fascism

Creatonement Alchemy

/ herismeorg / 1 Comment
(Photo by Snapwire on Pexels.com)
(or listen here)

Confucius said, “A seed grows with no sound, but a tree falls with a huge noise. Destruction has noise but creation is quiet. This is the power of silence. Grow silently.”

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. Rumi

I am not on board with creation being quiet in the traditional ways of quiet. Unless the big bang was the destruction of the nothings into the somethings which then proceeded with the quiet movement of evolution. Even sex I suppose is the destruction of the concentration of blood vessels which then proceeds to release all of things occasionally quietly bonding and replicating into a new human. The birthing is the destruction of the internal growth/housing and the new human quietly (ahem WHAT) evolves into a growing human. The human then goes through many destructions and creations of cells, emotions, bones, and all of the things, until we wear ourselves out through some destructive thing which does not allow for us to recreate ourselves anymore as humans. We become food for the earth or exploration for a scientist.

Is this what quiet creation means? The creation is happening without the impacts that destruction brings? No loud tree felling, but a wispy green nugget of something sprouts up as if by magic? The atonement for having destroyed the tree is the patience required to experience mystical quiet as witness of seeds and soils gently (to our eyes) pushing forth a new generation of life? Some of us pay oddles of noodles to have those new generation plants placed just so into our earth spaces. We cultivate and bask in its growth. We cool. Or we not cool since that movement sometimes requires destruction in movement and burning up dead dinosaur sludge from one place to another. Even if we are seed gatherers…

Babbling as I do since my brainiac is mushing about in attempts at life-ing it up. Destruction leads to creation, and creation eventually meets destruction, by their very natures. But we cannot always predict accurate manifestations of these transformation processes.

Who in the sam hell knew that using populism to elect a melanated president to counter balance the destructive, gaslit, trickle down, fake news, racist programming, misogynisitic ingrained patterns of bullshittery would haunt us with the backfire of magafascism? 

It's the, "man, oh golly, I'd really like to see us use our resources humanely for the betterment of our Earth, country, communities and ourselves," 

versus, 

"LISTEN TO ME AS I SCREAM OBSCENITIES AT YOU 
TO SHAME YOU INTO HEARING HOW I AM SAVING YOU, 

S A V I N G  Y O U,  

BY THE DIVINE POWERS IMPARTED TO ME AND MOSTLY ONLY ME 
AND THOSE I BULLY 
INTO BELIEVING MY GLORIOUS INHUMANE FUCKERY DIVINED THUSLY UNTO ME,
 
AS I RAPE YOU, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I FORCE YOU TO CARRY AN UNVIABLE LUMP OF CELLS, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I FORCE YOU TO CARRY A POTENTIALLY VIABLE LUMP OF CELLS, I AM SAVING YOU
AS YOU BLEED OUT INTERNALLY, I AM SAVING YOU
AS YOUR BODY AND BRAIN ARE IRREVOCABLY CHANGED FOR LIFE, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I DENY YOU VITAL CANCER TREATMENT, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I DENY YOU ACCESS TO ALL HEALTHCARE, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I DETERMINE YOUR ACCESS TO INFORMATION BASED ON MY BELIEFS, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I WEIGH AND DEFINE YOUR UTTER UNWORTHINESS AS A HUMAN, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I SHOOT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY/NEIGHBORS FOR INVOKING MY RAGE, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I BEAT YOU FOR EXISTING AND WANTING A VOICE IN COMMUNITY, I AM SAVING YOU
AS I BEHEAD YOU, I AM SAVING YOU

YOU SHOULD BE TAKING A KNEE AND THANKING ME
NO, NO, NO, NOT A KNEE BECAUSE YOU ARE DISRESPECTING ME
YOU SHOULD BE BOWING YOUR HEAD AND THANKING ME
NO, NO, NO, NOT BOWING YOUR HEAD BECAUSE YOU ARE DISRESPECTING ME
YOU SHOULD LOOK ME IN THE EYES AND THANK ME
YOUR EYES LOOK DISRESPECTFUL
YOU'RE DEATH THANKS ME. 
MY MAGNIFICENT SELF MAGNANIMOUSLY OFFERS A " FUCK YOU, YOU'RE WELCOME, I HAVE SAVED YOU. NEXT"

Sometimes I feel the angers.

