L Links:

• qhl\ personality
• qhl\ self disclosure
• qhl\ other tongues
• qhl\ reading bug
• qhl\ candyvision
• qhl\ design
• qhl\ diversionary
• qhl\ gilded tongue
• qhl\ elucidative
• qhl\ resources
• qhl\ audiophile

TH Thought Process:

The only purpose of anxiety is to separate us from the grace of God and His purpose in our lives.

Also, God does not take away our desire, but he offers us the transformation of our desires into a desire for things that are good for us. We can find fulfillment and joy in the purpose that God has given us. We never find fulfillment chasing after our own desires, but in desiring the things of God we can find true fulfillment and can experience the fullness of life-- life as God intends it. We can release our anxieties and obsessive thoughts and impulses to our Creator, and in that release we find ourselves able to access the true beauty of life, even in the midst of its messiness, because we have released our spirits from the clutter of our natural human stupidity and entered the current of God's purpose and therefore we ride through life on His strength and His joy.

This is basically a reiteration of Philippians, Chapter Four, so go and read the original . Don't take my word for it.

I want to comment on a statement from Interesting Monstah regarding the conservative religious position of Blacks on the homosexual agenda.

March 9, 2004

Last I Checked, "Agape" Means "Love"

...but you wouldn't know it from this hater tripe, courtesy Agape Press, "Black Conservative Condemns Linking Homosexual Agenda with Civil Rights":

Peterson asserts that homosexual activists "jumped on the Civil Rights bandwagon" in the early 1960s "under the pretense of trying to help black people so that they can further their cause, and that's what's happening today."

But Peterson finds it offensive that homosexuals attempt to equate homosexuality with race. "It's not the same," he says, "I cannot change my color from black to white, but I have seen homosexuals overcome and become heterosexuals. And so this [lifestyle] is not a civil right but a moral issue."

From the Agape Press.

Here we have yet another example of the black/gay wedge, being hyped by desperate white Fundocrats, where gay=white and black=straight. It's irrelevant whether homosexuality is a choice or a morality-driven lifestyle "issue". They tax all of us, natural or nurtured. That is what makes this a Civil Rights, capital C, capital R, issue.

Don't any of these "Black conservatives" like Peterson find it disturbing that they are being used in these pseudo-"Uncle Tom Callouts" by white social conservatives? Or that some of those "homosexual activists" were Black?

Don't these Black Fundocrat hypocrites understand that not all Blacks are straight Christians and not all gays are white?

Don't these people know anything about life? Reality?

Hello?

You Black conservative Fundocrats are being used as tools.

© 2004 Interesting Monstah

Interesting Monstah seems to be confusing Peterson's statement with an attempt to exclude Black homosexuals from partaking in or benefiting from the work of Civil Rights activists. In fact, all he has said is that there is no real comparison between the two issues.

There is a difference in magnitude. Racial issues are real, cut deeply through our society, and are with you for a lifetime (setting aside for the moment weird surgical procedures and the like). There is a definite connection between the treatment of people based on skin color and their experience of poverty, their relationship with law enforcement, their experience of religion and politics, their opportunities for education, employment and advancement and their general sense of being misunderstood by their society. There is also a deep history of mistreatment of massive groups of people based on race and ethnicity.

This is not true of the gay experience, and where there are similarities (i.e. the sense of misunderstanding) there is a difference of degree that makes equating true Civil Rights issues and the gay agenda offensive and trite.

Peterson is not saying that all gays are White or all Blacks are straight (or should be). He is just saying that Civil Rights issues will affect us regardless of other lifestyle choices, such as being gay.

Civil rights issues are about all of us-- they are about our families, and our children, and our economy, and our education, and our politics and our most deeply held beliefs. Gay issues are about gays-- and they are about extending the priveleges of our society to a population with a non-normative sexual orientation. Civil rights is concerned with securing the basic priveleges of our society for the everyday citizen, not in exclusion of such issues as sexual orientation, but including them among many other issues (origin, race, language, ethnicity, culture, age, gender) that, together, serve to move our society forward into an era of greater opportunity and inclusion.

