How a cover song changed my life

Let me be honest with you. I owe Taylor Swift an apology. I’ve been critical of her, because I’m a flawed human. I am judgmental. It was so subconscious that I failed to realize it until a friend introduced me to the band, I Prevail. They covered Ms. Swift’s song, Blank Space. (I Prevail, Blank Space)

Because it wasn't Taylor Swift, I listened to the song. Really listened to it, like I do when I hear something on the radio I really like; turn it up, lean in a little and focus up. Every word sank deep into emotions I have felt as a human and a woman.  They are turning points and memories of my journey. In her words, so I know she shares those emotions with me, those experiences.It was passionate, it was real and raw enough to make me feel. Mind: Blown.

It took a different voice to make me hear it. I hadn't noticed until now, because that wounded part of my soul bitterly thought, ‘what does that perfect rich girl know about heartbreak or real life?’ Because my jaded self, the tired part, convinced me she sounded whiny. When I listened to the cover song, this slowly dawned on me. As hard as I tried not to, I was almost reflexively participating in behaviors I intellectually scorned. There are two words for this; the scientific one is ‘cognitive dissonance’. The literary one is ‘hypocrisy’.

I don’t have to like her music to understand her journey as a person, and one doesn't justify the other. But, don't take my word for it. Let me explain, and decide for yourself.

“I could show you incredible things/Magic, madness, heaven, sin”

New attraction; the way-too-electric connection with a total stranger. The person that makes you sit up and take note; the one that makes you feel like you just came out of a coma. Every part of you is alive, makes bold and excited. We’ve all felt it. Acting on it is a toss up between happy endings and bad decisions, but we’ve all flipped that coin.

“Got a long list of ex-lovers/They'll tell you I'm insane “

Let’s pretend for a moment that we've suspended reality, and we actually remember no one can hear us in our heads. They only person judging us in there is ourselves. You’re sitting around and the topic of an ex comes up; your’s or someone else’s. How many times has the phrase ‘he/she was crazy; just nuts’ been uttered? If we’re being honest, I can’t put a real number I feel ok with on it but the percentage is high.

Sometimes, it’s justified. Sometimes, it’s just that thing we say when they drove us nuts with their emotions. I know I’ve been the crazy one; I’ve had a few too, if still we’re being honest. I guess Ms. Swift has, as well. Go figure, she’s human like the rest of us.

“So hey, let's be friends/I'm dying to see how this one ends”

I guess relationships, with all their emotional waves, started working on the jaded part of Taylor too. Probably didn’t help that there are people like me out here, pretending like I haven't felt it too, just for spite so I can justify my snide-ness.

I feel you Taylor, and I’m sorry I dismissed your emotions with jaded rhetoric. Some loves just don’t work, don’t let it make you doubt yourself. It’s the dirty realization of adulthood; insecurities don’t disappear when we grow up. They just turn into a host of other words; words like idiosyncrasies, hangups, issues. This is Einstein, applied to social behaviorism; the “energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it merely changes forms” of human emotions. You’ll figure out how to redirect it, to grow into it. You’ll find your voice.

Manifesting Destiny

This time of year is always very special to me. In many cultures, there is a time of celebration of bounty and harvest, of people gone but not forgotten and all things past; it is a celebration of life before the symbolic and very real death of winter in the life cycle all around us. I made a specific effort this year to open myself more fully to the energy ebbing around me and it came to fruition.

It was because of a very special series of events: a Medicine for the People concert, learning to allow myself to expand my inner circle without fear, a crystal bowl meditation and a chance meeting with a Rainbow Unicorn  - that I found the ability to reconcile my love and faith in science and my belief in the metaphysical into one conscious ball of intention, directed at changing the things I bitch about the most and lessening my cognitive dissonance.

In short, the universe told me to put my money where my mouth is and I'm not one to back down from a challenge. - hard nod-

I'm starting an effort called "Common Ground" - it's going to be a model program for grassroots activists across the country for taking unused plots of land owned by the city and turning them into perma-culture gardens that will produce food used to feed the people that overflow our local homeless shelters, food banks and church pantries (regardless of how I feel about the ORGANIZATION of religion, the people in them do some damn good things sometimes).

I'm hoping to expand the effort into educating people about the living conditions of people, especially children, right here in our own city, country. The main goal of "Common Ground" is to break the problems we face as a society into smaller, more manageable, groupings so that some real change can happen locally and spread out from there.

