~:: That Which Makes Us Tired ::~

In response to a blog recommended to me by my dear M: my comment.

It would appear that I can still write opinion. I may not be sitting down with images just now, or telling stories of family life, but I can still howl when trod upon. And why am I posting a comment on my blog and then on Facebook? Because I have always written to communicate, have always written for friends and family and kindred spirits. Because writing and reading sharing ideas is part of what has raised our species out of the muck.

And right now, I feel like the muck is pretty dang thick.  So I’m not actually recommending that you read EVERYTHING on the link that I’ve had shared on me, and now am sharing again, because there were lyrics here that repelled my eyes the way the wrong polar end of a magnet reacts. I got the point without reading them, thank you very much.  But the blog point is sharp and true.

You’ll force yourself to eat Kale – but we’ll take just about anything through our eyes and ears – like that kind of digestion doesn’t have just as much impact on our health and well-being. And the first comment? Very telling.

So, the link.  And so my comment:

That first comment was interesting. I’ve heard that kind of before, people trying to reason their way through their attraction to – I’m trying to come up with a term here – frippery could work, but it sounds so innocent. The destructive and seductive. Instead of the productive and beautiful (can’t come up with a light-filled rhyme there). I once accepted a literary award, and in my little speech to that audience of 500 plus folks, I talked about shoving darkness down the throats of students because, for some reason, we have decided that darkness is deeply meaningful, while light is just silly. This big guy, all dressed in black – another “children’s” author, came up to me and said, rather aggressively, “You said that darkness is a bad thing and we oughta not expose children to it. But what if a kid is *attracted* to darkness? They have a right to it, don’t they?”

I stared at him for a second – it was the end of the day, and I was finally packing up what books I had left over after the signing ordeal – and felt my face sort of squinch up – and I said, very frankly and honestly, “Well I don’t think THAT sounds real healthy.”

His face lost all its – umm, purpose, – and he said, in this amazingly little voice, “You don’t?”

Answer, nearly twenty years later: “I don’t.”

Stupid is probably the germinal word here. Like the people who signed the “Elect Karl Marx for 2016” petition (YouTube). Like anybody who buys a bridge in Brooklyn, for whatever reason. Stupid was here on the earth, just waiting for us to show up – like a virus. Stupidity – good natured, angry, depressed, lecherous, well-meaning, euphoric – it comes in all flavors. It seems to be what we human beings are best at.

And yet, I don’t really believe that. I believe that we were meant for unimaginably great things. We just settle for so very little, so very often. Then again, I know people who don’t settle at all. I know people who have built great beauty out of just what they find around the house and heart and mind. And of them, I sing, Baby.  And on them, I pin my hope.