Politics is a No-Win Game Played by the Rich

We have all been seduced by the media. Facebook and Twitter reign supreme. I can remember my life before either and I was much happier. It seems that the political elites are running a numbers game that no normal person can win. I think they are all putting on a show for each other and social media is the fodder that keeps it going. Media wants to outdo other media. Politicos want to outdo other career politicians. We too are the manure that generates the engine; the shit that supports the show.

So why do we participate? There is not one scintilla of evidence that our participation makes any difference at the national level.  Sure a black man became President, but look what that gave us afterwards? The shit-show that is Trump and his nepotism. The bread and circuses they feed us are just to keep us occupied while under the table work goes on in back rooms and deals get made by making large payments to “public servants”. I admire all the new fresh faces in the Democrat Party. I admire their idealism, but they too will succumb to corporate payouts and backroom deals. It’s inevitable.

I was so much happier when I paid attention to none of it. In a way, politics is its own religion and breeds its own kind of fundamentalism. We worship at the shrine of this or that candidate. We have rallies and meetings to bolster the “spirit”. We decorate our lawns and cars with posters and magnets declaring what we “believe in”.  And we wait until November to open our “presents” on Voting Day to see what we bought for ourselves.  And we are stupid enough to fall for it every time. People have been fighting since the sixties to hold politicians accountable and has it helped? I mean, has anything of the underlying structure changed at all? No. Same old shit-show.

I’m giving up on politics. I have no more idealism left, only reality. If a giant megalomaniac, corporate shill, Putin lover, and ass-hat like Trump could win, then they can have all the baggage that goes with electing him. It proves that Republicans, like the fundamentalist puppeteers running them, are itching for the apocalypse and they’ve just elected the anti-christ that will lead them there.  Since the Dems are too dumb or too unwilling to stop them, they deserve what they get. I’m not being an audience or consumer of it any longer.

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It’s 11pm and I can’t sleep

My husband and I atop Glastonbury Tor. 2013

10 Years ago I started this blog. I had just graduated with a Master of Arts in English and I missed the writing and research part of my university experience. I wanted a place to track my thoughts and not write a journal, per se, but interesting articles about my thoughts on various topics. I was not ready to give up writing.  I’m proud of some of the things I’ve written, especially movie and book reviews and my struggles with religion, namely Christianity.  I feel that I’ve lost the heady thrill of college writing and the joy of discovery.

Well, a lot has happened since. It’s been almost a year now since I moved back to the States after splitting from my husband and it’s been almost a year since he died of cancer. The former was planned but the latter was a surprise. I have not written about it except in my personal diary because it’s a long embarrassing and painful story.  What I thought would happen didn’t and what I never thought would happen did. When I left for the UK, I followed a dream. However, that proved to be exactly what it was; a dream. Unreal. Fantastical. Too good to be true. Did I mention I’ve become bitter as well?

Ironically, the only job I could find at my age upon returning to my home state of Illinois, starting completely over again and even with a Master’s degree, was a job in a church doing admin and financials. It pays better than I expected, and even though it IS a church, I don’t think I believe in God any longer even though I give it a half-hearted attempt now and then for old times’ sake. Sure, at work I can talk the talk as good as any of the pastors. But my heart’s not in it. In fact, my heart’s not in much anymore.

I no longer believe in the democratic process once a supreme corporate asshole like Trump got elected. No amount of umbrage on the part of journos, politicos, or anyone with any Washington clout seems able to change that. I tired of being outraged a few months ago. Also, for the first time in 45 years, I’m not attached to the hip to any boy/man that I’ve attempted to earn love from by jumping into the sack first thing. I’m no longer giving everything I have to a relationship that doesn’t give a shit about me. The self-sacrifice I’ve spent my life on has yielded exactly … nothing. In fact, the only thing I look forward to now is not dying of breast cancer or heart disease, both of which have visited me in my life at various points.

I now spend my time working, playing Red Dead Redemption 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and reading books. Those things are my favorite things (except the working part).  I don’t think I was ever cut out to do great or even semi-great things. I just don’t have the energy to invest. I’ve spent it all. I don’t have, nor will I have, any significant goals. I wish that, like Thoreau, I could find my cabin (read electronically wired house) in the woods and retreat into Nature. My best years are behind me, and if that sounds depressed, perhaps it is. Perhaps, too, it’s just reality.

Maybe I’ll write more now. Maybe that’s the therapy I need. We’ll see.

