Apple and Oranges

Even though I knew that "The Fates" held a destiny for me much bigger than a small-sized classroom, I've always loved teachers and education, so much so, I followed my best friend and her older brother to one of the best teaching schools in the country for working class New York kids on a strict budget, which is the exact niche my friends and I fit into. Why pay out interest rates on jacked-up student loans designed to suck from our meager incomes for years, when the starting salary for a teacher in New York State was $26,000 in the 90s (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d99/d99t080.asp)?

Suffice to say, I learned a lot about my friends and their curriculum by listening and talking with them. It served me well during my apprenticeship in publishing, which has the strongest industry ties to education, by necessity and design. Textbooks, anyone? Who do we serve more than schools? Libraries! That's why I'm typing to you from one today. Makes for an eerie kind of logic, doesn't it? And so we discussed our avid interest in changing the system from within, by shoving out the bored burned-out drones who labored in classrooms like they were slaves from "the bad man" himself, when really they were just bottom-level civil servants made for a life filled with repetition.

But, that's not the actual job of teaching. Running a classroom means you have enough juice and life-force running through your veins that you can actually transmit your passion for learning to other much smaller humans who need you to guide them through your excellently-designed curriculum. We had enough of the ennui that bad teachers hide behind. Get out, if you hate kids that much! It's like dealing with the bitch who runs your doctor's office. Oh, so you hate people? I guess tending to the sick would be at the top of your list, then.

And it wasn't because they were broke or in financial straits like we were. I've worked with plenty of people in publishing who worked because they didn't know what else to do, so they hoped to hide within low-paying jobs alongside some of the most educated people on the planet because....oh, wait. That doesn't work either. Claiming disability became some sort of signal that we "won", because crazy people think that the world is all about some intergalactic pissing contest in lieu of actually living life, like my wonderfully cool grandpapa taught me to do: have fun! Learning is like that.

So, we became focused on accurately transmitting that joyful feeling; not through some dull drama class we did by rote, but the real thing, which unfortunately requires you love what you do for a living, and that can't be faked, no matter the brand of wacky sauce poured on top for seasoning bland personalities. My friends and I felt alive. Are you? We became adept at reading children's real intellectual levels, and that's somehow another layer of threatening for the demented at heart. Here in town, we watched a sick woman smack her ADD son cringing on the floor at our community center in the middle of the day, in front of many witnesses. It was a shockingly familiar sight to anyone from this area: a stick-thin young woman with challenged kids, greasy hair, and a shitty attitude (she has a Down Syndrome girl, too) freaks out whenever she feels stress, which is all-day every day.

The gossip that circulated through us followed suit in a typically dysfunctional pattern we grew up with, too. She was in the middle of a ferocious battle with the teachers at the elementary school next door to our library/community center, because she refused to acknowledge what any two-year-old already knew: she's sick, and so are her kids. Duh. Of course he's "Special Needs"! But just like every rabid bitch we hated as kids, here she was again, haunting the very places we hold dear, like some nightmare merry-go-round in Hell. Hadn't we killed, er, pushed out all these bitches already? Birth control is practically free!

Much like a pseudo-debate over healthcare, it's not really about her kid and his needs, because we've already designed circles around it as an issue, when she finally decides to pull her head out of her own stick-figure ass. Who can tell? She pretended to almost run me over when I crossed at a corner near town, to give me the creeps (just in case I failed at her five million other warning signs that are as obvious as daylight at noontime), by pretending to search for something in her car. We have that on satellite photo, BTW. Look for it! Anywho, like any self-loathing drama queen, her weirdo displays are more about her strange lesbo displays someone has to actually notice, like when she comes into the library in her anorexic day-wear, to bend over until one of the gay women working here notices her bending over to put books into the return slot that should normally take a few seconds. Ugh...great. That's motherhood?!