Wish me luck.

Blogger's Dilemma

To be quite honest, most days I wait for something to truly ruffle my feathers or strike me as uniquely fun or interesting before I blog about anything. I need to be fired up, excited, intrigued and a little angry. (These are the reasons the relationship with your blog is like a spicy summer romance at times and others, a stale and lifeless thread you to which you cling. Truly, one of the most dysfunctional synergies I've ever been a part of.)

I bring this up because I have found not one, but THREE!, things that have me a little ruffled around the edges this morning. Ok, more than ruffled. Puffed up as hell and sputtering to my coffee cup like grumpy old men do at their newspapers. Which do I choose?

I found these images on the interwebs today:

There's so much wrong here I stutter thinking of it.

Or:

Again, this is serious. When is rape ok? Never. It is never ok. The fact that this many high school students think there are "conditions that allow" rape is bad, people.

And, last but not least:

Immigration is a serious issue. One we need to take a legitimate look at as a nation and be honest about, even if its just in the mirror. Have we ever, EVER, (as a European based people) assimilated into anything? No. We conquer, kill, claim and then remodel. It's our modus operandi.

Well, one of these will be forthcoming soon enough and the anticipation (I know you're excited) will be over. My rant will be complete (until later, to be honest) and most of these pictures will feature in something I write, because all of them piss me off.

The $64,000 question is, which one pisses me off the most?

Then and Now

Somewhere, in the middle of rushing around trying to get things done in my life, I realized I'd grown up. It wasn't the kind of thing that one takes in stride. Rather, it was more like an abrupt and slightly painful reality smack. Suddenly, I was OLD.

Not just older. OLD. My youth was gone, my best years were behind me, I noticed imaginary wrinkles and started waiting for gravity to win and everything to start that inevitable slide downward toward "sag"; where your chin and your earlobes and all the other stuff just seems to become too big for the space it's in and gives up and lets go. (Ladies, you feel me here. Men, some of you get out of this whole aging thing really lucky.)

I began to check my reflection in the mirror more seriously and some very old woman looked back at me, unexpectedly.

The point is, I was dumbfounded by the sudden, swift passage of so very much time. Where does it go? I think back to funny stories and people I knew in high school like they were sometime last week, not over a decade ago. So, I did the unthinkable. I broke out my yearbook from Junior year. I wanted visual confirmation that things were as drastic as I imagined; that a full 15 years had passed.

In order to do a proper comparison, I scanned my (16 year old self) yearbook photo into the computer, so I could put it side by side with my most current (almost 31 year old) self. I was as surprised as I imagined I would be, but not for the reasons I'd expected.

(Just for clarification, the only alterations to these photos was to black and white the right side one, to make it fair against the left side one. I was on yearbook staff that year and we made the decision to only do the senior portraits in color, along with some of the section header photos and text, with everyone else in black an white for artistic effect and to save a little on printing costs. Also, it's kinda grainy from the scan.)

After a little bit of contemplation, I decided age looks good on me. I did it alright and I am not the suddenly creaky old lady I imagined after surviving a whole year of being 30. Wisdom suits me. I look a little more tired around my eyes, but who doesn't after another fifteen years of living? 

And as for that 16 year old me, well... she's pretty OK with who she ended up being and I've forgiven her for being young, dumb, impetuous, rash and stubborn for no reason. I've even asked the fun parts of her to stick around and hang out with the now-smarter parts of me. (You can do that in your 30s, so I'm told.)

We've finally come to an agreement on what we want to be when we grow up, too. ;)  I guess a little perspective is a good thing.

Lizards sure do make nice boots

I was happily scrolling away on my Facebook feed, one eye open with coffee in hand, when this jumped out at me from amid the 'he liked/she liked' mumbo-jumbo. It was a GOP rhetoric meme, liked by someone I know, which was sort of like a cold water culture shock. 

Not because someone disagrees with me (we all know where I stand in terms of political lines), that happens. It is entirely acceptable to have different opinions. But, isn't there a line you can't be willing to cross? Like, perhaps, "I will not be dumb on purpose." 

This is the image that sparked the whole thing:

.....

My immediate reaction was stunned silence. Are people that desperate in today's political climate that they will make willfully ignorant statements like this one and other people will not only by into it, but promote this viewpoint?

Politics aside, lets think about this for a moment. (Given the vocabulary presentation level of the man in the photo, I'll explain carefully and slowly.) Lizards that make good boots, as it is so eloquently stated, are also reptiles. Do you know what reptiles do for the environment?

