The Santa Con

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

Blackface is weird in every century, because stupid rich white people think they can get away with it. After all, if you're corrupt and you know it, who better to look down upon than a people notoriously kicked around by an entire culture designed to abuse them? We had to fight our nation's bloodiest war just to protect humans from treating other people like cattle, with a lot less respect than that at times. 

Sickness doesn't whack you in the face like a punch delivered expertly in a boxing ring. No, psychoses just creeps up on you, festering in those isolated pockets where such illness traditionally breeds: in the rural back-country, far from the modern civilized world, making it odder still that New Yorkers openly harbor such blatant prejudices against their own neighbors, as they have for generations. 

First, it starts out with that one Jewish kid in school envious about the many Christmas gifts the pretty blond shiska girl gets; you know, the one he fetishes over to the extreme, without ever doing her the human courtesy of greeting her properly, with normal eye contact and a wide open smile that says "hello" to you, before you hear it spoken aloud. Dehumanization is a necessary part of any disenfranchisement program, and the seemingly sophisticated provincial that New York breeds is a particularly dangerous kind at that.

The pseudo-intellectual cosmopolitan knows all about local theater (heavy on the musically-inclined Jewish crowd), or the most recent New Yorker op-ed commentaries (heavy on the Jewish liberal afraid of what lies west of the Hudson River, where those scary burly "bridge-and-tunnel" people live), but you'd be surprised that they're most often more afraid of the savvy native living in their midst, with a much wider and well-balanced view of the world that we live in. And so the ball rolls further downhill, away from what they think is their right as a hometown crowd in our fair city. First, the retail stores closed (no shopping), as do our gentile restaurants (no "Chicken Parmesan" on our holiday), and then before you know it, every store will be closed in honor of the birth of one very special Jewish boy.

Because even as cynical Hollywood cranks out nasty movies (hey there, Canadian "Jew-Fro") based on your Jewish attendance during our holy day, they forget that the sole focus of this day is the birth of a humble Jewish boy born destined to create one of the world's greatest faiths. Isn't it ironic that the sneering drunken holiday some Jewish people have created to blaspheme our holiday is the very same one born of their faith? So, the next time you think it's harmless to dress up like a slut and gorge yourself during our religious holy day (ooo, you're so "naughty"), because you mistakenly thought Christmas is about shopping and some big fat guy in a red suit, let me assure, it is not, and we're watching you very carefully.

For more on the real religious traditions tied to our traditional (and modest) forms of gift-giving, I invite you to explore the actual histories tied to our faith. For instance, did you know that the man known throughout Scandinavia as "Saint Nicholas" (taking his name from an earlier saint*, as is our naming tradition) earned his title by giving dowry gifts of money to the poor girls in town, so as to hasten their marriages**? Because that's the truth. I know! Soooo much better than the dumbly-dressed bar slut. OK, then check this one out. The North Star was said to have served as a guide to "The Three Wise Men"*** (who were kings) by guiding them across the winter sky to converge upon Jesus' birthday place in Bethlehem****, then a Jewish city? No?! They brought gifts of gold (gelt), frankincense, and myrrh, and today we still burn incense in church and at home, during certain rituals.

So come on in! Everyone's invited to celebrate this party. You haven't been left out in the cold, at all. You have the whole world at your feet through His Birthday (of Our Savior), through the gift of faith that is our annual message of peace to you. Now, put down that beer, you stupidly-dressed bar slut. Ain't nobody care about yo' ass, ho.

 

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/home/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SantaCon 

*         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas
**       http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/three-impoverished-maidens/
***     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi
****   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem

The Third Eye (Blind)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye

Ever since my childhood bout with chickenpox (one that I don't remember), I've had a fairly visible scar on my forehead. My mom was worried about that, because I'm the only girl in my family, and she didn't want any physical evidence of sickness conflicting with my looks, which is the first real currency women are given in society. 

My market value as a marriageable mate is still very important (to her and to me), so she did what she could to keep a little toddler from scratching, including putting on those little mitts sometimes worn by newborns who scratch at night. Despite her vigilance, a few areas escaped her notice with my unconscious scratching: an area on my thigh, a little spot on the side of my face, and a big one almost dead center. Woe is me!

With time and the thickening of my skin, it's become almost invisible in most lights, excepting those occasions when it isn't. In my quest to normalize a semi-arid city out west, my then-boyfriend and I drove to a suburb of Denver that housed the one Asian section of that sprawling, modern (and almost characterless) city. He was still nursing serious internal hurts borne by an abusive mother and violent stepdad; abuses that included sexual molestation, as well as the usual beat-downs from a stressed-out, working class Brit trying to manage his émigré status, a new marriage with kids, and another country.

I was still licking my wounds from an aborted marriage, illegal as it was, due to my college friend's legal Unfit for Marriage status, so both of us were hurting from complaints not of our doing, but deeply effected by other people's collective traumas nonetheless. Because my ex didn't eat during his manic binge phases, I had greatly changed my lifestyle to accommodate his diseases, which left me in a serious deficit all around. I went a little wild with food on my own, eating and eating and never really feeling full. It was out of control, very uncommon for me, and really scary. I could see myself ballooning up daily.