Body fat is also a no-no among many "sports dykes" and the women who love/hate them. Also, you shouldn't date a closeted women who tricked some poor guy (perhaps deeply closeted, as well) into mating with her poorly, but you should know that from our lessons already, kid. It happens to us everywhere. When I moved into my new residence, I knew within minutes which neighbor was sick with what, and their children, too. It's rather easy to discern, like a physician with a tiny hammer timing your reactions from knocking your knee. The Hispanics upstairs did everything they possibly could, as backwards as possible. They made a kid without marriage, broke up, then he moved in his little girlfriend who preferred shopping to mothering (because they're barely out of their teens! Yay!), which she then telegraphed to everyone in the neighborhood by making his little girl into a pedophiles' sick delight, with outfits cut just a bit too short, so that her boyfriend's ex would suffer from her daughters' molestation that would certainly affect her throughout her life, and that was BEFORE I noticed her obvious developmental issues.

First, it was the girls obvious short attention span (easy: blame los Americanos with their sugar and fast food diet), then blame our high price of living telegraphed by obvious parental neglect (so they could leave their girl vulnerable to the house drunks downstairs by pleading poverty for their cheapo babysitting services, having the large man paw the young girl right in front of me on the houses porch, which I clearly documented), and then finally, I met the girl herself, desperate for a real adult to teach her something about life. She picked me out as a safe person quickly, ringing my bell for healthy food and drinks, which I readily had, like home-popped popcorn and seltzer water with fresh lemon slices. She loved my treats, even asking me for more, which I happily gave her in a plastic container that I never got back, in case I didn't get all the other messages transmitted to me that they could care less about me and her, what with their sulking, pouting, drinking, and active chain-smoking social lives to live.

The poor girl was also a shut-in, not leaving the house except for school, and that attendance seemed tepid and short-lived, too. As soon as the young couple could, they farmed out her daycare to babysitters and a series of shifty-looking "nannies", because that's what junior mechanics and their desk-jockey girlfriends do in this century, besides nursing a serious shoe fetish widely telegraphed in the house garbage cans (because they don't recycle, duh. They're "too busy" for that!), but one call to their friend and a Spanish woman will pick up your bottle returns, because the house drunk told me that. "Oh, yeah! We recycle here! Just let so-and-so upstairs know, and he'll call his friend. She picks through the garbage for bottles. You ain't gotta worry 'bout nuthin'. Put 'em in the two pails in the back with no lids, and they'll see it." Huh. I see. Hiding beer bottles and alcoholism, eh? Neat trick!

Their daughter also never played outside, or went to the little playground with picnic tables that are right here in the center of town, or got ice cream nearby like every kid here does in the summer with their parents, nor did she ride her bike openly in the driveway, or play in the yard like any other girl her age would do. She didn't have friends come over, either. She told me she had a sibling who didn't go out, because he "didn't feel good", so he stay inside a lot. Right! I could tell. As she sat at my kitchen table, I asked her to draw me anything she wanted. She couldn't. I asked her to spell her name for me. Nope! Did she know the letters A, B, or C? No! She fidgeted and bounced around my apartment, flitting from object to object, finally swiping them from my coffee table in anger, and then putting them back when my back was turned for a few seconds, which was the one practiced trick she had up her sleeves. When I asked her age, she told me she was six, but she didn't really know. Ah...

After new neighbors moved in, we had two families in our household with small children, and they couldn't be more different. The first time I met little Eli, he played happily in the yard while I became acquainted with his father, cheerfully picking up different stones and rocks to show me. I kept his little gifts in my hands, until his father noticed and asked him to put them down. As a symbol of recognition about their vast differences intellectually and developmentally (because everything is a big fucking secret, I guess), I lined up little Eli's rocks underneath the railing on "my side" of the porch (I don't actually own the house, which makes territorial markings doubly weird!), the same side of the house his parents kept their car parked that they drove everyday, so they would at least know that I knew. He'd sorted rocks by their size, shape, type, and color. At two. Yeah. Different. That's it, right?

 http://www2.ed.gov/parents/needs/speced/edpicks.jhtml

STARING IS RUDE

http://www.myvoicetshirts.com/

Children are really weird. They need to be taught how to live well or they won't, because people have some of the largest brains within the animal community. For that level of complexity, learning is the key to our understanding, and knowledge solves almost every problem we have as human beings. It is with this in mind that I've observed that the subject of appropriate eye contact needs to be addressed once again, because humans have forgotten what it means as a form of communication for our species.

