Bombs and babies. They don't mix.

I got into a discussion last night about... various things. Actually it's pretty much always the exact chain of things, with this particular person. The important part is that it started out being about politics and ended up being about America's wars in the Middle East.

I've been thinking about that conversation since it took place. I accept, from the outset, that me and this guy are just never going to have the same ideas about what's best in foreign policy. We just really can't because we're both stereotyping each other before we even get going. To him, because I am a "hippie"...

Actually, let's clear up for the sake of argument; I am really not a hippie. I bathe, I do not seek to accentuate all my experiences with weed, etc. But it's a term that Josh's friends and I sort of silently agreed on, that basically means that I am some kind of bleeding heart, peace-seeking, saddened-by-violence weirdo that they're never really going to understand, but will love anyway, because I care for them like family.

Anyway, to him, because I'm a hippie and I have not done time in a war zone, my opinions about when war is warranted are inherently flawed, because I am missing information about what war is really like. To me, he's coming at this from inside of an institution, and can therefore not be trusted to see out of a lens that has not been colored by that institution and his experiences within it.

We are probably at an impasse and so we probably should drop it. Forever. But it won't happen... I can't stand it when I feel like maybe the reason that someone is making (what is in my perspective) a mistake, in their conclusions about... things like foreign policy, is that they have bad information. I want for them to go forward with what is not bad information, and if the conclusion that they come to afterward is the same as it was before, more power to them.

For example, I used to hear this one alot, "Barack Obama is a Muslim!"
And so I asked the question, "Is that why you hate him?"
And what I'd often get is, "Well... kinda, yeah."
To which I would, of course, be forced to respond, "Well then you don't have to  hate him anymore! Because he is not, in fact, and never has been a Muslim. That has been ruled out for a long time."

See what I mean? Bad information. Not that I ever converted a single person who hated Barack Obama, just by informing them that it was ridiculous to still claim that he was a Muslim, but I couldn't like... NOT say it, because it's such an ignorant thing to either believe, or to use as ammo against him. There are plenty of other options. I can list them for you. I voted for the guy, and he's pissed me off on more than one occasion. Ask me sometime.

The problem with being me, is that there seems to be very little that I actually CAN refrain from saying. And I usually fail pretty substantially in certain areas. Like, anything that has to do with... killing a shit ton of people all at once, i.e., genocide.

Because this is the argument that this guy and I always end up in.
Him: We need to just fucking nuke the place. You don't understand. The Middle East is NOT salvageable. They aren't like us, they hate us, and they will do us harm at every available chance, as long as they exist.
Me: That might be an option, if there was any way 'the powers that be' could get away with blowing a bunch of women and babies straight to hell. That's what does it, dude. It's all the dead babies that come with things like nukes. It will never happen. If we nuked someone right now, the U.S. would be facing full blown riots.

Which is true, and I was trying to stay logical. Take the emotions out of it. Why are nukes not an option? Because we have the internet this time around. And everyone would know about it instantly if we chose such a path, and there would be chaos in the streets. If the Occupy protesters haven't taught us anything else, we need to be aware of how close the U.S. has come to some real serious shit, that ALL those people would pour out into the streets like they did. Everyone is pissed. It's not always about the same thing, but I guarantee you, that nuking the Middle East would bring a scary ass crowd out of the woodwork. The government won't do it, because they know they can't get away with it.

Also, there's this line of reasoning; the problem with bombing the shit out of your enemies, is that the pattern seems to be that we go about 40 or 50 years... and then we find a new one. For real or imagined reasons. The British in the Revolutionary War. The Native Americans in a bunch of wars. Ourselves in the Civil War. The Axis in Eastern Europe. The Nazis in Germany. The Communists in Southeast Asia. And now the Terrorists in the Middle East. And I know there was a whole lot of shit that happened before that, but the U.S. didn't exist to be a part of it.

It's not that I think that I am really the one to decide which battles are truly worth fighting. It is that... if your answer to dealing with your enemies is just to nuke them once they become "unsalvageable" in your eyes, then... we're essentially going to blow the fuck out of a different spot on the globe every half a century or so, when someone really pisses us off........

Don't you see the PROBLEM with that???

We have limited space on this planet that is livable, and you are talking about poisoning big ole... chunks of it, one by one as they make us angry... until what? Until people stop trying to make us angry? Look at the entire record of human history. Empires rise and they fight and they fall. There will always be a new enemy. It just requires looking at things in longer than a 30 year outlook. We can't nuke someone every time they become the face of evil to us. It isn't a realistic option in any case at all.