I remember my mom visiting me in Littleton (right after the high school massacres that happened there), as I sat down to eat a 2nd heaping plate full of pancakes and sausage at the cheap kitchen table my dad and his wife bought quickly for the apartment I had to relocate to. My mom asked me what was going on, with the understanding that she already knew, because she did. I have always been a size 6 as an adult "Miss", but under the stress of earning a living and righting societal wrongs, I gave in to my new boyfriend's huge Scottish appetite. We ate at any restaurant we wanted to, revelling in our escapes from the incompetent horrors of other people's homes.

With this in mind, we sought out Colorado's version of "Chinatown" to look at exotic eastern goods and, of course, eat. He went into one shop to look around, while I stood on the pavilion sidewalk outside, smoking a cigarette, another teenage escape valve I still had in place. As I strolled around the storefronts, a gentleman dressed in the tourist garb of a "guru" stopped his robotic pamphlet distribution for "Ancient Eastern Readings" to open his mouth at me. I wasn't used to agape stares at the time, because weight gain and untanned skin is considered "ugly" out west, but this was more. He looked...scared.

After a quick recovery (like most immigrants learn), he began speaking to me in a language I didn't know, pointing at the middle of his forehead over and over again. My boyfriend was out of the shop he was in, and I was walking quickly away. "What did he want?", he asked me smiling, in the non-threatened, jocular way men who are 6' and 250lbs have with shorter, smaller, and darker men. "Oh," I laughed. I was constantly tired and hungry all the time, clear depressed signs both, and I knew it. Smoking had become a dull chore that made me feel sick, too. I hated my life; a life in a foreign land that felt stiff, colorless, dull, and flat, like an out-of-body experience, and I was acting out a role in someone else's boring movie.

"It's my chickenpox scar." Where? He didn't notice things like that about me, busy as he was staying alive and staying afloat, despite the dragging down qualities of his life, too. "See? It's right here. In the middle of my forehead." And just like that, he promptly forgot about it, because that's how little spiritual significance I had to a big blond, tan, western guy with a very large and showily dramatic depiction of "The Rapture" tattooed prominently on his forearm for all the world to see, because that's exactly how limiting the scope of America can feel to someone who is perpetually outside of the cultural norms.

He lasted ten days in the cushy second story of an extremely wealthy and well-appointed Park Slope townhouse that I secured for us, upon my return home. Ten days, before he bugged out to drive back home, to a dull place where generic red trucks for good ole boys are respected as having more value than the people who sleep next to you for years. Ten days. That's all I got to right his world for him, as my world turned upside down, once again. Ten friggin' days.

Murderer

You should know by now that I openly express my disdain about people who use and abuse their so-called "religious beliefs", because I've published a lot of information about the continued erudition behind the scholarly traditions that comprise my religion. It ain't easy, yo. And that's why serious faith is mishandled so often, because it is so very hard to do. That's why, as Catholics, we say we are "practicing" our faith. 

Of course, I've been chosen to receive the greatest of G-d's gifts, which I try to gracefully submit to, in service of those greater strengths, but that doesn't mean average people like it or understand it. Many people are held tightly in the grip of their inadequacies, and that was burned out of me a long, long time ago. I do occassionally brush up against rank ignorance, though deeply ingrained prejudices tend to stay in remotely isolated areas, but it can happen anywhere in the world. 

The quickest social distortion begins with our easily understood written text that originated as the spoken word of firsthand testimony and witness, through books that hold our most sacred human stories passed down from our ancestors as they developed a higher, burgeoning consciousness that'll ultimately connect us back the universe, through what we call "Universal Truths". To deny that logic is an everyday mindtrick I won out against a long time ago, too, because in my world, it was called "childhood": http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/03/acts-of-creation.html.

Just like our ABC's, the first intentional misunderstandings of our faith start with those basic rules called "Commandments", with the understanding that to err is human. It is through His Most Divine Mercy that all can be forgiven with His Infinite Grace. We also believe in a greater technological understanding than that which currently exists, which means we actively seek to evolve into unity with the sentient universe that is forever, to reside in what we call "The G-d Consciousness". I know it's really hard. That's why people of faith are the most educated.

We do not define "G-d's Consciousness" specifically as an old man with a beard who lives on a cloud in the sky, but we do understand that our ancestors tried to explain their striving through a visual pictorial that was an expression of our belief about a benevolent universal truth, which we are also ever-expanding (just like the universe) through our continued exploration of the vastness that is our inner/outer space, which is also extremely hard to fathom and explain. And so, our ancestors started on a path to enlightenment with rather crude (to our eyes) representations of an inner space that's also at the core of our being. It's a very intimate place to be, like fragile newborns with their new parents. Try that on for size one afternoon, as a collegiate teen smoking and drinking with friends around a campfire. "Whoa, dude! All we are, is, like, dust in the wind." Yeah! I know! Stardust, "twinkle-toes"!

So, we accept that it might take several lifetimes (or less, depending on the human being/situation) to achieve this actualization of the self, and that you may not attain it, like, ever, because you suck, and heaven is for holy people ONLY. That's why we study so friggin' much. It's driven by a noble quest for the truth that's out there, as part of what can sometimes be an insatiable curiosity to find Our Maker within the beginnings of all life, like an epiphanic (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/epiphany) flash of light and heat and collision and implosion that's expressed as an outward explosion, in a great BIG BANG! We want to propel ourselves backwards and forwards through time and space, seeking out an intergalactic journey that's also occurring simultaneously as an inner space within the apex of our human consciousness: on earth, as it as in Heaven. What is within us is also out there. Dude.

You kinda need to understand a lot of stuff (or not, as the case may be), and that includes basic reading/writing skills. I've come across learning disorders and other common brain disabilities/impairments so often that I've learned to group my spiritual gifts of understanding, compassion, and erudition in the rare class it belongs to rather than, say, your flawed interpretation of the rules.

For now, I want you to focus on what "Thou Shall Not Kill" really means, which is actually a ban against having a maliciously murderous intent towards your neighbor (as in, "Love Thy Neighbor"). Many extremist iterations exist that supposedly work in service to The Ten Commandments, and, as such, are likely be totally incorrect. That's the price you pay for a shaky foundation, like not knowing how to spell or simple mathematics. How do I do that? Oh, good! Here we go. Again.

I want you to spend this upcoming weekend contemplating that somewhere in the world, you are considered a murderer, because you have killed. The ridiculous "fruitarian" from the movie "Notting Hill", who only eats stuff fallen to the ground, considers you to be so, because you "murdered" the harvested carrot on her plate that is her belief system, fucked up as that is. Of course, that's just the surface that masks her mental illness(es) and eating disorder(s), like today's marketing-induced "gluten-free" jerk who merely seeks to trendily mask their fussy anorexia behind a legitimate case of Celiac's Disease or genuine gluten intolerance. Trust me: you don't ever want to feel that sick, even if you lose a few pounds from violent diarrhea and near-constant vomiting. Asshole.

Someone else's indifference to killing a spider in the bathroom is another person's holy fiat, as a Buddhist monk so strict, he carries a broom to sweep the ground before his feet, so as to prevent himself from killing anything. Yeah, it's extreme, but it's also this guy's legitimate cultural belief, because it was developed before they knew that life exists outside the limitations of human sight. It's kind of batshit, but he came about it honestly with what he had on hand technologically, at the time. He also thinks he might come back as a fruit fly if he screws up life badly enough, as a just punishment for his very human undoings. In truth, it's technically involved and spiritually in-depth, which is why you totally shouldn't do it. Their version of reincarnation is not your genetic inheritance, because you definitely don't have the Nepalese in you to do it correctly. Trust me, wigga. Yeah, you.

But, posers do it all the time. They deliberately misappropriate from another culture to hide whatever fucked up stuff they're too chickenshit to face directly, so they borrow someone's deep faith that's been passed down from their ancestors for millennia, like that yenta from yoga class who was totally reborn in an expensive ashram overseas (way spiritual, way existential), before returning from her vacation as the insufferable "guru" at your local gym, as self-righteous and obnoxious as ever.

And so it goes. To the faithful Hindu or Buddhist, you are a disgusting, meat-eating blasphemer blindly consuming their sacred cow. Think about that this weekend, while you bithely grab some hamburger patties to char during your backyard barbecue. Or, perhaps the next time you hero-worship that guy who slit women and children's throats during his "Fog of War" overseas while fighting our "enemies", who's now trying to cope with horrific flashbacks all day every day, while he sits in a lawn chair drinking a beer right next to you. He's a killer. I want you to openly wear the moniker of "Murderer" this weekend, as you go about your day-to-day life. 

Think about how you look to someone outside your particular set of cultural references. From this starting place, we will move forward to the more difficult questions facing society. That's all for today, "Mes étudiants". Live well, and with great intent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_%28United_States_law%29

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kill

Sunlight Series (Before Christmas)

Three Christmas trees (real and man-made), and a Hanukkah bush.

(Pearl River, N.Y., December 2014)

Nature: Hungry Squirrles and Intense Rabbits

Hankering for a hunk of Italian bread.

I was walking home from the library one afternoon to be startled by a squirrel with a huge hunk of Italian bread in its' mouth, dexterously climbing a bush's branches with it locked down in its' mouth. 

Intensely chewing and staring...at you!

I must have had extra special magnetic rays radiating out from me that day, because later on, the local bunny rabbit decided to stand right outside the window of the room where I stay, surprisingly intense in it's stare, chewing vigorously and intently looking at me with a gaze that didn't break after I walked across the room to take a picture. 

"A bird ran into my giant freak-head."

Sometimes having The Patron Saint of Animals (St. Francis) as your main "go-to guy" is a bit unnerving, like Elaine from Seinfeld's bird phobia, provoked by a kamikaze pigeon flight at her "big head" while walking through Central Park. Sometimes I need to dial my pheromones down a bit. What do you attract?

My wolf pack grew by two that day.