In Defense of the 2009 Dream

Posted on 11/11/2008 by Jane Devin

John Lennon struck a chord when he sang, “you may say I’m a dreamer, well, I’m not the only one”. And he was right. To be human is to dream — and to want to bring our dreams to life. Dreamers, though, have gotten a bad rap. Our antagonists would have the world believe that those who imagine a better, more inclusive and peaceful world are ethereal beings, idle wanderers, and lost souls.

It’s a myth that dreamers are incapable of rationality and lost in the elusive. Both rationality and imagination are behind every brush stroke of Mona Lisa’s smile, and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. They have connected – beautifully – in the pen strokes of Shakespeare, in the musical notes of Mozart, and in the inventive genius of men like Isaac Newton and Bill Gates. Every human being has the potential to share this duality. We are, as a species, gifted with complexity, and a desire to know the divine.

It’s a new election season in America, and on the heels of disaster, the possibility of change sparks both our imaginations and our desire for a more rational world. Is it possible, we ask, to heal the wounds of people and the rift between nations? Is it possible to overcome the well-oiled machine that has sanctioned the rule of morally bankrupt and intellectually empty leaders? Can the voices of reason and possibility rise above the rallying cries of war and more war?

Despite those who would suggest otherwise, it was dissent against rigid dogmas, and not religious fervor, that informed every word of our Declaration of Independence. And then, as now, the authors of a new age seek both a dream and an absolute. The dream is peaceful progress and the building of a nation where every human being has the opportunity to reach their highest potential. The absolute is never again. Never again can we allow the want of revenge to override reason. Never again can we stand idly while politicians and big corporations sink our country into the morass of corruption and the swamp of endless debt.

When our highest dreams and most rational actions are joined, we may overcome not just the stalemate of political divisions, but other social issues.

Presently, over 500,000 children live in the limbo of foster care. I can imagine a day when the most innocent and vulnerable among us are truly protected, not just in a time of crisis, but for the duration of their childhoods. When the “best interests of the child” is a promise fulfilled, and where a child’s right to live in safety, without fear, is considered paramount.

I imagine a world in which every child is given multiple and varied opportunities to find, nurture, and expand their potential, and where doing so is not a luxury, but a given. I believe that if we were truly motivated to nurture the best within our children, we would find many more Galileos in our midst. Einsteins and Kings, Van Goghs and O’Keefes, and yes, Barack Obamas.

In a country that sought to revitalize the rational-imaginative minds of its people, we might see a final end to discrimination. We might see a day when false limitations are universally known and believed to be false – and where character really is the ultimate determinant of one’s opportunities.

I can envision a time when rational tolerance is practiced. When the steady progression of humankind is the goal of all cultures, including the cultures of the traditionalists and the devoutly religious.

Religion and tradition should not be used as justification for stunting the evolution of humanity, or as an excuse for denying the inherent right of others to liberty and freedom. No God or other high-minded entity would have us mutilate the genitals of little girls, rape women, or slay, torture, or starve thousands of people in order to advance a political, religious, or cultural agenda. To live in a world where even one act of such violence is considered unavoidable, or par for the course, is to have twisted the noble concept of tolerance into soulless apathy.

Humanity is not soulless, but our challenges are many, our divisions are great, and recent years have discouraged our ideals. So many, reeling from tragedy, or facing a time of personal struggle, are feeling the weight of despair. They may even be afraid to hope for better days, particularly in a climate that has traded rational dreams for ever-deepening political divides – a climate in which war, torture, and death was marketed as a rational response, and those who sought answers and accountability were derided as “bleeding hearts”.

There’s a saying – “we all want to change the world.” Actually, we know that some, particularly those who profit in a time of war and destruction, would like to see it not change at all. Others find change threatening in some fashion.

The dreamers among us move forward, past our fears, because our minds recognize them as unnecessary limitations, and our imagination longs to see what is on the other side. We long to expand the boundaries and break the unnecessary barriers. We long to fill our individual selves with the light of possibility, and then carry that torch to the outside world. We long to create a legion of united individualists, who will stand together and usher in a new age of revitalization, and the reconciliation of our ideals with our everyday realities.

If we can dream it, it is possible. A battle to revitalize the human spirit requires no enemies, and a revolution of peace requires no violence.

If we were to each follow our highest ideals, we would likely find ourselves not divided, but united. Not alone in our idealism, but joined. Not lost in idle dreams, but wholly invested in making them come true. 2009 is only our beginning. Our end is nowhere yet in sight.

