My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, I’ve been really down for a good chunk of time, and it’s very easy to get lost in all that darkness. It happens though, you either deal with it in your way or you don’t. I’ve been doing a lot thinking about life and what I want out of it. I keep hearing, “life is in God’s hands,” and “everything happens for a reason,” and “you just have to leave things to fate,” and “if something is meant to be, it will be.” I thought a lot about those things, and I realized something really important. I don’t buy any of it.

God’s not going to help or hurt me, God’s just watching. God’s not going to make my life work, that is up to me. People make choices and our choices have consequences that create other choices and outcomes. Fate, God, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t rule us. Leaving everything to someone or something else is just a form of inaction. When a person gives up their will to make choices, they’re just allowing other people’s choices to shape their life. A person’s own will is so powerful. Strong-willed people change the world. Choices and actions shape my life, not God or fate. I’m not leaving my life to anyone or anything, it’s all up to my choices and strength of will. Fuck it, I might fail at everything I want, but it won’t be because God or fate made it so. If my will is stronger than those that oppose me, I’ll be fine. I don’t think we should leave anything to God, because I think God leaves everything to us.

I’m not big on telethons, but Stand Up 2 Cancer is a good cause and I dug watching James Taylor and Sheryl Crow singing in HD, so donate something.

Today in the Boston Globe is another excellent article by Sara. She covered the funeral of legendary pro wrestler, Killer Kowalski.

Also, and I totally missed posting it, but she did a great article on a local Yo-Yo Man.

So, I wrote a very short piece of fiction. The idea just kind of came to me all at once driving to the movies. In the van I can’t talk to anyone, or use a computer, but I’m not nervous either. My assistant checks in on me regularly enough to where I can really think without distraction. I still wander into worry, but not about my imminent demise. I try to think about writing. I actually do most of my writing in my head, then it’s just a matter of physically typing things. So, I got the idea for Cupid and decided it was worth typing.

It’s the first piece of fiction I’ve written in two years and it’s the first that I don’t find embarrassing. I’m not yet a solid “story-teller,” I’m weak on visual description, but I’m not afraid to say that I’m really comfortable with my voice and use of craft. I may be a weak “story-teller,” but I have definite skill as a “writer.” I’ve lived a lot in the last few years and I think it shows in my writing. The story-telling will improve if I keep going.

I’m at a very odd time in my life, there’s fear, uncertainty, regret, desire, hope. It’s all potential fuel for amazing writing if it doesn’t break me first. I don’t particularly worry about any kind of massive and permanent psychological breakdown, but one never knows about the rest.

Nevermind, I saved the comments, which makes me less astonishingly stupid!

I accidentally deleted the last 20 comments which makes me astonishingly stupid.

My assistant, Sarah, has an iBook with a dead logic board, so I convinced her to hack it open and save the hard drive… which she did! It was fucking impressive…

So, a bunch of my mom’s friends and associates who have kids with disabilities are Christian conservatives and they now LOVE Sarah Palin. Well, somehow I ended up on their mailing list, and, well, I got involved…

You’re assuming that a VP Palin would be able to DO anything in her office.  Our country’s in a hole, our society’s practically moving backward in every way important.  McCain would just be a different flavor of what we have right now, and what we have is pretty rancid.  America needs a change, something completely different.  I guarantee that if we stay on our current path of war, pollution, cultural stagnation, rights for the relatively few of us with disabilities will be quite low on anyone’s “to-do” list.  

 

Michael Phillips

michael@lithiumcreations.com

https://lithiumcreations.com/

On Aug 29, 2008, at 8:24 PM, Nikole wrote:

Dear Michael,         

I so respect and honor you as a person.  No one has lived the life you have, no one has the knowledge of what it is like to fight for rights, even for life itself as you have.  I must agree that no one administration – Republican or Democrat is the answer.  Over the years your mother and I have fought battles on both sides of the political realm just to get what children with disabilities needed.  We have seen an amazing Governor Jeb Bush honor our kids and the horrible Governor Crist cut their services to the point of families losing their ability to care for their loved ones in their homes – both Republicans.  I have seen amazing work by the Kennedy family for our kids, and at the same time several Republican Presidents who signed more civil rights laws into action than the other party.  

What I have learned, and even more recently experienced is that amidst all these who we choose to support or believe in, there are those who care, those who understand, and those who do not – and unfortunately most do not.  What I see in Palin is a glimmer of hope that she will “get it.”  I have a new word for the most insidious form of discrimination – Benevolent Discrimination – most likely the title of the book I will write some day.  It is meant for those who seem to care, but instead have very low expectations.  We found that in the judge I just had for my due process ruling.  If you read the ruling carefully you can sense the discrimination.  The fact is that he felt Andrew was not capable of what we were asking and that the low expectations of his teachers were okay, since they were doing their best, and they cared for him.

I think it must be akin to those slave owners who treated their slaves well, physically, but never believed they were worth valuing on an equal basis.

The Republicans have failed people with disabilities.

So have the Democrats.  The Democrats of today are not the same as the party of Martin Luther King.  I heard his niece on the radio on the historic day of his speech, yesterday, and she decried the abortions in this country her uncle would have despised.  

So in no party is the answer.

The answer is in the hope we need to all seek, no matter who is elected.

The answer is in the valuing of worth of each individual in our country as equal  – not special rights for special interests,  but equal rights, no segregation for the disabled, and no low expectations.

