Dignity

I’m undignified. I run around and sprint on my bike and let kids with sticky hands handle my white T shirts turning them grape soda purple and dirty brown. I swear too much, I don’t have a dining room table and eat off a bench and I am in a non-defunct non-working band called shark week. I am the growl singer.

But these sorts of un-dignities are okay. Because I’m doing okay, you know? I have a steady job that I always get to fifteen minutes early. My parents are still married, my skin is white, my hair is red, I’m really photogenic, and I’m in college with damn near a 4.0. Really, when it comes down to it all those little things that I do don’t pull down my dignity. I am treated with respect by 90 percent of the people I run into.

But what if one day all that stopped: what if I was suddenly not in the position of all that dignity? What if, all of the sudden, I was hated or ignored, or worst of all, if I were to become invisible, for whatever reason. How would I feel in that situation? It is every persons wish to be respected and looked upon as human, in fact, I consider that to be a basic human right. There are, however, hundreds of people who are put away into boxes, ignored. It is so easy for me to write about dignity because I have never not had it.

I believe in respecting people, regardless of their position in life, every person deserves that: My cranky neighbor, the boss I find difficult, and every person I meet and see. Everyone I serve, everyone who serves me is in a position where they should receive that respect and in turn recover, gain, or hold steady to their dignity.

I don’t have the prettiest mouth. I can be critical. I can forget to love. I can see only the faults of the people around me. I don’t think highly of everyone, and sometimes I let people know that. It’s embarrassing to me, at the end of the day, when I total up the nasty things I’ve said, the small injustices I have personally led against someone and I am awed at how far away I can get from promoting peoples dignity.

In a world where there is just incredible injustice, I want there to be justice and through that peace and maybe, just maybe, go even a step further and head straight through to forgiveness because justice through forgiveness is the purest form and peace through those things is even better.

JR and I joke about socialism a lot but I really, truly believe that equality and respect and equal footing for everyone can carry us into a brave, brilliant new world. We have, in every second, every day, every week, choices to make and we can be brave, think hard, work hard, and carry ourselves in a way to dignify others in order to promote a just world, or we can take the self-edifying rout of degrading others for our own personal benefit.

Socialism

I don’t think we have much of a democracy going on. It’s more of an oligarchy. MY favorite theory of them all is socialism. Socialism means an equal footing. We are so isolated here in capitalist America, hidden in houses, behind TV screens, sitting in little metal boxes, packed in on the freeways, bumper to bumper but so far away from each other. (The loneliest I feel is when I am in traffic, so many people around me but I have never been so far away from them.) I feel that if we can equalize the platform, at least an inch, head towards a more ideal society, we can break down a few of those walls.

This morning I talked to JR about socialism in general, how the ladder can only take you so far alone, how, eventually, you get lonely there at the top, and it all is meaningless, all the material wealth, all the credit and prestige – just absolutely nothing. Without company, companionship, without someone else there to share these joys with, there is no joy. And you can sometimes find that in one person, sometimes you can find it in two, but there are rarely people who can find community with purpose: we are at the point where we find only community (if that.)

I said to my friend JR “I can talk to you like I have never talked to anyone before” and he said the same thing back but what if we could…what if we could talk to anyone about these things. If the greater good of mankind, which is very much at stake, was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And what would happen, if, when we were finished talking about that, we actually spurred into action.

I asked another friend of mine about socialism today. He has it all: the house, the car, the job. The bike room, everything.

“I like socialism,” I said. “I’m going to stop buying things.”

“socialism rocks” he said. “I want to stop buying things, too. I bought a book on 100 ways to make life simpler.”

“Did you put any of it into practice?” I said.

“No” he said. “It just made me realize how complicated my life is.”

And I was thankful that I didn’t have to buy a book to learn how to live simpler. I could just do it. Because I am well fed and sheltered, there is so little I desire besides good company.

At coffee chasers discussed money over coffee last night and the whole conversation seemed to flatten everyone – nothing so invisible has ever been heavier. The world tells you that the gold in your teeth is worth more than the ideas in your head, so you need to keep your mouth shut and protect your assets. I am in a good place.. I have never been happier. I make less than a lot of people I know.

Sometimes when I think about socialism, I think about Jesus. When I was a little girl, 12 or 13 I was just getting into my punk rock roots and I told my mom that Jesus was a socialist. “Yep,” she said and I was taken aback but she continued. “In fact the early church was socialist. Do you remember the part where Jesus instructs the rich man to give all his money away?” And after that I realized that we just go about things all wrong in the religion I grew up in.