That, and really... let's just go ahead and bring it up because it is the biggest, and most important reason that we can't just nuke the Middle East. I said it once earlier. DEAD BABIES. Period. End of discussion. You cannot ask us to be ok with something that amounts to extermination. If we dropped a nuke on any of our enemies right now, even the ones I despise the very most, I would be on the next plane to Washington D.C. Nukes = mass murder = genocide.

So really, when I get into this discussion with people, what it boils down to and what I always want to ask is the question at the root of the matter; "You're telling me... that you'd advocate genocide?"

And here we go back to what I think just has to be bad observation. Because I may never have been in an active war zone, but I have spent some time in what is left over afterward. And without that particular perspective, how can you advocate causing that kind of destruction?

Regardless of what you think about a certain nations customs, traditions or beliefs, how barbaric they seem to you... regardless of how dangerous to us you think they might be, I think that the aftermath of such devastation is something that should be factored in.

I believe that it would been impossible for anyone to have sat next to me and been unaffected, on that beach chair in little, tiny Cambodia, where the U.S. has dropped more bombs than have ever been dropped on any other country in history (more bombs in fact, than we dropped in ALL of WWII put together), and watched the people with no legs or no arms, and sometimes none of either, claw their way or be dragged by someone else, down the beach to stop in front of each beach chair and hold out their hands to you. Little kids, whose left or right side got to close to an explosion and now... has no extremities. People whose faces ate so much shrapnel that they are barely recognizable as humans anymore. And most of all... the maimed babies. Every base instinct that we have to survive and evolve recoils at the idea of murdering or injuring babies. Do I have to keep going???

We can talk logically about whether or not dropping bombs is an answer. But underneath, I'm always going to say, that unless you've seen that, you don't know anything. If you could look me in the face after that and say that genocide was a considerable option... I would have nothing else to say to convince you... but I would very seriously have to question where along the line you had ditched your humanity.

ADD writers...

I am having trouble picking out what things to write. I have a bullet list of topics. Some of them kind of run together. The blog I wrote last night almost strayed away from being an essay about my inability to believe in my elected officials power to get anything done, into my mistrust of really rich people, the ways that debt effectively enslaves people, the way that I no longer believe that politicians even believe in their own platforms, and a few others that I've thankfully forgotten for the moment.

This is the problem with being an ADD afflicted writer. There is so much I want to say that I often derail in the middle of something and run off in some direction that doesn't even make sense. Ugh... I need Aederol. Is that how you spell it? Anyway... I can't stay focused and it makes me... a shitty writer. Or at least that's how it sounds.

I want to write about Detroit, and the way it affected me SO deeply when I spent Opening Day downtown there last year.

It was so beautiful... under that thick layer of graffiti, filth and decay. The most spectacular buildings... it was a proud place. It still had the air of a city that had once been a mecca for arts, music, theatre, high rollers, ladies in big fur coats, and gentlemen opening the doors of flashy Rolls Royce limousines for them to step out onto the curb for a night on a very big town. All of that... all of those memories, hanging like ghosts in the broken windows of the high rise buildings. It shook me, that place.

But I know that part of the reason it affected me so much was that I had just come from Costa Rica with Josh and was very much... not ready to be back in the U.S. I feel very at home in gritty, run down, kind of sketchy places, because THAT is what the real world actually looks like, and that is where I had felt comfortable for the previous 2 weeks. Detroit, being the first city in the U.S. I've ever been to that had that same edge, was instantly dear to my heart.

That and I was emotionally... pretty raw anyway because the trip to Costa Rica had only served to prove, to Josh and I both, that whatever we were, it was getting deeper by the hour, and me going back to Alaska and leaving him in Michigan, uncertain of when I would be with him again was making me... feel pretty damn near desperate.

And, on top of that, there was this... crowd of very pretty girls squealing and running up to give Josh hugs when they saw him. Which... I know, happens when someone from a small town goes to what is essentially a small-town-reunion after being away for so long. I'm not generally affected by that kind of stuff very much, but I am human and well... a girl, and even though I hate to admit it, I suffer from a mild possessive streak when it comes to that boy, that I was not previously familiar with. Some of the girls there were not happy to see me. Some of them were very kind to me. All of it was interesting... but, none of it helped my having no idea when I was going to see Josh again, or what would happen to us if we were apart for too long.

