Haptic Storm

I finally broke down and went to our local PTA meeting.  It was one of the most depressing experiences in all the meetings I’ve attended.  The entire meeting was about money.  How to raise money.  How much money we have.  How much money we spent.  When/how to distribute the food ordered for the fundraiser.  How to get more money from the kids, what kind of rewards to bring the kids, how to get play equipment and benches for the playground, etc.  All I kept thinking was if we didn’t have to be talking about money, what amazing things we could accomplish!!  More than one teacher might show up.  We could have kids there too with their heads full of ideas.  We could maybe talk about curriculum, ways of making the school more accessible, fair, fun, comfortable.  Organize committees.  Begin a peer mediation group.  Arrange to get local members of the community to come speak to classes.  Authors.  Musicians.  Doctors.  Veterinarians.  Midwives.  Newscasters.  Graduate students from YSU.  Older people who have seen a lot. 

So many bright detail-oriented parents in one place, what a waste of energy and time…  It was truly depressing to see the serious conversations taking place about what would be the best way to entice students to bring in boxtops.  OH MY GOSH WE HAVE TO GET MORE BOX TOPS!!!!  I have no idea how to participate in meetings like this where I think the whole direction of the group is SO off-track.  It isn’t their fault, really, because the fact is whether I think the schools should get money for playground equipment, toner, benches, etc. the fact is they don’t, and these things are necessary and good for the children.  But are they the MOST important things for the children?  Something inside me tells me that the children would love more than any bench or party or swingset- the ACTIVE involvement of parents and teachers in their learning about the outside world. But instead, parents figure this raising money business is "being involved" in your child’s education.  Argh.  I just don’t know.  I guess it makes for quicker less brain-intensive meetings…

I think people who are learning to be less human (that is,
children/teens who are being taught how to live learn and love
"within the system" aka "growing up") try on different ways of being.  Some of these
manifest as laughing at others’ suffering, or actively hurting others,
or as escaping through drugs, alcohol, work, sex, etc.  The things I remember that always make me cringe with shame are those parts where I was trying on a particular way of disconnecting from others.  I remember an instance in particular where my brother and I were on the bus on the way to elementary school (he was 2 grades younger than me) and one kid was either getting teased or beat up or something bad was happening to him.  I remember clearly the difference between my brother’s reaction and my own reaction.  I laughed.  Brother cried.  It is this kind of memory that really makes me feel like a bad person.  Here’s two kids from the same family, same background, same amount of tv, etc., yet such a difference.  I think it was partly a difference in perspective- I was usually the one getting teased, so maybe I felt happy that for once someone else was getting picked on and I actually got the joke.  My brother was always well-liked by his classmates, so maybe he would view it differently?  I’m not sure.  I do know the system we live in, where caring for others is seen as a weakness, has to be taught to children from birth so that our humanness will not one day get in the way of our economic system.  Babies who get held too much are "spoiled", maternity leave is SIX [unpaid] WEEKS, we were actually taught to be racist- explicitly and without apologies, we do not recognize that slavery exists today in the US.  This is all humans learning to be less connected to each other in favor of our economic advantages.  I just hope the kid on the bus is ok and thinks I’m a jerk!

I try to teach my children to be connected to others but it is hard for *me* to be connected to others.  I want my children to grow up fully able to love oneself, others, and the universe we are in, but I struggle with it myself.  I hope to continue to learn how to do this with the help of my amazing beautiful partner.

As a mother, I always worry that while I may learn good things and good ways from other peoole and from books, there could be something missing inside me.  Some lack of real caring that will show through in a moment too quick to cover up my flaws.  Memories I have of totally uncaring reactions can sometimes add up in my mind and make me feel this way.  A moment too quick to plan for like a wreck or some disaster-  the instinct to save yourself overpowering the instinct to save another.

Anyway, I fell yesterday- OUCH.  I was holding my little one at the time.  So how did it go?  I was pleased to see that I caught myself on my elbow instead of my hand, thus protecting her from too bad of a fall.  She was scared, that’s all.  My elbow still hurts pretty bad, but it’s not serious.  But I’m still not convinced there isn’t that uncaring bit inside me.  It could have been one of those things where you’re holding something and you just don’t have a chance to think about letting it go in the moment.  Like my first waterskiing experience (probably shared by many): the boat pulls you and you shakily press your skiis into the water, start feeling freaked out, then you fall but forget to let go of the rope even though you were warned to let go of the rope if you fall…  So there you are, being dragged behind a boat half drowning because it doesn’t occur to you to let go of the rope.  It’s possible this was the case yesterday as my shoe got swallowed by the blanket on the stairs (don’t ask) and I tried to stop the fall with my other foot which was also getting swallowed…  Bang.

I grew up in Louisiana.  I lived there for 14 years before moving to another part of Louisiana.  After a few years of moving around, I lived in Las Vegas for 10 years.  In those two places, I grew roots while I lived there.  I felt like I was home.  I shared with the others who lived there dealing with the same road consruction, I smelled the same wildfires, I knew the surrounding areas in a local kind of way…  Like not the "Morehouse Parish is north of Ouachita Parish" kind of knowledge you’d get from a map, but the "Morehouse Parish is where Bastrop is, who sometimes plays my school’s team, and where I was swimming once when a coach asked me if I would be on their swim team and Ouachita Parish is where I live."  THAT kind of knowledge.  That’s roots and I feel it’s important to grow them emotionally, to feel like you’re home, that you have a home, even with all its defects.  It’s also important if you want to be politically involved, to understand certain issues, other people who also live where you do.  I would say it’s good for children to get this feeling too because it teaches them to make strong connections to not only other people, but the earth they live on, the seasons, the different bugs, animals, plants, trees and food associated with a particular area. 

