As a registered Democrat, this is the first time I have been targeted by the right-wing campaign machine. In my mail today there were nine political ads — six from the Republican Party of Minnesota, two from the Republican-supporting “Associated Builders and Contractors Free Enterprise Alliance”, and one from a Republican state representative running for re-election.

I remember reading the novel Clockwork Orange as a teenager, and being bewildered by the “Nadstat” language Stanley Kubrick created for his characters. The 2008 campaign literature of the Republican party is much like Kubrick’s experiment, except in this case the words are recognizable, but make entirely no sense given the reality of the situation. It’s the same kind of language that was recently employed by both Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens. Palin, upon reading a report that clearly stated she abused her power, insisted that the investigation found “no abuse of power there at all”. Stevens, after being convicted last Monday on fraud charges, stated on Thursday that he had not yet been convicted.

Denial in the face of reality would seem to be a poor strategy, particularly in politics, but even stranger than the alternative realities proffered by Palin and Stevens are the gaslighting slogans being offered up by the Republican party, seemingly designed to make rational people feel crazy .

Who can fix our economy? Only one party will fix the damage and prevent another crisis. Vote Republican.

Jobs lost. Spending up. Economy down. Energy prices Up. Vote (Republican) to end America’s economic crisis.

Vote Republican & Restore Balance to Our Economy.

Republicans will eliminate wasteful spending, balance the budget and regain the trust of the American taxpayer. [Emphasis added].

In these uncertain times, Americans have many questions….Republicans have real answers.

Help Republicans revive our economy.

Today’s financial crisis requires more than just a band aid. Vote Republican. Help fix a broken Washington and an ailing economy.

The Republican Plan: End wasteful spending for special interest projects not in our national interests and regain the trust of taxpayers. [Emphasis added].

There’s more, but you get the drift. Somehow, the crises wrought by eight years of a Republican administration is not the fault of Republicans, or of right-wing ideology. Somehow, even though our economy crashed while under the control of Bush and company, and the public’s trust was shattered, only more Republicans, sharing the same philosophies, can fix the damage. Only Republicans know, as Dick Cheney surely did when he decided to fill Halliburton’s coffers, which “special interest projects” are worthy of wasteful spending in the name of our national interests.

By way of some magical thinking, McCain didn’t support Bush with 90% of his votes, and the ultra right-wing Palin has no stake in the pro-war, corporate-pandering, pro-deregulation ideas that got us into this mess. As for all those Republican governors, representatives, and senators who refused to criticize their puppeteer, and instead spent the last four to eight years pulling strings and punches to ensure Bush’s will was done? Well, either those years never happened, or those politicians have been reborn, with only a scant memory of their lives before reincarnation.

It’s really a zammechat raskazz that the Republicans have vareeted, but my rassoodock just doesn’t buy it. And if that makes absolutely no sense to you, then I am surely worthy of your consideration — at least according to Republican logic.

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It’s a life Eileen never expected, and one she says smashed her expectations, leaving her feeling oddly embarrassed and filled with anxiety.   On occasion, she has to borrow $10 or $20 from better-off friends to pay for basic necessities.  Even though she is insured, she is afraid to get the hip replacement she needs for fear of losing income during the recovery period.

According to national government standards, Eileen F. does not statistically count as one of the millions of Americans living in poverty.  Her yearly income of $13,200 is $2413 above the 2008 poverty threshold for single adults, ages 65 and under, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau.   The threshold caps at $9,944 for singles over the age of 65, and at $13,540 for a family of two.    It is this threshold that determines national statistics on the number of people living in poverty in the United States.    Last August, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a report stating that 37.3 million Americans, approximately 12.5% of the population, were living in poverty in 2007, a slight increase from the 2006 figure of 36.5 million.

The model used to determine poverty thresholds was born from studies done by Mollie Orshansky for the Social Security Administration in the 1960s.  The Orshansky method has often been criticized,  but has not substantially changed since its adoption as a federal standard.  One of the major flaws in Orshansky’s method, which is based on minimum-level food consumption,  is that it assumes that others costs, such as housing, transportation, and daycare, can be cut back in hard times at the same proportion as food.