Surgery and Updates

My husband went in for bladder cancer surgery on Thursday and is now home recovering nicely. It all went as well as it could have and they said they got all of it without it having spread elsewhere. During it all, I think he gets reminded of his mortality and perhaps, just a tiny bit, he’s reminded about who’s important? I, too, have had a complete rethink.

We have actually achieved a truce, of sorts. I’ve had to scale back emotionally and he’s living with the idea that he does not have my full attention any longer. Perhaps that’s for the best.  This article is one I came across accidentally, but it does help me understand the ideas behind things and why we are all bent on romanticism and the idea of one person for each of us until death. I have always fallen for the full romantic picture that we are taught as young women; there is one special person, your soul mate, whom you will meet, fall in love, and marry and live happily ever after in perfect bliss. Yeah, not so much.

I think now that people live to a very advanced age and it’s virtually impossible to ask someone to love one single human being throughout your life. It is entirely possible to love more than one person romantically. I’m doing it now. I love my ex-husband and I love my current husband. I see no contradiction. The contradiction only occurs in people’s minds when it comes to sex. Jealousy only really occurs when we think of people having sex with other than us.

I certainly don’t believe anymore that people are monogamous. The majority of evidence that I see around me in the people I know and in the news confirms to me that men especially are incapable of fidelity.  Yes, women too, but it is not as accepted in women as it is in men. I am certain that if two people work at it, non-monogamy can work, however BOTH people have to start at the same place and not try to fit it in afterwards. My problem is that I didn’t sign up for it from the beginning. If I had, I could have dealt with it all better.  If I’d been honest with myself as well, I could have been self-aware enough to know that I am NOT one for fidelity myself. My current relationship proves it! And, just because I have no interest in outside relationships right now, it does not mean I won’t in the future.  I’ve made it clear that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and the hubby accepts that.

The lesson learned here is to BE HONEST FROM THE BEGINNING. We all spend so much time hiding and lying to ourselves and to others about what we really want and then we try to force ourselves to live by a moral code that we did not create. Someone else said that this was our moral code and we accepted it. I told my husband, it’s not that he’s ACTUALLY seeing anybody else that’s the problem for me, it’s the lying about it that angers me more. The betrayal is making it seem that I’m not worth telling the truth to. True, I’ve made it difficult for him to be truthful by my outbursts, but I’ve learned, through scaling back emotionally, that my outbursts do not encourage honest dialogue. So there are learning curves all around.

Perhaps something can be salvaged after all. I feel better about it now that I give myself time to really think about it and the ramifications of certain choices. It’s not for everyone, but it might be for us.

Things are Becoming Clearer

I think I’ve gotten a clearer image of what’s going on in my marriage.

Here is a man who is wedded to him computer for interaction (being blind) and for his primary contact with the outside world on a daily basis.  He trolls the internet for contact with those he finds interesting and amusing. While married to someone else, he comes across this blog and reads of a housewife, turned student, turned writer who lives a full life. I have a job, three children, a home, cats, and a husband. I get up and go to work every day and I write interesting things during my time off.

Cue eight years later where I give up all that, come live with said man. After things were progressing long distance using Skype and email, we find that being in each other’s presence isn’t quite the same thing as communicating over the internet. Gone are the interesting things for him; my job, my life, my interesting thoughts. Gone are my fantasies that we have anything physical in common due to fetishes I don’t share. We also failed to notice that he is an extrovert entertainer absolutely ADDICTED to being liked and appreciated and to being out in the social scene. I, on the other hand, shun social interaction as much as possible.  I do not like parties. I’m done boozing and bar hopping. Oooo. Bad move on my part.

This man therefore turns to the internet yet again for someone of interest. He finds another woman, university educated AND employed. Her topic? Music of course. Bingo. She also shares some of his fetishes because that’s how they met, on a site catering to that.  Bingo again. They now share morning and evening Skype conversations just as we did. This woman is now filling the role I did all those years ago; interesting life, shared fetish (which I was willing to entertain, but not obsess over), shared interest in music, social butterflies that crave attention.  He fails to see the parallel whereas it’s so obvious to me. I have failed to keep his interest and my one sin; being in the same room with him. Automatically I’m diminished by proximity.

My husband cannot say no to another human being even if it’s to the detriment of his own well-being or his family’s.  I can have no respect for a man who has so little respect for anyone outside his current, immediate circle of interest. I have come to the point of doing my duty without expecting any emotional rewards. That’s what marriage is isn’t it; an exchange of rewards? We exchange emotional rewards and intimacy for doing and sharing the same things? As one author put it, we make deposits in each other’s love bank and hope that enough deposits will overflow into and become the strong marriage we invested in.  What accrues is interest, closeness, shared loyalty, affection, passion, all of which add up to that weird mysterious term we call ‘love’.

