I Wonder

I wonder if God sees what His book has caused down here.

I wore my "marriage is so gay" t-shirt today, I think it's appropriate right about now. One of my professors (who has seen me wear it before) asked me if they passed Prop 8, and I told her yes, and I also told her about Florida and Alabama, to which she replied "Things like this make me glad to be from the Northeast."

And I guess that's what it comes down to. The mentalities in the different regions of our country are so incredibly different. I've never lived anywhere besides Connecticut or Massachusetts, I've never been taught anything other than "think for yourself."

There has to be a way to convince the residents of the rest of this country to think for themselves, to not simply rely on what they are told by biased sources.

Besides, why should the church (the meaning any) care who anyone marries? We're not living in biblical times anymore, where a man and a woman NEEDED to "marry" (poligamy was allowed, rape and incest were perfectly fine, sounds a lot like mormonism hmmm...) in order to procreate, lest the dwindling number of monotheists would have been killed off and their message would have been lost. Today, we don't need to procreate in order to spread a message, we have access to limitless sources of informations, both biased and unbiased, with which to form our own opinions.

So it all boils down to hate. Maybe their mentality is "if we constantly remind them of their 'sin' they will stop being 'sinners'."

Probably more accurately "Maybe if we constantly remind them of their 'sin' no one will see how sinful we are."

Going Home

There is something so difficult to pinpoint about going home when you're living away in college. Your home, the place where you grew up, kind of fades into the background while your new home, your dorm or your apartment, transforms into your new home. The dorm is an extension of your old home, to an extent. It just lacks one thing: good food.

God, I would do terrible things for a good meal right about now. I didn't eat anything until 3:30 yesterday afternoon, so for the entire day I was wandering from class to class in a ravenous state. It's no one's fault but my own, and if I weren't so busy I would have time to eat, and sleep, but I have absolutely no time to myself these days. Besides right now, of course, when I'm doing nothing. These precious moments so few and far between.

I look forward to going home, to seeing Molly and Rob and Jaime. There is no one here who could ever possibly replace them in any capacity. I miss them terribly.

In weird news in the life of Rachel:

I had to break up a fight in the computer lab last night, somewhere between midnight and 2 am. There I was, writing my literature review, when all of a sudden I hear shouting coming from the lab next door. So I stand up and look at the other people in the lab with me. They looked concerned, so I ran over to the other room and saw two chicks and this kid named Robert (who has asbergers) getting up in each other's faces and making a lot of noise. So I get between them and tell Robert to sit down for a second and tell the girls who were getting in his face to back off. Eventually they calmed down so I went back to the lab where I was working, only to have to literally run back over to the room again five minutes later because they were yelling even louder and saying things like "I'm gonna kill you," things like that that really should not be said on a college campus. So one of the girls who was in the lab with me took Robert out into the hall and talked with him and calmed him down and told him to try and ignore the girls while I told the girls to back the hell off Robert because as much as Robert can handle himself (he is in college and he is living here on his own) he does not have the same social norms as the rest of us, and that if they had a problem with him to go to campus police. (What happened was Robert was singing or something and he walked up to one of the girls and she ripped something out of his hand and when she did, he smacked her in the face. I won't even lie and say she didn't deserve it, but honestly hitting people is not acceptable). So they settled down, but eventually the girls went to campus police and campo came back and hauled Robert away.

It was very intense, but I'm glad we were there to calm the situation down before someone seriously hurt someone else.

I'm looking forward to going home for a bit, sleeping in my own bed, reconnecting with my best friends, seeing Puppy and Kitty and forgetting about the escapade that was the recent election (besides Obama winning cause I definitely support Barack).

I Don't Matter

I had a presentation on Communism in the U.S. as it relates to African Americans (or as African Americans related to Communism in the early-mid 20th century) in my African American Literature class today. I thought it was fitting, sort of, to have a political discussion th day after we elected our very first African American president of the United States. There were no sad faces today, everyone walked across campus as though a great weight had been lifted off of our collective shoulders. Last night we shouted and cried and danced and prayed with a nation of people who have for so long been divided by the most insignificant of qualities as race, gender, religion, orientation. We held our breath as we listened to the next president of our country inspire hope. I am already incredibly proud of my fellow Americans for seeing past the black and white, the young and old, the old blood and the new. America is certainly on a path toward wholeness.

And yet, there was a sense of despair upon leaving my class today. I have fifteen minutes between African American Lit and Child Development, the only fifteen minutes I really have to myself on Mondays and Wednesdays. The leaves are falling now, not so much falling as sailing, spiriling, whirling. With a sigh they let go of the trees that gave them life and they float to the ground, without a particular landing in mind. They simply float, and land wherever they land. I stood on the path between the main building and the science building today, and kept repeating in my head "I don't count, I'm not here, I don't matter." I feel air and sunshine. I watch the sunlight peek through the dangling leaves and land on my cheek in a splash of colour. I taste the fall afternoons, the cool air whistling around me, sending orange and red and yellow leaves into my path. I walk, and I run, and I sing, and I dance, and I laugh, and I love, and I know, and I forget, and I don't understand, and I am sometimes sorry, and I am almost never right, and I love life, and I hold hands, and I take my time, and I smile, and I breathe.

