i think it is a dysfunctinal concept dreamed up by Xtianity (and their new-age kin) to manipulate people into blind-faith & obedience to authority.

i personally, want G-d to love us conditionally... emotionally-loving us as part of Itself, is a given, no harm in that but let's take the Jewish-mythos angle here,just go ahead and ask the Angels if they are happy with the fact they are so "close" to HaShem that they are unable to act out of free-will and make "heavenly father" actually proud of them?..... sorry, but i'm glad there are "conditions" involved and i have the freedom to fuck up royally... thanks but no-thanks, to the Jezus-freakie-folk, i want my Daddy proud of me for more than the fact that i can read and blindly/unconditionally accept & recite a couple of sentences...

and do you want to "cheapen" something? just go ahead and toss it everywhere... pass those carte-blanche "all is forgiven" & "i love you sooooooo much!" cooing trippy-face mantras to the general public and watch all the words devolve and compost into huge piles of meaningless cliche...

i am a big love-love sort of folk in here.... spreading my beaming smiles and coo-coo to the loved-ones all around me, but i DO try and mind just what exactly i am saying and HOW i express it to people... it would devestate me beyond all belief to realise that my words of love had been so over-used and so random that they lost all meaning to the people who mean the most to me.....

and granted, i think there are many human-experiences that we all slap the same label of "love" onto (for better or worse) and i will admit right now that i am totally at a loss as to controlling my emotional-love for people myself, but i don't really mean the butterflies-in-belly when i tell someone i love them... i can get those sweet little moments of "awe" and Gd-in-all love-loves over much of humanity, but that does NOT mean that i would give them access to my body or possessions and commit to a future-relationship with them....

if i am in a relationship with a friend (even JUST a friend) there are an enormous list of actions that pass back and forth between us, and filter through my mind, swim through my blood, before i hear myself telling them again "i love you".... many many "conditions" involved...

we all have "quirks" as to things like sexual-love/attractedness, and i ain't going to pass judgment on another person's inability to commit to long-term relationship with someone based solely on appearance of face, or sound-of-voice, partner having "innies" or "outties", or even color-of-skin (oh well, it happens) any more than i would pass judgment on Ray Crumb and his boot-fetish.... we can't change our wiring to alter our emotions & sexual-response, not without a HUGE investment of time/energy and commitment (and i doubt long-term success of that sort of thing really)....

there are people who couldn't commit to being with me for any NUMBER of reasons.... a good many of them my own human-failings, and some of them just their own "quirks" that they needed from me that i just honestly could not provide them....

some of those quirks were pretty fucking odd if i do say so myself hahaha ;) a common thread through much of them though was my not adhering (consciously) to common-society's programming of what is "right" to be/want for myself and what is "right" to demand from the world we live in...

i am also basically too damn "whole" and un-needy and it scared off many men who saw our relationship as built on very shakey-ground i.e. i could get up and walk out any minute and how in the WORLD could that be called stable? (mind you, that only scared off the "men" (whether XX or XY), telling isn't it?) and as far as the women i have been involved with, we had much conflict over my not taking "roles" seriously enough... i like "pretty" and sorta-femme women but HATE tons of make-up/perfume/trashy-clothes, and no i did not want to lift weights, lower my voice, and cut my hair short (sorry girls).... but being "fluid" myself(s) again translated as being unstable/unreliable and our relationship being just to fragile... so the "girls" (again, either XX or XY) left me for more "solid" people...

okay, whatever.

