Monday, July 15, 2013
Is Freedom Really This Complicated? | Charlestongrit.com | Bold. Smart. Local. Now. | Charleston, SC
Is Freedom Really This Complicated? | Charlestongrit.com | Bold. Smart. Local. Now. | Charleston, SC
This Freedom Thing, It's Complicated
It was Tuesday the week of July 4th, I was downtown on Cannon Street sitting under a brilliant unfurled USA flag. As I watched the stripes snapping in the southern breeze, I thought of the significance of Old Glory and all that was on it. I imagined it with holes ripped from artillery fire, stained in blood. Are we any closer to the freedom it represented when crafted over 300 years ago? The news headlines of the week suggest not. Travon trial, Paula Deen and a ruling on gay rights.
I realized I didn't know where our flag was. What if I don't find it? Am I perceived as unpatriotic?
Is silence an opinion? Quite possibly the loudest and most misunderstood. What do I personally feel about Paula, Travon, Gay marriage? I wave a freedom flag with a closed mouth. It's complicated, I'm confused with the conflicting double speak of most issues.
I watch the world tilt slowy..uber crawling toward some embryonic beginning that I wouldn't classify as change yet.
Confused parents give "reveal" parties to let family and friends know what sex their unborn child is. 18 years later they may "reveal" they were wrong. Gay parents hurt when their sons and daughters are ostracized by society and subjected to hate, gay children hurt because they don't want to disappoint their family.
Families still wring their hands in angst at reunions and weddings knowing the contemptuous views of their matriarch and patriarchs concerning interracial marriages. Do we excuse their archaic views by claiming them to be pre-determined by their formulative years? Do we silently pray that our children choose the route of less pain? Did the slave mother hold her newborn baby girl and pray that would be so beautiful that the plantation owner would fall in love with her and move her to the big house or does she pray that her baby girl is so ugly that she won't be looked upon and taken from her? And which is right? Who am i to say, a white southern girl? It's ludicrous for me to state that I understand the plight of the African American, the gay man or woman.
So, let's say that we could wipe the slate clean and start over. Could the remedy be as simple as teaching and practicing unprejudiced love to our children from the beginning. Emphatically.. Yes! Simple? No! Complicated because another family will NOT teach their children those values and it will be their hate that kills goodness. i.e, Jesus, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
So, do I sit quietly on the porch and watch the parade go by? Is it safer to keep my opinion to myself, to silence the strike of these keys right now? Oh... Yes! Ole black water keep on rolling, Mississippi moon wont you keep on shining on me.
But, the world doesn't change with safe. I think of John Mayer's song "Waiting on the world to change." Maybe we shouldn't wait, maybe the hope of change isn't in drawing lines in the sand, maybe it's by erasing them. Maybe it's by allowing each grain of sand to fall where it's creator destined it should be.
We will never be truly free until we unilaterally accept the rights of each other to choose our own freedoms without imposing them on others. I don't have to march in a parade, hold a protest sign or buy a bumper sticker. I simply treat you as I would any member of our human race. Silence is not weakness. Speeches, parades, concerts are all aftermath of what should begin in the quiet recesses of the heart. Usually beginning with truth.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
A Bug's Life...Lesson
I walked out of my door to find a pre-historic era bug upturned on the concrete path to my door. My first thought was "Omg, what the hell kind of bug is that?" My second thought was that I would literally rip my own skin off if that thing had landed on me. I eased up on it only because of it's precarious condition. Not the dreaded Palmetto Bug, this bug was huge, thick, dark brown with a shell that looked crunchy and hard. It was two inches long with antennas as long as it's body. Beetles on Botox?
Bugs make me do weird things, temporary turrets syndrome at church picnics, erratic driving and to the horror of my kids... pulling my shirt over my head at a baseball game when a June beetle flew into my neckline.
Too big to smash, I walked away. I had a brief tug of guilt for not up righting it. But, as the world turns... I swear the same bug I save will be the one that causes me to wreck on the interstate by coming out from under a seat. So, on with my day. I will let nature take care of itself. I mean it wasn't like I turned it over. It would eventually die of it's weird predicament.