Share this:

While Awaiting the Rack & Condemnation of the Religious Wrong…

Posted on 07/30/2008 by Jane Devin

Subtitled: If my eye offends you, fuck you. It’s mine.

Tomorrow, the religious wrong, while pretending religion has nothing to do with it, will attempt to beat me over the head with their imagined moral authority and their too-real power. Chest-beating Christians will circle around me in a vulturous group, waiting to take the eye they feel they are owed. Not because it’s really owed, but because they feel a sense of entitlement, especially when it comes to black sheep who aren’t members of their flock. Stay tuned for that story.

For now, I want to tell another story about God, who’s often confused with Jesus, even though the two actually had little in common except a disputed paternity claim. The pre-Jesus God was pretty fierce. He razed whole cities in anger, and didn’t even spare the children. He turned a woman into a pillar of salt for merely glancing over her shoulder. He led a man to hold a knife to his toddler’s throat as an act of faith, and then said hey, just kidding, you passed. Not a nice guy, God. Not someone you’d want to invite to your weekend barbeque or cocktail party.

God’s image needed a little softening up, so along came Jesus, a wild story, a bestselling book, and all these years later, millions of crosses and Virgin Mary’s dangle from the walls, necks, and rearview mirrors of the righteous believers. Except many of them are not all that righteous, by definition of the word, tending to take after the almighty God far more than the gentle Jesus they melded him with. Meaning the badly religious are often some of the most wrathful, unforgiving, and punishing people here on Earth. Yet they demand for themselves a level of respect that far eclipses any good they created – if they attempted to create any good at all.

At least God is said to have created life and Earth. The Religious Wrong, on the other hand, have created only monstrously huge institutions to perpetuate the idea that using God as their shield makes them infallible by default. Sinful, but perpetually forgiven, no wrong is too wrong for absolution. Absolved, they are pure, and pure they sin again, and the cycle leaves them, at least in their eyes, exonerated from moral blame or judgment outside of Heaven’s.

The same people will cry “human nature is sinful” when confessing, yet once the Hail Mary’s are given and curtain is pulled back, they are quick to return to their state of imperviousness: Jesus forgives them, even if only through ancient words and stained glass windows, and this forgiveness is far more important than the forgiveness of other people, no matter how badly they’ve hurt them.

The funny thing is – and it becomes funny if you witness it often enough – is how quick the Religious Wrong are to disown each other when the proverbial shit hits the fan. The Christian who beats his wife and kids isn’t really a Christian (even though the bible allows for a little family beating, as long as the victims are women and children). The Muslim who murders isn’t really practicing Islam (despite that whole yarn about martyrdom and 40 virgins).

The first time I consciously processed how reactionary and frightening the Religious Wrong could be, I was in 7th grade, in Mrs. Hand’s class. I casually said “Oh, God” in response to something a classmate said to me when Mrs. Hand flew out of her chair, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me up to her desk. I had no idea what I had done to provoke the attack, although she kept insisting that I had cussed. My response of “God! No I didn’t!” threw her over the edge, and it was only then that I suspected. I was sent to the principal’s office, where I spent a fruitless half-hour with Mr. Campbell debating the issue of free speech and religion in a public school. Of course, Mr. Campbell won because he held the power. I left school the next year, when the choking, claustrophobic feeling of school became too much to bear.

I had really exited years before, as a third grader who was denied a skip in grades for “failure to conform to the rules of the classroom”. That year, I tested three to five grades above level in every subject, but couldn’t get through the torture of a school day without drifting off, or sneak-reading a book carefully hidden on my lap. Counselors were consulted, tests were taken, and everybody except my 3rd grade teacher thought I should be moved to fifth grade. Mrs. Herron’s reasoning was that such a move would be a “reward for bad behavior”. A cross-wearing Catholic, Mrs. Herron didn’t believe in spoiling a child, even with education, and her rod was to rack me into submission by way of mean-spirited boredom. And I, a child who loved books and learning, grew to hate school. I became a daydreamer and clock watcher, who learned through books on loan from the County library rather than through people.

People were scary to me then, and often still are. Irrationality frightens me, and more so when it’s ensconced in religious mysticism. The structure of an “organized” religion, complete with masses of brethren, allows religion a credibility and standing shared by no other fable or myth. I have to wonder if millions of people believed in Leprechauns, how many monuments would be built, how many laws written, and how many offenses would be taken at those who didn’t believe there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Tomorrow, the religious wrong will pretend that religion has nothing to do with their eye-plucking. They will talk, instead, about offensiveness, mine, of course, because God knows they are pure, blameless, and ultimately absolved – even as they talk crudely of tits and ass, dicks and balls, white trash, Mexicans, and bodily functions. Even as they scream profanity across the aisles, bite each other’s backs, and seek to do real harm to others – they are forgiven.