For the most part my local community voted against being perversely saved by nefarious right-wing nutso zealots. But we’re still waiting for final results from our truly horrifying unstable zealot-led wackos infiltrating our Board of Education. I am so grateful to not have a young child in our schools. It takes all kinds of people to organize and run a community – even wacky people. We are overrun with decades of systematically brainwashed people who truly believe they are in a holy fight to save all of us from ourselves at whatever the cost – lives, truth, integrity, knowledge, and general basic humanity. Their only goal is to win power and control OVER others as they FORCIBLY oppress, silence and eliminate those who are not in alignment with them. Sanctimonious malicious bullshittery.

Toxic people will not be changed by the alchemy of your kindness. Yes, be kind, but move on swiftly and let life be their educator. Brendan Burchard

We cannot, rather, I cannot fix this by welcoming the magafascists and politely tolerating the disgusting inhumanity they promote. I will not even try. What will I do? I will keep talking and showing up in spaces as I can and where I can. I’ll be letting go the toxicity of extending kindness where it is harmful. No more waving and smiling at the racists down the street, for example. I will wholeheartedly wish them wellness with a sprinkle of enlightenment to at the very least, cease glorifying a regime dedicated to the enslavement of other humans (remove your confederacy flag, people – it is a symbol of blazing racism and disgusting shame).

ParentsHerisme continue with their 1980’s world view of believing those in power will behave moderately due to power balance structure and the rest of it is all rhetoric. I strongly disagree (Roe v Wade much?). They cannot see what I see – they truly cannot. Their time in history, privilege, and ingrained learned fear, do not allow their lenses to open any wider. FatherHerisme is so rattled by it all, he was in tears over facetime trying to relay how he did his best to vote in a way that I could be proud of – but he couldn’t quite figure out what that might be all of the time. Sweet daddy *sigh* this is the heartbreaking part of aging parents being far away.

My international friends are somewhat hopeful, but mostly horrified at what they are witnessing us doing to ourselves(when they have time to wax poetic about our issues since there is bullshittery everywhere- authoritarianism rise plus COVID denier MUCH?). The older ones worry about a far correction into what their parents lived through with stark socialism (which wasn’t socialism of course – it was authoritarianism, which is the ironic slippery slope magafascists would LOVE to implement).

Anywho

Divest from and disempower systems of oppression. paraphrased from Nikki Blak

I want to do more of this and am thinking about how, where, why as I do the things of everyday life. I no longer feel doom and gloom most of the time. I feel the need for acknowledging destruction as well as acknowledging quiet and creation – or at least the humane support of them. Women’s rights and basic human needs, globally, in my country, community, and home.

There was a turning point for me last year where I realized I no longer needed to be invested in people, things, places which do not resonate with my own wellbeing and health. And this divestment is not a referendum on me or the people, things, places as being unworthy. This is my divestment from feeling obligated to connect with or understand those things not in alignment with my own health. Simple example of meat – it hurts me when I consume it, yet I went back to consuming it for years after having been a vegetarian for a decade. I attempted different kinds of meat and medications etc. Forget it – I have let it go. I am not invested in trying to explore that relationship anymore. I am more aware of no longer feeling obligated to be invested. This may come natural to you all, but having been raised to maximize co-dependency, this has been a huge learning curve for me. Saying, “no thank you,” to myself for myself with no negative feelings attached has been a huge shift for me, and a much easier way for my soul to move through each day.

As a result of this shift, and time, and my sweet tiny giant turning into a man person, I feel the cleaning out and preparing SonHerisme for his adulting launch. I am working on cultivating a practice of being more mindful in my immediate environment.

My first step is to do the hard ask of where I am putting my resources. Beginning with my list of everyday tasks I do and everyday items I use. I will be asking myself how (not if bc they ALL are in some ways) they are parts of systems of oppression and how may I either facilitate limiting (destruction of habit/service) the oppression further or divesting (creating something new) from them.

A teensy start:
-internet service
-laptop
-phone
-grocery store(s)
-Amazon
-laundry
-career
-creativity
-food prep

I hope this creatonement alchemy works for something good and is helpful. My purpose at this point in my life it to cause the least amount of harm in my areas of this existence. I want to be present for and aware of how I am doing that just in case the knowing is helpful to SonHerisme or anyone else. Or, I suppose, the knowing will be helpful and satisfying to me as I transition at some point.

