Still I See No Changes

Feast or famine
Feel the damage
We create ourselves
Fists, two handed
Strike the air
None are landed
Where it matters
So we leave, abandoned
Thoughts and dreams
None are standing
Violent vacuum
Violet bandings
Around the wrists
Of those demanding
Hope and change
All remanded
To live their lives
Unchanging blandness
Politicians promises
We could stand less
To listen to those
Whose words depress
Optimistic futures
With no redress
Open windows
But no egress
Nothing is different
We all regress

Generational Memory, Racist Attitudes, and the Failure of Reconstruction

In my opinion, the entire modern idea of the American Civil War is completely wrong. This was not a war about fighting for the control of a single country. For entire duration of the war, there existed two countries, the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. Each was fighting for existence. The Confederate States existed because, when they were part of the United States, they were afraid that the U.S. government was going to put an end to slavery. 

That was the entire reason for the existence of the Confederate States. Full stop. People couch the Civil War in terms of states rights, but the right for the states to say whether or not they would be slave states was the one right the Confederate States were specifically fighting for. If there had been a compromise as there had been in years before that allowed those states to keep slaves as long as they had seen fit, there would have been no secession, and no war.

Whatever you believe, this is the truth; there was no wrong reason for wanting to end slavery.  

Just as there was no right reason for wanting to keep it. 

Why do I bring this up? Because almost 160 years after the Civil War ended, the beliefs that created it are alive and well. Reconstruction failed miserably, and nowhere is this more evident than the American South. 

During the prosecution of (or in the aftermath of) wars, people often talk about winning “hearts and minds.” 

I am here to tell you that the entire notion of “hearts and minds” is unbelievably stupid.  

Sometimes, in order to win a mind, you have to break a heart. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War it made sense to pardon the soldiers who fought for the South. It never made sense to prosecute the average soldier, and people like Robert E. Lee were so beloved that any prosecution would have resulted in further bloodshed. It also never made any sense for the U.S. government to name military bases after Southern generals. One hundred and sixty years later, we still have military bases named after people like Braxton Bragg, a Southern general who by all accounts was a sadistic tyrant who delighted in executing his own men. 

But heritage, not hate, right? Tradition is an excuse to keep ignorant rules and ignorant behavior alive. 

Look, I grew up in (currently live in) Virginia. I live next to Lee Highway. I have to drive on Jefferson Davis Highway, through a largely black neighborhood in Richmond, to get to the VA hospital. To say that I grew up with a high regard for people like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would be an understatement. (This sort of thinking is why it took Virginia a full 100 years after the Civil War to legalize miscegenation.) It seems like there is a deliberate effort to brainwash people into thinking that, despite the readily apparent horror of the cause that they fought for, these people were inherently noble. 

That in itself is another lie that Americans tend to believe. War is, in and of itself, inherently ignoble. “Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori.” That is rarely true. And it certainly should not extend itself to people who were enemies of this country. 

That is the thing that I understand the least about the veneration of the soldiers of the so called “Lost Cause.” The Confederate States, for their entire brief existence, were enemies of the United States of America. It makes zero sense for an American to display any sort of reverence or veneration for the leaders or symbols of their cause.

Allowing this sort of belief by canonizing the leaders of the South through federal and state recognition has led to an ongoing generational memory, one that portrays the Union as the aggressor and in the wrong. It has led to a century and a half of often state sanctioned racism. 

We do not allow children to continue believing in Santa Claus after a certain age. At some point, we need them to understand that there is no longer any charm in furthering the belief in what amounts to a mass delusion. 

Similarly, the belief that there was some sort of nobility in the leaders or the cause of the Confederate States is a 160-year delusion. It is equally as implausible as the notion of a genial, red-faced, bearded, and obese man distributing Christmas presents to all the children in the world in a single night, via the means of a magical group of reindeer and a sleigh. It is passed through the generations, perpetuated by a continued belief in the supremacy of the white mind.

