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May 07, 2007 10:20AM
Here's the thing - every generation considers itself that last. Every generation considers itself on the verge of a total destruction/revolution of mankind and man's society, whether by divine or human agency; every generations lives in a time of ominous signs and portents.
And yet -
We keep on going, The great lumbering beast shoulders on, lurching and stumbling and sometimes crawling, each little person-cell not fully communicating with the other, and we keep going anyway. We don't know where. We don't know why. But we do keep going - always reaching up, out, towards the next day, the next month, the next year. Fighting the impossible fight, dreaming the impossible dream, reaching the unreachable star.
We are impossible beasts, and thrive on our impossibilities. And we move forward, regardless of the screaming of cells who think it's best to return to the known and the familiar. Slowly, haltingly, fighting ourselves all the way, we keep going.
That is why we are not animals, for all our animalism. We dream of being more than what we are, an trait unshared by any of the other animals in our biosphere. That is why we are ourselves.
To embrace animalism, rank and stinking, and claim nature as a model for human behavior is to deny dreaming. And to deny dreaming is to deny humanity.
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April 24, 2007 10:04PM
For the record: I erred in referring to the banned procedure as a D&E. They banned an IDE, the safe process, in favor of a D&E, the unsafe one that mutilates the fetus. Right procedure, wrong name, story of my life.
Woke up about twenty minutes ago with "Song for Bob Dylan" hovering in my mouth, vaguely remembering flashes of color and light. Took a while to remember where I was and why I slept - there's a streetlight right across from me that shines right into my eyes if I don't close the blind and for a minute wild thoughts of alien abductions and vanished time flew through my mind. Then I remembered that I was napping because I hadn't slept for twentyfour hours, more or less.
I went to New York over the weekend and didn't do much except develop a smoking habit and soak the summer in. Union Square lacked the Farmer's Market, so I couldn't buy nectarines and eat them to taste the sunshine, but it did have student protests. One side wanted Israel out of Palestine, the other side wanted Palestine out of Israel, and some folks in the back were talking about Armenian genocide but no one cared about them.
I love New York in all part of the year, it being my home however much I'm currently in exile, but it's got a special glory on the first really good day of almost-summer, when the winter cold and piled drifts fade into memory and people leap the fences in public parks to play frisbee on the grass.
Went to Angelica's and got some mullein; led a merry chase trying to hunt down a lighter and wrapping paper. I quite like smoking mullein, and as yet I've seen no negative and some partly beneficial effects of the smoke on my lungs; we shall see.
Staying up to watch the sun rise is never a conscious plan with me; it just never occurred to me to sleep. When it did, it was brushed aside - so I stood in the cool morning warmth, watching the sky lighten, acrid mullein smoke curling around my face and in my lungs and blown away by the breeze. The world seems like such a nice, peaceful place in the sunrise.
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April 19, 2007 02:40AM
So here I am, past two in the morning and I can't sleep, wandering the hallways as I do. Leigh from down the hall beckons me over, that grin on her face she always gets when she's trying to be shocking.
"Okay, please don't get mad at me for asking this, but would you give Brandon head?"
"...what?" I look over at Brandon, who's curled in an embarrassed fetal ball on the thin red industrial carpeting (it's the kind that feels vaguely like sawdust, found in only the finest dorms and mental institutions). "Why?"
"Because he said he might want it from you."
"I did not say that," he protests, muffled by his own arm. "I said I wanted head."
Maggie from across the hall, usually honest, is not forthcoming. I slide down the wall and crouch on the floor, shaking my head at the situation.
"I'm very inexperienced, you wouldn't enjoy it anyway," I say, trying to make light of what's fairly obviously Leigh trying to embarrass the shit out of me again. I already went through this last month when she discovered I could sing; I do occasionally enjoy singing for friends, but I am not a trick pony. He just groans and turns over, but at least he isn't facing the wall anymore.
"You look exhausted, why aren't you in bed?"
"I'm not tired," he mutters. "I just have a headache."
I gave him some Excedrin from my private stash and saw him on his way.
Today the Supreme Court passed a law banning "partial birth" abortions, known as "dilation and extraction" to actual medical professionals. The Supreme Court can suck my imaginary cock. D&Es are done when the life of the mother is in danger should she carry the pregnancy to term, and the child is not far enough along to be viable if extracted by Cesarean section. Partial birth implies that the mother was in the process of giving birth and then said "No, wait, I don't want it after all, just be a love and kill it, would you?"
The Supreme Court ruled, essentially, that medical professionals are not capable of making medical judgments, and that the life of the mother is subordinate to that of the fetus.
I am not a goddamn incubator.
Fun times in Academic Writing: SomeGuy presents his thesis topic for the final paper. It's about how hospitals are killing patients. He draws no distinction between deliberate murder, euthanasia (using specifically the example of the nurses and doctors in New Orleans, who were in a situation where they knew very well that many of their patients would die and made a call. It may have been the wrong call, but it is a very different mentality from deliberate murder) and simple, idiotic neglect. The last is worthy of handwringing, the second is a moral dilemma worthy of it's own paper, and the first is just plain silly.
Dr. F wasn't here today. Odd. And I have to sort out a harmony for Monsters by... five tomorrow. Fun times.
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