Goodbye, Mork...

I had to add just this one more, for posterity.  It's just too perfect.

Carpe Diem, My Captain...

I really don't understand why the death of Robin Williams is hitting me so hard.  As shocked as I was to hear of his death, I was (and still remain) almost as shocked by the depth of my reaction to it.  I mean, sure I've felt saddened by the death of other celebrities before.  I remember being particularly saddened by the death of Heath Ledger, and more recently, Philip Seymour Hoffman.  But I've never been moved to tears like this before.  Celebrities are, by nature, almost fictional characters to us themselves; always removed from our actual lives by cameras and screens.  (I think that might have something to do with why it feels so strange whenever you see one in person - it's almost like TV or a movie coming to life!)  And since we don't really know them personally, there's only so much their death can move us.

Or so I thought.

I don't know why this one hurts so much.  Maybe it's because I grew up with him?  Because I've enjoyed him so much for my entire life?  I remember the rainbow Mork suspenders I had when I was five years old.  (My first cosplay, I guess?)  I remember seeing Popeye in the theaters with my parents just a few years later, and loving it completely.  I have the same memories of Good Morning, Vietnam.  And Hook.  (Oh, Peter Pan!  Why did you have to grow up?!)  I watched Mrs. Doubtfire and Jumanji over and over, just because of the way it delighted both the boy and the man in me at the same time.

And I've seen Dead Poets Society so many times I can practically quote the whole movie.  I don't know when I'll be able to watch that one again now.  At the very least, I know I'll never be able to see it the same way again.

Maybe it's because it was apparently a suicide?  It's possible.  Might be the connection to my own mother's death.  But I haven't reacted this way to other suicides or overdoses, so why this one?  Maybe it's just the fact that suicide adds that final crack of heartbreak to the story.  We didn't just lose one of the greats forever; we lost him to himself, to his own demons, to his own sickness.  It feels like there must've been something that could've saved him.  It feels like it didn't have to end this way.  And it touches us all because, let's face it, haven't each and every one of us been there, or somewhere close to it, at least once in our lives?  But if we could survive it, then why couldn't he?

I think it's true that there are few things more sad in this life, than a funny man, with a broken heart.  His mentor, Jonathan Winters, knew that only too well.  But he survived it anyways.  It's too bad he couldn't be there to help his friend, who clearly needed him more than anyone knew.

Like so, so many of us today, I feel the need to pour my heart out to the memory of this funny man, who's been there my whole life, in some vain and desperate attempt to figure out just what in the fuck it means to live without him now.

Below, I've collected some of my favorites that other people have been sharing today.  Some are funny, some are poignant, some are heart-breaking.  But they all made me feel something.  And that's helped, at least a little.

Here's hoping it can do the same for any of you.

Every time I hear a siren I still say "that's my ride." Thank you Robin Williams. I wish your ride had not arrived.
— John Hodgman (@hodgman) August 11, 2014

Spontaneous tribute appearing at the bench in Boston, made famous from the scene in Good Will Hunting.

We mourn the loss of our friend Robin Williams, who always made us laugh and smile. pic.twitter.com/UOY8LTjVRA
— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) August 11, 2014

"Robin Williams is not dead, he is just waiting in the jungle until somebody rolls a 5 or 8." -testingonetwothreetesting, via imgur



"One of the funniest people alive died from sadness." - chili1179, via imgur

Nanu nanu.
— SarcasticRover (@SarcasticRover) August 11, 2014

Come on in Rob. I got you.
— Jesus Christ (@jesus) August 11, 2014

The first comment on this image, from NancyNevada, I think says it all:  "When Peter Pan dies, don't tell us to grow up."

Goodbye pal.  Thanks for everything.
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) August 12, 2014

This was reportedly posted to Disney's FB page this morning.  Heart-wrenching.

"But doctor, I AM Pagliacci." That's the only way this makes sense. Can't stand thinking of him being that sad. #RIPRobinWilliams
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 11, 2014

And finally, this is how I always want to remember him:



Your barbaric YAWP! was heard around the world, sir, and inspired MILLIONS.

And you will always be my captain.

Coming Home Again...