In effect, Orshansky started her food-costs-to-total-expenditures procedure by considering a hypothetical average (middle-income) family, spending one third of its income on food, which was faced with a need to cut back on its expenditures.  She made the assumption that the family would be able to cut back its food expenditures and its nonfood expenditures by the same proportion. This assumption was, of course, a simplifying assumption or first approximation, as she herself recognized. However, she had no data to support a specific different relationship between food and nonfood expenditure cutbacks.  Under this assumption, one third of the family’s expenditures would be for food no matter how far it had cut back on its total expenditures. – Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 4, Winter 1992, pp. 3-14.

There are many arguments that can be made against the Orshansky method, but the end result is that millions of America’s poor are not counted in the official statistics.  Variables, such as geography, non-cash benefits, and actual cost-of-living expenses make it difficult to gauge the number of people who subsist in our society with inadequate resources to meet essential daily needs. However, it takes no great leap of logic to understand that the figures used by the government grossly underestimate the number of those living in poverty.

Outside of the Census Bureau’s national statistics, which are most often quoted by politicians and the media, there is the matter of who is financially eligible for federal aid programs.   Every year, the Department of Health and Human Services publishes their own poverty guidelines in the Federal Register, employing an adaptation of Orshansky’s threshold.  In 2008, those guidelines were $10,400 for a single adult, $14,000 for a family of two, and $21,200 for a family of four.

Peggy Wireman, Ph.D. has extensive experience with government, economic, and social policy, and recently authored the book,  Connecting the Dots, which “addresses the complex relationships between family and community, and between community and other players affecting family and community life.”  Dr. Wireman, who has a keen understanding of governmental statistics, says that the definition of poverty has been out-of-date for decades.

“It was based on the assumption that people spent one-third of their income on food. Thus, food expenditure was then multiplied to account for everything. The problem is that relatively speaking, the cost of food has gone down while the cost of housing and health care has gone up.  A more realistic approach was developed by Wider Oppurtunties for Women.  They calculated what it would cost a family to live without government subsidy and without charity on a modest budget.  Modest meant housing, food, child care, health care, and a car which used to go to work and for one shopping trip a week.  The budget does not include funds for savings, education, entertainment, or any meals outside the home.   It is about twice the (official) poverty level.”

There is a persistent myth that assistance for poor families is easy to get and readily available.  While States and Counties employ their own guidelines, as well as the federal government’s, in determining who qualifies for various programs, they are all based on models that cut countless poor people off from the possibility of assistance.

In Minnesota, for example,  applicants for emergency assistance in the most populous county, Hennepin, must prove that the assistance given will be cost-effective and offer long-term (12 month) resolution to the immediate problem.  What this means is that those who find themselves in an emergency situation –- such as unexpectedly losing their job –- must show the County reason this won’t happen again next month, or the month after that.  Those who haven’t secured new employment have no way to guarantee this, so the County denies emergency assistance to them on the grounds that it would not be cost-effective.

Also disqualified are applicants who pay more than 40% of their gross wages for rent.  Under the county’s guidelines, a single head of household earning $8/hr. could pay no more than $554 per month for shelter. Outside of subsidized housing, a decades-old mortgage, or a dwelling in which the costs are shared by others, a $554 per month family apartment in the Metro area simply does not exist.

Bootstrap theories abound and are widely accepted, but Dr. Wireman has a different take after dedicating years of her life to studying the economic issues of American families.

“Most Americans,” Wireman says, “feel that people are poor because they don’t work hard enough.  Unfortunately, this is a myth.  If all workers who are making poverty-level wages quit tomorrow the country would shut down. We would have no child care centers, no hospitals, no restaurants, no stores.  Unfortunately, too, the myths that prevailed about welfare have been extended to cover all single parents. Working harder at lowly paid jobs does not lift people out of poverty.  The reason so many people are struggling today is that the productivity of workers is no longer being shared equitably with the workers.   The minimum wage corrected for inflation was $10 a hour in 1968. Eighty percent of American workers work in manufacturing of non-supervisory service jobs.  Their wage increase per hour since 1973 has been 35 cents.  Productivity has been rising.  Between 1995 and 2005 it increased by one-third, but two-thirds of this went to top management and the stock market. Only one-third of the increase was shared with the workers.”

