Ongka's Big Moka

The gods must have been crazy to show a bunch of hard-partying, state school kids a movie about a tribe in Papua, New Guinea that selects a new "head honcho" to enrich so that everyone can have a chance to participate in the fun, but that's exactly what happened when a class in Cultural Anthropology tore its way through my crowd. After that, the stoners went wild with late night discussions about society's failings. Why couldn't Americans be, like, more hip? Yeah, right. Why? 

Most of the time, our talks took place in the off-campus living rooms of rich suburban hippies whose parents bought them cars and homes to go back to after school. We'd be eating their mama's carefully shipped food like starving charity cases, when I'd been cooking all my life. Pot makes the crazy kids even nuttier, so I sat on my growing unease with my hands tucked between my knees most of the time, in the freezing old houses we rented for cheap. It never seemed warm enough, no matter how many layers we put on.

But, the idea was interesting. If a group of people agreed to it, could you actually give away all of your stuff to someone else without being a total asshole about it? It seemed doubtful, the way hippie kids tried to outdo each other over things like mixed tapes of live Dead shows, while they argued about who had the best collection. The hippies at school were some of the worst kinds of kids, too: petty, deceitful, spiteful, arrogant, defensive, condescending, overly competitive, and cheap. They wouldn't give anyone a loose joint for free, let alone the whole dime bag. These kids were gonna grow up to save the world? It's 2017, and guess what? I'm still waiting on that.

Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

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

One of my favorite "poverty stories" from my mom centered around my Norman Irish/French-Swiss (from Alsace-Lorraine) grandfather's Christmas Eve tippling. He "slaved like an African" as he used to say, underneath the ground in New York City's dirtiest environments, just to make sure other families were provided for, even while he worked to make up the difference to his own, as is customary among first generation immigrant families establishing a strong foothold in a new land, which is exactly what my ancestors have always done. I've always taken an enormous amount of pride from my previous generations accomplishments, and this charming lapse in my grandfather's customary tight rein upon his family freed me more than he could guess, though I suspect he knew the outlets that I needed, because he needed them, too. After all, he raised my mother.

You see, parents of seriously disordered family members (and children made parents before their time) need an extraordinary amount of strength to break through the addictions, compulsions, tics, and nervous disorders of the people they care for, in order to provide for them, but that doesn't mean they always appreciate it. My mom regularly panics when she's confronted with the severity of her illnesses, threatening the most serious hurt and abuses she feels she can deliver upon the heads of the very people who care for her the most. Like every high-performing person before me, the stress of caring for the sick and infirm is an extreme life condition to bear up under, one that's greatly relieved at times by the tempered mellowness of a good stiff drink, and an Irish one at that.

My grandfather kept a good bottle of strong Irish whiskey on hand at our house at all times, for those times when he needed relief from the very people who were most dependent upon him at the time of my growing up, which was my youngest aunt and grandmother. I always felt an enormous amount of empathy towards him, as he taught us in our home about the merits of a great crystal glass (also an Irish tradition), and the grace of a "good pour" to deliver the optimal amount of pleasure from a single glass of excellently-brewed malt savored in a hard-won peace, safely apart as we were at those times from the more wild extremes of our extended family. People like us, who are always in charge under penalty of death or serious hurt to a loved one for our slight lapses in their consistent care, learned early on to cherish the finer things in life like those that simple, well-done crafts provide for us.

It was no different for me. When I was forced by economic brutalities visited upon me through a careful network of systems I didn't design (hence the corrupt injustice of it all) to live with my mother for a time, 
I drained every drop of alcohol in her place. Even my mom's Italian relatives who have no real stomach or palate for drink took part in a relieving glass in the evening, needed as it was after a grueling day in the life of Diane. I found a stash of plastic-bottled whiskey my brother hid in the back of her pantry many years ago (and drained it dry with my mom's visiting cousin from Texas who always stays for free on her couch), an old weird bottle of homemade strawberry wine brought over years ago by an equally weird friend of hers (and never touched, because my mom and her siblings trained each other to covertly hide their compulsive addictions behind more superficially acceptable forms of release, like shopping and eating), and any other booze I could find, because life with the seriously sick is one hell of a ride.