I don’t want to buy things any more, because the more I find humans who love and care and think I realize that money is a tool and not a lifestyle. (haha. Money is a tool. I said it!) The more I just sit, on docks, stairs, benches, whatever, the more I understand the value of just being. Of having people who, as Toni Morrison put it so well in beloved, are friends of my mind.

One of my heroes, William Wilberforce said “I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.” We want to keep things to ourselves, we are taught to be selfish and it is something that takes constant combating. We don’t trust so we don’t share. We have demonstrated our careless stewardship with the way we have treated the world. We miss points all the time, and the person on the other side never bothers to explain and we never bother to ask and then rifts are formed. Any sensible person would keep away but what would happen if we all became insensible and forgave, forgave, forgave and ran round forgiving until our faces were shining in the darkness because that release of forgiveness that makes you glow and your heart swell.

A Whole Month of Yes

I take a slow amble to work. Work is in walking distance, skating distance and just a little under biking distance, though if I were running late it wouldn’t be too much to hop on the cruiser. This morning on my walk I was thinking about how our lives are full of “yes.” Someone on glitter once quoted someone that said “to every question asked of it the universe only says yes.” Which is absolutely true, if you think about it.

If you ask “Will I fail?” then you will.
“Can I succeed?” You will.

“Do you love me.”
“Yes”

“Do you hate me..”
“Yes” the universe says.

We can’t go through life constantly saying yes to everything or everyone – you’ll get trampled on and stomped on and you’ll lose your way among the brambles, but if you say yes a little bit more you’ll get places you never thought you would be.

This month I have said yes to a lot of things that I wouldn’t have done before.
“Yes, I’ll dance with you.”
“Yes, you can have that.”
“Yes, I’ll give that a try”

Yesterday I said yes and set sail (literally) on a little adventure. I called up JR to go for a bike ride after finishing up at the Menomonee Falls event. We kitted up in our spandex, and headed out along the lakefront at a relaxing, post civil war re-enactment pace talking…we went and checked out the Discovery World Museum’s front lawn which has my new favorite toy – a little metal sculpture you put pebbles in and it makes noise and sounds like an African thumb piano.

After that, we headed south some more, right next to the lake, over by the summer fest grounds, along the shoreline. We had to take it slow because of all the pedestrians – there really isn’t much there right now but there are signs all over announcing that there will be a long grass prairie, a short grass prairie and a lawn for running around on. There is a little lagoon and a little floating deck to sit on in it. Very beautiful and there were so many people walking their dogs, biking, and just enjoying the view.

We had just exited the new park and gone into a parking lot saw and wanted to check out a little red light house. I wave at everyone. I say hello to everyone I pass. I thank anyone and everyone because I feel that the walls between people can come down a little more if I even just say two words. It brings them out, they stop staring at their feet. I stop staring at my feet. Anyways, I was waving at the boaters passing by and this sailboat comes towards us.

“want a ride?” he hollers at me.

I look back at Jon. We had just been talking about going sailing five minutes before.

“Want to go?” I ask him.

He grinned yes.

“Sure!” I shout back. I took off my shoes and helmet and put my sunglasses in JR’s jersey pocket.

We were basically on a cement pier and we didn’t have a bike lock, not that I would have locked that bike up anyways. There was a sketchy, rusted metal ladder leading down to the water, so the boatists moored up to the wall. Jon hopped down the ladder with his bike, his shoes clipped to the pedals, swinging free. He was safe on board. I passed my bike down, crossing my fingers that it would be okay and not end up on the bottom of Lake Michigan and then climbed down the ladder myself, bare footed, in a tri suit.

“Hey, I’m Peter.” The guy said, shaking our hands. We introduced ourselves and decided where to go.

“I’ll head to skipper buds” he said. “We’ll dock there and have margaritas.”

Peter turned out to be a person who retired at 41 and has been living on his boat since then. He does odd jobs for a living, just sails around, and hangs out. He seemed to know everyone on the water, from a twelve year old boy on a sunfish to a group of people on a yacht. He delivers boats, does refinishing of old buildings, you name it, he can probably do it.

Jon stayed in the back talking to him while I climbed up to my favorite place on the boat – the very front. I sat down at the prow and swung my legs off the front, dipping my foot in the wake.

