Different names

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Tuesday June 14, 2016 · 7:43 AM PDT

2016/06/14 · 07:43

Fear has driven an unforgivable amount of our lifetime, of my generation. We're not unique in that, for a certainty, since every generation that woke up to 9/11 and went to school in a daze has a predecessor who woke up to some horror and did the same. Or heard Columbine over a radio, as I did. Fear is a sad conceit that we need to remember we all have.

I don't go by my first name Robert often. It comes from two people: a great uncle who died before my time in a sad accident, and a person running for president, shouting against fear, struck down in a moment of hate.

I carry that name, usually quietly, as some sort of weight to remind me that fear, that hate, that whatever negativity may be able to spring forth from us is never far away. That what we see as calm is never quite so simple, and positive notions never bloom without a concerted care for those around us. That we need to actively create love.

What I remembered this weekend after another shooting were some friends in college who were afraid to be open about their life due to geography, or the mood of the room, or just plain history. Due to the perceptions of those around them or the worst worries about what negativity might be lurking. Due to true threat. Not just people of any particular sexuality but also women rightfully worried about the reality around them or just about anyone thrust into any random collection of life factors that takes us away from the rare comfort we may craft. People living in an active yet invisible fear because we tend to quietly accept that rather than promote a level of love that could only benefit us all.

We all carry fear. It's alright to be afraid. That's unavoidable. But don't feel alone. So hi, I'm Robert, and if you exist I probably love you.

Planting: A hopeful resistance and a resistant hope

Boudreaux

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Tuesday April 16, 2013 · 3:01 PM PDT

2013/04/16 · 15:01

When I was just a few years old my great grandmother passed away. My family gathered at a beautiful old plantation home to divvy up what remained of her possessions. I can barely even remember it but I recall the little piece of a begonia hybrid my mother took from the side garden. It was a weird, stunted little clipping but it took root in a shot glass in the windowsill of our kitchen. And it grew.

As it aged it cast off fleshy little plumes that we would give to family and friends. They would also sprout in glasses and small clay pots and become their own bizarre little selves. Some would spark tiny pink blossoms, some would develop white pocked leaves, some would rise with ruby veins. It was incorrigible. Unique in its branching but always tied back to its roots. To the one who gave it to you, to the person you gifted a leaf; to the pretty little spurt of petals you shyly handed to to someone cute.

It's so easy to get numb to the difficulties of life. To the inevitable sadness that comes and the overcoming we all must pursue. To the pain that repeats and the anguished glossiness through which we have to view the future too often.

But there's this little plant next to me every day. It links me to family I never knew and wraps its vines around the people I am glad I do know. A perpetual life reminding me of a warm day my family was together, of a rainy afternoon I was with friends and had to quickly retrieve it from the deck so it wouldn't drown. So the connection would not be cut.

There are seedlings we sprinkle about within each other, and they grow despite us. When we're hurt they still blossom and when we look downward in morose worry they still reach ever upward.

Neoplasm - cancer explored in the context of the human condition

Boudreaux

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Thursday February 21, 2013 · 8:59 AM PST

2013/02/21 · 08:59

Cancer is a malady defined by unrestrained growth.

Clearly as we expand and duplicate as a people we have a broader base and add more ways to nurture our oddest, perhaps perfected companion.
Is it our balance? Our punishment? Certainly cancer existed before us but we have found new methods of invitation. Of production. New limiting factors to our brashness.
Have we linked ourselves to that which so efficiently unlinks us from this world?
Are we so perfectly compatible with that which is so barely combatable?
Is that what encourages us to be meek?

It's so precisely tailored to reflect our greatest abilities in the most horrific ways.
Reduction by multiplication.
Destruction by creation.

Certainly it isn't a purely human condition. The others fortunate or unfortunate enough to be around us sprout this seed too.
But no parrot turns plants into poisons.
No anemone arrays asbestos.
No snail shapes shells of uranium.
No friend fades willfully.

Is our own enterprise our expenditure? Do we scorch something inside us as we strive for more? It is a beautiful fulcrum if that's the case. It's a dark partnership.

Because humanity is a malady defined by unrestrained growth.

We are so crushed, so caught by the perpetuity of problems which keep us from what we want. We are caged and yet beautified by the limitations of lifespan. We are in a way encouraged to spread and to corrupt. To leave our mark and some hardened, irremovable trace within one another.

Do we bleed blindly and bountifully until we're struck down by our own outreach?
Do we cast our call crashingly until curtailed?
Do we invite our end with uncontrollable division?
Do we kill ourselves?

Scalpel and Axe Mirrored

Boudreaux

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Wednesday February 06, 2013 · 12:49 PM PST

2013/02/06 · 12:49

The argument on funding our way of life is often one presented as the scalpel or the axe. When it comes to spending cuts, anyway. What if you take the same metaphor and apply it to the revenue side?

The liberal argument is coming up to 313 million people and saying "You should give up some relative percentage of your worth in exchange for the greater good."

The conservative argument is coming up to 600,000 workers and saying "You should give up your entire livelihood and familial stability and potentially your future in exchange for the greater good. And hope you land somewhere." Then looking for other shards to hit at in hopes of crafting the desired angle.

I see the parallels in the difference between the scalpel and the knife. Both have their place, their use. Both are used with purpose. But one is used with thought and precision to keep blood pumping. The other with somewhat-guided hope that the tree falls the right way.

But to summarize; we've already decided the society we want. We want to provide for our seniors, our disabled, our veterans, those of us facing misfortune. Election after election confirms that. So government is going to be there and running off our production. Which is the bigger government overreach: taking a small bit from everyone or taking everything from some?

Little green signs all over WA (tangentially related to R74, directly related to national discourse)

Boudreaux

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Sunday October 21, 2012 · 3:48 PM PDT

2012/10/21 · 15:48

People can try to frame our current argument as an imposition of lifestyle or a creeping presence of a different sort of society. An infringement upon religious liberty, somehow, or some type of general reclassification of traditions. It's a fun enough place to stage the debate, because there's great swaths of literature to be generated and cyclically cited from it, but the disagreement that gets to the heart of the matter is the one that started it.

It's a schism about what is considered natural versus unnatural. For some people the notion of gay or lesbian or any number of points on the spectrum is not in coherence with the mechanics of life. "That's not how it was supposed to be, that's not what regenerates the population, that's not what we grew up with, that challenges something we didn't want to think about." This is planted firmly in the idea that what is "natural" should be judged on a group level instead of an individual one.

You know what's natural to me? Apathy. When something is occurring that doesn't impact me on any level or doesn't cause me concern in any way, I simply don't care.

Also natural: Compassion. If other people are doing something that makes them happy, that is a pretty heartening thing to see.

Also natural: Laziness. Even if I have some vague disagreement with someone, it has to be pretty damn intense for me to spend my time trying to stop what they are doing. Violence, discrimination, injustice. Those things can get me out of my chair or at least make me write something (hence...) but less than that...I am a bit too busy to go out of my way to shame people.

Here's what's unnatural to me: having such a compelling, fetishistic interest in someone else's affections that I need to not only support a systemic shaming of them as an "other," but also fight to maintain that system well after it's past any arguable sense. It's unnatural to be narcissistic enough to think one's own style is just so better than any other that it must be codified legally as the only way to be respected as true. It's unnatural to worship one's own judgment of others' peaceful actions as idyllic. It's unnatural, it's unhealthy, to desire the dampening of realized, consenting, positive emotion.

Law is binary, formulaic, sober and inanimate.
Love is polychromatic, irrational, maddening and the whole point.
May they ever be separate.

The Share (all cuts have cost)

Boudreaux

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Friday July 15, 2011 · 12:35 AM PDT

2011/07/15 · 00:35

I hear oh so often that government workers aren't giving their fair share, aren't making the sacrifices that private businesses must. That they are the coddled class. That they exist apart.

It's a repulsive, and sadly fatal lie.

Boudreaux

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Monday February 07, 2011 · 7:55 PM PST

2011/02/07 · 19:55

So I forced myself to watch the O'Reilly/Obama interview. And here's what really, truly, sincerely pissed me off.

Boudreaux

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Sunday November 28, 2010 · 8:50 PM PST

2010/11/28 · 20:50

We've all seen the MediaMatters cataloging of Palin's North/South Korea slip and her ridiculous overly protective reaction to it. It's great comedy and, as the best of it always does, says so much more about her and most especially her backers than it does about the people who paid a passing glance.

Boudreaux

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Sunday August 23, 2009 · 3:33 PM PDT

2009/08/23 · 15:33

So I was sitting at my computer half-listening to news and heard this goofy soundbite. Thought I would post it on my blog and make a funny retort and instead ended up making a long run-on rant about health care. Here is my unintentional product:

(Conservative pundit on tv talking about healthcare):
"...and America needs to stand up and TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!"

(Let me finish the thought):
"...from the massive plurality of Americans THAT FUCKING WANT HEALTHCARE REFORM*"

*see every poll, the 2008 election, and common fucking sense, you horrible buzzard

(Postscript):
So I'm really sick of the fact that this debate has been going on for not just my lifetime but my dad's and my grandfather's. Why should we provide healthcare to everyone? Because we fucking CAN. The measure of a society is not the strength of its forces but the level to which it can hold up its citizenry. The quality of life it can provide. We want to be the greatest country on the planet? God and Caesar combined? Then make it so that people don't have to lose half their livelihood because they develop cancer or have to spend their life in voluntary impoverishment because they were born with a recessive gene.

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Different names

Planting: A hopeful resistance and a resistant hope

Neoplasm - cancer explored in the context of the human condition

Scalpel and Axe Mirrored

Little green signs all over WA (tangentially related to R74, directly related to national discourse)

The Share (all cuts have cost)

I wish elite wasn't bad

Insert ideology: receive outrage

Kill Me (an unintended diatribe on healthcare from a lucky one)