So when my mom complained her faint little baby complaints about my grandfather's evening tippling bought with the scant extra he had leftover from a holiday paycheck that was spent all year in the planning of its expense carefully (just like I do, with every penny accounted for correctly in my tight household), doled out as it was among her and her siblings first, because they whined so much about this mythical "deprivation" of theirs that they suffered with, I admired the restraint and the courage that it took to channel all of his energy towards moving this family forward, even if it skipped a generation or two. So what if he got drunk off his holiday pay? What did any of them do around him (except for my loving grandmother) but bitch and moan about their phantom complaints brought on by the delusions of their own fevered minds, distorted as they were about his true priorities that were sound (in me), and have withstood the test of time.

So what if he only had enough leftover to buy the last Christmas tree on the lot, and often a small sparse one at that? When my mom and me and my middle brother recovered enough financially to become a family unit again, one of our first acts as a newly divorced family was to fly as a group to visit my violently out-of-place New York brother adrift in the blandly white Midwest, to celebrate Christmas together again as a family. We giggled as we gathered around his little apartment tree, happily surprised and pleased with ourselves for pulling off the impossible by becoming a family again, against all the odds in every book there is. That's what I think about when I think about my Christmases past: how incredibly lucky and blessed I am to be alive and with you all, in this miraculous century of miracles and light. 
Merry Christmas to you, in 2015. See you soon.

Share the Project

http://www.arcofrockland.org/

Do you remember that homework assignment from your elementary school days called "Show and Tell"? You chose an object from home, brought it to class, and then you got up in front of the entire class and your teacher to deliver an impromptu speech about it. For most of us, it was our first real experience with speaking in front of a crowd, and a nerve-wracking one at that. What to choose? What to say?! You spent your free time thinking about it, and then on the day of your speech, you second-guessed yourself all the way to the front of the classroom by fretting over each minute that passed by on the classroom's big clock, while another classmate did the talking. It actually does a lot of important tasks for human brains, organs that operate at their peak efficiency through utilizing all the advanced arts that are necessary for human communication.

It was the same thing for me in college. I took "Public Speaking" because it was required for all S.U.N.Y. school attendees, and then I "graduated" on to much harder skill sets, like talking about the projects I made all by myself at the world's premier art and design school. Bullshitting people you don't really care about for a good grade is an easy trick for most of us to pull off, but to be emotionally invested from your labors enough that you actually care about what you've made, and you want it to be well-received unanimously, is par excellence. A lot of people with some technical abilities do enough that passes off as skills people pay for, but a lot of the time, it's work we don't want to do ourselves because it's boring or dirty.

That's where we pick it up: you at the end of your rope, because you fear getting your hands really dirty, or because you're afraid of the risk that comes with those of us who are brave enough to fail in public without even trying. It means you're strong enough to survive a loss(es), so much so, you can visibly pick yourself up from the floor in front of a huge crowd, dust yourself off, heal, learn from your experience, and then get pissed off enough to do it better than next time. Some of us even publish the results. My father always told me that failure is essential to success, because it's true. If you win every single time you try something, then you aren't trying hard enough. Really brave warriors go out on a limb that can break at any time because that's where the sweetest, rarest fruit always is. So what if you fall down? Who hasn't?!

People afraid to fail in front of others are easily controlled through their visible fears. They're those athletes who illegally dose to have a secret edge over their opponents because deep down (or not so deep), they know they aren't good enough to succeed without rigging the contest to their advantage. They're the type of scumbag managers in your daily business who use access to your computer over a secure network to block or track your every move every chance they get, because they know they aren't good enough to be in your position of importance at a company. They're cowards, and cowardly people lie, cheat, and steal all the fucking time because they know they'd suck without you, their high performing muthfucka, to pick up their slack, and there's a lot of that to be had in this world.