That sound
that instantly unforgettable sound
so alien in this setting
the garden in front of my home
but absolutely unmistakable
like hooks in my ears
pulling me toward it
no resistance
couldn't if I tried
half grunt
half moan
all hot need
rhythmic
repetitive
Uhh... uhh... uhhhh!
warm Spring day
one of the first of the season
her windows open
she doesn't care
or maybe she likes knowing
her naked lust echoes across the courtyard
for anyone to hear
oh, gods the things she is saying!
screaming out her climax
crying out for his
telling him where she wants it
telling him where to put it
I'm suddenly dizzy
losing my grip on the earth
heart racing too fast
palms beginning to sweat
mouth going dry
overwhelmed
overcome
pummeled by emotions from every direction at once
lust of the voyeur certainly
but also anxiety
          this is wrong
and fear
          what if someone sees me
and shame
and guilt

And jealousy
and sadness
I wish I could have what she has
I wish I could be him
and I know that will never happen
not for me
not anymore
those days are long dead
cold ash in the ground

As her hot screams
soften to moist sighs
and my lust sours into grief
the hooks evaporate
forgotten
and I turn my back to the strangers' intimate sounds
and crawl home

I'll Stand Before The Lord Of Song...

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not someone who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a lonely Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
Remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

          -"Hallelujah"
            Leonard Cohen, Various Positions

Eleven Years...

Eleven years ago today, we were packing to leave the beach.

Princess and I, and two of our friends, had just spent a lovely post-Labor Day week at my grandfather's beach cottage in Delaware, and our vacation was over, and we spent the morning packing up to return to our "normal" lives.  (I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time I would ever set foot in that cottage on the beach, where I had spent part of every summer of my entire life up to that point.)  When we were finally ready to leave, and packing up the car, I turned my cell phone back on for the first time since I'd arrived a week earlier.  About a minute later, I found I had a dozen voicemails from my father, all from that morning.  I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and heard recording after recording of my father telling me that the United States was under attack, to turn on the TV, and whatever I do, not to come home.

We hadn't turned on the TV once the entire week.  When we finally turned it on that morning, we were all horrified, and dumbstruck.  And as we stood there, watching the towers burning, I remember thinking to myself, with odd clarity, That son-of-a-bitch is going to use this as an excuse to invade Iraq.  My hand to gods, that exact thought crossed my mind, followed immediately by, No - no way - that's ridiculous - even he wouldn't do something that horrible.

We decided to stay another day, because no one was quite sure what was going on at that point, and it just felt a lot safer out there in that sleepy town on the seashore, then back home, next-door to D.C.  That was one of the most surreal days of my life.  We were glued to the TV all day, watching what looked like Hell Come To The U.S.  But where we were, it was a beautiful, just absolutely gorgeous late-Summer day.  It could not have been more peaceful, or serene.  It produced a strange sort of cognitive dissonance that permeated the entire day for all of us.  Nothing we did felt right - if it fit with the scene around us, it didn't fit with the way we felt about what we knew was going on at home; and if it fit with how we felt about the attacks, then it seemed really out-of-place with where we were at the time and what we were experiencing just then.

Not knowing what else to do, we partied that night like it was the end of the world.  We did shots and got wasted and played Truth-or-Dare until we were all drunk and naked.  (Trust me, it was a lot more fun at the time than it sounds now.)

And the next day, we went back home to a world that had completely changed, in ways we would have a hard time understanding or coming to terms with for many years.  I still haven't completely come to terms with a lot of it.


Addendum:  I didn't want to make my post today about this, because I didn't want to be perceived as disrespectful.  But I feel like I have to say it, for several reasons.  It's just been on my mind a lot lately, and I don't want to bottle it up and pretend it isn't there.  And yes, some people might perceive it as disrespectful, but I don't agree with that opinion, and if I start basing my decisions about what to say or believe off of what other people might think about it, then I'm lost.  In my opinion, today is the most appropriate time to address it; the only appropriate time to address it, really.  It would seem oddly out of place on any other day, and waiting until next year will not have changed anything one way or the other, and by then I might have forgotten it, and lost the opportunity to express these feelings for good.

Let me preface this further by saying, I am not a conspiracy theorist.  I do believe that conspiracies can and do occur, but I am also a skeptic by nature, and 99% of the conspiracy theories I hear are clearly, demonstrably, ridiculous.  However, that said, there is something about the official story of what happened that day that has just never sat right with me.  I know a lot of people are going to consider me an ignorant, monstrous anti-patriot for saying this, but that doesn't change the way it appears to me.

I have never believed the story of United 93.

I am truly, truly sorry if that bothers you in any way.  I don't want to upset anyone, and that certainly has nothing to do with why I'm writing this here.  But it also doesn't do anything to change my perception of the situation, either.