In Connecting the Dots,  Dr. Wireman exposes the changes in business practices and public commitments that have made the American Dream unrealistic for millions of workers, both blue and white collar, and lays out a framework that she believes may help undo the damage.

In the interim, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and women like Eileen, and other people I’ve spoken with in the course of writing this series, including single parents and the elderly, often feel invisible in the colorful, abundant landscape that is the American Dream. They nurture their hopes, and tend to their crises paycheck by paycheck, looking less for temporary handouts than for a long-term way up, and out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

Note: A condensed version of this article was published by the Huffington Post.

Next: Part IV, The Health Care Crisis

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We live in a world of instant everything. Every human situation, it seems, comes attached with cliches, platitudes, bromides, stereotypes and parodies. There is, conceivably, a box to place every person in, and a label to slap them with. There are also socially created barriers that inform perception, determine response, and decide opportunity. As society evolves, so do these barriers.

In the 1970′s, for instance, it was not unusual for job applicants to lack college degrees. Today, four year degrees are required for almost every corporate position, including those that are considered entry-level.

Throughout history, but even more apparent in today’s political climate, the have-nots have born the brunt of social stereotypes, bootstrap philosophies, and feel-good bromides. They’ve been romanticized in songs and novels, damned by social critics, and sacrificed at the altars of law and politics.

The pride and strength of the working poor is legendary — their clothes are old, but never dirty*, their love for each other overcomes all, and they’re only poor if they choose to be* — because it’s love, and not money after all, that makes a person truly rich. They bear drudgery and ridicule with hearty stamina, and sing and dance their way through meager lives filled with hardship, always hoping, always praying, and never losing sight of what’s really important.

At the same time, there’s something wrong with those people — something inherently flawed about them, like their character, their ambition, or their intelligence. It can’t be about any of the “isms” because, as we’ve all come to learn through the example of the rare exception, the -ism’s don’t really exist. After all, if Loretta Lynn can work her way out of a coal mining town in Kentucky, and Oprah Winfrey can become a billionaire, then anyone can. It’s just a matter of really wanting to achieve, and working hard enough to find success. And since there’s no such thing as luck, unless you’re talking about the kind people make for themselves, there are no logical reasons for failure, only excuses.

Last night, engaged in a conversation with a new friend, I had cause to revisit some of my darkest days as a young single parent. My husband had managed to get a divorce from another state, with the Navy’s help no less, stating that he had no children. He left while I was pregnant and had a one year old daughter. His legal maneuver left him off the hook for child support but still gave him the legal rights of a father. There was no legal recourse for me since at the time my state, Nevada, did not cross jurisdictions. It took twelve years to find even the minor relief of terminating his rights. He never paid child support, and never saw or expressed interest in seeing the children.

I worked two jobs, while struggling to pay daycare and rent. One job wouldn’t cover both, much less buy groceries, and I was evicted twice, and had my power shut off several times. One of the lowest points I remember was a cold day in October, when I washed my cocktail waitress uniform out in a dark bathroom, with cold water, because I had no electricity. No heat, either, so the babies were bundled in snowsuits and covered with blankets. We had no food in the house to speak of, and when I woke up to go to work, my uniform was still wet. I had to hop a bus to daycare, then to a casino where a poker player fried my leg and my last pair of nylons with the tip of his cigar. I broke down crying, and was promptly fired.

In those dark days, hope was tinged with desperation and need, and I drove myself past exhaustion, while at the same time trying to be the kind of mother I always wanted. One who was essentially happy, loving, and present. It took years, an incredible amount of energy, and living through multiple traumas to make a life that wasn’t desperate, or teetering on the brink of disaster. It wasn’t even a middle class life — there was no home in the suburbs, 401K, or college fund — but it was a life that covered the essentials.

I know poverty because I’ve lived through its varied realities, from the grumbling hunger to the bone-chilling coldness; from the pain of infections I couldn’t afford antibiotics for, to being robbed because I lived in a bad neighborhood and was an easy target. I’ve suffered from the policies and punitive measures that steal hope, time, and money from those who can least afford to lose anything.