Because... I've been in a long distance relationship before. It was wild. It was EPIC. And, eventually, it failed, because love is unsustainable over long distances, especially when a relationship is new, and I was suddenly incredibly afraid that that would happen with me and this man that I couldn't stop staring at all the time, and could never stop thinking of.

A couple of times on that day, it occurred to me that Anthony (the long distance ex) would have probably been in man heaven at that bar party. He loves glamour and style. It was part of the reason he never understood me. What the hell does a girl like me need 80 dollar bottles of perfume or expensive Pandora bracelets for? But, in England where he comes from, that's what women want.

The women of Detroit are nothing if not put together. Glamorous, out-going, covered in... shiny things... basically, the antithesis of ME. I was almost intimidated by it, until I started to think about how much WORK it must be to keep that up. It was raining and cold and that did not stop half of them from being out in the puddles (DEEP puddles) in the parking lots, in high heels and with full make up and ornate hair, even when several of them were so hammered that all of that mascara and hair spray was forming black streams down the curves of their faces. Which fit right in with the list of things that Joey told me I would see on a day in downtown Detroit.

.....Do you see what I am DEALING with here??? There are like 6 independent essays in that shpeel. My Opening Day experience in Detroit. My crazy vacation with Josh in Costa Rica. Being confronted by Josh's hometown full of pretty women. Baggage that I've attained from being in a relationship with a guy in another country. Glamour and how confusing that is to me. See? But I have such a hard time separating them out like that, because, in my head anyway, each is so integral to the others.

How can I REALLY make you understand how much I loved Detroit, unless I talk about how much I love gritty cities? How can I explain my bizarre fear of being far away from my sweetheart unless I talk about what a train wreck my last long distance relationship turned into? How do people DO this??? Stick to just ONE thing, as if anything exists without 18 million different factors influencing it? Ugh. I am sick of myself just trying to explain it. It should be simple. Write an outline, expand on each point individually, when something you're writing reminds you of an unrelated topic, add it into the bullet list of shit to come back to later, and leave it alone.

But... as soon as the new one occurs to me, I'm completely OVER the topic I'd started on in the first place. And before I can get done thinking out anything, the phone rings, or someone starts talking to me, or I remember that I haven't paid my cell phone bill and it's due tomorrow, or I get tired and want to lay down, or I look outside and want to be out there instead (at least, I'll start feeling that way again round about April), or I realize I'm hungry.

In fact... I'm hungry. I'm going to post this because I want to feel like I'm making some progress, even though it's a big pile of crap. I will write most of those things individually later on, and probably reuse some of the language, because most of the words I just spit out are the ones that I use to tell these stories to people out loud, and... they're mine damnit, I can reuse them as much as I want!

Yep... cranky. Cranky usually means hungry. More soon... I am really trying.

Remember when the State of the Union used to mean something?

I listened to part of President Obama's State of the Union address tonight on my way to take photos of Lauren for the fight poster for her next match.

Had it been 4 years ago, I would have listened with rapt attention to the entire thing, and taken notes. I care a lot about what happens in our country. And were this an earlier time, I would have put a lot of stock in what he had to say, what his plans were, and what he thought was important enough to add in to his speech.

The difference is now, that I don't believe in the system anymore. I still believe that Barack Obama is a decent guy. He came from nothing, and to me, that makes it impossible to believe that he doesn't know what its like for most of the people in the country right now. When it was Bush, besides thinking he was a huge douche, I knew that he didn't really know anything the way someone like Barack Obama would know it. Seeing it in pictures and knowing the statistics is not the same thing as growing up riding the trains around Chicago with the average people, listening to them talk about their problems, seeing how it had affected them and their families. Being a person in their same situation. Feeling the struggles and wanting a better life.

Someone like Bush is born into a soft, pink, little bubble of easy living. Protected from real stresses and never having to worry where dinner was coming from. So when Barack Obama got elected, I was ecstatic. At last! A human who got it. He would know what was really important to the people. He would be able to make it happen.

Four years later, I still believe that he wants to make our world better. I also believe that he can't. No matter how badly he desires it, no matter how hard he works. The deck is stacked against him. The powerful players control everything, and if what he wants isn't in line with what protects their interests, he is blocked at every turn.

I listened to him talk about how unfair it is that we live in a place where "costs have gone up while paychecks have stayed the same." Where the cost of a decent education is such that it makes it a luxury that average people can't safely afford. And if they can, they are then locked into a situation where, because they are so deeply in debt, they can't choose the jobs they wanted when they set out on the path to better themselves.

