I'm feeling better:):):)...

I talked with my stepmom, Marilyn, last night:)...her dad just died and she seems to be doing amazing about it, frankly...I can't imagine how much she must miss him...and, as she said, hopefully it is something that I will not have to face for a very long time:)...

But it was good...Marilyn is someone who is strongly committed to me and my life...and to doing good in the world...she's an amazing listener...and we've both clearly grown in the last 2 years in ways that are really good for our relationship...

Most important to me is that I can speak more freely in front of Marilyn, now, I think...and she's not hassling me as much about whether I talk the way she wants, etc...

I, frankly, think that so much of how we guard our language and thoughts around one another grows out of our fears that we won't be accepted for who we are...which happens so often that it leads us to feel afraid of just being ourselves...as if we could dichotomize our lower instincts and our highest instincts...as if there will be a time when even if we don't say, "Fuck" out loud, that we'll stop thinking it...

It's a silly, sad, restrictive for-no-good-goddamned-reason attitude about life that reinforces one of our truly lowest natures: the persistent fact that we are so often dumb, scared little bitches who have such a hard time just learning to be grown-ups, for goodness sakes, and not just playing them on TV...we spend so much time trying to PROVE and PRETEND what grown-ups we are, that we persistently fail to be them enough to recognize that grown-ups (and kids, when they aren't afraid that grown-ups are going to hurt them) cuss and do all kinds of things that are not so polite...

And -- most grown-up of all things to face -- that THAT FACT OF LIFE is not going to go away...ever...ever, ever, ever...no matter how many times we try to punish one another into submission...

Always, always, always...people make up their own minds about what is ok and what is not so ok...what is great and what is terrible...and no amount of bullying will ever make that fact of life go away...

I don't know how many friends I have who have serious drug histories who still tell me that they think that scary things in life or things they don't like can be bullied away, obviously completely oblivious to their own pasts...the biggest reason why I'm so clear that the drug war has been a miserable failure is because I have way too many friends who have shared some SERIOUS drug histories with me...much of it was pretty innocuous, really, and would be terribly tragic if they faced some kind of jail time or losing Pell grants or other kinds of punishments for much behavior that is just self-destructive, at times, and happens to be illegal...Big Macs are self-destructive, too, but I don't want any stupid fucking laws against them...and I'm just waiting for the anti-obesity crowd to make them illegal and then we can REALLY begin to resemble the old Soviet Union in our OBSESSION with kicking peoples' asses to be how we want them to be...but even the things that were more serious problems -- like out-of-control junkies -- no real indication, at all, that jail-time or any kind of force would do anything, really, to improve the situation and deal with all of the emotional shit that is underneath that bullshit...

But the major point, here, is that my friends just can't seem to get the foolishness in their reasoning...bullying will make problems go away and yet in one of the issues that is central to so many of my friends' lives it has CLEARLY not had an impact...and, if anything, has made it taboo enough that they want a taste...and, often, much more than just a taste...

And what is so incredibly dysfunctional about this, to me, is that almost literally EVERYONE knows it...that people will want to do what is taboo...

And some people, at least, seem to know that the best way to remove the temptation of danger is to remove the taboo...that repression -- social, intrapersonal, legal, political -- does not work except temporarily in the face of immediate danger...and, even then, it has longer term consequences that must be accounted for...

If it did, then highly repressive societies like Saudi Arabia should not produce insane mass murderers like Osama Bin Laden...or Germany and Hitler...or China and Mao...or Cuba and Castro...or Kim Jong Il and North Korea...President Bush is not a mass murderer, but he is FAR TOO RECKLESS with power to warrant having it...but, as in so many fucked up countries all over the world, people still choose him no matter how much destructiveness he engages in...because he supports their seemingly unrelenting prejudices about life, no matter how destructive and self-destructive those prejudices might be...

Hopefully they will choose differently this election, so that we don't have to listen to four more years of rationalization about how there's nothing really serious to learn from our failures in Iraq...

I don't know WHY people are so persistently such crying, whining little dumbasses and victims of a world that they help create...

I take that back...I think I do know why...but the causes are very similar to the very things that so many of my friends say they want...how much THEY have been hurt in the world...how self-protective that makes them...how the emotional defenses blind them to the consequences of their actions both because they don't want to get hurt but also because they think they have to hurt others to make it in life...it is such a crazy, dysfunctional belief that it's hard for me to believe, sometimes, that we will escape it...

But escape it I am fairly confident we will do...

Because we really only fuck life up so much, it seems, before we get on a better track, if history is any guide...

It's just disheartening to know that we have to fuck it up so much before we get it straight...

But get it straight we generally do...

I am tired of the cycle, though...I am tired of rooting for just LESS mean ways of dealing with one another...

How about dealing with our meaner instincts on our own time and learn to be responsible for them and stop taking them out on others because ignoring them or trying to pray them away isn't working...

Taking therapy and psychology more seriously might help here...as might learning to more authentically and openly acknowledge when we think we might be wrong...

But much of it, I'm convinced, is risking looking "weak," when, ironically and paradoxically, that so in so much of what too often looks "weak" to us is where real strength lies...

And the ultimate show of weakness...the ultimate showing of our underbellies...is just being ourselves...and not worrying about what others think about us...

And the truth is that the deception invovled in this one is really all just an illusion...

Because the truth -- the real truth -- is that none of us can be anything OTHER than ourselves, no matter how much we try to delude ourselves otherwise:)...

I've got to go...I'm starving...and I'm tired of ranting:):):):):)...

I hope everyone has a good day:):):)...

Love,
Ben