It was beautiful, I cannot tell you how it feels to just be there, skimming over the water, watching it look like the melted glass from a house fire, all angles and peaks making wakes and waves and have the wind in your face, waving to everyone else in the Harbor. Boats let you walk on water, it’s a little like feeling a miracle.

We sailed down to this bar, shored up, and I learned how to tie a boat up. JR and I walked in, and the place was filled with Harley riders and their transvestite looking women. We were a little (to say the least) conspicuous in my tiny tri suit and JR’s spandex bike shorts and our bare feet, but we had some drinks and talked my Peter flirted with the rich ladies next to us.

After that we set sail again out of the harbor. I sat on the front again. I spent half my time looking out to the bay and the other half to JR and Peter who were talking. I appreciated watching them break down boundaries, connect to someone they would never have before. I’m not sure how we would have ever met peter otherwise, since peter lives on the water and JR and I are pretty much land locked – we use wheels, not rudders. We talk to the people we know, the people we are comfortable with, the people we are introduced to by safe people, which qualifies them as safe people, too. JR observed that we are taught as kids to say no to strangers, to stay away from people, lest they hurt you, that the world is harmful and evil and everyone is out to get you and those feelings are continued by the things that make us stay inside: Televisions, the internet, and any number of the things that take us away from the humanity of each other. We are consistently and quietly exiled to our own living rooms by these things.

Because we do not walk around and yell “hi there!” to everyone we don’t know that it’s a rare thing that you don’t get a “hey there!” back. When we open up and just say “yes, I’ll try it” you never knew what you might do, where you might go, who you might meet but you have to personally decide whether or not you are willing to take the risk that you may get hurt, that your toes might get stepped on, or that it may fly back in your face like spitting into the wind.

We were dropped off at the yacht club at about seven thirty, JR and I just glowing from the wind and the water. We put our clipped shoes on and rode out of the yacht club home.

I’ve never started a bike ride and ended up on a sailboat before.

How sweet the sound...

Last night, my friend JR and I sat with our faces inches from the screen window, looking out at the alley that my bedroom faces. It was so still outside, quiet, with ambient urban noise: the conversations of people floating around like Gregorian chants - unintelligible, but beautiful. I heard the clink of glasses and the distant sound of cars driving slow through the narrow streets. Someone in an adjacent house shooting pool.

I am slowly going deaf in my left ear. I am walking around with an unbalanced head, feeling like I am fine on the right side, but my left ear is under water. When people walk on my left side now, for conversation, it is muddled, the letters run together and I find myself saying “I’m sorry?” or “Can you repeat that? I didn’t hear you?”

I’m going to see a specialist ASAP about it because last September, more like two Septembers ago, I went to my doctor with an earache, and when it left, my hearing was hollow, I could hear my heartbeat in it, and I took everything known to man, penicillin, allergy medication, Sudafed, and it didn’t clear it up.

I’ve had ear infections about every month or two weeks in that ear and that frequency has lead to actual hearing damage. I had my hearing checked by my general practitioner, and he recommended me to the specialist. I never realized how luxurious hearing sound could be. Stretching out on my floor and listening to music, the swell of conversation in a crowded room, whispers in bed after dark about all the sweet, hanging questions of life, the murmur of a contented person, the purr of a cat, the roar of traffic from a distant freeway, laughter. All these sounds click through my ears, into my head, and bring back memories.

Sometimes the freeway sounds like the roar of the ocean and when I am falling asleep in cars I remember being six and playing in the sand on the south china sea, with the white sands beaches in the Philippines. Sometimes I hear the clink of glasses and I remember dinner parties and dinners out. I remember my cat Daniel sleeping next to me the night my grandpa died, purring, warming up the dark.

Victor Hugo is my Hero.

More from Les Miserables.

As in the morning, he saw the trees pass by, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the dissolving views of the country which change at every turn of the road. Such scenes are soemtimes sufficiant for the soul, and almost do away with thought. To see a thousand objects for the first and for the last time, what can be deeper and more melancholy? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant. It may be that in the most shadowy portion of his mind, he was drawing a comparison between these changing horizons and human existance. All the facts of life are perpetually in flight before us. Darkness and light alternate with eachother. After a flash, an eclipse; we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to seize what is passing; every event is a turn of the road; and all at once we are old. we feel a slight shock, all is black, we
distinguish a dark door, this gloomy horse of life which was carrying us stops, and we see a veiled and unkown form that turns him out into the darkness.