It just always struck me as too neat, too tidy, too... American.  It's like something out of a storybook, or a fairytale.  Or a Hollywood movie.  It's just too perfect to be real.  The fact that they just happened to be lucky enough to crash in an uninhabited area.  The fact that the one plane that didn't hit its target just happened to be the last one, and just happened to be the one headed for the White House.  The fact that on that day, of all days, for this story that is fairly dripping with patriotism and Americans-Are-The-Greatest glory to come out, from the government, has just been a little hard for me to swallow.  From the first time I heard it, it has felt exactly like the "your dog went to live on a farm upstate" story a father would tell to his child.

I tend to follow the "Occam's Razor" style-guide when it comes to conspiracy theories:  the simplest explanation is the most likely.  That's one of the many reasons why I've never believed that 9/11 was an "inside job" (even though it would've felt so good to blame Cheney and Rumsfeld for it); the idea that the federal government could organize a conspiracy on that massive a scale is simply ludicrous, and laughably so.

But the idea that they might shoot down a passenger plane that they believed was on a suicide mission to crash into the White House, especially after three other planes had already hit their targets, and without knowing how many more there might be?  And that if they did, in fact, shoot down that plane, that they might, on such a tragic day, tell us an up-lifting story of everyday American heroism, rather than the truth - that the United States government had been forced to kill some of its own citizens, in order to prevent the murder of far more?  Those really just don't seem that far-fetched to me.  In fact, they seem kind of plausible.

And the more I've been thinking about it lately, the more I've come to realize, that if that is what happened, I wouldn't even blame them for it.

Even if the U.S. shot down United 93, they wouldn't be responsible for those people's deaths.  The terrorists who hijacked that plane, and pointed it at the White House are the ones responsible.  There is simply no argument about that.  I mean, honestly, what else should the government have done?  Let the plane destroy the White House, just so that those Americans on that plane could live another hour?  Is there anyone who could truly argue that there was some safe way to quickly bring that plane down without injuring anyone?  If the government had the means and opportunity to take down that plane - and I don't think there is any reasonable argument to be made that they didn't - then, if I'm honest with myself, I don't see what other choice they had.

And you know what?  I wouldn't even blame them for lying to us about it.  Those men and women on that plane are everyday American heroes, no matter how they died.  Just like every single person who died in New York or D.C. that day is a hero.  Don't they deserve to be remembered as heroes?  Don't they deserve better than to be remembered as innocent victims caught in the crossfire between their government and a handful of sick assholes?

Yes, you could make the argument that the lie was self-serving to the ones who told it.  And I don't necessarily think you'd be wrong.  But I think it's just as true that the lie honors the memories of those men and women in a just way; in a way fitting of Americans who gave their lives, willingly or not, so that others could live.

The official story of United 93 might be a mythology, but they deserve that, and much more.  A beautiful mythology to honor their deaths is, literally, the least we can do.

In Toto Memorium...

There's a War Memorial in the middle of my town.

It's a park, actually.  It's filled with dozens of memorials, each one for a different conflict.  Apparently, it's the only park in Maryland that commemorates soldiers from every American war; from the French and Indian War, all the way to the first Gulf War.  There's even a monument dedicated to the residents of Frederick County that lost their lives fighting the Barbary Pirates.

Apparently, there are also some soldiers buried under that park.  Which I guess is fitting, considering its purpose.

I first discovered the park a few years ago, on another Walpurgisnacht, while drifting through town in the middle of the night, in my usual state of psychedelic illumination.  It was knowledge of the bodies buried there that actually drew me to investigate it; tickling my sense of ghoulish voyeurism.  But I ended up having an entirely different experience.

I imagine most people have been to war memorials at one time or another.  Living in the D.C. area, it's an especially common occurrence; I'd lost track of the number of memorials I'd been to before I'd even made it to high school.  After a while, they just start to blend into one another, and it's easy to become desensitized to their meaning.  But, usually, those are memorials dedicated to one, single, specific war or conflict.  I found that the effect of a memorial dedicated to All American War to be powerful in the extreme, even to someone as jaded as I sometimes pretend to be.

The first effect I noticed is that there are simply so many monuments in this park.  And when you realize that each one is dedicated to a different war, then you begin to get a sense of the scope of just how much of our history we have spent trying to kill other people before they could kill us.  And you can't help but start to ask yourself, Have we ever been at peace?  Is peace even a realistic possibility?  Or is it just an idealistic fantasy we tell ourselves to soothe our sense of fear and alienation in the face of a violent, hostile, uncaring world; just like "God" and "Heaven"?  (How ironic that those two concepts in particular, so often the direct cause of so many wars, are actually responsible for all wars, in a way.  Would it be so easy for us to kill one another so often, and in such numbers, and for such ridiculous reasons, if so many of us didn't believe with such absolute certainty that they wouldn't really be ending forever, but simply traveling to "a better place?"  I would wager that Life means more to the atheist, who understands its true finality.)

