She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie- Crack-Donald's
This entry started 11-09-04 at 8:30am
Well, well, well after seeing the film “Supersize Me” many of my friends predicted that I might lose some of my affinity for Mc Donald’s. They of course underestimated my staying power. I’ve just finished the Deluxe Breakfast and it was - oh so good!
As I posted last night I was indeed rear-ended by an uninsured motorist. It was the top to a “crappy day”. But the reassurance and strength of my wife really made the difference between profound depression compounded in worry and the attitude that I instead carry now, which is - we can make it through any storm.
I am thinking of the now infamous speech President Bush gave at one of his fundraising dinners in which he intimated that he was now with his kinda people, “The haves and the haves more.” This of course was a joke that was polarized way beyond its real value and therefor seemed to lose all its value. But that’s what we do so often in America - we play a great song until it’s actually annoying.
I can’t help facing the fact that in light of all that’s happening in my life I still live on the fringe of things, almost like a commentator at a sporting event. My Aunt started crying the other day as she related to us a story Amy Goodman told at a recent lecture about the massacres of Aboriginal people in Australia. She explained that the story was so horrible and described how brutal humans can be. But the interesting thing that she also said was how hard it was to be powerless to do anything about it. Again I won’t tell stories about other peoples lives in any detail- that is for them to do but I can tell you as my mother she has real reason for these emotions.
Anyway, all of that to go back to Bush’s well placed comments, and say- I am a “have more”! Possibly or probably not in the exact context he was referring to, but I am in ever way I can think of. My marriage is the purest most sacred thing in my life. My job is great, I love the work- and I love the endurance it takes to please all those customers while they say and do the most insane things. I have friends that go the distance every day in their own lives and shine like diamonds in mine. For all this I am grateful, yet sometimes I wonder if it is a construct of my own mind?
This is because I think too much -, as some of you will know already about me. In fact I am a “too much” kind of guy throughout my life. But I am working on many of those things.
Stopped because of a call: picked up 9:00 am Wednesday.
Just finished breakfast, it is very nice working at Disney these days with all their new equipment. I want to get back to my “living on the fringe” comment from yesterday. It was very important for me to stress to my loved ones that my relationships with them are not detached but very deep and spiritual. But in my every day life of watching politics and seeing all that is happening throughout the rest of the world - I can’t help feeling like I’m not participating like I should. It’s as if the world is spinning towards some destination unknown like a space ship (Enterprise maybe) and instead of being a crewmember, I am the ships log and just record all that others are doing.
Should I be eating tons of food, and throwing away what I can’t stuff down, while the food I eat in a year could feed 5+ people for that year in a Third World? Ok now someone reading this might already feel himself or herself asking:
“What the hell can you do? These countries make their choices. You live in America stop feeling guilty over it- all these little countries just need to follow our example and very soon they will be doing just as well”.
I am not arguing this issue here- mostly because I don’t know the answer as to if it would work. What I am arguing is the “how” to take that advice. How can I just forget about the plight in the rest of the world, how can I forget that in the Sudan 100’s of thousands of men, women and children have been slaughtered? How can I forget that as I sit on my butt digesting breakfast that American Soldiers are humping through the street of Fallujah trying with their blood to enforce the NSS of our country? Or is it part of the human condition to feel so many things at once? To feel joy for my life that has been so full, and feel sorrow for those that do not even enjoy the regular necessities of life, is this part of the human condition?
But for me that is a stretch. Not that I am an emotionless turd, quite the opposite is true, but I am a very happy fellow. I mean I am simple too- lol, so maybe the thrill I get from putting on my slippers and grabbing a good book and a blanket next to my fireplace with my wife bussing around me is not every ones idea of paradise, but it is mine. So I take my thought from my comfort to the stark realism of war and chaos and think that “There, but by the grace of God, go I”.
I am so happy, that the distance between that other colder reality and mine is staggering. In this way I feel myself longing again for the constructs of my childhood, and therefor ultimately a false reality. So I am stuck a bit in my own ability to stretch, and as I write this I have come to my answer, even if it is hard I must strive to look the whole world in the face and enjoy my life while understanding that tragedy is a course flowing around as well.
America to foreigners must sound like a child’s story. So perfect in it’s ideology- “For the People by the People”. And even as many other nations point fingers at us and blame us for their own positions, when I take stock in where we came from as a nation and where we are now, no one can deny our progress. We went from cowboys to corporations in a few hundred years.
So the question is, do we as a country lock our boarders and isolate ourselves from the chaos without, or do we try to bring the rest of the world in with us? I’m going to start trying to form some kind of opinion on this is the coming weeks. As soon as I finish my last project of parenthood.