Reptiles are very beneficial. They are an important part of the food chain in controlling rodents, feeding on carrion and alligators are important even by creating dens and gator holes that help protect wetland species in droughts.

Reptiles impose an important check on insect and rodent populations. Some of the most venomous snakes in the world such as the Indian cobra actually prevent the spread of disease-carrying rodents, even in urban centers, so their usefulness often outweighs their danger. However, far more benign reptiles also act to control populations of pests. 

According to the website Animal Bytes from Busch Gardens, crocodiles and alligators also prevent overpopulation of fish species in coastal regions and wetlands, which is pivotal in keeping these aquatic ecosystems healthy and balanced. A healthy aquatic ecosystem is instrumental for fisheries that make their living in these environments.


But, they pretty much just make a nice pair of boots. Do you even live on this planet?

I can hear the counter argument now. "What's one species of lizard compared to lack of dependency on foreign oil?"

Number one, the Keystone XL pipeline will NOT remove our need for foreign fossil fuels, not by a long shot. Second, importing it from Canada and Mexico is still importing it. Third, I wonder how many other species got the same consideration before they were made extinct? Perhaps the Tasmanian tiger, the Zanzibar leopard, the Madeiran large white moth, where loss of habitat due to construction as well as pollution from agricultural fertilizers are two major causes of the species' decline.

Those are only 3 of a list of species that have gone extinct in our quest for "progress" that isn't really all that progressive. The Keystone XL pipeline project, the tar sands it creates, are dirty and nasty forms of fuel which will further pollute the environment and harm ALL living creatures. What happens when we find OURSELVES on the endangered list?

As for the EPA itself, the tagline under that meme from the previous poster said "The EPA is just another of Obama's anti-domestic oil puppets". 

.... -headshake-

The EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency, is responsible for the fact that they can no longer put asbestos in your insulation and for that fact that you don't have to drink water contaminated with urine, fecal matter, lead, toxic waste, industrial runoff, and a list of other nasty things. The address climate change, the protection of endangered species and they have the power to make CORPORATIONS pay for what they do to the environment in the name of profit.

How is that a puppet of anything? And how, for the love of clean water, can you think its a bad thing?

I suppose, if you can save .10 cents at the gas pump, the wiping out a whole species is alright, not to mention destroying hundreds of acres of ecosystem. Who needs trees and land and water and clean air to breathe and stuff?

Oh. Right. We do.

In response...

...to the Facebook discussion I photo'ed for the Honest Discussion post from earlier today, my Transformer friend sent me this on my news feed just a little bit ago. It really makes my entire point for me. I am enraged and saddened, frustrated.

Seriously people. What is wrong with us? 

An honest discussion

While surfing the internet, I came across this graphic image from Being Liberal about why we need feminism in today's ever changing world societies. Take a good look at it and let what this is actually saying sink in, people.

Women shouldn't have rights? Be slaves? Be seen and not heard? Be dominated? Know their place? 

Are we serious here, World? Especially America, the supposed land of equality and freedom. Shame on you. If you aren't familiar with the way Google's search process works, it takes what you have personally searched for into consideration for suggestions, yes. But, much like Twitter, it takes the most common or popular 'trending' searches as well. This is what the results of the most popular searches yields currently on the subject of women.

I was understandably frustrated at the sight of this. Especially because of the Anonymous effort to bring attention to the stereotyped rape culture we live in today by bringing national attention to the Steubenville rape case, which would have been quietly shoved under the rug, otherwise. (Thanks, guys.) The media results after the guilty verdict came down remind me again why we need feminism in this country: 'The tragedy of two young boys ruined football careers after the verdict was announced'. WHAT?! 

Did we forget that a young girl was raped and video taped, pissed on in the street and then turned into an internet joke and the tragedy is that two rapists can't play football anymore? Gee, thanks for some perspective on the world, CNN.

As per my norm, I posted it on Facebook, where I do most of my ranting via memes and little snippet comments. Here are the results (again, people are darkened out to protect their privacy, because I care about them. I'm out there on purpose, but I won't make anyone else be. I'm also friends with a lot of Transformers.):

So, I suppose the only thing left to say is....

.... and I will not shut up, not ever, until people see the fallacy is our "traditional" thought processes and something is done about how we as a nation mourn for the rapists and not the victim. 

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