Think I'm exaggerating for effect? Just ask my older brother about his kids and their fancy rich white kid school in poncy Connecticut: the problem with greeting adults correctly became so bad, that his kid's school had to put it back on the curriculum, just like in the days of old, when your kid came home from school with a note pinned to his shirt about his behavioral abnormalities. Could be worse; we were told horror tales about physical abuse and public shaming, like raps on the knuckles with a ruler, or sitting in a corner on a stool while wearing a big ole dunce cap. Want us to bring that back? No? Okay, great.

Then let's go over it again. When, say, a new human moves into your neighborhood, it is customary to signal that you understand an event has occurred by looking at said human straight in their eyes, smiling, and introducing oneself, handshake or no. Same thing with students at school: when your child enters a classroom, it is customary for them to show respect to their teacher (who is a very powerful and well-educated authority figure in our communities) by smiling and saying "Hello, Ms.______." Oh, and that underline I typed in the previous sentence means that you fill in the blank with the name of your kid's teacher, dumb-ass.

Yeah, that's what my brother told me: the dysfunctional rich kids in his kid's school were so unaccustomed to greeting humans through eye contact and name recognition (because nannies change often, and their parents care more about their stupid fucking corporate jobs than noticing their kids, because they have that all-important flight to catch for yet another dull business trip), they stopped knowing how to enter a room with people in it. That's right, fellow Americans: our children have forgotten how to greet, speak, talk, and make eye contact with other humans. Where do you think they'll go from there? Nowhere.

Same thing with me walking down a street I've walked for years, in a county I went to school in, also for many years: people seem to not understand that gawking at beauty makes them look like the dumbest, craziest piece of shit I will never ever want to meet. You fucked up by gawking at me, ass-hats, like I'm a fucking piece of furniture, or a brightly-colored painting that's your special shiny object to peruse. 

Today, for instance, the fucking douche-bag guys of Rockland County who like to stalk decided that they would only drive by me in cars and SUV's with tinted windows, because their fucking retarded behavior is so bad, I make fun of them obviously rubbernecking at me when they drive past, by imitating their slack-jawed yokel faces. You fucking dick! So original..stalk the beautiful girl. It's like getting a date by harassing women walking by a construction site, which I like to turn around by catcalling beer-bellied, hard-hatted losers in response. It's awesome! They're so scared of me.

So, to re-cap, let's go over the list once again, for the Special Needs and Special Ed sections, who may or may not need a helmet to participate in daily life. You failed: eye contact, greeting other humans properly, introductions as a customary way of greeting other people, smiling and/or nodding to indicate that you are aware of other life forms in your immediate environs, as well as many other basic forms of human communication. Your child has no shot at life because of your obvious failures at becoming a decent human being. Oh, and by the way: staring is still considered rude in this century, fuck ups. Learn something today, you dumb fuck! I friggin' hate rude people.

 https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=staring+is+rude

Focus

Doubly exposed, with a tensely unhappy look.

All my life, my mother has taken really bad photos. It's always been weird to me, because before I was born and for some short time afterwards, my mom loved painting. I still have the precious little watercolor that she made me for my baby room, of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet floating on a watery green background that was supposed to reference grass, but I don't mind the abstraction. My first oil paint kit was my mom's old discarded one that I pulled out of the back of a basement closet. I was reminded every time I opened it, with it's old brushes, linseed oil, and postcards that she used for reference. She wasn't very good, but she also didn't stick with it. There's one painting I found (now hanging above her bed at my putting) that she did of a landscape from a photo. It has some brilliant elements, but just like me with a fondness for science, her vocations led her elsewhere.