But then I began to wander through the monuments, one-by-one, down through the history of our wars.  The Persian Gulf War.  The Vietnam War.  The Korean War.  Each one filled with names chisled in stone.  Names of people who lived here, in my town.  Who wandered these same streets at some point in their youth.  Some who even wandered the same school hallways.  Maybe some who had even lived on my street.  Fools and Heroes, every one.  Strong, and Doomed, and so unbelievably Brave.  Braver than I will ever be.  Braver than I ever could be.  And just boys!  Just boys.  They'd only just started.  They had so much left to do.  Just boys.  How is it possible that this country, of all countries, that coddles and insulates and over-protects its children to such a ridiculous, obsessive degree, could do all of this?  Could still be doing all of this?  It is literally, staggering.

And so many names.  So many names.  The World War II memorial is the largest in the park, by far.  A wall, ten feet high, and fifty feet long.  Entirely filled with names.  Our names.  And I wandered down that memorial, reading those names, trying to take it all in.  It was almost too much.  I could barely comprehend so many people, just from my tiny little town alone(!), all fighting and dying all over the world, not much more than sixty years ago.  How could that possibly have happened?!  And this, the most moral and just of all the wars!  The one where we were most clearly combating an Evil; the greatest Evil the modern world had ever seen.  It was still almost too much to believe.  But I finally got to the end of that immense list, and the end of that long wall... and then I realized - the list of names had stopped at "L."  Oh, no, I thought, it's not possible.  But I rounded the corner of that wall to discover, to my horror, that the entire other side was filled in, as well.

It felt like a lead weight had been inserted into my chest.  It was all I could do to keep myself from breaking down into tears right then and there.  I simply could not comprehend that amount of pain and suffering, on that enormous scale.

But the memorial that affected me most, and that I will always remember, was the memorial to the soldier boys of World War I.

I've always had a bit of a fascination with WWI.  It was, by far, the most gruesome and horrible conflict that humanity has ever seen.  The brutal combination of trench warfare and the advent of modern weaponry - the machine gun, the tank, the flamethrower, the grenade, the fighter plane, chemical warfare, etc., etc. - created an environment that was, quite simply, more akin to a meat grinder than what we think of as "war."  Almost forty MILLION people killed, wounded, or missing-in-action.  By the end of the war, Europe was running out of fighting age men.  So they were drafting men as old as seventy, and boys as young as fourteen.  More meat for the grinder.

At the time, they called it "The Great War."

The memorial dedicated to this human atrocity is obviously the oldest in the park.  It's almost certainly the first one built there.  It was sculpted in the style of classic monuments, with a bronze statue of a doughboy standing atop a large, octagonal concrete base.  Onto each of the eight sides of the base has been affixed a bronze plaque, each about three feet wide by four feet tall; and each plaque is, again, a list of names.  The names are so small that they are impossible to read without climbing up onto the memorial itself.  They had to make them that small in order to fit them all on the monument.  And unlike the other monuments in the park, which list the names of everyone involved in their conflict in any way, the WWI memorial is from an earlier time in America's history - it only lists the names of the boys who never came home.  Boys from my hometown.  Dozens and dozens and dozens of them.  All slaughtered.  Gone now, even from memory.  All that's left of them are names on a plaque, that you can't even read.

As I wandered around the memorial, trying to comprehend the weight of it all, I came upon one plaque that was different from the others.  It had fewer names, and was in a larger font.  I noticed it had a title across the top that was large enough that I could it read it:

"The Negro Men of Frederick County, Who Gave Their Lives In The Great War of 1917"

I've been sitting here for fifteen minutes, trying to come up with my response to that; to sum up how it made me feel then, or how I feel about it now.  I'm sorry, but I can't.  I just don't have the words.  I guess I should try to concentrate on feeling grateful that they were even included in the memorial at all.

I'll leave you with this thought for this Memorial Day.  Sums up my feelings pretty well.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  And while you're out there, barbequing, and sunbathing, and partying - try to be good to someone.  Just because you can.

And just because, it's something.

Confessions #3...

"Is it really mine??"