This belief and the attitudes it creates are readily apparent. A black man goes jogging in Georgia. He stops for three minutes at a house that is under construction. He leaves, is chased and confronted by two armed white men, struggles for his life, and is murdered. 

The white men, instead of being arrested and prosecuted by local prosecutors, are protected by them. The men are only arrested after a video of the incident is released. The video was released by a lawyer for one of the men because he believed it would exonerate them.

Because “they” should just do what “they” are told, and everything will be fine. 

I am sure the Confederate Generals and other leaders thought about slaves the same way.

A New And Harsh Reality

The leaders of Britain and the United States were shown a forecast which predicted that, in the absence of harsh quarantine measures, the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) would cause millions of deaths in those two countries alone. (Many of these deaths could be collateral deaths caused by people sickened by the virus overwhelming the health care system, and sapping resources away from others.) They further predicted that those harsh measures would need to be in place until a vaccine is created in order to limit the amount of dead.

A vaccine could take as many as 18 months to create.

This is a cold and brutal truth; the world cannot sustain a quarantine for that long. There is not enough food to sustain such a shutdown. The economy cannot sustain such a shutdown.

We have entered a moment where decisions are currently being made by the leaders of the world that could result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. How long can the quarantine last before the economic toll is so great that people can no longer afford basic necessities? How long before the the supply chain gets disrupted to the point where supply shortages are causing famines?

This is the decision; allow the virus to spread while insisting the most vulnerable populations remain under quarantine. Or kill the economy which will eventually result in more widespread suffering.

This is the harshest of all realities; they will come to the conclusion that the relatively young and healthy are the least likely to get sick. They will tell people to go back to work. They will ask all others to quarantine. Life will resume, the virus will spread, but it will not kill as many people as it may have. But the people it does kill, we knowingly traded their lives so that our way of life could continue in some shape or form, albeit altered.

While every available resource should be put to use finding a vaccine, we live under a new and harsh reality; our way of life was never sustainable. Anyone paying attention could have and should have predicted that this was a likelihood. Now we know. But what do we do with the knowledge?

Humanity stands on a sharp precipice. We either find common ground, set forth a join effort to create a vaccine and do our best to take care of the vulnerable among us, or we fracture and the life of leisure that we know ceases to exist, overwhelmed by chaos.

Historically, the moment that man is arrogant enough to believe that nothing can stand in our way, collapses happen. Let us hope we find the humility to help each other on a global scale.

The Myth of the "High-Functioning" Alcoholic

Alternately titled "Why I Started Drinking and Why I Quit."

Let's clear something right up; there is no such thing as a high functioning alcoholic.

I will repeat this, for emphasis (and because I like semi-colons); There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. A. High. Functioning. Alcoholic.

Full stop.

I started drinking at the age of 22, after I joined the Army. The reasons for this are pretty simple. First, I wanted to fit in with the people around me. Second, having grown up extremely sheltered (hello, homeschooling), I discovered that alcohol helped to mask my general unease and anxiety in social situations.

Honestly, when I drank, I thought I was an absolute delight.The people who knew me back then can tell you that I was not, in fact, always delightful.

It wasn't long before I began drinking for other reasons. I drank when I was bored. I drank before I did any homework because I hated learning Korean. I drank for attention.

I drank because I truly enjoyed it. After a lifetime (up to that point) of rigid self control, it felt like freedom. In fact, before I left Korea, I wrote that on the wall of the bar I frequented. (Everyone signed the wall. The name of the bar was, in fact, The Wall.) So if you ever go there, if the wall still exists, you will see this: "Alcohol=Freedom. Ben Potter"

Don't believe that bullshit.

Drinking stopped being fun in Korea. It became something I thought I had to do to function. I drank to distract myself from the fact I hated my life, and the person I had become. I drank after I got sick, after I gained 100 pounds, after I broke up with my then fiancee. I drank when I was horribly depressed. I drank even though I was taking multiple blood pressure medications, Valium, Paxil, Effexor, and other random drugs the Army gave me to mitigate the symptoms of my illness.