If, for example, you go to school to get a degree that will get you a job that will help people, when you finally get done, you are often then limited in what options you can really choose for work, based on if those employers can pay you enough to cover your student loan payments AND the costs of housing, food, health care and life in general. You are trapped, just like he is. You can't make the world better, because you have to pay your bills.

The point is, I am totally disillusioned. I grew up believing that my vote had power. That if I voiced my concerns and fears to my elected officials, they would listen to me, and if enough other people felt like I did, they would do something about it. Years later, 1 in 6 people in America lives in poverty. And yet, that number, 15% of us, is not enough to cause anything to change. And I do not believe I am the only one who is bothered by that. I do believe that there are good people in Washington DC who would change that if they could... but they can't.

They can't because anyone who has millions of dollars to throw at a campaign for a politician, can also use that money as a threat to ensure that politician never gets elected, if they are not pleased. Which means you have to win their favor in order to get in to government, even if you have the best intentions of how you'll use your term once you get into office. Because once you're in their pocket, you are firmly NOT in the pocket of the rest of the American people. The ones who elected you to be there for them.

It may have been beat to death, the phrase 'our system is broken', but it was never something I believed until recently. It was a pivotal moment in my life... when I turned from an idealist into a realist. At least, about this. It sucked. I wish I didn't know what I know. I wish I could still listen to my President, who is a brilliant and decent person, talk about his grand ideals without cynicism in my heart. I suppose this is part of what growing up means. Just when I think I am done turning from a kid into an adult, I get slapped in the face with some kind of ugly, new reality about people.

It makes me close my ears and my mind. It makes me focus only on the people I have here in my own life... the ones I believe in because they have proven to me that they deserve my faith and respect. It's almost, in a strange way, like reverting to childhood; when the only people who mattered to me were my family and my best friends... because everyone else may as well just not be real.

That was what I felt like. Like what I was listening to didn't even touch me anymore. Like I was eavesdropping on a conversation that wasn't meant for me... save to remind me that I need to start stuffing more money into the boat fund, and that I should probably sit down and try to write out this blog. And then... I pulled into Gracie Barra and went about attending to someone who actually matters to me.

The first chip in the glass.

I haven't been able to write lately. I have submissions I need to finish for two separate online magazines. One of them is a contest for travel writing from women, that awards the winner a crapload of airline miles... which is the very coolest thing I could possibly think of to win in a contest. There is nothing I would love more in the world to receive for free than plane tickets.

Especially right now, because we are in the very longest and very hardest stretch of winter here in Alaska. It's -10 outside right now. I guess that's better than -20 like it was a few weeks back, but either way it is the kind of cold that sucks the warm air straight out of your lungs when you step outside, and freezes your nose hairs into something resembling very small subterranean stalactites.

Even the sunshine can only bear to stay out there with us for a limited amount of time before she says, "fuck this shit" and retreats behind the mountains for an 18 hour sleep. How else can you survive this? Hibernation is the only way.

There are some people who are not deterred from their outdoor activities by this temperature. They have invested a large sum of money in cold weather gear and they are able to enjoy our beautiful, frozen wilderness regardless of the bitter cold. I, however, am not one of those people. Wrapped within a pile of furs, parkas and blankets, insulated with electric socks, handwarmers, and surrounded on all sides by roaring bonfires, I still would not agree to spend more than the bare amount of time outside that I have to, on days as cold as today. It isn't just whether or not I can keep my body warm enough to survive it... it is... the fact that taking that first breath of sharp, frigid air feels like I am sucking in the energy of a place that is not meant to sustain life. It is hateful, cruel, soulless. A void. And it says to me, in a hollow, rattling voice, "you do not belong here."
And, I agree with it. I can feel my little spirit shrink back down on itself, oppressed and bent under the heavy darkness and malicious cold. This place... at least out of doors, is not meant for me during this particular stretch of winter. After the busyness of the holidays and long before the sun comes back to stay for entire normal day times, I start to feel desperate. Negative things are magnified. Fear, anger, insecurity... all come creeping back out of whatever caverns I've shoved them down into and all of a sudden, I'm a mess.

And it is making my current predicament more impossible to conquer and more scary not to.