She was curled up in the fetal position on her bed, a mattress on the floor, hiding her head under her pillow.  This tiny, terrified little girl, trying to hide from me the way a child might.

"Is it MINE?!" I screamed, again, as though the volume of my voice could somehow force her to answer me.

We'd been together for four years, since my sophomore year of high school; an eternity at that age.  She had recently moved out of her parents' house and into this tiny, barely furnished basement apartment across the street from our old high school.  Her roommate, a mutual male friend of ours, had just told me they'd been "screwing for the past month."

"Fucking TELL ME, goddammit!"  She curled up tighter and pulled the pillow closer around her head.  I could hear her muffled sobbing.  I have to admit, it made me feel a little better.

She'd told me she was pregnant a couple of weeks earlier, as we'd sat parked in her car, waiting out a rainstorm.  Even though we'd only had sex once in the month leading up to that, I still just naturally assumed it was mine.  After all, she wasn't having sex with anyone else.  And why else would she bother telling me if it wasn't mine?

She told me she was going to "get rid of it."  I could feel a part of me break when she said that.  At the same time, we weren't married, weren't ready to marry, weren't living together, didn't have jobs, and I had just failed my freshman year of college; we were hardly ready to be parents.  And I didn't really feel like I had much say in the matter, either.

"How are you going to do it?" I asked, as the rain beat down on the car all around us.  "Do you need my help?"

"No, I know what to do.  I looked it up in my book of remedies.  There's an herb, and I have to make a tea out of it and drink a bunch of it, and that'll make me bleed it out."

That sounded horrific to me.  "Wouldn't you rather just go to a doctor?"

"I can't afford a doctor.  And I don't want my parents to find out.  Plus, this method is supposed to be safer, and less painful."

"TELL ME, YOU FUCKING BITCH!!  IS THAT MY BABY YOU'RE KILLING OR NOT?!!"

The next day she bought a vial of Oil of Pennyroyal from our local Wiccan shop.  The concentrated oil was incredibly pungent.  As she infused a dropper full into a cup of hot water, the sickly-sweet aroma filled every corner of the tiny apartment.  It smelled like mildew and peppermint.  It was enough to make you gag, and there was nowhere to go to get away from it.

She drank two cups of the "tea" every day for the next two weeks.  Within a day, the smell began to ooze from her pores, mixing with the smell of her sweat.  If anything, that smell was even worse, like moldy garlic, with an astringent note mixed in, something halfway between nail-polish remover and hairspray.  It was nauseating.  I couldn't even stand to be in the same room with her.

Even if it hadn't smelled so strong, and so horribly, I don't know if I'd have been able to stand it.  Because that smell was the smell of my first child being murdered.  It was the bloody death of my son or daughter violently assaulting my senses.  And I guess in that way, it was almost fitting.  It would've seemed wrong somehow if it had smelled pleasant.  No, of course it had to smell like boiled death.

For the record, I was, and am, pro-choice.  I believe everyone has a right to make up their own mind on this issue, and I do not judge anyone for the choice they make.  If a woman has an abortion, at any point, and for any reason, I do not consider it the murder of a baby.  But I found it was easy to accept these things in the abstract, when they were about other people, and other babies.  I soon discovered I felt very differently when it was suddenly about my baby.

The tincture of pennyroyal made her horribly sick.  She bled constantly, and was bent double with vicious cramps for days.  She had trouble keeping food down.  She would get sudden fevers.  She couldn't sleep.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would hallucinate.

I felt just as sorry for her as I did for myself, and for our unborn child.  It just seemed to go on and on and on.  I felt like this had to be worse than just going to a doctor and getting it over with.  But now it was too late for that.  I alternately tried to comfort her, and ignore her.  I stayed away from the apartment for days at a time, going out to get high with my friends, trying to forget what was going on in that tiny, damp little basement room.  I couldn't even begin to figure out how to deal with what I was feeling.  And while part of me wanted to take care of her and try to help her, another part of me hated her for what she was doing.

But then, after she'd been drinking the pennyroyal tea for almost two weeks, the oil almost gone, her roommate had casually confessed their affair to me, and all the nebulous, sickening things I was feeling crystallized into a razor-edged rage.  First, there was the sense of betrayal - they'd both been lying to me for at least a month now.  They'd been fucking behind my back.  And how could I be so stupid as to not see it!  But then came the realization:  we'd only had sex the one time over a month ago (her recent and sudden lack of sexual interest in me suddenly making sense).  But she'd been having sex with him repeatedly during that same month.  So how could she possibly think the baby was mine??  But, of course, she didn't think it was mine.  She knew it was his; they both knew it was his.  They just let me believe it was mine.  They just let me suffer through all of that, for nothing.