To have no sense of place is I think a certain kind of stress that’s hard to describe.  I’m glad I grew up with a sense of place; I think it’s partly why I connect so strongly with the earth and I would hope to be able to pass this vague sense onto my children.  Growing roots is a way of connecting, of inter-being, of refusing to be the islands this capitalist culture seems to demand that we be.

I’m only halfway through the book, but I’m feeling the need to write this anyway…  As a socialist, I’m pretty disturbed that Orwell tries to make socialism into the same thing as fascism.  No wonder people like my mom think socialism is scary.  I’d say that it is more of a fascist dictatorship with two separate classes: proles and party members where the government holds all the wealth and power.  That’s not socialism!  In a socialist society, *the people* hold all the wealth and power.  What I mean by government is *the people* governing themselves. In a utopian socialist society, there wouldn’t even be any police because everyone would have all their primary needs met- like healthcare, housing, food, education, and clothing.  Anyway, I kind of understand now why people who read 1984 might recoil from the word "socialist" if this is the representation it gets in popular literature. 

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I am a white girl with no style.  Close to 75% of my current wardrobe was free.  I can say without a doubt that I am 99% of the time NEVER bothered by this.  I’m a mother of three and I do not have time for shopping, I do not have a need for expensive clothes, and I don’t believe in buying new clothing anyway if it can be avoided.  For one thing, there’s great clothes at second hand shops if you really must go buy another whatever it is you’re looking for.  None of the money you spend there will go to GAP or Old Navy or any of those sweatshop corporations, and depending on the store, you will probably be supporting a locally owned family business.  Also, I strive to be socialist/anarchist in my actions because I believe in socialist/anarchist ideals, and as such, I do not want to wear clothing with all those damn logos all over them and support our corpocracy, the power the US and other Western corporations has over other people in other nations (and our own).  So I try to wear free clothes.  

My free clothes happen to come from my sisters-in-law who have LOTS of fairly nice clothes to pass on.  I mean lots.  I have never had so many clothes in my life, even when I was getting second hand stuff for my work.   Our diaper bag happens to be a freebie too, and it has "Callaway Golf" logos all over the damn thing.  I hate it, but I don’t have patches- I don’t buy those either!!!

My point?  Well, remember how I said 99% of the time I’m not bothered by my lack of style?  Yesterday was the 1% I guess.  I attended an anarchist event where we didn’t know anyone.  I looked like a damned Easter egg.  These people seemed pretty ok, but I felt EXACTLY like I did in elementary school when I was the poorest kid in school and no one wanted to be my friend.  I wasn’t turtly enough for the turtle club- again.  Only this time it was a little more disturbing because these were people I was hoping to feel at home with for once.  I understand there is a security culture to think about, but as my partner pointed out, if your style is so defined, wouldn’t it be easier for infiltrators to copy?  Wouldn’t the best way to prevent infiltration be to talk to newcomers about key issues and get a read on their politics instead of looking for tattoos, dreds, and patches?  It felt like just another clique to me. I don’t look like an anarchist or a hippie or even a socialist, but that doesn’t mean I believe that heirarchies are good or that there should be a class of people who are hungry, homeless, or in need of healthcare.  In my own way, my clothing matches my politics just fine.

That said, I would go again (under certain conditions)!!  I did meet one couple who seemed really nice and I felt good that we met.  It was also good to be around people who have similar politics to us just to know that they exist with all their flaws and vulnerabilities.

So I don’t plan to go out and find a hippie skirt and the right bandana. But I might make some patches for that damned diaper bag using scraps of free clothing that either doesn’t fit or has logos on it…  

OH the pink!  My 6 month old girl has thankfully almost outgrown all the pink infant clothes she was given.  She’s starting to wear some of her brother’s old clothes now and I couldn’t be happier about it.  It’s not so much the color pink per se, as the AMOUNT of it, and the frilly impractical nature of some of the clothes.  It’s also the urgency people seem to place on her "looking like a girl".  At AGE ZERO!!  She’s ZERO YEARS OLD, people.  She is a baby who is learning social skills, motor skills, language skills- she needs to be able to move around without the people she’s bonding with constantly having to worry over a dress staying in place or a dumb bow in her hair.  Why is it so important to people that baby girls wear pink and/or frilly things?  Do we want girls to be display dolls, passive and not participating in life from day one??

She will be expected quite soon enough to wear chemicals on her fingernails, her hair, her face- to look at her now and think about that is really horrifying!  She’s so perfect the way she is.  We all are.  I can’t stand fingernail polish or the other things I will probably have to put on myself when I get a job again.  Ok, that’s all for now.

Giving my little ones naps all the time I spend quite a bit of time thinking about sleep.  I was thinking how sleep is really a common denominator, how whether you’re in the US or in Venezuela or China or Darfur, everyone has to sleep.  To me this puts everyone in the world in a common space almost daily.  Obviously not everyone sleeps at the same time, but if everyone sleeps 8 hours a day, then at any given time, a third of the world is asleep! 

It would be really nice if we could use this space to connect with each other.  I know the logical answer to this, that sleep already serves its purpose by giving our individual psyches and bodies time to heal and work out issues, but it seems there should also be something bigger going on…  something to remind us of our many common denominators like the desire for freedom, family time, food, clothing, shelter.