MotherHerisme turned 78 this week. SonHerisme’s band won their division at state competitions. I took a catnap outside on this final warmish sunny-side up day. It was so quiet that I could hear gleeful leaf scamperings of tiny creatures in full on wintering prep. Also, the persistent bee popped around for a pre-slumber check-in. More celebrations with pom poms. More nature. More mindful acknowledgement and divesting from the harmfuls.

Silence, you are the best thing I have ever heard. Boris Pasternak

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

*fingers crossed that some of this magic works to alleviate some suffering and anxiety somewhere*

Thank you for sticking with me through all of my silences

Take-Backs

/ herismeorg / Leave a comment
(Photo by CDC on Pexels.com)
(or listen here)

As predicted by the path of past experiences, it is the ol’ familiar take-backs time for my brain in a no take-backs reality.

After 9-11 I remember sitting on the commuter bus going to work downtown and looking at the bright blue sky dotted with puffy fluffs of white clouds. In a big city there are always airplanes making their way here and there across the big sky. On this day, there weren’t any airplanes. The sky was so empty of airplanes that is was starkly noticeable by everyone that something on this day was dramatically different. It was in that moment that the shock ripped through my body of how everyone on that commuter bus knew the tragedy and death of 9-11. Everyone knew it. That knowledge of pain and horror was just sitting there like a solid lead apron on all of us. All of us knowing people burned, people were crushed, people knew they were going to die, some had to hold little children while they died, some had to fall hundreds of feet in terror, some people had to choke to death, some people did not know they were going to die. All of us on this bus had this knowing of horror. I wanted to grab all of the knowledge and take the pain away from everyone. I wanted to scream with that knowledge and run it far away from anyone so that they would not feel this unbearable pain. There weren’t any take-backs.

In April 2014 I sat hunched over, clutching my sweater as close to my body as I could just in case it could swallow me up out of the freezing nightmare, in an oversized winged-backed chair, in a fancy office, across a large desk from a seriously hard-core put together not a hair out of place attorney. I could see her looking at me very intensely. I could hear she was talking to me, but I could not unscramble the words she was saying so that I could understand them. Then I heard something. She said, “You are here to hire me to get you divorced. Correct? You want a divorce. Correct?” My response, “Is that what I am supposed to do now?” In that moment I knew that she knew what was going on. Which meant that other people I had spoken to knew as well. The police knew. My family knew. A few friends knew. This knowing of others knowing cut through me like the hottest coldest quickest jaggedy edge blade. There weren’t any take-backs.

Similar experiences with my first malignant cancer diagnosis (I’m a-okay!), Frump as a ballot candidate, onset of COVID, and every single freaking damned school shooting. And each time the worst part is that there are NO TAKE-BACKS.

Those kids, those children, those teachers, those lives are gone. The lives of their families, friends, communities are forever marked by these events. There are no take-backs. There are no amends to be made. No mea culpa. As a nation we have venerated and voted for radicalized fascism under the guise of pseudo-christianesqueness for at least the past 40 years.

COVID has forced us to somewhat face what and who we are as a nation. I am so relieved, honestly, to see many of us rising to speak openly and take actions from a place of love for humanity rather than sinking into the fear and zero-sum-game tropes. The information is out about us and cannot be pushed back into irrelevancy because there are also no take-backs for verified accurate information dissemination. There are also no take-backs for the march of time. Rising generations of activists and voters are now outnumbering the groups of culturally indoctrinated zero-summers. Those interested in promoting inhumane policies, laws, and governance, will always exist, of course. But they will become more and more outnumbered by the rest of us who know that unregulated civilian access to rapid fire automatic or whatever weapons of those ilk, are not humane. They will become more outnumbered by the rest of us who know that equitable access to healthcare (including mental, dental too!), education/training, food sources, affordable housing, and community are critical for a productive functioning healthy nation. 

Those children that we are all okay with exposing to COVID will be voting in 13-18 years. 

In 13-18 years, almost 22% of our population will be between 71-95 years old. 

I wonder how those full of teen angsty- idealism voters are going to feel about a large portion of those 71-95 year olds, plus pockets of following generations, having decided their health and lives were worth risking over their abject refusal to wear a small covering over their noses and mouths while inside, and take free vaccines. 

I wonder how they're going to feel knowing that those 71-95 year olds consistently voted against taking care of our planet while voting for more destruction of our planet. 

