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today has offered blow after blow. i am sitting here trying to feel blessed or identify the origin of my terrible mood so i can attempt to remedy it. i'm in a funky place, thick and reletless with no identifiable doors, in or out. i need sleep desperately
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to introduce to him the concept that he does not derserve something solely because he wants it is intensly important to me."
this illustrates how differently we view human beings. in my world, real human beings, especially children, cannot have desires that are hurtful, and we deserve what we need and desire. we are innately good and do not need to be deprived into being so. if we do have desires that are hurtful, it's because we've been hurt and learned from our fucked up lives and culture to want (to be addicted to) things that are not life-affirming.
in a healthy world, there is little distinction between our needs and our desires - meeting one is meeting the other. we need to be touched, and we desire it. we need the nutrition of complex, amazing food, and we desire to taste the flavors it. we need the warmth of fire, and we want to sit beside it and watch it burn down to coals. the desires of young children fall into this beautifully - they innately want, and deserve, exactly what they need: touch, loving company, nursing, and caretaking of their physical needs. they cannot separate need and desire, and people in a healthy, wild world cannot either. the break never needs to be made.
when i think of desires, i do not think of shiny rows of health-crippling food, or manufactured goods made of bits of stolen earth by the poor. in those i see, at best, my addictions. when i think of desire i think of the touch of a lover or friend, the flavor and nourishment of a good meal, the soft, deep pleasure of laying down in a safe place to sleep, the melody of you singing.
the field of things we can want has been so altered, and in that sense, from inside civilization we can learn addictions (which feel like desires) for things that destroy us and the world. i think each of us deserves everything we want unless it hurts the living. i have a very broad definiton of what hurts the living, since i see the entire earth - rivers, iron-bearing stones, the field mice in the wheat, the cancer-riddled women making computer chips in thailand, the soil under portland avenue - as alive, but this is my own understanding and i recognize that other people do not see the world as alive and seek their desires accordingly. all that does not mean that the fundamental act of desiring deserves punishment, nor does it deny that we deserve to have our needs/desires satisfied.
"the concept that he does not derserve something solely because he wants it is intensly important to me."
that breaks my heart to hear.
when i hear you say how much you value teaching him that he does not deserve something solely because he wants it, i hear you telling it to yourself. i hear your mother telling that to you. i hear you shackling yourself to one of the lies of our culture. we deserve to fulfill our desires. you deserve that. i do.
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while we as adults have the difficult task ahead of us of unlearning desire-like addictions for things that cause pain, because our damaged lives taught us to depend those things, luca does not have to go through this. he is a fresh start and has the chance to not learn those hurtful addictions in the first place, to experience his innate, instinctual need/desires as the place where satisfaction is found, and to not feel for one minute that he does not deserve to have his need/desire cared for. you have given him this so far. why would you turn on him and suddenly tell him he does not deserve to follow his desires? all that amounts to is a shackling. and one you choose to do yourself.
"my son will be upstanding and compassionate and understand that because of the power given to him automatically because of his gender and race he is required to relinquish some of his desires and comforts in the name of equlity."
REVOLUTIONARY WORK IS NOT THE PURSUIT OF US ALL HAVING THE *SAME* RAW DEAL! every single fucking one of us - you, luca, me, every one of your clients, that tiny baby you told me about, the alley cats on 5th avenue, the coyotes losing their homes - every one of us deserves, and should be able to expect, that our needs/desires are met.
working for anyone's freedoms is not about voluntarily throwing away your own. that's the lie of Christianity right there. it's everywhere now, not just in churches or missionary outposts or the minds of mothers - the glorification of self-sacrifice as some sort of good.
we do not need to make ourselves smaller to fit into the system of oppression. the system needs to break open.
sonya, the central lie of our culture is that we must surrender our freedoms to get anything worthwhile out of life. the central way our culture keeps itself going is the stealing away - or forcible removal - of freedom. think slave-hunting. think the indian wars. think homeless folks. think of yourself. it's the same process - the loss of the freedom to move through spaces, to access our loved ones, to stay on any given piece of ground or build or inhabit shelter upon it without paying heavily. to eat the food we see laid out before us in supermarkets, as it once was freely and abundantly laid across this land.
i need to go eat breakfast with friends now. i enjoy writing you letters because i feel like i can speak more clearly sometimes. i got your response to my other letter. i'll be home late sunday night. talk to you then...
lisa
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