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5 de Febrero 2009
in complete sentences
it has been brought to my attention that housing values have taken a dive, that the new president is not, as we would have thought, everyone's favorite person--Etta James is pissed at 'Bama and Beyonce for the at last not-tribute sung by the latter at the inaugural ball--and if you took all the folks who have been recently laid off in the Northwest region, and dropped them off in the forest of Sonoma County California you could populate and repopulate the town i grew up in, twice... and all this in spite of a new administration that can, as i read in The Stranger's Last Days column, address us in complete sentences.
all this seems like just the thing to keep me up nights, or at least one night... maybe next week.
instead i have been experiencing a sort of rallying in my personal affairs and perspective on things: our house was never worth the median value, which has yet to drop below what we paid for our little fixer upper condo with a yard, i am still celebrating the president's skin color, cadence and nicotine addiction, rather than his disappointing policy, and i am living on student loans which means i know exactly when i will be the victim of my financial hardship 2.5 years from now, unlike the 70,000 Americans who were silly enough to think they could borrow as much as i have, for far less worthy reasons and then put off repayment indefinitely.
moreover
i have received much encouragement over the past six months or so, more than i ever have in my life. not in monetary form, but in personal contact.
so when i started feeling really guilty this week for celebrating my success in life i started asking around and got this:
Jen explained it to me this way: there are three kinds of business in this world
your business
my business
God's business
though this kind of thinking usually makes me feel nauseous,
and though it is nearly impossible to know who's is what and what is whose, i think she was just trying to tell me to get some effing boundaries, which is not a new idea.
if the global economy is tanking i should look around, reprioritize according to what really matters: love, family, hope, and focus on people, instead of stuff. to laugh when it is funny and cry when it is sad, to keep my friends close enough to hug them, smell them, look into their eyes and tell them that we were never promised anything but love and even that doesn't usually show up in the ways we want it to because it isn't something we can control.
if global warming is causing the weather to freak out, animals to die and homeless men too, i should take a deep breath, remember i can do my part to quit shitting on the planet and move ahead, rather than sit around in a cesspool of worry.
the people who love me most in the world grew up in subpar housing, eating rice and beans they picked in the fields. They didn't speak the right language, or know the right people. They didn't have half the education I have. They survived abusive alcoholic fathers, busy mothers and endless sibling rivalry. They married too young, too poor and raised brave, if mildly dysfunctional children, who got over it for the most part well enough to guide Sarai and i through to this point in our lives and guess what:
we have never had it better than we have it today.
whenever i am most worried i think of 1928 and remember that it was a great year in spite of the crash:
it was the year there was a man dumb enough to build our little solid house so well that the foundation still hasn't cracked 80 years later (sure it is kind of a run down little place but the bones are good)
and mostly
it was the year my grandfather was born... why, you ask, would anyone have brought a child into this world, that world, that barrio, en el campo, at such a dark time in our country's history? because.
because they could.
because they could.
not because they planned it out and figured it would end well, not because they wanted to or had to or even because of some God-given mandate to multiply and subdue.
just because sometimes the mortality rate cuts a girl a break or mother nature forgets to misbehave or any number of the wrong things went right
which could happen at any time, for any reason to any one.
accidentally.
worrying about it isn't going to help, that is for damn sure and hoping seems kind of played out. but some of us are just dumb enough to pretend we're bucking the system.
we're listening to the sad songs and the dance songs and drinking hot drinks and telling dirty jokes
in spite of it all.
and we're calling it "doing our part" or something like that.
we'll keep you posted if it stops working, if we realize that this is not a good way to stave off the worries, we'll let you know, but for now we're sticking with this plan.
help yourself | By crymytinyflood | 1:54 PM
Comments
I think you've got the right idea, but you probably already know that. At least, I like this better than stocking up on canned food and guns. Although, given the chance, I would like to shoot a gun someday.
Posted by: emile at 6 de Febrero 2009 a las 12:07 PM
