Twenty Ten

I wonder sometimes if anything ever really changes. I mean really. Sometimes it feels like we take two steps forward and eighteen million steps sideways and who can even perceive how many backwards and then when you account for orbital, the earth spinning, relative position to the sun and whatnot, did we move at all? Did we get anywhere?

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions. I think its bunk. If you need to change something in your life, you need to change it now. Not quit smoking by the time you're 30 or lose weight after the holidays, or stop drinking after Mardi Gras. Do what you have to do now because you know you need to do it. And even though I'm not much for resolutions, I've been thinking a lot about progress and change and the movement of time since New Year's.

They have this new chip that's maybe gonna get tested on folks that would detect if cancer had metastacized llooooonngg before it was ever visible as tumors or masses or tissues in other areas. That seems like progress.

So does the fact that I can tell stories about my dad to anyone, anytime, anywhere and not really worry about something unpleasant happening just because he's gay. It can just all be out there.

But then, I watch a lot of documentaries about wars and conflicts, religious and race based. These conflicts just keep going onandonandonandonandon. One gets better and we'll all supposedly learn from it, but then next thing you know the Israelis are knockin on the Ethopian (jewish) refugees they let in the country in the 1970s because they're not Jewish enough because they descended from Sheba who was not a Jew and and juddaism gets passed from the mother, so they all need to be converted. There are certainly more recent examples. But I think of Israel as being a country devoted to education and that should save us from racist thinking right?

But it doesn't. us them. It goes onandonandonandonandonandonandon.

We beat kids. We haven't solved that one yet. Nor have we solved rape or sodomy or being nasty to each other on a daily basis.

I'm guilty of this. Not beating kids, but the nastiness. I get in a funk and want to yell and scream at strangers who don't know where anything is in my grocery store and stand in the MIDDLE of the isle discussing whether or not we need marshmallows for the hot chocolate and I just want them to FUCKING MOVE!

I haven't learned in 30 years not to be angry at things not worth being angry about.

I believe in anger. Its an important emotion. Its possibly the most motivating of all emotions. It forces us to change. Maybe we're angry but not enough, not at the right things. Maybe I should stop being angry that people drive the wrong way down a parking lot row and yell at doctors who don't report child abuse. Maybe I should stop getting so snippy at my husband for leaving bottle caps on the counter instead of in the trash can and tell the tourists at the grocery store "Of COURSE you need marshmallows for the hot chocolate! What kind of fire will you have later without them?" Maybe I should stop blogging and write letters to legislators and companies telling them about my outrage and my suggestions. But I probably won't. I like blogging. I snip. I'm annoyed by tourists. I should see the things I need to change and change them now.

And sometimes I do. I don't smoke. I eat pretty good. I floss. I exercise a lot. The mental energies could definetely be handled better though. I should structure my time more and focus on my writing. I should structure my mind more and focus more on what's right and less on being so fucking critical.

Maybe the teens will be better, the twenty-teens that is. Teens are angsty and full of fear and rage and change. But they're clumsy and insecure too, so maybe we'll keep stumbling around, taking steps forwards and sidewards and cattywompus, never really sure of our place in the universe.