I don't trust people who haven't been banged up enough by life because they're too afraid to live it. If you don't have war stories about your epic adventures (with some cool scars to show for your hard work), then you haven't lived enough, because you're too busy sitting on your fat ass peeking out from between lace curtains, like a punk ass bitch in your lazy cushy suburban home, passing judgement on those of us who love life enough to take risks, by taking a fall or two on our asses out in public. Ain't nuthin' but a thang to me, yo. In fact, in my chosen sport of MMA, we don't have "perfect" records (none of us do, really. Not one single athlete), because it isn't a fixed game like some of the shadier sports. There's no such thing as a "perfect" win in our world, because Samurai's accept that they are, like life, imperfect.

It can be jarring for fans of other sports that play dirty through drug use openly ignored, and/or with the assistance of funding from illicit gansta money to front their operation. Whachoo mean he lost? Whaaa....?! They can't even comprehend, because they've learned through a twisted game to expect a fake impression of perfection that's not real because it's a cheat. Some sports are choreographed for a narrative outcome like pro wrestling is, with it's funny over-acting and hammy role-playing, but make no mistake about it: when Brock Lesnar fought in the MMA, he fought a real fucking sport with skill sets so profound, it blows the minds of people who try it. There are just too many mathematical outcomes to predict statistically, and so our sport reflects the genius mentality of people who understand concepts like "hard" and "difficult to achieve" really well, because it's the life they live everyday: a tough game with the odds stacked so much against you, you can't help but draw on a crowd of admiring supporters.

And so it is with my charitable endeavors and active daily service to y'all. I do it because I love it, and I trained for it because I'm the best at it. But there are tons of fuck-ups. I don't have the money to operate a closed system of my own, so I "copy and paste" shit on some old fuckin' computer at the library, because it sucks too much to interact with my better (and older) plug-and-play Mac technology. I call them "Work-Arounds" that are essential to any "real world" type of living: those life situations that reflect the poorer thinking of the people around you who are too blind or dumb (or both) to put real money where it actually belongs. And so you see broken links with dead video uploads and missing photos (stuff I could never do for you at your rich white man's company without aggressive public censure in meetings or firing), because I'm operating under war-like conditions that accurately reflect the angst that I write to you about almost daily, on absolutely no budget whatsoever, because that's what the sick people around me choose in their deluded fantasies: a deliberately purposeful impoverishment that's my accurate lifelong reality.

I tell you this today, in this season of gratitude and thanks, because I don't ever want you to get it twisted with me, and because I care enough to commit my ideas and passion to you on this century's version of "paper" that is semi-permanent in this new digital age. This is my version of "Show and Tell" for you, because I care enough to humble myself by sharing broken work that is still better than any rich white muthfucka's gamed version that's aided and assisted by a thousand other people in support to just him and his goals (usually staffed with lots cheap women and other minority folk), who prop him up look like "Mr. Big Stuff", because he doesn't have the talent or the heart to fail publicly like I do. I want you to be clear about that moving forward, as we go forward on this enterprise that you support with your time and attention.

http://rocklandsample.org/

So, when you come across some joke of a "celebrity" who's puffed up with artificially padded social media accounts that are bought and paid for by advertisers and promoters (unlike yours, maybe), I don't want you to have any doubts about who they fuck they are, or how they got there. They're usually pumped up way beyond their actual skill sets, because most of them don't hold up to scrutiny up close and personal like I do, makeup-free on the daily and going on age 46, baby. That means no weirdo surgeries, no hidden cosmetic procedures behind closed doors, no airbrushing beyond all expectations tied to reality, no surreal overly moneyed shit to throw you off your game by bankrupting your pocketbook in service to someone else. I AM the real deal. Are you tho'? And why not, miss?

Because in my world, part of our "bragging rights" goes towards proud, prominently displayed post-fight photos that show you how we are never really injury-free from this life we battle through daily, smiling back at you through temporarily banged-up faces that show our hard-won war wounds, just like the bad-ass muthfuckas you know we are. I don't want you to be thrown by these supposed low numbers you think you see online, just like the too big ones represented by the false premise that some fat-ass porn star has got it all over you, because you care about teachin' yo kids right from wrong on the cheap, like my new friend Jeanne Newman does. Who the fuck are you compared to her, a woman who has devoted her entire life to public service through teaching and annual Thanksgiving dinners for her people? Just who the fuck are you, anyway? Because you ain't nuthin' to me.