But let a black sheep make one sarcastic comment . . . and all hell breaks loose.

More to the story tomorrow.

Share this:

God, the USPS, and me – the next Charles Bukowski.

Posted on 07/20/2008 by Jane Devin

Leaning back in the cheap office chair, his hands behind his head, the Bastard tries to defend the indefensible. If pressed by the God he believes in, he would have to admit to being drunk with power and high on self-satisfaction, but God is a long ways off and he has years of Sundays left to repent. For now, in this 11×14 room, he fears no retribution, and all the glory belongs to him.

His greasy hair is tucked under a baseball cap but it’s his brother’s team, not his. I settle on this detail for a moment, and know that if I were a more cunning person, I could use it to my advantage. If I were more like Jesus, I might even find some compassion for the Bastard. In either of those scenes, I might start off telling him about my millionaire sister. The one born to favored status because my mother dreamed that the ghost of her beloved sister, Olga, entered her womb during pregnancy.

So pretty, my mother would say of Dianne Olga, like an angel. The angel worked for six years of her life, married two men of means and retired early. Wearing blinders, she waxes passionately about bootstraps and hard work, and how her tax dollars shouldn’t go to people who are too lazy to buy health insurance.

The Bastard’s brother was a famous baseball player, a World Series champ, whose fourteen year career left him set for life. The Bastard, who grew up playing the same game in the same Minnesota fields, isn’t even a real supervisor, but a 204B – postal lingo for a mail carrier acting as a temporary supervisor.

His act is rough and unpolished. He can’t hide his smirk or his love of power, no matter how fleeting or temporary. He peels the schedule he so carefully crafted from the clip board and hands it to me.

There are rural carriers in the postal service who are losing their homes to foreclosure and writing bad checks for groceries. Unlike city carriers, who are paid an hourly wage, rural carriers are paid based on yearly mail counts, which are always held during the lightest season of the year. This year, the count was in March. No holidays, no back to school ads, no spring clearance sales. The mail count was so low, that the pay for almost every route ended up being cut by one to three hours a day. It doesn’t matter how many hours the carrier actually works to deliver the mail – he or she will be paid for the hours calculated during the annual count, no matter how heavy the volume for the rest of the year.

A large number of the rural carriers employed by the USPS are relief carriers – people who passed the exam to become a regular carrier, and who are waiting for an open route. In the interim, they work at a lower hourly wage with no health insurance or retirement benefits. The wait for a regular opening can take years.

The schedule the Bastard hands me is meant to add injury and insult in equal measure. He has taken to punishing the relief carriers he does not like, while giving full-time or nearly full-time hours to those he does. He has bent and twisted official rules and a scheduling matrix to meet his goals.

Houses are being lost.
Cars are getting repossessed.
Lives are being fractured.

He smirks. Adjusts his baseball cap. Points to a regulation he interprets as giving him the ultimate power.

Christianity is everywhere in the government building. It is taped to the walls, inviting people to morning prayer meetings. It is on a box of prayer requests. It hangs from USPS keychains, and is tacked to work areas. The Bastard is one of those that leads the charge. Thursday mornings will find him hunched in a corner, hands clasped, praying to the God whose forgiveness is a sure bet.

The very Catholic postmaster nods his head in approval, knowing that he has bent rules and convention to hire the daughters and sons of favored workers, while extending punishment or goodwill arbitrarily – with tendencies that favor the religious.

The union meant to protect workers is an association. The National Rural Letter Carriers Association. They publish a newsletter with inspiring messages from their official chaplain. Their mammoth failure to negotiate a fair contract for their members is glossed over with talk of God, ethics, pride, and the value of hard work.

Relationships are falling apart.
Anxiety and hopelessness are setting in.
Suicide has been quietly talked about.

The saying “life isn’t fair” has never caused me to shrug my shoulders in apathy. Life is not fair, but most of us know it should be, and can be, much fairer than it is.

This fight is not mine. It’s too big and encompassing and too dirtied by bureaucracy, politics, religion. Ignorance is bountiful, and poorly intentioned people are everywhere, but there are limits to what any one person can do in response.

Instead, I wait for the day people take the blinders of religion and arrogance off, and come into their own humanity. To be forgiven or not based on their intentions, to be loved or not based on their actions, to be blessed or not based upon their merits.