I know bootstraps and bromides. The romanticizing of poverty, and the damnation of the poor. In this series, we’ll discuss economic realities and policies, as well as the emotional cost of being poor in America, the richest country in the world.

Excerpted from songs:
*Stevie Wonder, Livin’ for the City
*Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors

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I’ve tried to get behind the Democratic nominee, even though he was not my first choice.  Maybe, I think, Obama’s two year campaign for the nomination while in the Senate wasn’t as calculated as it seems.  Perhaps he was right when he said he couldn’t accomplish what he wanted politically while in Congress.  Maybe his lack of national and international experience isn’t such a bad thing.  In any case, as a lower class, gay, liberty-loving, pro-choice, pro-peace, uninsured Democrat who is swimming upstream in this corrupt, leaden economy – and who doesn’t want her government, courts, and schools ruled by religious dogma – Barack Obama became the only choice I could make, regardless of my reservations.

I knew that, so I un-bookmarked my favorite news sites, determining that outside of casting my vote there was not much else for me to do.  The professional pundits would have their say a million times over, darts would be thrown and re-thrown, minds would be made-up fairly early, but barring another voting disaster like the one that was created in 2000, we would know who our future President was in November.  I had, and still have, confidence that it will be Barack Obama.

Then again, I remember the polls which had Gore leading significantly, and I will never forget that we ended up with a President who did not win the popular vote.  There was  corruption at some polling places, problems with machines, and disputes over absentee ballots.  The hanging chad debacle in Florida brought us televised images of Republican thugs, looming over vote counters like second-rate Mario Puzo characters.  In the end, it was an “activist court” – the same kind of court Republicans say they despise – that handed George his imperialist crown, and allowed him to bring this country to where it is now – on the brink of a major meltdown across every board.  Still, the vote was close enough to be in dispute.  It was close enough to leave delegates and the courts breathing room.

As I drive around the wealthy suburbs in the heartland of Minnesota, I see the McCain-Palin signs that those living closer to the city don’t see in any appreciable number. It worries me, but more than that, it leaves me feeling angry in a way that maybe only someone else who has really struggled in the past eight years can understand.

I watched Sarah Palin and Joe Biden politely dance with each other last night.  Her folksy charm, his bleached smile. Her giddy smile, his gentlemanly charm.  Her soccer moms and “Joe Six Packs” to his Scranton coffee shops and gas stations.  It was an easy debate, mellow and slowly paced, and from where I sit – in the living room of my rented apartment (where I’m a month behind on rent since my hours got cut) – passionless.  Neither candidate exhibited a sense of urgency over any of the issues facing us today, and both seemed out of touch with a large portion of middle America – who aren’t just worried about sending Billy and Suzy  to college, but about being able to provide them with essential basics, like food and shelter.

Yet the increasingly poor working and middle classes weren’t really addressed in the debate – except that Palin wants to make sure that they can’t declare bankruptcy.  Here in Minnesota, bankruptcy reform included a provision stating that attorneys must be paid their fees up-front before the paperwork is filed, at an average cost of $1600.  It’s a law that allows wealthier filers immediate relief, and that prevents those who are living in poverty from filing at all.  That was the Republican solution to what they perceived as massive bankruptcy fraud – to give richer Americans an out while further crippling the poor, whose jobs are the first to go, who are the least likely to have medical or disability insurance, and who cannot afford to stop judgments and wage and tax garnishments against them.

Palin said there were some “good lessons” to be found in these corrupt, predatory, pro-wealthy, anti-poor times.  People, she said, shouldn’t live above their means.  They shouldn’t buy a $300,000 house when they can only afford a $100,000 house.  Which might be good advice, if a $100,000 house truly existed as anywhere near the average anymore.  Instead, a vastly inflated real estate market has left Minnesotans with $230,000 “starter homes”, and in some new developments, the tiny tract of land those homes are on aren’t even included, but are to be bought after the home mortgage is paid off.  This was one of tactics used in order to create the appearance of “affordable” housing, which, in actuality, has ceased to exist.  A two-bedroom rental apartment in the Twin Cities metro runs about $1200 without utilities.  My daughter’s first mortgage, on a three bedroom town home, is $1600 and that doesn’t include the association fees.