You best be believin' that, because that's what time it is: only 350 followers on your page, or that many likes on your charitable site, or a paltry show of "thumbs-up" on your giving photo today? Oh hell, no. What the fuck is that, anyway?! Gone, baby. It's gone, gone, gone that-a-way. You are what's "it" to me. That's what's up. Same thing for my man Barnaby and his service to our beloved ARC friends, here in town (Hey, there Kevin! Mommy says "hi" and gives you big warm hugs all the time:), now takin' his act on the road to Massachusetts, armed with one of my lil' black stickers for prove positive of our unification. You know I do that, too! You think these people are unknown to me? Fuck y'all, then. You're a rock star to me in my world, baby. Don't think this false "divide-and-conquer" shit where you have to sweat it out alone on an isolated pocket is unknown to me as a strategy to keep you down. 

They're that afraid of us, my friends, because we are that strong and that good. Believe it. Believe in me. Believe. We've just grown out-of-bounds by one more person today, my friends. Yeah! That's it! We've grown by one, and now my wolf-pack is more full for it. Haha!

http://sharetheproject.org/20-2/

This one's for you today, Ms. Jeanne Newman! 

Thanks for all that you do daily. We see you!

https://www.facebook.com/sharetheproject/timeline

Homelessness

 


Homelessness is not real. It is an artificial human construct that does not in actuality exist as a problem for us. We do not have a shortage of cheap, available housing in this country. We have a shortage of heart and soul. Witness this, mes amis: I pulled these figures off the web in a second (from 2013), and the number of vacant homes in America is 14.2 MILLION. Yes, you read that right: millions of empty homes that need humans to inhabit them: http://www.realtytrac.com/content/news-and-opinion/americas-142-million-vacant-homes-a-national-crisis-7723.

After all, if we don't care for objects, they break down, fall apart, and drop away. It is our tending to a house that makes it into a home. What is the point of chronic abandonment? More losses? It doesn't make any sense, any way you look at it: from an economic standpoint, a moral point of view, or as an ethical debate. We need people to feel at home, because people deeply rooted in the idea of community do not commit offenses against their neighbors who love them, because they would be the very same who gave them shelter. Would you? And if you do have diseased neighbors so sick that they bite the hand that feeds them, we have options for those sick members of our society, too. We can take care of our own and move forward, my friends in Christ. Don't believe otherwise, because that is a lie.

To pretend otherwise is a conceit that you (and you know who you are) can't afford to ignore anymore, because we're onto you. Move forward with us, human, in love and in faith. That is all for today. You have your orders. Go for it. This is "Love Thy Neighbor", folks. You want to get in on this message for real; like, yesterday, in fact.


610,042 people were homeless in the United States. 

Nearly two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness 
(65 percent or 394,698) were living in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs. 

Click here:  https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+many+homeless+in+america

The Harvest Pumpkin

 

This happy hardy little gourd made it all the way to Thanksgiving from the first few weeks of October. I bought it at the store from a cardboard box filled to the brim with them, carefully selecting it from among the other gourds by taking my time, looking for just the right size and shape to complement my little doorway. The big box itself was a cheerful visualization of the harvest season, and I found myself brightening up every time I came home to it, which is just the way I planned it: that is the essence behind seasonal decorations.

I finally picked it up this weekend to throw it away, because it had gone soft and mushy from the inside out. The stem popped off as I picked it up, and the round little pumpkin quickly rolled away from me and off the porch, bouncing down each of the four front steps to the old yellow house, landing on the sidewalk. I felt like it was running its' last, final steps to freedom, and I took it as a sign that it's beautiful but brief life had indeed come to an end. What an adventure! 

And it was right on time.