In the meantime, the Bastard smiles like he’s hit a home run in the fourth quarter and the bases were loaded. His parents and God are sure to see that he’s really every bit as good as his brother, even if the cheering spectators are limited.

I plan to escape like Charles Bukowski. Bukowski was 49 when he quit the postal service, saying “I have one of two choices — stay in the post office and go crazy … or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.” He starved brilliantly, becoming one of the most prolific writers of his generation. His experiences with the USPS provided him with many anecdotes and characters.

Knowing that I will soon starve my own way into bliss makes the Bastard less dangerous to me. His darting eyes, paunchy gut, and greasy hair become details for some future story that speaks to the anti-Christ of men who believe their salvation is assured by virtue of Jesus keychains and weekly prayer meetings.

Share this:

Jonestown, Guyana: Effect & Reflections, 29 Years Later

Posted on 12/11/2007 by Jane Devin

I. The Horror of Jonestown

I was sixteen years old, and just months into an emancipation that was all at once frightening, peaceful, and confusing. I had no idea what I was doing, but was determined to let experience be my teacher. After a few fits and starts in the foreign territory of Northern California, I found a decent job and a furnished apartment. I signed contracts and opened accounts – and was absolutely giddy when I received my first box of checks.

I had a charged-up kind of confidence that came from years of hopeful and escapist reading. Positive thinking mantras, bootstrap philosophies, self-informed destinies. Think it and be it. I had scars, deep ones, but I was determined that they would fade. That as an adult, I would bury those crushed and diseased layers of childhood under so much happiness, love, and positivity that they would cease to exist in any real dimension, and become only distant memories.

Then, Guyana. Jonestown. A Utopian dream for those disenfranchised or disenchanted by society – a dream that somehow went terribly wrong – leaving over 900 people dead, including 287 children.

I didn’t really believe the news when it came blaring through my tiny black and white television. Adults die, but children – we bounce back. Adults are screwed up in a thousand ways, with their alcohol, their deceptions, and their rage, but children – we know, don’t we? We run, we escape, and when we can’t – we bounce back. We hold our thoughts and dreams in a special place they can’t touch. We make promises to ourselves, and take pleasure in every new inch added to our height. Soon, we will be grown-up. We will reach the magical age, and no one will harm us anymore.

I was so mad at the media. The newscasters wouldn’t shut-up, even after hours, about the dead Congressman and the camera man, their lives, and their families. It seemed to me that the media was pronouncing that these men, who lived professional, distinguished lives, deserved to be mourned, while 900+ other people existed only as a sensational backdrop – nameless, faceless, without stories to tell, or families left behind. I needed to know: Who were they? What happened? Why? How? Did they try to run, did they struggle, did any children escape, did anyone, in a moment of revelation, scream for others to stop? How could one man, who originally led others in a quest for equality and harmony, lead them into murder and suicide?

287 children. Really dead. Not able to bounce back from the sickness of adults.

I used my bus money to buy every newspaper and magazine available, and became frustrated and obsessed with the story of Jonestown. The answers were sparse and shallow, and the children remained largely anonymous. Adult survivors who were interviewed still seemed blinded by a charismatic madman and a broken promise of Utopia. At sixteen, I found them selfish and weak, and despised them for fleeing into the woods without carrying so much as one defenseless child with them.

Jonestown was thousands of miles away from the Silicon Valley, where I, like thousands of others, spent my working hours in a sparkling clean factory filled with diodes, capacitors, and motherboards – cutting edge technologies meant to make life easier and more efficient. While the horror of Jonestown was being broadcast, cars stalled at their usual pace on crowded highways, people fought for parking space at the malls, and billboards and radio stations hawked their usual wares.

People made jokes about the “Kool-Aid drinkers” as if there really was no more to the story than a bunch of really stupid, worthless people who followed a delusional madman into a murderous pact. But there were bent and broken syringes, showing signs of struggle. Reports of parents screaming, children screaming, and being forced to swallow. Tiny teeth marks on plastic syringes tell a story very few people had the heart or mind to tell.

They took the children first. 287 of them. Agents of Jones, for the most part, led them; a few parents. They led them to the podium like little lambs – and lions – to slaughter. It was a coldly calculated move, designed to make the bereaved parents easier to manage, more willing to let themselves be killed.

The dead and dying were placed out of sight, to painfully convulse to their deaths under the warm Guyana sun. They say it took about five minutes for their hearts, even the tiniest, to stop beating.