In the meantime, the minimum wage is still less than $7 in most states, Target employees are still starting off at $8.00-$10.00  per hour, and bus drivers make $10-$12.  The starting pay for a public school teacher in Minnesota averages $29,907.  Factoring in 30% for taxes, and the cost of health insurance (if available) it is easy to see how and why so many Americans are living “above their means”.  It’s the economy, stupid, and buying a cheaper brand of toilet paper and clipping coupons isn’t going to get the average working class American out of the downward spiral of debt.

The myopic Palin, though, doesn’t wish to “point the finger of blame” or “look back”.  Which is odd, considering the blunders and transgressions of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the level of corporate corruption and political underhandedness during their reign.  An unwillingness to admit these issues even exist doesn’t exactly bode well for a future of tackling them head-on.  (Where are those missing Halliburton millions by the way?)

Someone will, I’m sure, take the time to count the number of times Palin said the word “maverick”.  I lost count.  McCain may have once had some maverick ideas, but his ideas today, on everything from health insurance to troop withdrawal, are ineffectual and stale, promising nothing more to the working and middle classes of this country than more of the same, for longer.

Then again, what we have from Barack Obama and Joe Biden is hope, and I feel scant little of that, particularly after Obama (and McCain and Clinton) voted yes on a (now) $800B bailout, filled with pork barrel spending, that EXCLUDED consumer protections that were part of original bill.  Taxpayers will now not only be helping some of the most corrupt and predatory lenders on Wall Street, but they’ll also be shelling out $478M to the film industry for making movies in America, and $192M in rebates to rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

“It is completely unacceptable for any kind of earmarks to be included in this bill,” said McCain the week before he voted on the bill.  Later, he said he “had to” support the plan because the country is “on the brink of economic disaster.”  Eschewing Palin’s advice, McCain looked back and pointed a congratulatory finger at himself.  “There were plenty of other bills that I fought against, voted against” because of pork, he said.   This one, though, which takes corporate welfare to a whole new level, and which is the most massive gamble in U.S. economic history, McCain helped pass.

And Barack Obama voted right along with him, as did the majority of Congress, even while the public’s phone calls to Senate offices were running about 100-1 against.  What can be said about politicians who ignore the will of their constituents, and who refuse to rise above the din of political panic to fight for what’s right, just, and proper?  Even if one was to believe a bailout was the solution, there was no logical reason for the pork barrel earmarks, or the exclusion of consumer protections.  I find it ironic that the two men who are promising to bring change to Washington – to end “business as usual”–  have failed to do this as Senators.  Instead, lesser known mavericks from both parties, willing to risk Wall Street’s disfavor and unpopularity among their peers, were the ones who stood up against the tide and said no.

There were no mavericks in last night’s debate and sadly it appears there are none on the horizon.  There’s Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin –  some hope for change, or more of the same. There are all the usual cliches from both sides, a disconcerting lack of substance, an unwillingness to fight the good fight, and there’s been no sense of urgency about anything other than Wall Street’s financial institutions.

As for the war, and spending for the war, I am amazed by the misleading rhetoric.  Funding for the military has not just gone towards armor and equipment for the troops, it has gone to enormously expensive contracts for giant private entities like Halliburton.  Voting against “funding the troops” isn’t always about the troops, but about who we’re choosing to rebuild parts of countries we have demolished, how much we’re willing to pay, and how accountable we wish to hold them.

Patriotically baiting one-liners such as “brave men and women who have died for our freedom” continue to be used to chill dissent.  The awful truth is that many of our dead soldiers did not to save our freedom.  Our freedom was not in danger of being taken away.  While 9-11 was an unparalleled disaster on American soil, it was not an attack from another country, but from a group of Muslim extremists, most of whom hailed from our government’s ally, Saudi Arabia.  Our freedom from terrorist attacks since that event can be attributed more to tightened security at our own borders than waging war abroad.  Very few of the major extremists, including Bin-Laden, have been caught and even if they were, the destructive bane of radical Islam would not stop with their capture.  Further, even if America and her allies could force democracy on Islamic states, there is no guarantee – and more than a strong likelihood – that it would be temporary. Islam does not separate the political from the religious, and Sharia law, which Muslims subscribe to as part of their faith, is at odds with American-style democracy.