By the same metaphor I think that my account is open, but there is very little left in it to draw upon. The smaller and smaller amounts I invest is offering no return (in fact, it’s being diverted) and I’m considering closing it one day. Why keep an account open that works against you? It’s at these times that I need to find a solid figure spiritually to focus on; one I know will always be there for me. I think God provided this in my darkest times before and, whether made up or not, God will once again provide an anchor I need when all human anchors fail.  My Daily Stoic talks about having a ‘mantra’ one can turn to at times like this; to bring one back to the center and stabilize.

Let it be so.

Giving In or Accepting Things I Cannot Change?

I have used many philosophical and religious systems in my life, for personal improvement mainly. I’ve been a devout and now a nominal (if that) Christian. I’ve read numerous philosophers.  At university, as a literature major, I was obliged to read widely and often. This I gladly did. I could never quite come to know a system that worked for me, that reflected life as it is lived and not as some dogma pronounced.

My favorite bible book is Ecclesiastes. It has more sound wisdom in it than the entire collection of epistles, stories, and myths in the Jewish and Greek Testaments.  It’s curious that no one preaches from this book, probably because it goes against all the tenets of Paul’s version of Christianity. I have to say that my favorite philosophers have been the more practical ones. I’m all about practicality until I get some damn fool notion of romance into my head. One of the most practical is Aristotle.  The Transcendentalists are sublime. The Stoics are admirable AND practical.

My morning read always includes a portion from The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. In today’s portion, a quote from Seneca, Moral Letter, 83.2

I shall keep watching myself continually, and – a most useful habit – shall review each day.^[2] For this is what makes us wicked: that no one of us looks back over his own life. Our thoughts are devoted only to what we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future always depend on the past.

Good words to heed and keeping a journal has been a daily habit with me for over 40 years. I do look back over my life and realize all of the mistakes in thinking that I keep making and all of the actual mistakes. It’s a very self-reflective journal, sometimes nauseatingly so.  Daily examination is a good thing, although as a Christian this would always turn into some kind of scrupulosity fest which never made me feel any better.  But one thing the Stoics believed was that we have control over one thing; our own minds. All else stems from that, including our will.

I’ve also learned a great deal from my husband who follows every whim, denies himself nothing, and seemingly has no control over his own ideas, actions, or choices. He also never reflects on what’s past because he just forgets everything. He’s like a blank slate every day. I ask him about previous marriages and he doesn’t remember anything, or chooses not to. He keeps no diaries or journals or blogs. This complete lack of concern over one’s actions has taught me a great deal about how we see the world and our reactions to it. It’s also taught me that we CANNOT change other people. We can only change our MINDS and therefore, our actions (will).  Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations 7.2:

How can our principles become dead, unless the impressions (thoughts) which correspond to them are extinguished? But it is in thy power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame. I can have that opinion about anything, which I ought to have. If I can, why am I disturbed? The things which are external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind.- Let this be the state of thy affects, and thou standest erect. To recover thy life is in thy power. Look at things again as thou didst use to look at them; for in this consists the recovery of thy life.

I need to go back to first principles every single day and reflect on those things that worked for me and those things that didn’t. When was I most happy? When was I most content? What made me feel in control and purposeful in my life? What makes me feel crazy and out of control? It is to these which I must reflect on every morning. As Aurelius said, ‘to recover thy life is in thy power’.

No, I cannot change anyone else, but I can change how I see it and how I react. Now this is easier said than done, but if we keep falling into that hole in the sidewalk instead of choosing to walk around it the next time, we have only ourselves to blame.

Each Day a New Thing

My husband wakes up early every morning to make coffee and chat with his new girlfriend.

When I came to bed last night, I felt I needed a hug. We are sleeping separately now and I went to his bedroom, hoping to get in and just stop it all for a moment. He was chatting on his phone with this woman. He usually lies when caught outright. This time he said he was chatting to a friend about a musician, but I know this is not true. I can see his phone. He is laying on our bed, dressed as he does in women’s clothing. He says it makes him comfortable. I have never minded that.  But he is compelled to share it with men or women, along with other fetishes like wearing nylons, garters, and feederism.

