Welcome to our world!

Welcome to my new blog - part of the world of sharing myself, exposing myself, putting myself "out there." I've been a singer and songwriter for 20 years and have never been able to come this far - to open myself to public display where I am the one generating the opening. Sitting and languishing, trying avenue after avenue to create a prosperous and healthy life, all the while ignoring what I believe I am on this planet to do - create! Create music, create connection, create understanding and healing and awareness and raise consciousness and open hearts and share dreams and... and... and.... So welcome to the beginning. Thanks for being here. Open your eyes, your ears and your heart and dive into these thoughts here. Go to my website and hear songs, see beauties, get inspired, feel something. I hope it has a positive impact. Let me know.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Duh... Which way do we go? Which way do we go?

Duh... Which way do we go? Which way do we go?

I just went for a walk this morning, that was all. Walked with my son and my fiance to the haircutting salon and looked through a large book with gorgeous pictures of South American rain forests. Took my son to Noah's for an egg-mit. Nothing spectacular. But mid-way through my bagel I was bombarded with the surreality of living in America right now.

Let me set the scene.

On the table, a discarded, leafed-through copy of the San Francisco Chronicle talked of a cafe, hysterically called the "Actual Cafe," that has a weekend prohibition on laptops in the hopes of making it's customers Actual-ly talk to each other. On the back page of today's chronicle: another story about the devastation in Haiti, the continuing struggle to slog through the remains of a hotel where just two weeks before a young woman had called her mother saying she'd "found her calling." Now she's counted among the more than 200,000 dead, and some might even consider her lucky compared to the millions more who are trying to haggle over too-small rations when and if they make it through to where survivors are. I suddenly was trying to hide my tears from my son as he started telling me why Tacky the Penguin was singing the wrong words to the song...

On the windows of the bagel shop, giant posters advertising drippy sugar-covered chocolate bagels dominated my view to the outside world, and people inside perused cases full of wheat-infested, sugar-infested non-nutritional madness to see which choice would fill their big bellies (oh no, I don't pretend to be apart from this non-spectacle spectacle, even though I did put the servers through the seemingly awfully burdensome task of loading our egg-mits into our to-go ware metal canisters to avoid using extra packaging). I guess since we've found out that bagels aren't so "good-for-you," companies are just going to outright go for the sugar addiction. Placate the masses, put their under-nourished bodies to sleep with corn syrup. Now, with a look at these posters, and the people at the table in front of me with their 2 Starbucks paper cups, 2 cardboard heat sleeves, 2 waxed paper bagel covers getting up to get more napkins, I hold back more tears for that rain forest I was looking at earlier, which is on the verge of destruction.

But I feel blessed in some ways, as I look around the shop. No one tried to bomb my neighborhood this morning because we mix the races so much, or because perhaps we practice different religions. As I sit at my table, I can see a Latino couple, a mother and son who look North African, some African-Americans, a Filipino couple, and some white guys all walking through the same store, at the same time. We've achieved something here, I think. But then I remember what people are still going through, how people get looked at sideways and still wonder - are they looking at me because I'm... Fill in the blank here with whichever disadvantaged population comes to mind first. Don't get me started about how our African-American president is getting torn down, bit by bit, in the media and then in the public opinion polls, as he tries (can you believe it) to create consensus. And again I'm tearing.

Holy crap! How am I going to make it through this day without falling under the weight of so much oppression, SO MUCH suffering? Each person with their own story, their own connection to our co-acted play of the world falling apart. Has it always been this way throughout time and history? Have we always been up against so many seemingly evil forces pushing us to extinction?

And how do we all sleep at night with the daily tales of corporate greed, terrorist death and destruction, war, environmental disaster, not to mention the petty things our one friend did to another?

I'm serious. Michael Moore has been making these movies about arms, health care, capitalism, and in each movie he basically says that all the information he's giving - all these outrageous examples of how the path we're on as a society is openly, flagrantly preaching profit over people again and again - is right there in the newspapers that we are all reading. We heard that the Supreme Court just approved the giant corporate funneling of money into political campaigns; we heard that Republicans in the Senate are blanket-voting "no" on every measure the president is trying to put through; we've read that politicians won't vote their consciences because the big corporations will fund them out of office in a second; we know that the health care system doesn't work - many of our friends and colleagues are getting screwed over daily - unable to get dental work, or get the biopsy they need; we've seen the movie about climate change - we even feel the crazy weather changes; we know the research is showing that if we do not take action now, our planet will be harmed irreversibly; we know there's a continent-sized plastic bag swirl in the middle of the Pacific; and we hear daily stories of bombings, beatings, struggle and injustice.

Is it just that we feel so over-whelmed and small? Is that what's making people stay asleep? Is it that we'd rather be eating our sugar-covered bagel-bites than cooking some brown rice at home or tending some greens in our gardens? Is it really that we'd rather be entertained than engaged?

Whatever it is, how do we combat it when it's coming at us on all fronts? How do we take a stand against forces so ubiquitous?

I don't have the answers. I've been reading a few books and perusing a few web-sites that have good ideas - "No Impact Man," by Colin Beavan, www.fouryearsgo.org. I've been using my to-go cup and hankies instead of paper napkins. I've been cooking more at home, trying not to buy packaged food and using my cloth grocery bags. I've been practicing kindness, going out of my way to get to know people from other cultures. I've been meditating and crying out my stress about this dire set of situations. I'm teaching classes to over-worked parents to help them raise healthier children. And even with all this, I need to do more. Perhaps with this little rant, I can convince some of you to consider consuming less, consider the places where you might watch tv instead of connecting with friends and make a change. What could you do TODAY? One change? Today is national take-your-own-cup day. Could you NOT buy a coffee if you didn't bring your own cup? If we all did, we could stop the destruction, and pretty quickly I think. If we all cried out for people to stop bombing - I mean all of us - what if we all (peacefully) rioted in the streets crying out for a stop to world violence - could we get people to stop for a minute? If we knew that it would really change things, would we all have the courage?

Just some things rattling around my brain this morning. Just a thought or two from the morning walk. May the rain cleanse away the sleepiness today. May someone (God? The Universe? The Great Spirit? Buddha? Just Little Old Me?) give me the strength to speak out again tomorrow.

Peace.