Well, well, well after seeing the film “Supersize Me” many of my friends predicted that I might lose some of my affinity for Mc Donald’s. They of course underestimated my staying power. I’ve just finished the Deluxe Breakfast and it was - oh so good!
As I posted last night I was indeed rear-ended by an uninsured motorist. It was the top to a “crappy day”. But the reassurance and strength of my wife really made the difference between profound depression compounded in worry and the attitude that I instead carry now, which is - we can make it through any storm.
I am thinking of the now infamous speech President Bush gave at one of his fundraising dinners in which he intimated that he was now with his kinda people, “The haves and the haves more.” This of course was a joke that was polarized way beyond its real value and therefor seemed to lose all its value. But that’s what we do so often in America - we play a great song until it’s actually annoying.
I can’t help facing the fact that in light of all that’s happening in my life I still live on the fringe of things, almost like a commentator at a sporting event. My Aunt started crying the other day as she related to us a story Amy Goodman told at a recent lecture about the massacres of Aboriginal people in Australia. She explained that the story was so horrible and described how brutal humans can be. But the interesting thing that she also said was how hard it was to be powerless to do anything about it. Again I won’t tell stories about other peoples lives in any detail- that is for them to do but I can tell you as my mother she has real reason for these emotions.
Anyway, all of that to go back to Bush’s well placed comments, and say- I am a “have more”! Possibly or probably not in the exact context he was referring to, but I am in ever way I can think of. My marriage is the purest most sacred thing in my life. My job is great, I love the work- and I love the endurance it takes to please all those customers while they say and do the most insane things. I have friends that go the distance every day in their own lives and shine like diamonds in mine. For all this I am grateful, yet sometimes I wonder if it is a construct of my own mind?
This is because I think too much -, as some of you will know already about me. In fact I am a “too much” kind of guy throughout my life. But I am working on many of those things.
Stopped because of a call: picked up 9:00 am Wednesday.
Just finished breakfast, it is very nice working at Disney these days with all their new equipment. I want to get back to my “living on the fringe” comment from yesterday. It was very important for me to stress to my loved ones that my relationships with them are not detached but very deep and spiritual. But in my every day life of watching politics and seeing all that is happening throughout the rest of the world - I can’t help feeling like I’m not participating like I should. It’s as if the world is spinning towards some destination unknown like a space ship (Enterprise maybe) and instead of being a crewmember, I am the ships log and just record all that others are doing.
Should I be eating tons of food, and throwing away what I can’t stuff down, while the food I eat in a year could feed 5+ people for that year in a Third World? Ok now someone reading this might already feel himself or herself asking:
“What the hell can you do? These countries make their choices. You live in America stop feeling guilty over it- all these little countries just need to follow our example and very soon they will be doing just as well”.
I am not arguing this issue here- mostly because I don’t know the answer as to if it would work. What I am arguing is the “how” to take that advice. How can I just forget about the plight in the rest of the world, how can I forget that in the Sudan 100’s of thousands of men, women and children have been slaughtered? How can I forget that as I sit on my butt digesting breakfast that American Soldiers are humping through the street of Fallujah trying with their blood to enforce the NSS of our country? Or is it part of the human condition to feel so many things at once? To feel joy for my life that has been so full, and feel sorrow for those that do not even enjoy the regular necessities of life, is this part of the human condition?
But for me that is a stretch. Not that I am an emotionless turd, quite the opposite is true, but I am a very happy fellow. I mean I am simple too- lol, so maybe the thrill I get from putting on my slippers and grabbing a good book and a blanket next to my fireplace with my wife bussing around me is not every ones idea of paradise, but it is mine. So I take my thought from my comfort to the stark realism of war and chaos and think that “There, but by the grace of God, go I”.
I am so happy, that the distance between that other colder reality and mine is staggering. In this way I feel myself longing again for the constructs of my childhood, and therefor ultimately a false reality. So I am stuck a bit in my own ability to stretch, and as I write this I have come to my answer, even if it is hard I must strive to look the whole world in the face and enjoy my life while understanding that tragedy is a course flowing around as well.
America to foreigners must sound like a child’s story. So perfect in it’s ideology- “For the People by the People”. And even as many other nations point fingers at us and blame us for their own positions, when I take stock in where we came from as a nation and where we are now, no one can deny our progress. We went from cowboys to corporations in a few hundred years.
So the question is, do we as a country lock our boarders and isolate ourselves from the chaos without, or do we try to bring the rest of the world in with us? I’m going to start trying to form some kind of opinion on this is the coming weeks. As soon as I finish my last project of parenthood.