The Good, the Bad, The Beginning

 Dear Reader,

I humbly invite you on a journey with me. A journey through words. Words in strings and columns. I am bursting at my bloody seams to speak to you all. I need my words to gush forth with pounds per square inch. The pressure has been building and I extend my invitation to stand with me and experience a fire hose to the face.

I hope it is not so painful. I love you, and I want you to live your most contented life possible. 

I am content. I am also bipolar and fight the Brain Chemistry Battle. As I write now, I feel sleepy. And also elated to be finally connecting with you. With us all.

I want to build a world with you and the image of a dining room table comes to mind. 

Let's please play a potluck imagination game. Thus begins our journey.

I love food. Walking into a home filled with the smells of different dishes is a yummy feeling for me. I recall memories of Thanksgivings, parties/BBQs, food festivals, and more, like potlucks. 

Potlucks feel like a win-win. The host cooks, but doesn't have to cook everything. Hmm, I love that; it's hard to host when you're cooking 3 different things at once. You get the idea, it's nice for the host. The guest gets something out of bringing a dish. Several somethings, I think, though I'm sure I will not think of them all and you may not agree with me. Let's start making a list:

Potluck Guest Gets:

1. A sense of obligation being met

2. The gift of giving

3. Join/belong in a peer-group

4. Communal experience

5. Recipe sharing/enjoying

And then when all the guests have arrived you have a table full of food, which you enjoy together (a communal experience).

There's also clean-up, and leftovers. Decisions to be made, chores to be done. I hope you see the analogy I'm building here. The potluck is a metaphor for society. 

Think of how a potluck might go if everyone brought the same thing. You'd have a table full of meatballs (if you're lucky) and nothing to go with them. A table full of cranberry sauce. That's homogeny. That's what happens when we try to get people to look, act, and think like the status quo. "We don't like gays or vegetarians." That eliminates several different dishes right there. 

Our table is already diverse, but some of us try to push people out. I'm not speaking on immigration, honestly. I'm talking about the voices already present that are owed representation. You can think of it as a seat at the table or a dish that compliments the main course.

Diversity is paramount, therefore when we speak ill of people, we silence them, especially when we generalize. "All vegetarians are gay, "for example. It's not about being politically correct, either. No one wants to be canceled or demonized for a stupid comment; that's the opposite of embracing diversity. That is just as silencing.

I used the word "communal" intentionally. The American propoganda machine has maid mincemeat of any word related to communal: communism, commune. Communication doesn't exactly count, at least not for the point I am making here. I challenge you, dear reader, to challenge some notions you've held as sacred. Are all vegetarians really gay? No, of course not. And all gay people are definitely not vegetarian, although there's probably a statistic out there of the number of self-identifying gay people who self-identify as vegetarians. I'm not saying you think that. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. It doesn't matter, thankfully. The point is that if you have a belief you've never challenged, I, once again, challenge you to do so.

A story from my own experiences when I was forced to challenge a long-held belief. It was likely the year 2000. I was a freshman at California State University, Chico attending a history class, which would have been required for general education credits. The professor was a 30-something male, so young, and--most important to this story--foreign. He had an accent which did take some getting used to, but it was an uncomfortable experience for me only when I heard him say that Paul Revere did not actually make "a midnight ride." I felt my face get hot and my pulse must have quickened with my breath. I may have started to sweat, I don't recall. I do remember walking down the steps of the small lecture room, once class was over. I marched my naive white butt over to the podium where he was packing up. His skin was so much darker than any other person's skin than I have ever seen in my life. I know I thought he was handsome, though I was sometimes frustrated with his accent. I don't believe I considered the word "respect" at all in the moments following his astonishing accusation that I had been lied to through my whole education. I could not tell you what I said, but said professor (associate, adjunct, tenured? maybe a lecturer?) bristled understandably at my tone. He shot back defensively and/or defending his original assertion and I think maybe a few more words were exchanged before I turned heel and left. I likely cried very hard, if memory serves. The interaction itself and shaken me in addition to the claim. Why was this such a big deal to me? I could guess that because stability is hard to come by at home sometimes we hold fast and hard to other things to give us legs on which to stand. Makes sense to me.

Well, bless that professor, what an angel to be standing in front of a room of 18-20 year old kids in a foreign country and teach a closer approximation of truth than the refuse served on every American kids' platter. We are force-fed this slop in order to assimilate into this culture and it works. We hate commies and Regan was a hero.

I don't personally believe that; I say "we" because I hold myself just as responsible for maintaining the status quo, up until now-ish. I have accepted vitriol and diatribe. I have gotten my hands just as dirty shopping at big box stores, buying gas, being a good little consumer. 

PLEASE do not mistake my challenges or my message as anti-American. I fucking LOVE America. I cry at the Olympics rooting for us, I sob during veteran reunion videos. Both my grandfathers served valiantly, and my own mother served overseas. I am a skeptic and questions help to reveal the truth about much of what we think we know.