Focusing on any one issue, such as the gay agenda, to the expense of the other issues can serve only to detract from the true struggles of all the other people who fight for Civil Rights. Exalting any one issue, such as the homosexual agenda, to the status of Civil Rights itself not only shows a very shallow understanding of how our society works, but it serves to marginalize the very population that it is supposed to promote. All the differences in what "being gay" means are accentuated, rather than accentuating how "being gay" can be part of the normal existence of a white person who grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, a Laotian immigrant who runs a Vietnamese restaurant, a poor child of Kanjobal Maya descent who saw his Grandpa get shot in the head by the Guatemalan military and now lives in Chicago, a young black girl who was adopted by a mixed race family at the age of four months because her crack-addict mother gave her up at birth rather than try to raise her in the slums, a black man from Cuba who grew up under Castro's regime and saw the wealth of his family wane, a Canadian kid who enlisted in the army at age 17, is of Lummi Indian descent, and served with the 101st Airborne, and so on.

The point being: it should be okay to be gay and fly under the radar; it should be okay to be gay and be focused first and foremost on the welfare of your people, your family, and normal people like us, and not just some fringe agenda; it should be okay to be gay and not buy into all the fashion and the mannerisms and the urban lifestyle; it should be okay to be gay and to accentuate one's normalcy; it should be okay to be gay and not to be attention hungry or a caricature of oneself. And of course, these things are okay, but the parades and the voice of special interests and the minstrel show that gays characters provide us on TV drown out all these normal voices.

And also, if you are a minority and gay, how can you leave behind the greater struggles of your people and focus on obtaining priveleged status based on a marginal lifestyle? How can gays pursue political influence to such a degree while leaving the rest of the population behind? Why are you wasting your time being offended that normal, family-oriented people of your own race and ethnicity look at you funny? Don't you share many of their concerns about society? Don't you understand many of the diffuculties they encounter in day-to-day life? Why don't you refocus on the hard work of finding common ground with your fellow soldiers in the greater Civil Rights struggle and participate in those efforts primarily, and the sexual orientation issues only secondarily? Because the truth is, no one is limited to living in a ghetto and dealing with poor educational options and criminal profiling because they are gay.

And yes-- it is the gay person's job to be clear about themselves and seek out understanding because they are the one who has stepped the furthest out of normative societal bounds. There are legitimate constraints on how we express ourselves in a free society, because without those self-limiting mechanisms we would dissapate into a random and licentious mob of willful individualists with no sense of accountability for our own words and actions.

I am not, at this juncture, and in this context, saying that it is absolutely wrong to be gay (although due to my religious beliefs I lean in that direction), but I will say without a doubt that there are wrong ways to express one's homosexuality (or heterosexuality, or ethnicity, or any other categories, ad nauseum).

We must simply use our discernment in how we exercise ourselves upon those around us and upon our greater society so that the greater good is promoted, rather than self-centered, near-term, or fringe interests. And this is equally true of many other activist voices and fringe interests, not just the homosexual agenda, lest anyone think that I am singling them out for blame.

Focusing on real Civil Rights issues and true social justice, instead of being caught up in the superficial distractions that our society and its media attempt to delude us with, is the true task set before all of us.

We must engage ourselves in the effort to make this world a better place for everyone, and that is a complicated and multi-faceted task. Letting any one voice drown out the others is a mistake that is encouraged by the powers that be; the worldly powers that seek to maintain their hold on our lives and all that makes our lives meaningful; because when we are thus divided, we fall.

We must find some way to see beyond all of our isolated issues (and there are many) and stand up united. We must find a way to do this without an utter dependence on charismatic leaders (who will be shot or succumb to their human failings) and without splintering off into many bickering groups. We must work together as everyday people to transform everyday life, and this is more important, and of a greater magnitude than any one group's agenda.

Okay, "hibernation of the hazel mouse" has to be the strangest search string that has ever led to my site. While following this up on Google I also discovered that a mouse can hibernate in the rectum of a polar bear. I mean, they both were hibernating "together," so to speak. Random upon random upon random.