Secret Santa

I've written before about my feelings regarding Christmas, and it is typically a lot of "Bah Humbug", but occasionally I'm reminded that there are many people out there who feel like I do, and highly influential ones at that. Why buy more stuff, stuff that the people in your life don't need? After the first addictive rush of "Gimme!" wears off, they're left with an awful, empty hangover feeling from a binge that gets them no closer to where they really desire to be. Do something real for them this season by giving to someone who really needs it. They may not thank you immediately, but what you're doing lasts far longer than whatever piece of cheap (and toxic) plastic they'll eventually toss out. Hang in there and go the distance, because that's where the real good stuff is.  I'm with you on this one.



Here's yet another "secret" (that's not so secret) from a real life "Santa" who always gives :) Facebook users, click on the link for a great Xmas tip: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152091712840590&set=a.336319760589.197360.114205065589&type=1&theater 

Sharing

berry bush

Yesterday I "shadowed" one of the wonderful ladies in my parish who volunteers as a teacher for the children's services in the back of our church, while the adult congregation hears the more sophisticated sermon from the priest up front. It's a time to introduce basic concepts that are central to our faith. I chose the group who have yet to receive the sacrament we call Communion*. That age is a good fit for me as a writer and illustrator of picture books, books made to facilitate a child's development from the pictorial to more text literate.

*http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-first-communion.html

It was the Third Sunday of Advent, a time spent in preparation for Christmas, or Christ's birth, though it's not an exact calendar match. Roman Catholicism derives its' timetables from pagan holidays and their seasons, easing the conversion from polytheism. As such, our holidays take much from traditional and ancient concepts of the earth's rotation around the sun. The Wise Men of yore found Our Savior through navigating the North Star* across the sky, a star bright in the winter. *http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/polaris-the-present-day-north-star

The overwhelming commercialization of our holiday is something I've written about before, and it is a good point to repeat, but something else caught my attention. The children's curriculum focused primarily on John, a follower who became known as St. John the Baptist, for blessing converts through water purification, common to many religions of the world, as his custom was derived from Judaism. He was often confused with The Messiah, because he gave sermons of great impact to the crowds who gathered for baptism.

I thought that the best (and most simple) concept of the day was that of sharing. How many of us get cold, hastily bought gifts of gaudy plastic baubles or horrible clothes, that are banished to the backs of our closets and of no use? We all have, and they only serve as sad reminders that the giver is someone not even well-acquainted enough with us to know what we want or need, a dusty relic of the kind of spiritual poverty that pervades so many people's lives.

Take this from the Gospel of Luke, paraphrased for children, that preaches a message of love instead: “Be generous and kind and always ready to share whatever you have with others. Be honest and fair and be happy with what you have.”

From that basic idea, we can derive an easy set of actions for kids to do with their parents, ideas about spreading a love that sustains when that toy breaks two days after Christmas. 

- give what we can to local charities, 

- bring a card or gift to someone who lives alone, 

- give outgrown toys to a local nursery school or child's home in the neighborhood. 

Donate, and give, give, give. That's the stuff that survives for ages. Blessings to you during this week!

"I'm a little teapot, short and blue..."

BarkAid!

I want to do everything all the time. I want to squeeze the juice out of every day, because life is such a precious gift. I wanted to be published by age 30, win many awards, and be in business for myself at the same time I ran a household with dogs and kids while I helped to save the world. What? Was that a lot to do? Huh. This super hero over commits, and I always will. Having a large to-do list is one of the greatest pleasures about an active life, but friends, I do get tired and occasionally sick. Plus, there's just so much work to do! 

I wanted so much to attend BarkAid and get a haircut at the same time (women, the original "multitaskers"). Early yesterday I realized that I can't go. I'm pushing a really big project out the door and I can't afford to take a day off while the momentum is there. Nonetheless, I really support what they're doing. I hope everyone who joins in with this special event has a great time, while delivering a very important message to us about our furry friends. Domesticated animals must have our help, because they rely on us for their survival. Let's not let them down. Power to the puppy!

http://www.barkaid.org/

http://www.animalhavenshelter.org/site/PageServer 

http://lomantinithesalon.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/welcome/