I wonder how they're going to feel about those 71-95 year olds denying their country equitable access to health care, despite having proven data through their entire adult lives that it was cheaper and more beneficial for everyone to have equitable access to health care. 

I wonder how they are going to feel about how it was more important to us that they may be murdered at school than we demand better gun safety regulations and school staff/community support. AND that we specifically voted for elected officials who would accept monies from those profiting off of children being murdered in schools and develop legislation in favor of more guns being more available to more people without any oversight or acknowledgement of responsibility to the communities (much less humanity) they were elected to represent and serve (communities include ALL humans - even birth-five year olds). 

I wonder how they are going to feel about continued veneration of systemic racism and inhumane discriminatory policies.

There are no take-backs for many of these things. Only moving forward by addressing them head-on with humane, thoughtful, truth-centered, meaningful conversations followed by humane, thoughtful, truth-centered, meaningful actions. I mean in the best ways we can as individuals. I am not the door-to-door knocking, yelling demonstrator, or logo-ed t-shirt person. I am quite bad at all of those things. Writing a letter, speaking to groups, putting things in bags to send out – those things I can do.

I wish there were take-backs. I want to take all of the most horrific of the horrors away and wipe the deepest awful pains clean. We are flawed. Lives are hard. We can only control our reactions.

In my house last night SonHerisme shared with MotherHerisme that one of his favorite teachers was leaving for a long vacation with his family. They are going to stay near where SonHerisme’s father, MrexH, lives. MotherHerisme responded to SonHerisme, “Is he going to see your father while he’s there?” SonHerisme responded, “Why would he do that? You don’t make any sense, Granny.” Afterward, SonHerisme’s demeanor changed rapidly, as it does when his trauma surrounding his father is triggered. It is almost as if mentally and physically his insides are on fire. We left the house for evening tennis and SonHerisme was very quiet for the entire car ride. On the return home, I opened up the conversation to help SonHerisme work through his anger and to have a plan of how to further move with and understand his emotions. At one point SonHerisme looked over at me, saying, “You know what momma? Next time Granny goes to the hospital, I’m going to tell her that I really hope she sees her dad there!” Because he is dead – but you already have guessed that, I imagine.

Entering the angers. Acknowledging the angers. Sitting with the angers. Moving with the angers. Holding space for the angers.

I spoke to MotherHerisme today while SonHerisme was at school. Her response, predictably, was to break down into a puddle of toddler-worthy dramatic tears. “I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings!” She does not know what she does not want to know. She only knows what has been drilled into her which is that if you are doing well as judged by the judging people, and a white lady, then you are morality personified and should always demonstrate that by being happy, insisting those around you must be happy, and it is your duty to shame and punish those who are not happy or doing well, as those are indicators that they are morally inept or unworthy. When flaws are pointed out = epic meltdowns. She thrives on the idea of her divine right to take-backs no matter what. This is her cornerstone of her trauma-response sanity.

I will continue to walk this path in different supportive ways with SonHerisme as he changes and grows through his life path. He is my most and best and favorite. No take backs ever.

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

Behold(er)!

/ herismeorg / 2 Comments

(ps already – this quote is not sent as a demand for you to find joy in service, it is sent as an idea that if you are called to find joy, you might find it in service)

Moving away from the politics of American elections and into the politics of everyday relationships.

I just cannot yet.

We all know that this 2020 general election in the USA was not about politics between conservative and liberal democratic parties.

Our election was about choosing to embrace or reject an ideology which bases all actions and decisions on the premise that many groups of people are unworthy of consideration or being treated humanely, in order that the select premium group of people can elevate themselves and thrive.

We continue to be mired in the blatant fascist hypocrisy which has risen in a terrifying way: whose putrid messages continue to be spewed and elevated by neighbors in our communities, cities, counties and at the highest levels of leadership across our country.

This is vile and should be called out at every opportunity.

If you have not taken a firm stand against the current president and his sycophants, then you are enabling the continued death of thousands of your neighbors and encouraging the blatant disregard of democracy and humanity (for yourself as well, btw).

You may leave now and do some serious self examination along with a total destructive gaslighting media detox.

I’ll be here for you when you find your mea culpa.

In the meantime, I’ll keep fighting for all of our rights as humans (yours too). #carryonpeacewarriors #carryondemocracywarriors

Love, Ms Herisme xoxo