Our want (and greed) of oil from these regions has, in so many ways, hampered the evolution of the Middle East. We have propped up dictators and made multi-billionaires out of royal families.  We have funded madrassas, educated their scientists, and given technology and weaponry to oppressive armies.  Our worries that the religious extremists in the Middle East will go nuclear are not without basis – yet we continue to pour money and other resources into the region for the sake of oil.  At the same time, we have failed miserably in developing, producing, and promoting other forms of energy.

I am angry.  Disgusted.  Disappointed.

But I’ll vote for hope, even if scant and waning, because the alternative is just too frightening to consider.

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They are always beautiful, the Belladonna women, if not in the classical sense, then in some unusual and overstated way. Like an electric light show in a darkened theater, a Belladonna woman charges the atmosphere around her, flashing her eccentric style and rare form to the amazement of a populace unwittingly numbed by everyday plainness. Visually stimulating, the Belladonna woman is also magnetic, capable of drawing an individual of interest or even a large crowd around them with barely any effort at all.

Incapable of mediocrity in appearance or attitude, even on those rare occasions when they try to blend in, a Belladonna woman rarely escapes notice –- or the judgment of others. While most will find her colorful demeanor intriguing, some will feel a need to shut her down –- to gray wash her with some sort of damnation. They will decry the falseness of her palette, the way she pridefully carries her individuality, and they will reject her for her vanity.

In response, the Belladonna woman will brighten her colors, stand taller, and narrow her beautiful eyes. Unlike the male Narcissus, she will avoid the sword of judgment. She sees her own beauty not as a source of shame or folly, but of personal power, a feeling which she nurtures as a source of strength and confidence. Shunning didactic mythology, the Belladonna woman refuses to be the moral to anyone’s story, including her own. Morals are for the rugged, the religious, or the simple. Instead, the Belladonna woman will have her own set of  scruples, which she may reorder from time to time according to her ethics at the moment, but they will always be strongly held and forcefully applied.

Yet, for all of her seeming strength and confidence, a Belladonna woman is easily hurt. Whether her vulnerability comes from a place of ego or heart is often debated, even by those who know her best. They wonder about the duality of her occasionally fragile spirit and her unbreakable pride. They may wonder for a lifetime, because the Belladonna woman always leaves mystery – and so many other things – in her wake.

All parts of the true belladonna are narcotic.

Like a siren’s call, the Belladonna woman is hard to resist. She has a lyrical quality about her, a deep vein of emotion and truthfulness that rises above the daily din. The emotions will be her own, as will the truths –- and either may be shaded by incongruent hues –- but the way she sings them will make true believers even out of jaded skeptics.

Many are content to sway to her song from a distance, whereas other will feel a need to serve her in some capacity. The Belladonna woman, however, will reject most people who seek her out. She is selective, and her choices are predicated upon her needs or desires at any given time.

The call of a Belladonna woman who accepts someone into her inner circle is not the call of a mere friend or lover, but of a female monarch. To enter her court, whether it’s a rundown apartment in the city, or a gleaming skyscraper, one must have something of value and worthy of royalty’s favor. Once they are in, she may not ask them for their biggest gifts, but she will expect them as her due. Putting the Belladonna woman in the position of having to ask for anything will set off a surge of distrust and unease in her, since she feels that those who love her should anticipate her needs and understand her desires. If they do not, and fail to learn quickly enough, the Belladonna’s song will turn into a metaphorical call of “off, off with their heads.” To fail her is to show incompetence, and she will not suffer the blunders of others for long. She is a woman whose sense of self is very much reflected in her environment. She cannot feel as confident and secure when those who serve her, her rooks and knights and pawns, are clumsy and inadequate.