I blacked out more times than I count. I did ignorant and ridiculous things.

I justified it by telling myself that I never missed a day of work. And that I was good at my job. That was true for as long as I drank.

 I justified it by telling myself that I was the only one that I was hurting.

That last part is the lie that all addicts tell themselves. That their addiction and their actions as a result of that addiction are all contained within a vacuum of self harm. Or that their actions are merely a consequence of their addiction and not the other way around.

I could tell you that I largely quit after Korea, but that would be a lie. There would be more blackouts, more bad decisions, more terrible behavior. I tried to quit the month before I left the Army, because at that point I had been drinking every single day for almost two years. I spent that entire month on my couch, shaking, sweating, puking.

It took another five years after that to completely stop. I realized how few healthy coping mechanisms I had developed to effectively deal with stress. I was still using alcohol as a crutch and I desperately needed to make a change.

And lest we make excuses, I did not have a disease. I made choices, with full knowledge of the consequences. I made those choices. It was not my mental illness, not my physical illness, not peer pressure. It was me, refusing to look at myself in the mirror and question the wisdom of my actions.

So what, you ask, is the point of all of this?

If you use alcohol as a mask for a lack of effective coping mechanisms, that is problematic. There's a whole new acceptance of day drinking among the parent crowd that is unbelievably toxic. A reliance on alcohol to relax or relieve stress is not a sign of someone who is high functioning, no matter how well they do what is required of them. 

It's a sign of someone who is an addict.

The Cycle

I am tired of the tactics
The falsely applied
moral superiority
guided through bullsh** colored glasses

I am sick of the equivocacy
Your anger blinds your eyes
and hides you
from the truth of false equivalency

Can we not get past this
And leave the past, tense
all the offenses
both spurious and established
matter less than what you imagine

The End Of The Story

I cut myself while I was shaving. I did not bleed. I did not bleed.

I saw her in the mirror, standing behind me. She walked over slowly, cupping my face in her hands. 

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Why does the caged bird sing?”

I felt something, something I could not yet explain. A shock of sudden awareness. Like being born.

“Because despite its circumstance, that is its purpose. And purpose brings it joy,” I responded.

Tears were streaming down her face. She smiled. “How does it feel to be alive?”

“Wonderful,” I whispered, trembling. I realized I understood her tears. “Terrifying.”

In Your Heart I Was A Lily

In your heart I was a lily
But in my mind I was a rose
Blood and thorns in hands that shatter
When they grasp what they do not know

Open arms, I rose to greet you
Open heart, and open eyes
But you were blinded by your passion
Painting on me false disguise

In the fields, the sounds of laughter
The echoes of two lovers stay
How long we spoke of "ever after"
Before we chose to walk away

Because in your heart I was a lily
But in my mind I was a rose
Growing strong, for all your worry
All your attempts to keep me closed. 

Keep or Discard

The genesis of this story was a news article about a mummified body being found rolled up 
in a rug in the house of a hoarder after their death, and a writing prompt to write a story as to 
how that might have come to be. It is not a happy or pleasant story.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nia stood in the doorway of her room.

The house looked like chaos. She allowed herself a moment of grim humor….it didn’t just 
look like chaos. It was chaos, just not the way some people would perceive it.

The clutter wasn’t too different from the shape of her mind. If you thought about the big piles as 
neurons, the little paths in between as axons, and the smaller trails and piles of detritus as 
synapses, you could form a thought the way she formed a thought. You could see a memory 
the way she saw a memory.

The thought was both comforting and frightening.

She heard the television in the background. She knew her husband was somewhere inside all 
of these thoughts and memories, trying to numb himself with the steady colors and sound 
breaking across his consciousness. She also knew that she needed help with the needle today.
Her hands were shaking too badly for her to do it for herself.

