-all, that’s going to be a “no.”
2. Grocery Shopping.  I made it out today~but doing so helped me realize that this just isn’t going to be a thing anymore.  It was a two-day affair.  I had to shower yesterday and then make the attack today.  Too much.  From now on, I’ll be using the online ordering system and limiting my heroics to driving over there and picking it up (they don’t deliver).