P o c k e t CT

I received this email called Nuevo California (at the bottom of this post for reference) twice after this last election, and about fifty times after the 2004 election. I felt the disenchantment so sorely after the 2004 election. How could we?, I mean even how could we get close enough for fraud to pull an election? As president Bush declared that he saw a clear mandate in this close close election I cried. I mourned for our reputation in the world, and for the continuance of what I considered poor choices and dangerous paths. I felt sore about the depth of the loss and I wanted to hide. The humorous yet derogatory emails contained an element of how I felt.

I looked at every state that winner take all made this happen with perplexity. I couldn’t understand about Red state mentality. I started to try.

So I have been thinking about this for a few years now. I spent hours on this state stats site confirming that yes it is true. It would seem that all of the larger morality, health and social problems are concentrated in the states that vote republican. Why? How? Can it be that people are voting to “protect marriage” because they see it is in danger more than their blue state counterparts with 22% less of a divorce rate? Is that it? Is morality a big issue in these states because they are surrounded with problems? It may be part of it but I don’t think that covers it entirely.

I was reminded of this again when I watched a TED Video on the difference between liberals and conservatives. (yes another one, I know. I am addicted)
This is a psychologist delving into the five ethical structures of humanity. Fascinating. The reminder of the 2004 election was that his presentation used this image as the usual reaction of liberals when trying to understand the red state mentality. Am I the kind of person who thinks that if someone doesn’t agree with me they must be dumb? Probably as long as the laugh lasts and then no, I want to look deeper.

This time I got only two emails and I noticed something very different. First off I have to say that I think that it is kind of crass to spout off like this. We own all the toys and we are taking them home to play without you.

What I noticed this time was about the resources listed here, particularly: fresh water, food, education and low-sulfur coal. Is this really that one part of the nation is wealthy in countless ways and opportunities and therefore educated and open to change and the other part is well *not.* Therefore the red states are filled with a lot of the problems of poverty – bad food, low education, less opportunity. Perhaps the higher alcoholism, teen pregnancy, porn consumption, obesity and everything else mentioned here is due to a larger poor population comparitively. Perhaps the educated and better off people of the red state more fear the “take” of their impoverished neighbors because there are more and the dole is bigger. Is this all really that the blue states are the haves and the red the have nots? I know this is not news here but it hit me harder this time. And it hit me harder how crass this email is because of it.

So this time “we” won the election. With the state of the economy and the talk of new deal style investment into our country perhaps we could learn from how it got this way and invest in the red states. Not just the military base investment that was done in the new deal but perhaps an investment that will equalize the resources and bit. Maybe in a while the wealth and empowerment will fix the problems that make the red states try to legislate morality. Wouldn’t it be nice if Alabama was our shining star of alternative energy creation instead of the lead of porn consumption per capita in the USA. If Texas was solar power central would the obesity naturally go down? Would Tennessee’s teen pregnancy rate stabilize if…

We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss. We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and
entrepreneurs. You get Alabama . We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90
percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their
projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We
get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico

Peace out,
Blue States

(This is a re-post from last year. I tried to think of something more absurd but couldn’t)

Today is Absurdity Day. Why? Know one knows, but it just is. Maybe we should all get used to it take it all in stride like good existential theater. Or maybe you prefer to run around mouth agape at all the over the top crazies you encounter. For me, I think I’ll try to just stay calm.

Some time ago I had a lovely cuddle date with my awesome friend, Diba. She got a bee in her bonnet that she needed more affection and started to frankly ask for it. “Can I have a hug?” “Do you mind if I hug you?” “Will you put your arm around me I am cold?” Sometimes she also coupled this forthright requesting with a mischievous desire to crack the shells of the shy folk around, or bring the aloof into her arena. It is all fun to watch. Lucky me, I get asked, “Can we have a cuddle date?” Yes absolutely. We plan to lounge, read short stories to each other, massage, hug, chat, snuggle … fantastic. The date was arranged.

At some point that day or maybe before Diba says “Jerry is coming too” She is a community builder by nature and can craft anything into bigger and bigger groups. In this way the little cuddle date turned into a cuddle threeway.

At first we talk about God, the structure of the universe, my distrust and disdain for pretentious new agey mumbo jumbo. Here is have to explain myself, Diba teaches Reiki does different kinds of work in that area, but doesn’t in the slightest trigger my snake oil salesman alarms. But that Aristotelean color coded level chart in The Journey of Souls turned me off. We chat about what we hope for out of various relationships in our lives what is happening with people we know. Then our conversation turns to sex, interesting experiences, how to communicate in bed.

And now I bring you to what I want to share with you on this holiday

D to J: there is this one thing I keep telling you about how to please me better and you never remember it

J scrunches his eyes up a little trying to recall

D: Can you remember it?

J: You know there is a perfectly good reason why I can never remember this

at this point Jerry starts getting animated. Too animated for a prone position on the outside of the bed and leans up

J: You see long long ago all the men would be out hunting together and they would kill a dinosaur and bring it back to the tribe. There would be big celebrations and feasting.

(J gets all the way at the end of the bed and waves his arms around in celebration, chest hair popping out of his unbuttoned shirt in a very caveman like way)

The women had been hungry for a long time and awaiting the men’s return. This would go on for a few days. Then the meat started to get a little rotten and the woman started to be a little dissatisfied. She would start her endless nagging. nahnahnahnahnahnahnah

(J puts hands on hips for nagging woman effect)

So the men quickly plan another hunting party. Happy to be away from the women for a few days they traipse around the jungle. (the hands are animated again)

After a few days the men start to get hungry and hungry for the women’s attention. They are thinking to kill another dinosaur and get back the arms of their people. One man could remember the nagging of his women and just took off – he never had any offspring but the guy who couldn’t remember what his woman said (eyebrows up past normal hairline) he bred.

D: What I told you was that you need to be a little gentle

There are so many issues with that story it is hard to begin. I could go on about hunter gatherer societies and how hunting was less important for sustenance than gathering (except in a few.) I could bring up that it is highly unlikely that man ever hunted dinosaur and more commonly chased buffalo over a cliff and feasted on the wreckage. I could playfully knock J off the bed for making that nagging sound about women with two of them in a bed. I could talk about how most lovers start with what their last lover liked but the better ones adjust and you just proved yourself intractably mired in a certain style. But this like good actors in theater of the absurd should be take as if completely mundane. Or like a good fable give it a nice moral at the end.

Moral: Caveman or not if what you are doing puts a woman’s nails deeply embedded into the popcorn ceiling, back arched like a cat screaming and ready to kick you because it is too intense – it is good to back off a little. A good reminder for all of us.

Enjoy your absurdity day. Let me know how you celebrate…

(This is a re-post from last year. I tried to think of something more absurd but couldn’t)

Happy Homemade Bread day.

It is obvious to me what to do to celebrate this day is eat bread and gush about the people in your life that have made you some. First and current is my housemate Adam. When I say “Do you know how to make Pumpernickel Bread?”– he looks in up and informs me that he will make some if I procure some rye flour. I say it is under there and he pulls it out right then and there to get going on it. I took half the loaf to Christopher’s house and yesterday we ate it toasted ala toaster oven with kale and cheddar cheese. Adam is worth celebrating.

Robin makes the best damn potato bread in the entire world.

Rebekah can make croissants and when she did so at the Leverett Coop I made extra efforts to get them.

How about you? Tell me about your favorite bread. Tell me about your favorite bread maker.

I have been amusing myself lately looking at physical symptoms of being in love. I watched this brilliant TED talk from Helen Fischer on the science of love and the future of women. This cinched my addiction to TED podcasts and got me thinking. Her thesis is that romantic love, rather than being an emotion is a three part drive. This trinity consists of lust, love and attachment. She approaches this talk through both the scientific and through literature. The talk was fabulous you should check it out. She put a mess of people into an MRI and scanned the brain activity of people who claimed to be in love. In this article she talked about the how love is biochemically indistinguishable from OCD. Happy news for the people popped in the MRI with the requited variety but the same obsessive brain patterns existed for the poor souls whose love scene was all awry.

So after that I have been thinking about the universal experience of being in love. In this presentation she talked about a few of the most common symptoms. That you have focus and attention on that person, that things have special meaning, that you are charged with incredible energy, she talked of craving, of sexual possessiveness and heightened motivation. I think of another book that I read that talked of the warped sense of time you get. The feeling that you have known the person for longer than in reality, or longer than you have actually lived. These all seem like universal “symptoms.”

A bit ago Jan asked me “Are you in love” and for several reasons I said “Ummmmm” and changed the subject. But now I am looking at this in this Helen Fischer scientific way. So I start looking for a complete list of symptoms to see about this both dreaded and sought after mental state.

I google with a little luck. Many are teenie-booper-ish. This one seems very 20s. This one has the symptoms of being in love may actually be a debilitating medical condition and is very funny. You might not be in love, you might be schizophrenic or you might have Parkinson’s disease. Why would we seek out something that mirrors symptoms of mental illness? Oh yeah Dr. Fisher claims it is a drive like thirst and self preservation.

Then I ask Jan.
Do you think there are physical symptoms of love?
     Yes of course
and they are?
     eating more/less depending, euphoria
here are some I have read: energy surge (less need for sleep food etc) time shift of length of knowing the person (like you feel like they have been in your life forever) hard to imagine life before
ocd symptoms, heightened attention, that there is huge beauty in small things
(I have had that one since I turned 26, non stop) also that there is a feeling of awe and transcendence about the world
more?
     yes also, all of the above but if you don’t feel those things does it mean you are not in love? because by those standards Stricken section—forgiving peoples faults more easily accepting them.

All this was interesting but is this all of them? So maybe I’ll just ask you. Are you in love? Do you have any other common symptoms of love to add to my list?

Dark Flow

This last week I had a dream about my mom. I am a little sketchy about the exacts of it, basically she was telling me that she was going to go to Europe for a month. I was happy for her plans. I was so incredibly glad to see her. When I woke I wanted to crawl back into my dream to a place where the missing her can hold off for a bit. It is the same place where I am not dreading the aspect of having the holidays come and figuring out how to have them without her there.

The next morning Christopher was telling me of his dream which was of him driving a bus and having a cat which he decided to stick on top of the bus in a straw nest he made. Then he lost the cat, which held some heightened dream significance. The dreams have merged in my head. The bus is now one of those touristy double-decker jobs and my mom is out looking for the cat for him. I hope she finds it because then even if it is only a dream mash up I can say “hey Mom this is Christopher, he is really neat, reminds me a lot of you actually” and “Christopher, this is my Mom, she is awesome.”