MRS. WUI RETRIEVES HATS

CONTAINER

ASKING PRICE

ROOT-BOUND

GAY MARRIAGE

GAY RIGHTS

RUNAWAY MIND WITH EMOTIONS RIDING CABOOSE

ALL I WANT IS WHAT I HAVE RIGHT NOW

SURRENDER

FALLING

This bears repeating (I also posted it on my MySpace profile):

I grew up on a wooded patch of delta at the mouth of the Eel River in Northern California. We were a mile from the ocean and surrounded by water. My family was packed into an old ranch house on Cock Robin Island (yes feel free to giggle at the name... okay stop giggling now) which is accessible only by a one-lane bridge. The school bus couldn't cross this bridge, and we were about four miles from town, so I had to walk or ride my bike for a mile or so each morning to catch the bus-- starting on the second day of Kindergarten and continuing till my last day of High School (of course, by then I was often riding my bike the straight 12 miles to school, cutting out the madness of the bus ride, cutting out the middle-man).

We were a family of seven, with three daughters and two sons (myself included). I am the oldest. I have a different mom from the rest of them. My dad married two women who went to High School together in Lawrence, Kansas. They knew each other, went to the same youth group, had art class together, were both into my dad who was, at the time, the youth group leader. My dad was in his long-haired hippie phase and was in from California after a bad Christian Commune experience (they burnt all of his books while he was down in the Bay Area, because, y'know, book burnings were the groovy thing to do, and he wasn't down with that, so he split with a friend of his to bunk up with his pal's previous girlfriend in Kansas).

He married one of these young hotties from his youth group, conceived me (my Grandma Dorothy at times wolud take me aside to impress upon me in private that I was conceived in Kansas City during my Great Grandfather's funeral and that I was in some sense his reincarnation and so I better get on it and be a credit to his legacy). Within the year his young wife had completely lost it, seemed to be cheating on him, and they divorced. It was my Grandma Aileen who noticed that her daughter's behavior was beyond passing strange and who tried to get some medical help. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, upon which she grabbed my 1 and a half year old butt and took off with me so they couldn't steal her baby and lock her up.

My dad caught wind of these events and drove his VW Beetle out to Kansas in a panic, trying to save me. He just thought she was selfish and adulterous. He had never suspected insanity. His car barely survived the trip so he began scouting around the Lawrence, Kansas area for someone to help him. He found my step-mom, fresh out of nursing school, and she offered to help him with transportation. They chased my mom out to California and back. She kept moving due to paranoia (albeit justified paranoia) that people were after her.

My dad and step-mom were still travelling back from California when the police located me and my mom back in Lawrence. The police spent an hour searching the premises for me, trying to extract info from my hysterically sobbing and delusional mom, and were about to give up on the search (they figured I was off the premises and they were going to have to search the neighborhood). Near the time they were about to leave a young cop searched the basement again and noticed that if you squeezed behind the central heating unit, pressed against the wall, you could get to a defunct closet that was under the stairwell. The central heating had been installed in such a way that it blocked this closet. When he wedged himself in there and opened the door a crack he found me playing with dust-bunnies and the remains of an old mop. My face was not wet. I had not made a peep.

See, the cops had almost given up because they were certain that a two year old, left alone, would be crying after an hour of isolation. I guess I was used to it.

However, I was in good health. The cops turned me over to my Grandma Aileen. She handed me off to my dad when he arrived. On his trip he and my step-mom had had time to reacquaint and bond and they were already engaged to be married.

So most of the excitement of my life happened before the age of two.

I live at "The Edge," which is a Christian campus ministry at San Francisco State University. I have done a lot of work on the garden this summer, so when the students arrive for the school year there will be produce to use for the purposes outlined on the edgesfsu.org website (i.e. "We are creating an organic garden to regrow the soil, grow food for homeless and women and children's shelters, and learn about life-sustaining methods of gardening."). I just happened to grow up in a large family, being the oldest of five kids, and gardening was one of my responsibilities. So putting in a garden is like falling off a log to me. It has felt good to get my fingers back in some soil and start some green stuff growing. Besides, when the capitalists get done gunning down democracy abroad, they'll probably finish the job right here at home, and at that juncture a green thumb (as well as a quick trigger finger) may just come in handy. For clarificition on this paranoiac line of thought (no, I do not think the sky is falling, no I do not think the world is coming to an end) please take a look at Octavia Butler's "Parable" series, beginning with "The Parable of the Sower." You may come to realize that the immanent collapse of all that we take for granted is a more plausible option than we would care to think. On that lighthearted note, sayonara!

