The Human Manifesto

I’m up and can’t sleep. So surfing the web I come to BNTM or Britain’s Next Top Model.  I was struck at how more congienial these girls were compared to out-of-the-gates-back-biting/hatin’-on-each-other they were compared to the American show. But then I then I had a Ah-Ha moment. How we are teaching young girls ,no matter how hard they try, how good they look, they are never enough. These shows with their hip muzak and slick editing cuts and slight but “honest” barbs from judges who mind you have been in the biz for several years and have loads of experience and training under their belts, take 13 young girls and demoralize them for entertainment. Of course, the girls/women aren’t without fault, yet, who can say they had much wisdom at the ages of 19 to 23, especially when it came to the pursuit of happiness in the form of a dream?

I don’t know many people who can be willing to call being rejected over and over a dream, let alone a sign of character. I don’t even know if being judged can actually qualify you for something worthy in the long run. But I do know that if any of these so called judges on these shows call themselves feminists, they may want to rethink their definitions.

It must be hard to raise a daughter in times like this. Having to compete with educating them and allowing them to retain something that is uniquely them. For these shows are aimed/marketed at the tween/teenage years where beauty is paramount and should any young girls watch these shows, they must leave with some impression that they must not make the same “mistake” that the contestants do. But therein lies the trap, what is the mistake? How their beauty could kill their chances for happiness in the form of material gain?

Even with Hillary Clinton making a hard earned educated effort to take the world’s highest office, during her campaign she has had to undergo a gauntlet of criticism  relating to her own femininity. I wonder if women, the bearers of life, which is about is close to perfection as you can get will ever see that they are enough.

You Enter Midnight

Alone, and not wishing to be, unable even to express yourself to others, you enter midnight and the greatest intensity of the dark night. Here you have finally come to the time of sovereign solitude. In this precious time, which has no apparent prospects of love or happiness, you clearly perceive that nothing in the outer world has proven adequate to heal your condition. Nobody, not even your dearest friends and loved ones, can make you whole. Even if they have tried, and love you enough to try loving you forever, they can’t give you peace.

You eye your books and consider all the benefit you have gained from these extremely wise vessels of truth. Yet not one book, not one thought, goes deep enough inside you to where the affliction abides.

You look at your possessions, your money container. No material thing has been able to help you. No material means have worked. Nothing, no one, in the outer world has enabled you to come out of this dark night.

In your loneliness, you next — in a seemingly random process — notice that none of your thoughts have proven adequate to your suffering. Not one — even repeated fifty thousand times — breaks the inner storm and lets in light. God and higher consciousness seem so far away that perhaps they are unreal. Neither one has, despite your protracted exposure of yourself, done anything to ease or remove your agony. Nothing appears efficacious. Nothing works.

Clearly, there is nowhere to turn. There is nothing to be done. All actions you considered have been tried. There is nothing to think, nothing to feel, nothing to do, nowhere to go. It seems you have to accept this defeat — or, you can persist in struggling against it. For awhile longer, you go about thinking, feeling, and doing other options that occur to you. But you realize in the midnight of your soul that you have tried every option you know of.

Just Chillllllllll

I thought I would go to a job fair to see about getting a start on a job and/or internship for the summer. And I got hit with the dreaded “You’re a late bloomer” conversation. Of course, a lot of the interviewees were in their early to mid twenties, but at 36 and several years of living abroad and being a teacher, going back to school still doesn’t seem to erase the stain. Arrrgh. I don’t need someone to tell me I’m a late bloomer to know that. But I had to laugh at it all. At the mixed messages America sends to its kids while their in school. Learn a second language and you’ll be marketable. Travel or live abroad and you’ll have international experience. All the meanwhile, most companies are actually looking for some geek who’ll increase their web hits or even create the next big thing since Google.

Yep, that’s what they don’t tell you in school- That you aren’t going to educate yourself and be able to compete in a competitive workplace. Rather you’re going to learn the competitive workplace so that you an educate your boss.

Guilt is a bitch. If Eckhart Tolle was in my room this moment he’d probably be telling me to get present to my ‘pain-body’. I’ve working on my bento blog-Play with Your Food, all day. I figured that if I was going to spend so much time surfing and learning about bentos I would just join in on the fun. So, I’ll be posting my lunch online along with recipes I find. I can’t get my head around that. How in America I’m blessed to be able to post pictures of food and make it an art while some people are wishing they had a meal. Traveling has that effect, it helps you think outside the box and eventually see the irony in life.

I didn’t do any work today hence why the guilt. I don’t know why the idea of consistent work equate to living “correctly” for me.

Well, I’m not going to try to figure it out at this moment. My fave tv show, “Good Eats,” is on.

