What a sad, sad day for America, for humanity, for the Western World, for the humanism born, most recently, of the Renaissance. Fittingly, in Washington, D.C., it was a dreary, rainy, cold day, with grey skies. We are already so close to retrograde Mercury as to make almost no difference. My dreams last night were of evil people, regularly administering drugs to make people doubt their own sanity, of evil rituals involving swords and not-yet-dead bodies in coffins.
As is often my wont when things are just too much to bear, I buried myself in work, allowed the mundane to achieve irrational importance, spent my minutes and hours fixing footnotes, checking arcane rules in FRAP, organizing logistics for filings likely to become unnecessary. Oh, and I tried to talk D-i-L into going into the woods with me for a few days; lately, I've been craving woods the way that a thirsty woman craves water. There wasn't anything else that I could do. Alone, I can't be the rioting in the street that today's events demand of all sane people, although the Goddess knows that I am about ready to go stand all by myself outside the WH with a sign that say, "Will riot for habeas." Because I would. I can't imagine how I'm going to explain to my ancestors that, on the day when habeas corpus was stolen from Americans, I stayed inside a warm office and debated trial strategy.
T. Thorn Coyle writes about today's evil, insisting that all we need to do is to continue to tend our own gardens (well, perhaps I'm being unfair; perhaps what Thorn means is that all that we CAN do is to tend our own gardens, but I think she ignores the value of rioting in the streets):
[2006/10/17 5:01 pm]
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
This bill provides legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists simply for doing their jobs...
This bill spells out specific, recognizable offenses that would be considered crimes in the handling of detainees so that our men and women who question captured terrorists can perform their duties to the fullest extent of the law. And this bill complies with both the spirit and the letter of our international obligations. As I've said before, the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values.
- George W. Bush on the Military Commissions Act 2006
Evil walks among us. How have we come to such a pass?
May we shed light in these times where shadows are seen more clearly than the sun itself.
Walk in love. Please. Walk in love.
Do not become that which you resist - Victor H. Anderson
If you are angry, let your anger burn cleanly. If you are despondent, try to take hope. Find something to do that will help our culture, our society, the world. Someone asked me today "How do you deal with the frustrations of it all without getting overwhelmed or depressed?" First off, I only read the BBC news twice a week instead of daily. Daily is too much. I do my work to the best of my ability and try to grow as a human being. I make attempts toward the evolution of the species. And I volunteer feeding people once a week. That last keeps me sane in the midst of the turmoil the world is in. It is tangible. I go in and scrub pots and clean tables and know that at least some crazy, or poor, or addicted people got fed in San Francisco. Every little bit really does help. What can you do? Any attempt at rehumanization in the midst of dehumanization adds weight to the balance of love. Find that something and commit to it.
Meanwhile, Impeach Bush Now.
(as Miniver Cheevey says today: "these men have a date with the Hague.")
[2006/10/17 9:37 am]
Tired of religion and politics? Here is a wee slice of culture (that, come to think of it, includes a lot of hot sex, so I guess we're back to religion after all):
Shortbus by John Cameron Mitchell is a beautiful movie. Touching, gorgeous, sad, funny and human. Not perfect, but beautiful - just like a lot of us are. The closing scene made me so happy I wanted to cry.Thorn also points to
Miniver Cheevey who quotes Dibgy.
Jason, at the Wild Hunt, reminds us that
Pan's Labyrinth is coming in a few weeks, just when we're likely to really, really need it.
At times like this, I do think that we need to be out in the streets. We need it not only for the way that it can, in unanticipated ways, change the government. We need it for what it can do for us, for the way that it can affirm for each of us that we are the kind of people who will do what is needed to protect liberty, that we are the kind of people who will woman the barricades when it's necessary, who will leave the comforts of our interesting jobs, who will leave our Lazy Boys and plasma screens and DVDs behind and GO OUT INTO THE STREETS. We need it so that we can explain ourselves to our ancestors when we are standing on that bleak meadow waiting for the ferryman. We need it so that we can explain to our children and grandchildren what we did in the Runnymeade Wars. We need it because we are a manifestation of the Goddess, because it's all real, it's all metaphor, there's always more.
And, at times like this, I believe that we need to do our work, to, as Thorn suggests, do the Great Work. We need to hold our families and loved ones close. We need to read fairy tales and see fairy tale movies. We need to bring our financial lives quickly and ruthlessly in order. We need to manage our own health as a crucial resource in the campaign for liberty. We need, says my Taurus moon, to clean our homes, throw out the trash, and make some soup. And, we need to, as that poor, misguided misogynist from Galilee once suggested, feed the poor, clothe the naked, heal the sick.
The madmen in the WH don't define us. They can't limit us. They cannot make us less than we are. They do not define the nature of the universe in which we live, nor do they limit the wide, wide sphere of our souls. We are free, even in their jails.
So mote it be. For Runnymeade!