Thursday, 13 May 2004

Después de los exámenes
El viento corre por el cielo
Y todo el mundo se cae en dormir.

No sé si sirve como poema, pero creo que tiene posibilidades.

Wednesday, 5 May 2004

Here are the responses that Sister Outsider (AKA Anitra) gave to my questions:

1. What would you like to prove to yourself? If you had infinite resources and time what would you do to prove this to yourself?

That's a toughie. I'm hard on myself, so I'm trying to prove things to myself all the time. I wanted to prove to myself that I could get in and succeed in graduate school, and here I am, doing just that. I'd like to prove to myself that I could successfully run my own business, and if I had an infinite supply of money, I'd do just that. The other things that I'd like to prove to myself are more personal in nature: being more assertive, etc.

2. What types of fantasies scroll through your mind most often (violent, sexual, worried, etc.)?

Do I really have to answer that? *lol* Hardly ever violent, unless I've seen or read something particularly violent. I'd say worried, and sometimes sexual.

3. What part of yourself do you most fear to lose? If you lost it what do you think you would feel?

You mean, physically? Physically, I would say my eyesight or something. I'm already half-blind as it is. I think becoming blind would just make me feel helpless and not in control. If you're referring to non-physically, I'd say my sense of independence. I've lost it before, and it sucked, because I [was] constantly walking around being defined by everything and everyone else.

The above entry (05/05/2004) © 2000-2004 ADC

Monday, 26 April 2004

Another angle I could tackle (in reference to my domain name, "emotionally stunted") is the dynamic explored in Nick Hornby's writing, as expressed here at Contemporary Writers, a site about British authors.

Sunday, 25 April 2004

My sinuses were keeping me up (felt like a ping pong ball got shoved up in my skull) so I was browsing some of my links. Sister Outsider had a thought-provoking little exercise posted on her site, so I thought I'd participate.

Here were my three questions:

1. What would you like to prove to yourself? If you had infinite resources and time what would you do to prove this to yourself?
2. What types of fantasies scroll through your mind most often (violent, sexual, worried, etc.)?
3. What part of yourself do you most fear to lose? If you lost it what do you think you would feel?

I will post any response I receive.

Saturday, 24 April 2004

I posted this on Open Brackets:

How eminently skilled I am at
Self-distraction. Like a hummingbird inches
Away from the flower's open mouth,
Offering me nectar that I might sustain myself,
While instead I become enthralled by my own
Reflection in a dewdrop, hanging from
The fuschia. In that moment I enter a reverie
Of self-adoration, wherein I love myself as a
Vision of the expansiveness of all possibility; Wherein the perceptual reality of my own
Preference seems imminent, so close that I can
   taste it.
Such that in this dewdrop illusion I believe that
The contemplations most dear to my heart may be
   actualized;
Wherein the requirements of flight and exertion
Fall away and I perceive an eternal beauty in that
   moment
Of distraction in myself.

Oh that the world may revolve around me and be
Saved from their confusions by my realizations!

Except that, pausing so long between the reflection
   and the flower,
I wait too long for nectar and I fall,
Beautiful thing that I am,
And offer my plumage to the reality that places
Its requirements upon me, whether
I prefer it or not.

Meanwhile, the flower waits, offering its nectar--
Blandly existing without metaphysics or agenda.
There is no other purpose that beckons it away
From the union of its form with function.

But as for myself--
How eminently skilled I am at self-distraction.

---//---

It's just a toss-off poem, but I think it expresses something useful about our tendency to exalt our concepts of reality over reality itself. We must spend more time, I believe, submitting to what life requires of us. All the high-minded concepts in the world will not loosen those requirements, and we may as well aquiesce to them gracefully.