The relatively easy activity of writing out what I think about some shit or other, because that's always been what I do, is already proving to be a huge challenge for me because I can't quit thinking about how I'm actually going to try to get this out in the open world where it will be read by strangers. It's no longer just self-therapy. It will no longer only be read by people who love me enough not to give negative criticism. It will be something that I take from inside of me and give to people... and hopefully in exchange for money. That in it's very nature changes what I am doing. I can't sacrifice anonymity of my loved ones. I can't write about things that are deeply personal. And once you take that away, all of a sudden... I worry that I'm not really as good of a writer as I've always been told I am.

Or at least, not anymore. I used to write about a lot of personal things, but also about like... bigger world issues. And I think... I was pretty good at it. I had a lot of readers, anyway. But it's like I've developed adult ADHD or something. I can't organize my thoughts anymore. I start thinking about what David Carr would think of this... disjointed piece of crap, whatever it is at the time, and then I get anxious, start thinking in circles about how retarded the whole idea is anyway that I might ever actually be able to make a living doing this, because so few people ever can, because there are writers all over the planet, with internet access, and therefore far more ease in getting themselves out there, and there are far fewer editors who are looking to pay people for their writing, and those editors now, because of the internet, are completely inundated with writers to choose from... and how could it ever be me? How could I ever be good enough?

The dark, cold crazies that I'm wallowing around in don't help me rise above this kind of fear and doubt, at all.

Then I consider the alternatives... that I'm going to have to have a normal job, like normal people and live in one place. Get health insurance, re-start my retirement fund, go on vacation maybe 3 weeks out of the year. But every other weekday I will have to get up early, which I loathe, painfully. Go to bed early, which is completely impossible for me. Focus on things in front of a computer screen that don't matter to me. Accumulate stuff in my apartment to make it more "cozy". Watch the sunsets off the back porch at night and think the very same thing, every single time....... "Jesus... I have to get out of here."

That makes me panic. Like a spooked horse recoiling from a pissed off snake. I can't stay here in one place. I want to be here in the summers, falls, and early winters. And then I want the fuck OUT. I can't live that life. The one that is essentially an exercise in securing yourself, on as many possible sides, from normal life events. Home insurance for my stuff. Health insurance for my illnesses (when/if I get them). Life insurance for my death (...what a ridiculous concept). Car insurance in case of wrecks. Savings account for emergencies. Retirement account, so that I don't have to eat at soup kitchens when I get old. Social Security... which is a joke because it won't probably exist once I need it. And in the meantime, I'm trying to pay off the car, that I only own so that I can get to the job, that I only have so that I can pay my bills, that I only have because I am expected to possess all the safety nets for all the disasters that may ever touch me.

"But, for god sake Aurora... what are you going to do if you get cancer?"

You know what causes cancer? I mean aside from the obvious exposures to icky chemicals and shit. It's STRESS. And unhappiness. And hate. All the things that you start developing in abundance, even as you're insulating yourself from the risks of being a human being on planet Earth.

I can't do that. Where in the hell did we get so fucking turned around as a people.

If I can write, I can make money wherever I happen to be. Which means I can travel for a living. Which means that I don't need this apartment, or my CRV, or the insurance, or the tie downs. Which means that Josh and I can go... wherever the fuck we want. Without me requesting "vacation time" from whoever employs me at the moment (another ridiculous concept. Why the hell do I have to ask permission to leave my interim existence, the shit that I do because I have to, in between the shit that I do because I LOVE to. "Please boss, may I have permission to go live my real life for 10 days out of the year?" Fuck that. FUCK it).

I have to find a way to do this. I'm a good writer. You can write on the move. So, this is it. I have to do it. I have to make a way, ditch the house, ditch the car and take off to visit all the friends waiting for me on my little planet. I have to... and the consequences for my not doing it are the life that I outlined above. The one that makes me (not everyone, but me) jump backward in fear when I think about it for too long. The one I have already been stuck living for long enough, because I am too afraid to grab my own life by the testicles and make it be what I want it to be.

And... the fear of that happening is effectively paralyzing me from being able to write a single fucking thing. Except, of course, about how I can't write a single fucking thing. Which will get me no where fast, which means that I'm facing these winters, this darkness and this panicked uncertainty for all of my foreseeable future.

The only hope that I'm holding onto, is that even if I can only write about how I can't write, I have to keep doing it. And if I keep throwing my weight against the outside of this thick glass bubble I've worked myself into, eventually it will crack open and the whole wide world will start coming back to me in the form of my oldest, dearest friends; my words.