One of the wisest men I know, a proud member of the Green Party, Mark (who in a personal letter to me after our recent loss said the following) (hope you don’t mind me sharing Mark)  The root of the problem in our schools and in society in general is an ugly prejudice toward individuals with disabilities.  It has to do with the way society views their worth.  We live in a crass, commercial age, where we measure human worth by an individual’s ability to conform to our view of physical beauty and intelligence and their ability to produce capital wealth.  The revolution that is needed is a spiritual one, where we view an individual’s worth by their spiritual beauty and the innate value given by God.

I have been following Palin since the birth of her child in April, and have learned that she understands the value of her child, his “spiritual beauty and the innate value given by God.”  While I understand that it takes more to run a country than valuing one human life, one that some would say a life worthy of abortion, I think it is a good start.

With love

Nikole

On Aug 29, 2008, at 7:03 PM, Michael Phillips wrote:

Trust me, I don’t think a Republican administration is God’s answer to anything.

Michael Phillips

michael@lithiumcreations.com

https://lithiumcreations.com/

On Aug 29, 2008, at 6:56 PM, Lilly wrote:

Amen!  Praise be to God!  This is the best news I have heard in a long, long time – I have to say that as a registered democrat who served for several years in a democratic administration, my vote will always be for “our children.”  And this mom of 5 is one of us and she sure has my vote!!!!        

Subject:

 

Dear Friends,

 

What I thought to be only a long shot has come true. For the first time in this election I have hope, real hope for our children, our broken education system. I cried when I learned McCain had chose Sarah Palin for his running mate.

 

Read her personal statement regarding having a child with Down syndrome.

On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome.[11] She returned to the office three days after giving birth.[12] Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”

 

http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/2007/02/palin-on-issues.html

 

Read her position paper on education:

http://palinforgovernor.com/Position%20Papers/SarahPalinOnEducationInAlaska.pdf

 

Never in the history of our country has anyone with such personal, direct ties to a child with a disability come into the Presidency/vice presidency. In times when many of us have considered our views non-partisan – what matters is our kids – here is our chance to vote for our kids and their rights. I have no doubt that Palin will advocate for us in a new, fresh, strong way. I will take any woman with the nickname Sarah the Barracuda.

 

from an older blog:

Why Sarah Palin?

 

This blog is the result of about a month worth of research on potential Republican Vice-Presidential candidates for the 2008 election. I had been considerably less than thrilled with all of the early speculation, mostly swirling around second-tier presidential candidates, so I decided to see if there was anyone better suited for the job that I hadn’t been hearing about. So, I developed the following profile for the perfect VP candidate (using Rudy Giuliani as my presumptive presidential candidate):

 

1) A energetic, young, fresh face who will energize the electorate

2) Not connected to the current administration

3) Pro-Life

4) Pro-Gun

5) A woman or minority to counter Hillary or Obama and put to rest the idea that America only elects white males

 

One of the first names I found that fit these qualifications was that of Sarah Palin, the recently elected Governor of Alaska. I knew that I had stumbled upon a fantastic candidate for national office, but I kept looking in the hope that I could find other potentially viable choices. However, after looking at every GOP governor, senator, and congressperson, I found that Palin had only become more appealing.

 

She was certainly energetic and young, having become governor at only 42 years of age. Watching her speches and campaign ads, I discovered that she was definitely a new kid of leader, coming off more as a spunky soccer-mom than a stuffy career politician. As for abortion, she was staunchly pro-life; and as a lifetime NRA member she was the most pro-gun candidate in the country. Furthermore, her experiences in rural Alaska provided a perfect complement to the big-city credentials of candidates like Giuliani. Her moderately libertarian positions on most other issues also match up perfectly to Giuliani.

 

There was thing about Palin that initially worried me – “lack of experience”. She had only been elected governor in 2006, and her only previous experience was as a two terms as a city councilwoman and two more as mayor in Wasilla, AK (population 8,471 in 2005) followed up by a failed campaign for lieutenant governor and a brief stint on Alaska’s Oil and Natural Gas Conservation Commission. This didn’t seem very appealing at first, but then I took the time to look closer at Palin’s history. What I had failed to realize was that she had habitually knocked of powerful incumbent opponents and was a quick learner on the job. In the 2006 gubernatorial election, she rolled over scandal-prone incumbent Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary, then went on to defeat former governor Tony Knowles in the general election – pretty impressive. Further back, she had knocked off an entrenched incumbent to become mayor of Wasilla, then developed a reputation as a hard-nosed, effective mayor. Her performance in Wasilla got her elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors and earned her the nickname “Sarah Barracuda”.

 

In the end, I decided that Sarah Palin had actually compiled a rather astounding record of achievements in her 42 years, and was more than capable of making the jump to the national level. So now I ask you who you would rather have as your Vice-President. You could accept conventional wisdom and choose from the lineup of old men currently being bantered about, or you could choose an inspiring leader like Sarah Palin. As for me, I’m going with “Sarah Barracuda”, a candidate who will help us win the election and then deliver solid results.

For a few hours this week I seriously considered making this an Emo Goth Atheist Poetry blog, but I’m not quite ready. I really don’t have the energy for it, nor do I know how to write poetry. Also, as much as I thought about it over about fourteen-hours, I’m definitely not an Atheist. The idea that God couldn’t hate me or punish me because there is no God seemed really nice, but then it felt really empty and frightening. If there is no God, even a God that hates me sometimes, then that means I’m entirely alone. I have nowhere to go for help, or to ask for forgiveness to get help. Everything would be random, and I just don’t like or accept that idea. I can’t. Maybe I’m weak, I don’t know.

If you want me you can find me left of center, wondering about you.