But I don't count, and I am not here. There is nothing so damaging as feeling as though, because of something over which you have no control, you are being punished. You are poor, and therefore you must be punished. You are black, and therefore you must be punished. You are a woman, and therefore you must be punished. You are gay, and therefore you must be punished. Separate but equal. They let me vote, but my vote doesn't count. They collect my taxes, but I am not a citizen. I can't go anywhere where I dream of going without fear that that anywhere will hate me for me. I can't love freely. I can't live freely.

Sometimes when leaves fall, they don't know where to land. I feel like a leaf, suspended in mid air.

I'm so sorry for everyone in California. I'm so sorry for the families who are affected by this blind hate. I'm so sorry for the children who will grow up thinking, or knowing, rather, that there country does not love them as it should.

I don't matter.

Maverick

Who's the Maverick now????

Congratulations Barack Obama, make this country proud! Please help set us on the path toward whole-ness.

I wish my daddy was alive to see this day. I wish I was back in the old neighbourhood holding Miss Bubba's hand. Barack, you won this for all the kids who dreamed of being president when they were told they would never make it. You won it for your daughters, who have the potential to some day become world leaders. You won it for my daddy, who worked tirelessly for the rights of all people. You won it for Miss Bubba in the old neighbourhood who could never dream outside of Hartford, outside of the bubble we lived in. You won it for Dr. King and HIS dream that has become OUR collective dream. You won it for me, the kid whose parents grew up on a farm in upstate New York and a little apartment in Bayonne New Jersey, the children of immigrants and dreamers, who thought a little house near the projects in Hartford was like a dream. You won it for me and all the people like me, the dreamers and the thinkers and the doers. You won it for me and all the people who are making their lives better, who are taking what our families had to offer us and shaping that into our own fantastic American Dreams. My daddy was there to hear Dr. King speak. He was there to walk with him, to hold his brother Americans and his sister Americans by the hands and sing and wonder and pray. And now you, Mr. Obama, have been given this wonderful opportunity, this unfathomable challenge, of repairing our nation while maintaining your sense of self.

You won the election for all of us, now the task is to lead ALL of us, not just some, into the future. Take me, and my red white and blue, orange yellow and green, black grey and tan, polkadotted and striped brothers and sisters, and lead ALL of us into a brighter tomorrow.

God bless this wonderful country where anything is possible.
And thank God for not passing Question 1 in CT. Be with all those who are still fighting their own battles. Teach this country how to love ALL and respect ALL individuals.

Vote

No on Question 1 in CT. Don't amend our constitution just to take my rights away.

No on Question 1 in MA. Do not repeal the state income tax and let the haves continue to get more and the have nots continue to flounder.

NO on Prop 8 in CA. Love is Love!! Separation of church and state!

VOTE

The Last Fight Let Us Face

I don't even want to be a part of this democracy anymore. I'm sick and tired of people who think they are right. I'm certainly not right, no one is right.

But I do know this. With the money these two men spent on their campaigns they could certainly have fed many starving children IN OUR OWN COUNTRY.

It's infuriates me to no end. Starving babies in our own country. God forgive these blind bastards. Don't tell me it's their parents fault for having them, it's their parents fault for being uneducated, for being poor, for depending on the government. The government is THERE to be DEPENDED UPON in times of need. If the government did a little more maybe these starving children wouldn't be starving, and their parents could find themselves "pulled up by their bootstraps."

Socialism. right. now.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

The End of an Error

I voted yesterday by absentee ballot. This is the first presidential election that I've been eligible to vote in. I think this means that I am officially a participant in democratic process? Total sense of accomplishment.

We've almost come to the end of the last eight years of backwards governing, of war and tears. There is a sense of joy at the end, a sense of relief. We as a nation and as a world have definitely earned the opportunity to celebrate the end of an error. No matter how the election ends, I personally feel that nothing (including the election of John McCain, possibly excluding the election of VP Sarah Palin the complete and total nut-job) can come close to the tragedy that was the last eight years.


To have come through it: to have joyfully
survived even the happiness - quietly, completely.
First the testings were mute, then verbal.
Who could look back unamazed?

No one has been able, since life lasts
because no one could. - But the infiniteness
of the attemps! The new greenness of birch trees
is not so new as that which behalls us.

A wood dove coos. And again what you suffered
seems, ah, as if yet unlived-through.
The bird keeps calling. You are in the middle
of the call. Awake and weakened
- Rilke 1921