It would be easy to call her a bitch, but it wouldn’t be wholly accurate. While the Belladonna is a queen among women, and an often unpredictable and demanding one at that, she has a glowing vibrancy about her that’s both fascinating and contagious. The Belladonna woman is drama, comedy, excitement, and adventure. To be with her is to look at life through many colored lenses. Every day, and sometimes several times a day, the spectrum changes, and it is always lively, and always animated.

Belladonna was an important ingredient in Witches brew during the Middle ages, often being equated with female sexuality.

The narcotic nature of the Belladonna woman’s appeal can offer solace as well as seduction –- a feeling of flying, or at least of being light years beyond a dull existence. She will take her lovers to places few others will ever experience, and teach them how to soar their spirits farther, higher, faster. Her sensitivities will move her lovers, as well as her friends, in a profound way. Both will feel instinctually protective of the Belladonna woman, even during her most steely phases, suspecting that her stubborn shows of strength are, at least in part, a cover for deeper wounds.

Lovers feel heightened just by being in the Belladonna woman’s presence. Sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and textures all seem sharper, richer, deeper, and somehow more real than they’ve ever felt before. While in her court, lovers feel compelled to stand taller and be more heroic than they ever have before –- to immerse themselves in a shared life that is fully thriving and saturated with desire.

It is the constant challenge of being in the Belladonna woman’s good graces that lends fire to the flames of her would-be heroes. Even small tokens of appreciation from her act as a catapult, launching lovers into a quest to find more, do more, love more, and be more. It is this never-ending quest of “more” that leaves one reeling with happiness over every success, and newly motivated by every failure. When love is present, and the Belladonna woman is in full bloom, the quest is more invigorating than exhausting.

It is when she wilts and turns away that the trip, once so beautiful and enlivening, turns bad.

Belladonna was used during the middle ages to gain confessions. This psychochemical torture would confuse and weaken victims, making them unsure of what was fantasy or reality, what they had done, or had merely imagined.

The sudden absence of her brightness leaves a void, and with a Belladonna woman, it is almost always sudden. It may be as simple as boredom for her, or a chill she suddenly developed when a particular lover’s gift, or even a friend’s, failed to please her. It may be that a quirk, a whim, or a new pair of eyes seen from across a crowded room piqued her interest, and curiosity in a Belladonna woman rarely goes unsated. She is a woman who acts upon her feelings, swiftly and confidently, and she is unlikely to consider any explanation necessary.

Left in the darkness, alone with a love that is not returned, those who have been up-ended by a Belladonna woman are wracked with grief and unanswered questions. Initially, they will torture themselves over what they might have done or failed to do, but soon they will question their own part in the Belladonna play, ruminating over the gifts they gave so freely, and the sacrifices they made without hesitation, so that they could stand in a ray of light that was not their own, and that never could be.

It can takes months or even years, but eventually the blackness turns to a familiar shade of gray. Numbness sets in, and its blank palette is felt as a relief. Life moves forward, at escalator pace, on some auto-pilot never noticed before. In time, feelings start to return, but they are guarded and framed in question marks. Still, even in the painful aftermath, the purples of African violets and the oranges and reds of sunsets stand out, as do the feathers, the bricks, the cracks in the sidewalks. . .the lilt of a piano, or the strum of a guitar. . . . the quickening of a pulse, the warmth of skin upon skin, the chill of morning, and the heat of fire.

Nothing after a Belladonna woman is the same as before. Even loneliness is more acute, and longing more intense.

And one day, you will see another Belladonna, beautiful and colorful, and charged with something rare and electric. Your eyes will meet hers as she is sizing you up. Instinctively, you will straighten your shoulders, stand a little taller, and the hero that resides in your heart will start pounding. . . .

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One of the blobs I recall came from a philosophy class, in the form of a particularly stubborn student who sought support for his shapeshifting opinion. “Reality is all just what we believe,” he said. “If I didn’t believe this Pepsi can existed, then it wouldn’t exist.” No matter how others argued that the Pepsi can was a material fact that existed independently of his thoughts – that it would exist with or without his belief in it – the student persisted in a type of egotistical thinking that left him in charge not only of objects in his own path, but that gave him the God-like ability to change matter into non-matter.