I swear I couldn't get that bug out of my head. When I got home six hours later, I could see that the bug was still there as I walked up the path. It was still, it's antennas not moving.
Ok, I will just go inside now and surely a bird will swoop down soon and this drama will be over. Another pang of guilt, now I wanted it to be gone, because it reminded me that I did nothing to help it, I let it die.
I peeked out the door about an hour later. Still there. Ok, I will sweep it into the yard where the birds can see their dinner. I whisked it with the broom, it landed upright and it's antennas started twitching! I felt a small leap of joy. I guess 7+ hours on it's back left him a little wobbly, but it started inching it's way to the edge of the concrete. I shut the door quickly before that bird that I had been silently beckoning all day would swoop down and change the moral of this story.
I felt weirdly happy that the bug didn't die and that somehow I could change the course of nature and myself by simply offering a hand/broom out to a struggling bug.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Fear No Weasel
Don has been creative as a weasel in winning me over to his likes. e.g, Accidentally getting hot sauce on my lasagna, the wrong cut with the pizza cutter equals a tad of anchovies, The fan logically became acceptable white noise as it drowned out the TV when I went to bed first and then the latest, the crickets... They came in stealthily one night after I went to bed. I heard them several times through my dream fog and thought that a chirper was sitting on the window sill. When I woke the next morning I realized the chirping and was dronefully repetitive and coming from an app on Don’s Iphone and not the windowsill.
So after 25 years, Don has yet to convert me on beans with ketchup and scary movies. He picks out the movies, mostly because I will scroll through the movie list for an hour, A to Z to find one. He does a good job most of the time. 9 out of 10 choices get a Siskell and Ebert-less thumbs up. But, I believe it is his mission to find the end all movie that will turn me into zombie loving, blood sucking, fear seeking adrenaline junkie that occasionally and accidentally shouts the F bomb at the TV. So, every now and then a blacklisted movie will slip into the house in the guise of a misrepresented presentation that would go something like this.
Me: "What kind of movie did you rent Don?
Don: "It's a mystery"
Me: "Not scary?"
Don: "No, just eerie."
If I don't trust his shifty pose or non-committal gaze, I will further ask what the review says. To which his reply would be "Oh the usual, some violence, 13 or older with adult supervision." A few have left him on the couch alone with a whole bowl of popcorn for himself, while I entertained myself in another room.
He seems to have realized he has used the same terminology for 25 years and needs to be more creative. Christmas was a good example. When I asked him what we were going to watch this year, He answered simply "A western." Well, he didn't actually lie. But Christmas Day...Django?????
Me a grown woman, sat with my fingers laced over my eyes and fingers in ears. I looked around the theater at the wide eyes of other women, duped as well. When we got home, I didn't know whether I had seen the worst or best movie ever. I wasn't sure whether to take a shower, read the Bible or take a drink. I had to watch I Love Lucy re-runs to go to sleep.
Well, obviously enough time had passed since Christmas and it was time for the bandit to strike again. But, he stooped to new lows.
While getting drinks and a snack together I asked the usual. "What kind of movie did you find?"
He replied. "You will like this one. It's a romance, girlie movie." I plop on the couch as the movie begins. The screen rolled the movie title "Warm Bodies" as a blue skinned, bloody mouthed zombie lumbered through an apocalyptic airport.
I give Don the eye, he throws popcorn into his mouth and says "Watch it, you'll see"
I just shake my head in disbelief. Girlie movie. I believe I have as healthy an affection as the next person for dead people. But, when I open my eyes, I want them gone. If not, I want a cache of silver bullets, garlic and wooden crosses. I just can't grasp the moaning and stumbling incessantly throughout the eternity and there is nothing sexy about pointy teeth and blue skin.
Saying that, somewhere after the young, possibly once good looking zombie ate the heart of the alive girls boyfriend and started having feelings for her, I busted out laughing.
I enjoyed the movie more than I thought, but mostly because of Don's tenacity to sneak one in. After all these years it's nice to know there are a few surprises left. I might even put a dot of ketchup on my beans this week.
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