Tag: empowerment

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Charleston, West Virginia My Life Story Uncategorized

The Black Checker

Fuck me. Normally I’m somewhat average in terms of efficiency. Under crisis in August I rose up to become a top 10 performer. Mid September my balloon began deflating and now my life consists of staring at a mug until I finally get up and walk into a wall. Technically I still get a bit done but am nowhere near recommended levels of crispness for my weight range.

Is this a normal response to someone’s mind being overloaded by things they don’t want to think about? An early sign of AIDS? Right now I need to be calling the prosecutor’s office, visiting the courthouse, wrapping packages and taking them to the post office, doing some secretary work for a famous herbalist, cleaning the house since the front door is made of glass, stopping my plants from dying, cooking dinner so the meat doesn’t go bad, playing with the dogs to keep them from sliding into depression, plus I really need to buy a coat and some pants since the temperature keeps dropping and I gotta get these things and more done by six when the sun goes down.

Cause then I have my night time stuff to do.

But rather than performing the tasks essential to survival (in the end we all die anyway, right?) maybe I’ll just sit here drinking coffee and tell you how my empowermints are going.

The most important thing is that I completed my illegal drug empowermint. This was sort of the jewel in my empowermint crown to the extent that I kinda of feel I’ve peaked and have nowhere to go but down. Maybe that’s why I’ve been tailspinning. My whole life I’ve wondered how people obtain illegal drugs when there is no clear road to obtaining them. You can’t buy them in a store, you can’t ask people if they sell them, so how is everyone is high? Well it turns out the answer is friends.

I’d decided that friends were the next realm of empowermint anyway. You can know how to dig ditches and start a campfire but without any friends you gotta hard hoe to row. And I literally knew no one of flesh and blood. Now I know a few.

And I really, really want to write about them. But I don’t know if that’s rude. I’ve always avoided being friends with writers for this exact reason. Just like I’ve avoided being friends with musicians because they have no morals. And tall people because their heads are too far away from earth. And dark haired people because they are wusses. Thin people are harsh and intolerant. Fat people just chuckle when you want to talk about something serious. People with large heads are obsessed with conspiracies. Small heads look weird. Long necks lack commitment. Short neck means tiny brain. Men can be dangerous or break your heart. Women might assume you’re a lesbian and you end up having to eat their pussy just to be polite. There’s a reason to avoid everyone.

I almost feel I’ve gotten too many ideas about life stuck in my head and now I need to clear a few out. Men who eat pasta are gay. Men who avoid pasta are gayer. Drugs are bad because they’re illegal. Hot dogs are bad cause I once found a short thick hair in one. Bars are bad because ghosts live in them and they can get stuck in your hair then follow you home. Honey mustard dressing is bad cause if you eat it you’ll attract men who like to be done up the ass. Red attracts violence. Purple insanity. Black death. White can make you so spiritual that you attract dark sluts who give you aids. Orange can make you attract fun loving sluts who also give you aids. Gold will turn you into a man. Silver softens your brain. The world is full of things to be avoided.

More than ever I feel like a black checker all alone on a checker board. My player has decided he’ll use me to make his next move. He doesn’t have many checkers left. But whichever direction he moves me in I’m gonna get jumped. Maybe this is why I keep walking into walls.

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Astrology Charleston, West Virginia My Life Story Writings

The Grapes of Practicality

I can’t even tell you what this last astrological storm has been like. For my husband, who deals- by his own choice- with 100% of life’s practical matters it has been one disaster after another, bordering on the catastrophic. It is a level 6 hurricane and we are still huddled inside the house waiting to see what happens. Will we be crushed alive screaming in pain as the life slowly slips from our eyes? (Channeling my father now.) Time will tell.

For me, however, it has been a time of empowermints as though the threat of ruin has given me wings. I’ve managed to do things I thought I was incapable of doing. And it’s been really fun. Where do I begin? I figured out how to open a bank account. I figured out how to ride a bus. I figured out how to get a library card. I figured out how to put buttons on my site encouraging you to slide me bits of money under the table. I figured out how to fill out government forms. I learned what bills are and some of the things you can do with them. I figured out how to set up an ebay account and sell things. A book has sold, so tomorrow I will figure out how to buy packing supplies and use the post office. It’s almost like I’ve figured out how to figure things. I see a problem and muscles start to move in my head. A lightbulb has gone on.

I’ve always felt so helpless. I don’t know why. I would just stare at practical things unable to comprehend what they were and how I should respond. It made me feel ashamed because I assumed people would believe I was being intentionally pathetic as a way of forcing them to help me. So I never asked for help and lived within my limitations.

Now that has changed. I spent the whole bus ride asking the driver practical questions on how busses work. I asked the librarians practical matters about other buildings located downtown. Every person I meet, I try to extract as much practical info from them as I can without seeming weird.

After about 5 days of pure practicality however today I hit a wall and was unable to move. Do you think the more practical you become, the heavier you get until eventually you can’t move at all? Could this be God’s way of keeping humans from becoming so practical we can interfere with his plans? Can this practicality streak continue, or is it just a temporary spike from which I will once again descend into a pool of helplessness?