Spring break is almost a day away!! Hu–fucking–ray!!! Okay, that’s a bit of the salter side of me, but I’m really glad, as the pressure was really getting to me. As it was to everyone. Truth be told, no wonder Americans are fat, and dealing with so many health problems. We work these long stretches of work and then take two days or two weeks of rest. It’s  insane!! My biggest problem with it is that unless one is self-employed there’s no wiggle room for individual needs which is why I think so many problems exist in today’s society. I know how I work well, and how I don’t. And as I get older, I realize more and more if I’m going to have a life which supports me, then I’m going to have to create situations where I work positively and not against my own grain.

This past week really drove that home for me as I was having health problems for the first time. In December, I had a check up and was told of the existing problem, but of course, since I didn’t have any of the more serious symptoms of the issue, I blew it off somewhat.  So when the symptoms arose, I felt really isolated.  I’m 36 and about 10 to 15 lbs above what I probably should be. But I’m thin, so I take that for granted. What a false sense of security to have.  So, now I’m faced with having to educate myself on what I can do to lower the impact of future symptoms. And it hit me as I write this entry, in fact I’m a bit mad, how my doctor didn’t really explain much to me about my condition. Perhaps she was busy, perhaps she didn’t care, perhaps she is jaded because the condition I have is very common among black women and perhaps she thought, I wouldn’t do much to change the situation.

Whatever it was she thought, I think, I am going to have to educate myself and be accountable as well as responsible for my wellbeing. Much like one’s own happiness.

The key to having it, comes from within.

I’ve been wanting to log this thought for quite some time.

As a child, I was bussed to school. For an hour, my bus would wind through several of Chicago’s South Side black neighborhoods. I never minded the ride, as I enjoyed the architecture that changed as steady progressed toward our destination. In Spring, the morning sun would illuminate the characteristic red brick on rows of bungalows, making it seem like I was riding through Edward Hopper’s “Sunday”. All this changed when the bus would round the corner near 78th and Marshfield.

Each morning a man would stand out in front of his home, with Bible in hand, shouting verses. To a group of mischievous and restless school kids, we saw this as an opportunity to impress each other. The first time we happened on this man, we shouted, “Amen” and “Hallelujah” “Praise Jesus” and fell back into our seats laughing at the small reaction we got. By the third time, several of us tried to come up with tricker devices to use to deter the man from his morning sermon.

“The path of the righteous is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” the man would shout.

“You moma is so ugly that gorillas think she’s a queen!” shouted one boy. We would fall back into our seats, hysterical with laughter.

I recently thought about that man and wondered what brought him to such a public display of prayer. What was he praying for? Had his life been so beset with problems that he was moved by the spirit to pray publicly as a form of redemption? Or could this be his testimony of how the Lord works?

I’ll never know. By the end of third grade, the man was no longer praying outdoors for our consumption.

As I think about that period of time, our shouting could have been an encouragement to him, a test to his faith or willingness to stand apart for what he requested of God or believed in. I’ve been struggling for years with this whole concept of individuality and group. And listening to spiritual tape, it clicked for me how having it does not necessarily mean that it’s manifestation from one’s being as I had previously thought .

It’s 11:35 p.m. and I have just spent 24 hours of my life creating and writing a web page presentation for my international class. This semester my courses are requiring blog entries as a form of writing. When the semester first started, a cohort inquired about the international class, and as I told her about the blogging part, she stopped me mid sentence and said “You’re blogging about blogs?” I couldn’t help but laugh as she asked with such seriousness. It’s understandable that I would use blogs to a extent to write in the course. Hopping on a plane to Africa to cover Kenya’s election troubles, would be nice, as winter has gotten the best of me, but not realistic.

So,yes, I’m blogging about blogs, and finding out that quite a few others do it too. So much for revolution from the citizens who could actually go out and get a true opinion or post a correct fact about an ongoing issue in the news. Rather, America has moved from public discourse to CTRL+C AND CTRL+V (for those who aren’t techo-savy, it’s cut and paste.) I’m wondering how much of this liberating other’s words for a personal blog doesn’t tread into the plagiarism territory. It doen’t take much to lift some eloquently written prose and form a few sentences around it. People don’t want to do much digging and word of mouth is still king for anything. So, linking a few blogs to yours ups the possibility you’ll get at least one more hit that’s not coming from family. And it’s hard to create something that stands out in billions and trillions of bites.

So, I guess until writer’s blocks are banshished, OPPs(other people’s posts) will be cool.

36 years ago, the Human Manifesto came into being. Not much to say about 36 year here on planet Earth but rather would prefer to count one’s blessings. My health is in top shape, especially since I finally quit smoking. My home has peace (and too much silence), my dog is my companion who gives me unconditional love, and I still have learned again how good it is when given the oppotunity to start anew like each day.

Namaste