Which made her utter lack of ability with cameras even more troubling. Why? She hated posing for pictures, gladly showing me her sulky pouting baby pictures in black and white that my grandparents made her pose for. She cited all sorts of excuses: she hated getting her hair set with curls, she didn't feel like posing, or she was "too busy" to take a good shot. Baffling answers all, but they didn't tell me the real story, because unlike my mother, I could read pictures like they were books. Her photos were all over the place; bad angles, blurry shots, jarringly off composition, always out of focus, or she had a really tight, forced expression of her face when she did pose.

Cutting me out of the picture, and getting away with it.

I didn't really make the connection until many years later, years after I expertly learned the businesses of visual communication, and the various methods of those mediums, because it's that complex. My mom hates posing for photos because she looks crazy in them, and she knows it. It gelled for me with my oldest brother and his wife: with all their compulsive traveling, not one single travel shot produced by them (they also shun the creativity of most social media). Not one. Oh, years of oddly posed Christmas cards of them that they framed for us as "gifts", my savvy marketing family even hiring a professional photographer for their staged Greenwich, CT shoots, but not once did they pick up a camera. They'd admire it in others, market themselves through the medium and put it on their walls, but not once have I ever seen one of them take an actual photograph. They say they don't need them or like them either, which is doubly weird, because they work out to maintain their images all the time. But, I suppose if I had a suicide mom and kids on serious psychiatric medication (like my brother and his wife), I'd hate reminders, too.

Ditto with pictures of me. Not one of me on any of their walls. My mom has these strange plastic-wrapped bundles of pictures, sometimes correctly labeled for the individual in the photo, and sometimes not. They come to me as she finds them stored throughout her household, or when her cleaning lady moves old furniture around. Her handwriting on them ranges from the perfect schoolgirl of her youth to the much more recent scrawl of her senior years. I have no idea why she randomly selected some pictures to be packed away in baggies and some not, except for the obvious proof that these photos show me, like time capsules of her madness: because she still struggles to make sense of the world around her, and who the people are in the photos.

Posing behind me, like I'm a trophy fish on the wall or a decorative lamp.

 
Nowadays, I use them as a form of art therapy for her, just like her onsite caregiver Lynette does in much more vivid detail with her, one image at a time: who are these people? What do they mean to you? Do you remember taking them, or how you felt at the time? More and more, I feel like all of my very learned expertise comes down to the feeling Anne Sullivan must have had breaking through Helen Keller's massively intricate self-defense system: I have done all this for her, to break through the walls of her mind that are like prisons for the many facets of her fractured self. I use my art to break through, very often to her, violently and aggressively, as you can plainly see why here. 

Some days, I simply sign the same messages of hope and loss, love and anger, here on this site and through other media outlets, over and over again until you get it. And sometimes, like this perfectly framed summertime photo obviously taken by grandfather for its' astonishingly stand-out clarity, I get help exactly when I need it, through a man who openly supported my art and personality without prejudice at great contrast to our unhealthy and immediate family. I can feel the power of His Eternal Undying Love, spoken loud and clear across the ages, through one simple, humble, and very beautiful photograph of a little girl trapped and angered by the madness of others, because that's exactly what my healthier grandparents lived through with their children and grandchildren, too.

It was the summer of '75 for me and my awesome Grandpa.

For the Many Faithful of the World: today I give thanks for the loving, beautiful, and gifted grandparents who were essential to my good health growing up. I would not have survived this life without them. Their patient care was often just a phone call and five minute drive away. I also give thanks for all of you who have survived the cruelty of other people's madness to achieve great personal success, by breaking through the many walls around you to greatness. Long may you reign in peace with us. Amen to you.

 (for Bernard and Ann, two of His Most Faithfully Devoted Servants)

Here's a hint: I'm the one in the middle.

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