I don’t know. My thoughts on practicality are two-fold. On the one hand, it is just practical to be practical. It gives you more options in the practical realms. On the other hand, the weird part is, despite the limitations in my life caused by impracticality, I feel free. Like my life has meaning. I’ve been talking to a lot of people recently. Some seem to go so far as to feel that if you don’t have your own bank account and car you aren’t really alive. I don’t feel that way. I think a person (but hopefully not me) can live just as meaningful an existence from a prison or mental institution as they can driving around in a pickup truck & taking yearly vacations.

It may be that these wings of practicality are paper wings that won’t last forever. After all- at least according to astrology- my life’s purpose is in the House of Imprisonment and Mental Institutions. I like to think that is metaphorical, meaning I find my true wings from looking within myself.

Oh! A practical idea just occurred to me! Would you like to know what your life purpose is and where you can find your wings? If so, slip me some sweet sweet money and I’ll tell you. Money is the first principle of Practicality, the principle upon which all other principles depend. In fact, it will probably be my success or failure in gaining money that will determine if this practical streak continues, or if my library card just sits rotting in my new wallet as the light slowly fades from his eyes….

P.S. My Dad. When I was a kid he loved to tell me about people dying and crying and screaming in agony as the awareness of impending doom entered their mind. He also liked to sing me songs about puppies being ground into sausage as he was putting me to sleep and then he would rock me as I cried in horror.

That is how a person becomes a Scorpio.

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia men Writings

Submission

Here is my feeling on submitting to your husband- it is inevitable. Wills are made of iron & men have more iron than women.

Still, it annoys me when submission is made into a moral accomplishment. Is falling down the stairs an accomplishment? What about riding down a mountain in a grocery cart? I don’t see anything particularly noble about yielding to someone else. It is more a practical choice.

I don’t like it to be sugar coated either. The happy submissive wife holding a tray of cookies. In real life, submission is an extreme sport. Like surfing. Giant waves come at you and there is nothing you can do to change them, just learn how to not get knocked down. Maybe there is value in living that way.

I recently read the autobiography of Bin Laden’s wife and couldn’t believe how much her life resembled mine. She must follow her husband around and not ask questions. When he comes he comes, when he goes he goes. Things blow up and she isn’t supposed to cry. He moves her to a frozen mountain top with no water or electricity and she doesn’t complain. Only once does she make a request from him- that he spend more time with his boys. He complies by encouraging them to become suicide bombers.

What resonates with me most about all this is that conservative propaganda leads people to believe you submit to your husband in exchange for security. False! There is little security in it. For Bin Laden’s wife, machine guns, bombs & grenades were everywhere. Even if your husband doesn’t lead a militia, full dependence puts you in a precarious position. If he leaves you or you leave him, you are doomed. Yet the odds are over 50% this will happen. If he goes insane you are also doomed. The odds are probably high for this as well. I recently took a poll of women asking what percentage of men- that they have known behind closed doors- were decent & the response averaged out to around 5%. So the probability of dependency meaning security plus home sweet home cookie platters is somewhere around 2%*. And you have little control over whether you end up in this 2% or not. From what I can tell, men are like movies. We can watch them but not impact what happens on the screen. Following a man’s will is not for the faint of heart.

Men seem to think women are obsessed with empowerment and proving they can do what a man can do. But I don’t know any women like this. So called “empowerment” usually serves the more humble purpose of not dying & ensuring your kids survive as well. I imagine most women would prefer decorating cookies for their loving husband to working in a sausage factory making ends meet. They just aren’t in the mood to play russian roulette when the odds are 98% not in their favor.

And it is really really hard to be both the empowered woman and the not-empowered woman at the same time. To devote oneself to home, wife & motherhood while also having a high-powered law career to fall back on.

There are definitely advantages to being a traditional obedient wife. You lose one type of freedom but gain another. The freedom of not having the spend the majority of your energy making a living. This allows you to devote yourself to what you find most meaningful. Maybe you will raise kids. Maybe you will learn to fly. I don’t think being a submissive/dependent wife is a bad option. But it troubles me that the cultural forces which promote it are the same one’s unwilling to acknowledge its true risks & challenges. Conservatives say things like “ a woman can’t be abused unless she wants to cause otherwise she would leave.” Well, how do they figure that? How does a person with no access to resources or survival skills just walk out the door?

This is why conservatives annoy me even though I am one. They are not realistic at all when it comes to women. They love to say that women abuse men just as much as men abuse women. But how exactly? Normally they fall back on the idea that women must be doing some super subtle form of invisible evil which ends up being the exact equivalent to all the dastardly deeds men quite obviously perform in the world. I don’t believe this at all. At the risk of giving someone a hernia, I do believe men are more “bad” than women. Because the masculine principle relates to power. The feminine principle relates to love. There is a reason the taliban is male. It’s not a coincidence.

So what is the solution? I don’t know. Submit to your husband or to your boss at the sausage plant. Her choice. Personally, I avoid the smell of sausage at all costs.