Friday, 23 April 2004

The concept that I want to explore on this site (in part) is as follows: "Our society is emotionally stunted, but it is our children who pay the price."

The picture above is the work of an eight year-old artist from Oakland, California. She was removed from her family because of an abusive situation and lived in a group home for several years. While she was with us we did our best to give her the tools to succeed and thrive despite her circumstances.

Her art is also featured in an article in the SF Weekly from January of 2004 go>>>

Monday, 12 April 2004

I just wanted to acknowledge this piece of perrenial wisdom from my nuova amica (? is my Italian cutting it?) Andrea on MySpace (they usually require an account & password to get in):

Miles Davis once said, and I don't really remember it verbatim, but when asked why he doesn't play ballads anymore he replied, "Because I love to play them."

In essence, this musical genius and simultaneous enthusiast of change, was suggesting that in order to truly succeed in life, sometimes you have to leave the things you love so that one can grow and mature as a person.

This is not to say one should leave something as soon as they begin to love it, but it is merely to say that attaining satisfaction from one thing and using that one thing to provide satisfaction from then on out is just like keeping the same posture for hours on end. It may feel fine at the time, but the longer the muscles are kept static like that, the more it is going to hurt to try and move them. And really, they eventually are going to have to move in order to get along.

I feel a slight twinge every now and then, which beckons me to try something different, go somewhere new, do something in an unconventional way, eat something strange, or wear something crazy. So many people allow themselves to grow complacent in their lives. They know in their heart that they have desires. Desires to change, to do things they have never done, to see things. Many people cite excuses for not doing these things. Like money or time or responsibilities. All valid, of course, but if there is something you truly want to do, there are ways to make it happen.

It takes initiative. And it takes the strength and courage to move from that seemingly comfortable position, endure the slight pain of having to change from a situation that has been held for slightly too long, and to take on a new stance. In the end the soul will be greatful, just as my muscles are when I remember to move around and stretch them out every once and while. Extend the possibilities of oneself to prevent the soul from "cramping up" and growing hostile in its confinement to one way of life.

Ain't that the shit? Hit me where it counts, I know that much. So onward with life, but with perception muscles all limbered up and ready to do-it-to-it like they ain't nothin' to it.

(Yeah, I know. I'll stop it now.) Peace out!

Sunday, 11 April 2004

I have been commenting on various pages in lieu of accomplishing anything else:

(1) Comments on a choice quote from Martin Luther on Open Brackets.

(2) Somewhat misguided comments on Banagor's commentary on the Rwandan genocide (I did not read carefully and quickly got off-topic) but anyhow, you can read what I said.

Tuesday, 7 April 2004

Setting: Ehido, City of Bahia Blanca, Pichihubi Train Station

Visual Focus: Homeless Man

"Suddenly great, enormous wings erupted from his back. His coat was cast aside, his arms stretched as if strained from the armpits to the fingers into where they joined with their new enclosing feathered sheaths, the wormlike threads from the sheaths creeping integument-by-integument into his skin-- his back arced upward as if pulled to the sky with cords-- as small rows of non-flight plumage sprouted out in curves from his upturned elbows back to where his axilla and deltoids had been and large primaries flashed out from where new tissues gloved his wrists and fingers, turning in a slight inward curve, and in the sunset light gleaming a blackened shade of bronze.

"Still surprised, I stared. 'Sometimes it makes a frightening sort of sense,' I said to her, 'The wings, the homelessness, the flight.'

"Leaving his crumbling hunk of cheese half-eaten, he ran down the platform, sunset light gleaming in his panicked eyes as he lifted off, arising from the ground, arcing left above the approaching train-- suddenly free.

"'They usually just die after that.' she said, sipping from her tea and wishing (I could tell) for sugar."

Wednesday, 6 April 2004

Setting: California, City of Oakland, The Hills

Visual Focus: Toyota Corrolla, Gray

"While I was driving the other day, not too far from my home, one car just swerved off to the side of the road, curled up into fetal position and lay there sobbing-- her hazard lights blinking dolefully.

"The rest of us just kept on driving."