Outside of that class, I had never run across people who were prone to believe that a Pepsi can – or any objective fact – couldn’t really exist without their permission. They may have had differentiating opinions and beliefs, but they were based on some part of reality, even if cherry-picked to meet a personal need, belief, or preference.

For instance, I once had a neighbor who was enthralled with Tammy Faye Baker. For reasons that escaped me, he just adored the heavily made-up Queen of PTL and religious scandal. When I brought up issues like 24K gold bathrooms, “seeds of faith”, and vulnerable, workaday investors, he didn’t deny the facts – he simply hand-picked which ones were more important to him. She was funny, and charismatic, and he thought she had paid enough for her crimes. He chose beliefs that best met his personal concept.

And we all do that to some extent, particularly for people we love or admire, or even hate. We often magnify either the good or the bad, until the good is shined to a heroic luster, or the bad is blown up to villainous infamy. Reams of poetry are written for new lovers, who are coddled in the glow of novelty, while scathing diatribes are written about former lovers, who became stale, hurtful, or disappointing in some way.

In the world of shape-shifting reality though, Tammy Faye Baker might be Mother Theresa in same-sex drag. Maybe those tears she shed were really the sweat of Jesus and his twelve drag afficionados.

Lovers, past or present, may be wiped from existence with the stroke of a new memory. Maybe that drunken one night stand didn’t really happen. Maybe people just woke up naked together because they were recreating Rodan’s The Kiss for artistic reasons when they were suddenly felled by the sleeping disease African trypanosomiasis. Maybe, too, the lover in question wasn’t really a human being, but a sex-starved ghost like the one who visited Anna Nicole.

After living through The Year that Blew My Mind, I gathered up my gray matter to ask a singular question about the shapeshifters: Why? The singular answer that came back to me was Motive.

As complex creatures, we are connected to each other not only by DNA, but by story, opinion, and belief. We lack no opportunities to hand-pick facts and beliefs that best fit our individual paradigms. We can overlook bad traits in those we love because their love makes us feel great, and feeling great is more important than finding fault. When the bloom falls off the rose, and love lessens, then the bad thing we once ignored suddenly overwhelms everything else. The wet towels left on the floor become a symbol of disrespect – the forgotten anniversary becomes evidence that he or she never cared in the first place. Opportunities to connect or disconnect abound, and are most often reasonable, even if often exaggerated. Wet towels and forgotten anniversaries are annoying, and can be symptomatic of a larger problem.

The question in the shape-shifting world, though, is why people seek to change material fact or create whole new matter altogether. The answers are as varied as the motives.

Recently, I heard a story about two friends who had a private conversation. One of those friends then went and shared that conversation with another friend. That friend then made their conversation public, and a joke was taken wildly out of context and used as ammunition against friends #1 and #2. People formed strong opinions based on misunderstood third-hand evidence, but no one – not a single person – thought to question the motives of friend #3, whose actions had a rolling stone effect of harm and damages. There’s little doubt that she knew it would, as the resulting fallout proved, yet the major role she played in creating strife went unchecked. Motive? To create drama and gain attention. Mission accomplished.

Closer to home, The Bastard continues to make up rules as he goes along, leaving devastation and despair in his wake. His motive is to feel more powerful, and to exert what power he does have in ways that buoys his flagging ego. Mission accomplished.

Bush, Cheney, and Company continue to reorder matter and facts in their Invisible Pepsi Can world, where an “axis of evil” exists against the backdrop of the All-Mighty, All-Good, All-Powerful capitalist structure of America. WMD’s exist, then they don’t. Soldiers die, but it’s not all that sad if they hide the coffins from public view. It’s not about the oil, but then it is – oil companies who haven’t been in Iraq for 36 years now have no-bid contracts. The mission is really, finally accomplished.

Those of us who believe in objective truth can’t let ourselves be undone by those who believe that the world spins on an shape-shifting, make-believe axis. The truth of both fact and matter will eventually bear out, no matter how many people choose to create blobs of something else.

The shapeshifters are frustrating (and even frightening when they hold power), but by examining their motives – by asking just that one question – we can better understand the world they live in and avoid getting caught up in their crazy-making blobs.

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