I grew up after Guyana. I changed, my dreams changed, and my thoughts shifted outward. My introverted nature turned itself inside out, and I began to demand answers for every unfairness, injustice, and act of cruelty I saw, experienced, or heard about. I became, to some, a hellion; a thorn. Others found my passion admirable, but “too much,” too “intense”. I was urged (and often warned) to be more diplomatic, to temper my tongue, and slow my thoughts.

I did / I didn’t. I tried / I failed. I burned hot and cold, got burnt, and burned myself out for months, even years, at a time. Often, I stepped up only to get shot down. Sometimes, I rallied back, fought harder than ever, and succeeded. There are rarely any easy choices in a life that’s determined to make a difference, no matter how small, limited – or even eventually inconsequential – that difference might be.

II. Naming the Rage

I raged most, and still do, against those in positions of power and authority – including parents, religious figures, CEO’s, celebrities, media moguls, politicians, judges, and those in law enforcement – who misuse and abuse their positions and then hide behind the many protections they are afforded in order to prevent their misdeeds from being discovered or, in the case of the wealthy or powerful, to escape punishment when they are caught.

I name as my enemies those who neglect, abuse and even kill their children, leaving scars, blood and tears in the wake of their negligence or violence. Those who pilfer and steal the hard-earned money entrusted to them – those who purposely distort the news millions of people rely on – those who make shady backroom deals to line their own pockets – those who bring their personal prejudices to bear in deciding the fates of others – those sworn to uphold the law, but who hold guns to their wives heads, torment their children, or beat handcuffed citizens to a bloody pulp, and then hide behind their badges.

I name you as my moral enemy, if you are one of those who are so dazzled by the light of power or celebrity that you will invent blinders or a different set of rules for privileged others. If you are one of those who will create excuses for authority figures that you would not create for your own friends or neighbors. Those of you, for example, who would support the torture at Abu-Ghraib as a justifiable means to an end, yet loudly proclaim America to be the near-infallible and supreme promoter of Human Rights.

I name you hypocrites – those of you who would line the streets to cheer for a perverted star like Michael Jackson, but who wouldn’t hesitate to demand the harshest sentences for sex offenders in your own communities. Those of you who would make heroes out of someone like (the now-dead) Kurt Cobain, or other drug-addled stars – but who want the poverty-stricken crack addicts in your own neighborhoods locked behind bars for years. (A disease is a disease regardless of how much money or talent a person has).

I name you selfish, those of you who vote only for the lowest taxes, and the least dent in your wallet, even while you claim to care about the most defenseless among us – the poor, the children, the disabled, the elderly.

I name you cowardly, those of you who choose blinders and invent excuses for even the worst acts perpetrated by those whose talents, lives or positions – or even whose looks – you idolize. Those of you who, although fully capable, won’t stand up in the face of adversity or injustice, but instead cower when there’s any perceived threat to your time, your peace, your reputation, or your resources.

There are many violent, abusive, power-hungry, corrupt, degenerate, illogical, dishonest, and cowardly people in this world. If I have enemies, it is because I do not care to make such people my friends.

III. A Fighting Spirit, a Fighting Chance

287 children died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. The last remnants of my childhood died with them, and out of the tattered, torn spirit of a young adult sprung the heart of a fighter. I will fight for you, I promised them. You’ll see, we’ll make it right, we’ll make it matter. We’ll show others how to bounce back.

Twenty-nine years later, I carry my own battle-worn legacy, and it’s unremarkable really, except for the strength of convictions born out of the ruins of tragedy, and the long-reach of lessons learned. The intensity of my beliefs and feelings will die with me, and even the strongest of my words will fade into oblivion or obscurity. I will one day leave the earth as most people do – as the children of Jonestown certainly did – largely anonymous, leaving behind barely a ripple. Stronger, younger, and perhaps better-situated others will pick up the sword. I hope so, and pray that they will have more success than I did. At the same time I would not wish anyone into a life of prolonged struggle.

IV. Braving the Fears

Once, when I lived in the country, I made a hesitant companion out of a lone red fox. She would often come near my porch in the early hours of morning. Fascinated, I began to set out bowls of dog food for her, and watched her from behind the window whenever she came. If I spoke, or moved too quickly, the fox would startle and take off running. I watched her then, in silence, for several months. One morning, I opened my door to find the tiny, lifeless body of a fox pup on my steps. He was still somewhat warm but had gone stiff. I could not revive him.

I never saw the mother fox again, but I thought – if even the wildest creature can brave her most ingrained fears to try to save her young – what is wrong with us?

What the hell is wrong with us?

* * * *

Share this: