These Are Wild Times

 A man just started a live stream and then set himself on fire as a form of protest against the USA’s involvement in the Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.  Have we seen protest like this ever in the US?  Possibly in the sixties?  There’s a famous photograph of a monk who has set himself on fire, sitting peacefully while half of his body is ablaze with gasoline-fueled flames.  You can almost hear the sound of the fire through the photograph and you can definitely hear the sound of the fire on the live stream of Aaron Bushnell.  You can also hear his screams.  The video I saw blurred out the video of Aaron burning, and that’s fine.  I don’t think I need to see it 100% to understand.

It was wild.  These are crazy times.  Everybody says that: “these are crazy times”.  “These are crazy times we’re living in….”  But what does that mean for actual life?  It made me think about the game of basketball and the shiny, smooth court it gets played on.  Players run, and bounce the ball as they go.  But imagine if the floor was severely uneven.  City courts can often get cracks in them, divots, and even potholes.  If it’s all they got then I’m sure there will still be kids out there trying to play even though the ball frequently takes some wild bounces.  But imagine a court that’s severely uneven, wavey like skatepark moguls.  Or imagine the nice squares in Boston’s ‘Parque’ floorboards, but every single one is slanted at a different angle.  In either scenario it would very quickly cease to be a fun, or even possible game.  Every time you tried to bounce the ball, it would come back at a different angle then you want and it would make any type of dribbling in a straight line nearly impossible.  If we all learned how to play basketball on a nice, smooth court, and then were forced to only play on this hypothetical uneven court, who would even want to play?  It’s no longer a good game.  At some point a new game may be created using the uneven court, but its unlikely it would merit the name of “basketball”.  I’m picturing something closer to trampoline basketball or even ultimate frisbee.  Whatever comes of it, the point is that to try to continue playing the (traditional) game of basketball on such an uneven surface becomes a miserable and ultimately futile task. 

Well, maybe that’s an argument in favor of ‘God is Change’, like Earthseed.  Shape it, learn from it…  The way I feel like I’m being called is to a quiet house, maybe a cabin.  A bike to get to vendors and resources.  A radio to stay in touch.  And nature.  If it’s possible to just somehow get a small piece of land to live, starve, survive, write, be wild, sleep, learn, become a human…

I just don’t believe people know what is the best way to live life, and I guess I can see how I might become homeless one day. 

The Way to Escape Is Not By Playing the Game

 During the Abbot Elementary episode last night, Ava pushes Janine to “do whatever it takes” to get a ASL translator hired at their school.  Janine had taken a fellowship position at the school board in lieu of her teaching job at Abbot, and was heading up an initiative to get a deaf student a special translator to attend her classes.  Janine quickly learns how much red tape there is to go through to get something like this to be approved through the district.  She needs signatures, she needs something to be notarized, certain processes can take up to weeks to process… She realizes that even though she used to pride herself on going above and beyond, working special programs into the Philadelphia school district is beyond what she can achieve.  She sits in her office dejected when Ava appears, fabulous as ever.  She tells Janine about how she got “a field trip to Game Stop” approved, and one other crazy instance that shouldn’t have gotten approved, but “you do whatever it takes” for the kids.  Of course my first reaction was of bootstrappin’ inspiration!  Nice speech, Ava!  Man, she can be ridiculous but every now and then she’ll surprise you by being good at her job.  Later, it appeared the avenue Janine took to get the translator was to go to the child’s parents and recommend they threaten the school by saying they would go to the media and publicly call out the school district’s lack of support for special needs children if a translator wasn’t arranged.  The next scene, we see a translator helping the deaf student in her class and in the hallway.

As always, I absolutely adore Abbot Elementary.  Like Ted Lasso, I think its such a good thing that the most popular shows are characters that fight to remain positive in a very cynical environment.  It’s a lovely show.  At the end of the episode, I was a little hung up on the method that the Janine character choose to get what she thought was best for the student.  Threatening the school board with media and potentially legal action?  At first it seemed a little much.  But I quickly came around to the realization that no, of course not- we should definitely call as much attention to any program that is not keeping the standard of what our laws and resources require.  I guess.  I don’t know, I don’t know how to run a school district and how their money/resources are allocated.  But I think what stuck with me more is the message that the Ava character pushed.  “When the system fails you, you have to do whatever it takes”.  I guess this has the feeling of deviousness, that its condoning illegal methods.  Which I’m not against, but I just hate systems so much I get frustrated even by portrayals of injustice and have a difficult time moving forward with any constructive thoughts after I experience something unjust.  My mind hits a wall in a way.  “But wait- there’s obviously something wrong with the way the district is set up because the children aren't getting what they need.  Is it just a paperwork and processes issue?  Maybe someone is abusing power and allocations?  Something is not working properly and the owness shouldn’t be on the individual educators to make potentially devious workarounds.”  Rather than accept the situation for what it is, my brain desperately tries to go to the root of the problem and, through brute force, will it away so that we can all move on with our progressing society.  I think I do this with American society in general today.  So many things are broken or failing, corrupt and unjust.  It causes me to basically freeze.  “What’s the point?” is definitely close to the feeling, but I want to clarify that this feeling is contained in participating in “America”.  That sounds too vague, doesn’t it?  The corruption and abuse of power in American capitalism makes me question whether I want to participate in the work force, buy land, keep money in the stock market...  It does not make me question the point of life and living.  I know who I am more and more every day, and I know what I want out of my life.  The obstacles that challenge me from living that life will not go away if I just close my eyes, but I don’t believe the way to escape them is to play the game.  There it is.  And why is the American Dream basically to escape all of the things you needed to do to get there?  “Work my ass off and then have enough money to retire and lead my quiet life on a nice plot of land.”  Right off the bat it goes against the saying of “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” that we’re always told.  Why isn’t the Dream to lead a happy, healthy, balanced, natural life?  My soul does not feel any need or desire to produce imaginary currency for an imaginary system.  This all just feels backwards.  Why didn’t we learn how to survive first?  As children, we should be learning how to make food, how to clean water, how to build a shelter…  the basics!  Then, we can move up to responsibilities and specialties, and so on and so forth.  Of course some kids/people aren’t interested in cooking, farming, building a house and that’s ok.  Let them grow into their interests and strengths.  But I think it’s crazy to ask kids “what do you want to be when you grow up” at age 5, ask them “you’re going to a $70,000 per year university, now what do you want to major in and be for the rest of your life?” at age seventeen, and launch them into corporate America with 20yrs of debt a few years later.  When does one get to learn and understand what it means to be a human on planet Earth?