To say it put a damper on my search for a hug is putting it mildly. I retreated and said, ‘Never mind, it’s not important’.  Ten minutes later he joined me in my bed for a short snuggle, as we used to call it. He rubs my back for a bit and it puts us both to sleep. Later, he got up and went to his own bed.  Small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

Last night after my post on this blog I emailed him. We always talked best via email, more honestly when we didn’t face each other. He preferred our correspondence when we were 3000 miles apart, but now, I am just a nuisance to him if I want to talk. I asked him outright if our marriage should end.  This morning he must be too busy with his girlfriend because he hasn’t answered me yet. I can smell the coffee from downstairs, so I know he is up. My email is not on his list of important things to do first.

This is the culmination of years of getting along, me finding out his secrets, fighting, reconciling, and starting the process all over again. I suppose the question I should ask is, do I want to end it? Part of me does. The other part is the practical aspect of having to pack everything again, spend thousands of pounds again (assuming I have that), move back to where I am familiar, but to no job, no car, no health care (i.e. insurance), and no place to live? Do I want to put my already fragile health at risk with that stress again? What holds me here? I have no close friends. Which is more stressful? Which can I deal with if I work actively to ignore the stressors?

It’s not a matter of which will make me happiest. That’s not an issue any more. At my age, happiness is nice to have but not something I’ll expect to find.  It’s a matter of trade-offs. What can I live with? I suppose this is another day to contemplate that.

Dexter Morgan, Absorber of Sins if Not a Sin-Eater?

Image via Wikipedia

“A sin eater is a person who has the capacity to sense, draw out, and consume the suffering of others.” Isaac DeLuca Sin Eater.

I watch the Showtime series Dexter whenever I can. Some of my family members have wondered how in the world I can watch this stuff or find in Dexter a sympathetic character. I can because I think that there is a dark place in each and every one of us, as Dexter calls it his “Dark Passenger.” Some of us can squelch this. Some cannot. To me, it’s the epitome of sin and a lack of impulse control that I believe some are born with. Or, as in Dexter Morgan‘s case, was born when we experience a horrifyingly traumatic event. There was a free preview of the channel on all this past week and I spent every night getting through the latest season. What occurred to me as I watched the season finale was that perhaps Dexter serves as his community’s sin-eater, perhaps not in the literally sense as in eating in the presence of a corpse, but in the Scapegoat or Sin-Absorber sense.

In Season 5 Dexter meets Lumen (notice the light reference) who has been tortured and raped by a group of childhood friends, now grown men, who get their kicks by murdering women after such unspeakable acts. Lumen escapes this with Dexter’s help, but spends the season trying to track down and kill the perpetrators. After initially backing away from involvement, Dexter tries to help her eliminate her torturers and together they see what each of them has the capacity to do. Dexter is amazed that he is finally fully seen by another human being and she is not disturbed. Perhaps because, momentarily, she is broken herself. But in almost the last scene of the season finale Dexter does something that struck me as a completely selfless and redemptive act. He grasps Lumen’s head between his hands and kisses her squarely in her third eye chakra between her brows. It’s not a quick peck, but a long drawing out sort of kiss. It is only after this kiss that Lumen feels completely healed from her trauma, and after, I might add, they have indeed tracked down and killed the last perpetrator.  Lumen is freed, but Dexter is not. He has not got rid of his Dark Passenger. It is his lot to kill those who harm society, or so he believes.

Despite the ethics surrounding the acts of such a person, it brings up all sorts of religious connotations for me. Are some people destined/doomed to play the bad role? In the Hebrew bible, God is seen as choosing some for evil purposes and some for good.  Paul clearly thought that God did this very thing by hardening Pharoah’s heart to accomplish the freedom of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. (Romans 9:17-18) One can also say that Judas Iscariot was destined to betray Jesus, whom the writers of the Gospels thought was known from the beginning as the betrayer (John 6:60-71).  However one interprets it, clearly in a foreknown world, some are doomed to be the evil that people hate. Jesus, himself, and his disciples can be seen as “sin-eaters” in the sense that at the last supper, the disciples would be considered eating with “the dead;” Jesus himself. In the Church, priests can perhaps be considered sin-eaters in the sense that, during the Eucharist, we eat Jesus’ body in order to confer grace or absolve us from sins.

Dexter could also be an example of a case of natural selection. There are those who prey on the innocent and those who prey on the prey-ers upon the innocent. It’s natural law or a hierarchical food chain, however one chooses to see it. It could carry religious connotations or it could be simply evolution with human beings as just another animal acting out animalistic ways. It just struck me that Dexter manages to heal all those who come into contact with him, yet he is never healed in the sense that he is always broken, always has a Dark Passenger, and yet we sympathize with him, or some of us do anyway. He didn’t choose to be this way, larger forces did. Some of us can’t choose to absorb the sins and sufferings of others.

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