i'm not even going to say that none of these people "REALLY loved me" because i don't doubt that they did, in their own way.. but we all have our own needs/conditions in relationships.... no way in fucking hell would i want to be with someone who was "tolerating" me there, just because of their feelings for me, even though i was not at ALL what they wanted in a partner... (been there done that, NEVER again please)

my own feelings aside, know what my conditions are to be with me? i want health.. for myself, my loved ones and this entire fucking planet & Universe... i make my choices for growth, healing and mindful/ethical behavior, every time i so much as buy CANDY in a store i am pondering over all that.... so same goes for my partners in life ("just friends" and otherwise) if someone craves only to be irresponsible and immature, i won't include them in my life, i won't ACT out of my love for them (i.e. let the fucker be lonely, i ain't callin him/her) i do not consciously reward mis-behavior in people, no matter HOW much i emotionally-love them... because when i DO reward that, and help them more-easily stay in that state of take-take-take/exploitive behavior, then i am basically like the spineless-mommy who spoils her child rotten with candy and then looks to the sky when her little girl has a mouth full of rotten teeth and diabetes.... fuck. that.

i am mental in my own ways (for instance, my mother-to-all delusions in here) but that being said, i think that i tend to have non-harmful dynamics with most of the people in my life... i am legally/techinically wrong to feel "i am their mother" to strangers on the street, but my loving each and every friend as "my child" does not diminish them in any way, does not dis-empower them (learning to be "a mother" at 5, meant my "children" were peers (horizontal from me, not above/below by definition, and i NEVER forgot that***)... i do not encourage any sort of self-harmful behaviors, and no matter how dependent our relationships might sometimes begin (i.e. me & my biological little-sisters, me & M, etc.) every single ONE of my adopted-kids learn from me that they are able to live on their own... walk for themselves.. not because i am their "legs", but because i see with my own eyes just what they have inside them and MAKE those little buggers face it too.. they ARE "strong enough".

- e.


*** edit: in all honesty, i probably use/see my use of words like "mother"/"child" with my peers just as they see/use the concept of a "good friend"... a neuro-linguistic quirk of my own (my idiolect), but my "friends" forgive me for it... yes? ;) - e.

more than i realised:

Harlem Arts School Shuts Over Financial Problems


and i think i figured out why i'm freakin *so* bad... aside from the fact that its just right up there on my list of the Failures-of-Humanity that we make our kids suffer for what us grown-ups FUCK-up...

when i was little ms. sweet-n-innocent, and living my quasi-cracker existence in wetlands of coastal Jersey, i was basically growing up surrounded by families of Bennys** & commuters who just decided to relocate to NJ and STAY there... Brooklynese was me mother-tongue...

New York wasn't another "state" to me, i could see it from the beach (day OR night)... it was just like another part of Jersey, one that you'd have to take a CAR or ferry to get to, but of all the kids i knew, a lot of us had parents/grandparents from there (some of them STILL there)....

talk of the old-neighborhoods were like fairy tales from teh Old Country.... heard about where the best food was, which neighborhoods were the most dangerous (usually the ones the speaker was from!) and heard everyone throwing around addresses as intersections... and btw, i was super proud that i could say my mother was from "Hell's Kitchen" (first, because it would get some "oohs" sometimes, and also because it was the only time i could say aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks without getting in trouble)....

i wasn't the smartest kid with geography, i thought that the Coneheads were from France, and that was right in the middle of America near Wisconsin, but i also had other little Juju "truisms" in my head... Jews come from Brooklyn (ONLY Brooklyn)... you *have* to go to China Town to get cheap clothes... and Harlem is where JAZZ comes from! ;D like this Mecca of Soul in my head (and heart) and i am sure i dreamt up many not-at-all-accurate fantasies of what it would be like if i could live up there with all the music ;)

okay i know i was lacking a bit of info in most areas of life (i was a kid!)... i got over it as i grew up... most of it, anyway... now i know that Moses didn't part the East River and that my mother is apparently from "Clinton" (the FUCK??) but i can't give up my dreams of Harlem... i *can't* .. i feel like we owe Her & her children (and children's children!) so much!

so how the hell could New York let this happen?! it feels like such a horrible "omen" to see ...

- Z.