Because it was easier to just let me believe she was killing my child, than it was to admit that they were fucking behind my back.

I kicked open the door to her bedroom and screamed at her, "You've been fucking HIM?!"

"Oh, God, no!" she screamed, and curled up fetal, hiding her head under her pillow.  I continued to scream at her, getting louder and more angry, demanding to know if it was my child.  She wouldn't even acknowledge me, which only infuriated me more.  She just kept hiding in that ridiculously childish way, as if she could make me disappear simply by hiding her head long enough.

Finally, I'd had enough, and I grabbed her pillow and blanket and flung them across the room.  She covered her head with her hands, but I grabbed her arms and pinned them down on her bed.  Straddling her, holding her down, I screamed into her face, "IS IT FUCKING MINE?!!"

"NO!  IT'S NOT FUCKING YOURS!!  OK?!!"

...

I don't know what I expected her to say.  I guess it was more about forcing her to tell me the truth.  But, the thing is, to this day, I still don't know if she really was telling me the truth or not.  I don't know if she even knew the truth.  She'd lied to me about so many things by that point; she'd been lying to me for almost our entire relationship.  I can do the math, and I know that, statistically speaking, it almost certainly wasn't mine.  But, she said they'd used condoms.

And we hadn't.

So I still can't help but wonder.

And I know that I'll never know the answer - no one will ever know the answer - and that the numbers are on his side, so there's really no point in speculating.

But, if that's true, then why am I still thinking about it, all these years later?

Busy Good...

I spent most of my work day on an urgent task that has to be done by tomorrow.  And then I took a long lunch with a dear friend whom I love very much (hi, C!) and don't get to see near often enough.  And now I need to hurry up and get out of here because She and I are going to see this tonight.

So, no time to write a nice post, unfortunately.  But all for good reasons.

So for now I'll just post this here, because it is the thing that moved me the most today.  I hope it touches you, too.

It Wasn't Enough.

April 20th is NOT a "holiday"...

I know I'm in the minority, but I tend to take the word "holiday" in its literal interpretation, as a "holy day."  There is something special about that day that separates it from the rest of the regular calendar.  We give it a higher estimation in our reckoning of our time here in these bodies.  Also, "holidays" are always celebrations of something Good.  The Bad things we commemorate with "memorials" or "rememberances", but never with holy days.

And because of my peculiarly literal take on the concept, I have always had a hard time celebrating 4/20 as a holy day, even when I was regularly meditating at the altar of The Bowl, The Bong, and The Cannabinoid.  It just seems so...base, to me.  It'd be like having an "Eat Junk Food and Jerk Off" day and calling it "holy" or "special".  Just seems wrong, somehow.  Admittedly, of all the different ways of poisoning ourselves for pleasure, that really is the only one that could even come close to deserving it's own holiday.  (Can you imagine a Smack, Crack & Crystal holiday?  How about a Nicotine day?  Though I do tend to always be sure to have a drink on Repellation Day.)  ;-)  It's definitely the least of all of those evils, but it's still technically an evil, so why would we want to celebrate it?

But I still do celebrate it.  (Though I celebrate in a different way now than I used to.)  I celebrate it because a "hippie holiday" of getting stoned and laughing your tits off is SO MUCH BETTER than all of the other things this day represents to so many people.

Hitler was born on April 20th, and so this is a holy day, indeed, to thousands and thousands of monsters with human faces who poison our species with violence and hatred.  Taking their holiday away from them, as the catholics took xmas from the heathens, can only be a Goodness.

Two of those monsters in particular chose this day eleven years ago to stage a massacre at a Colorado high school.  They brutally murdered children, and they had fun doing it.  And they were just children themselves.  And they chose this day specifically because it was Hitler's birthday AND because it was the "hippie holiday;" they wanted to attack the "peace & Love" crowd that they despised so much, and they wanted to re-brand the day and turn it into something horrifying.  And, unfortunately, they succeeded in doing just that for hundreds of families.  I don't want to give them the satisfaction of doing it to me, too.

So, no, it's not a true "holiday."  But I don't think that matters much, in the end.  Taking a day of tragedy and horror and turning it into a celebration of joy, even self-destructive joy, is still a Goodness, and one that I will continue to take part in, for as long as I can.