EDIT: address to their web-site: Harlem School of the Arts to find out more about the school and perhaps make a donation? (come on, don't make me whip out my Jewish-Mama guilt-trip on you now)



** re: "Bennys"... in case you don't know, a Benny is the kind of human that is predominantly very light-skinned, wears clip on sunglasss, has a shmear of white war-paint going down their nose, big BIG hats, wears shorts with waist-band pulled up to their nipples and (if male) is sure to wear black-socks with sandels. they live "away" and come "down to the Shore" to get sun (apparently they live underground?) and also buy cheap plastic trinkets on the Boardwalk, to bring home as souvenirs.

know the male
yet safeguard the female
and be a river gorge to the world.
as a river gorge to the world
you will not lose your real potency
and not losing your real potency
you return to the state of the newborn babe.

know the clean
yet safeguard the soiled
and be a valley to the world
as a valley to the world
your real potency will be ample
and with ample potency
you return to the state of unworked wood.

know the white
but safeguard the black
and be a model for the world
as a model for the world
your real potency will not be wanting
and with your potency not wanting
you return to the state of the limitless.

to the "able-bodied" folks, guess what? you are all handicapped, every last one of you... you have numerous weaknesses, inabilities and shortcomings that make accomplishing much of life a huge chore.... if you didn't already know this its probably because you don't do much with life, or maybe just try to avoid looking at yourself too hard....

to the "handicapped" folks, guess what? you are all able-bodied, every last one of you... you are full of numerous talents and strengths that make you able to find creative solutions to any and all of the obstacles that life tosses at you... when in need, you can decide for yourself where and how to look for help from the other folks around you (not every has same strengths/shortcomings, so it works out)... if you don't already know this, its because the educational-system/media have been succeeding at keeping you quiet and off to the side, or maybe you just avoid looking at yourself too hard.....

i don't blame you, but how about we start to play a new game... this old one is getting rather boring...

*TAG* you're It! ;)

- Z.

have to share a thought regarding Robertson's recent demonstration of idiocy.

it reminds me of when i was on a mailing-list for translators/interpreters when Katrina hit us down in LA....

i remember how i read post after post from folks discussing how Nola got what it had coming, and that it served them all right for being so stupid to live so far below sea-level (and so on).. and they laughed at how greedy Amrika was suffering now (note: it wasn't the "greedy" who were suffering)...

i remember replying to them all with 4-letter-words that would make HaSatan blush head to toe (not very smart of me, but i was in a panic), while i screamed at the computer monitor and plugged ears when yet another chopper flew over me & Aaron's apartment.... (sound of choppers makes me shake really *really* bad)

but it taught me a valuable lesson: humans are STUPID.

if we are not there first-hand to really experience things for ourselves, we tend to be a bit out-of-touch... the farther removed (by miles, or mentally "distancing"), the less we grok.

and among these wannabe-know-it-all polyglots of that mailing-list, with IQs that would make Einstein blush (from head to toe) i found very little sympathy.

so much for thinking that our "brains" will save this world.. i think it will be our "hearts".

- Jules & Co.

all of them of "suspicious" origin.... number i heard last was "9" of them between 2ish-3ish last night, all of them were put out posthaste, but 2 people died.... i'm really shocked actually...

word is spreading faster than the fires though, and people of NoHo (and elsewhere in the Valley) are banding together and rushing to "be there" for those who were hurt....

i'm not at all shocked to hear that part.

everyone is terrified about what is going to happen when the System finally does go kapput (please G-d, NOW!) and i'll tell you what will happen.... we will be terrified, and devastated, and there will be idiotic-System-worshippers who tear out their hair and gnash their teeth (and probably do a bit of looting and stampeding over the weak/etc.) but once those moronic lemmings go ahead and leap to their death, the rest of us will be able to just shrug it off and go ahead and live our lives, and WHILE doing so, we WILL "be there" and take care of each other.

sorry if you disagree, but that is what i've seen (in random disaster/crises here and there throughout this life) so that is my story, and i'm sticking to it.

- Jules/Zora & Co.

EDIT: http://northamptonmedia.com/
& link to facebook group Friends of Northampton Arson Victims