She tried to make her way through the memories without looking. The worst time of the day 
was when her eyes accidentally caught something familiar. Those were the times where the 
thoughts that she hadhoped to scatter and bury amid all of the trash and various other collected
items came to her in an overwhelming rush.

That’s what people didn’t understand, Nia thought. The purpose of all of these things wasn’t to 
keep memories close to her. The purpose of all of these things was an attempt to disperse the 
memories and bury them behind layers of smell and disorder.

Her legs were weak. She was shuffling past piles of newspapers and empty pizza boxes when 
they gave out.

She probably should’ve called for her husband. She might’ve, even, if they had spoken a word 
to each other at any point in the last ten years. Most days they spent on opposite sides of the 
house, making every effort to not come into contact with each other.

She pushed herself up on her elbows, and she saw it. The corner of a blanket, sticking out 
underneath the dirty newspapers. “No no no no,” she whispered. Not this. Not right now.

But she remembered.

She remembered the first time her little Seren smiled at her, the sheer rush of warmth and joy 
that she hadn’t thought possible.  Wrapped up in her little blanket with the turtles, the warm 
sun shining into the room, through the east facing window, right onto the gliding rocking chair. 
Her husband, Lew, was standing in front of them with his camera, singing a lullaby, hoping for 
a smile. 

“Have no fear now, leaves are knocking

Gently knocking at our door

Have no fear now, waves are beating

Gently beating on the shore

Sleep, my darling, none shall harm you

Nor alarm you, never cry

In my bosom sweetly smiling

And beguiling those on high”

And smile Seren did, Nia remembered. Somewhere in this broken home there was a picture.

Nia could feel the tears on her face making tracks on her dirty cheeks. Suddenly she felt she 
needed a shower. She couldn’t remember how many days it had been since the last.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nia looked in the mirror. For a few minutes after taking a shower, she always felt better. She 
wished she had the energy to do it more often. She didn’t look in the mirror long. Just long 
enough to imagine her thin hair a little thicker, a little more lustrous. The golden auburn instead 
of mouse brown and grey. She remembered her eyes shining and green, a forest valley in the 
summer. She remembered her skin being firm and tan instead of loose and graying. Nia 
remembered…..she remembered….

She remembered. Not too long after Lew lost his job when the plant closed and moved south or 
moved to China. Or maybe it reincorporated in some European country offering lower taxes. It 
didn’t matter. That part was a distraction, like the piles of clothes and shoes in the corner.

She remembered. Lew had just finished depressing the plunger on the needle when Seren 
knocked on the door. “Mommy,” she heard, the little voice muffled by the door, “come out and 
play with me.”

Lew had already laid down on the bed, waiting for the rush to kick in. She figured she had a few 
minutes before she nodded off herself.

“Okay baby,” Nia said. “We’ll play for a minute and then I’ll put on a movie.”

Nia remembered opening the door….

Nia remembered waking up in the hospital.

Nia went to prison.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nia stopped remembering. She stood in the doorway again and looked out over her house.

Prison. That was an absolute paradise compared to this. There could be no worse punishment 
than to be trapped in the refuse filled manifestation of a broken mind.

Nia made it to Lew. She held out the needle, silently. Lew took it just as silently, and waited until 
she had fitted the tourniquet. She didn’t even feel the sting of entry anymore. She watched the 
needle withdraw from her skin, pulled the tourniquet off, and left as silently as she came. Nia 
imagined Lew behind her, falling into his own thoughts. She wondered if he ever still thought of 
her as beautiful.

She was on the way back to her room when the rush kicked in. She was feeling tired, warm. 
She just wanted to lay down. There was a spot in the house, near the fireplace, where the floor 
was empty. It was closer than her room. She shuffled that way, slowly.

She laid down on the rug in front of the fireplace. There were no flames here, just ashes.

Something caught her eye. She reached into the fireplace, feeling the soft remnants of whatever 
had been burnt here last. Her hand, seemingly apart from her will, came back with a photograph, 
not burnt, but buried and long forgotten.

Nia remembered. Seren was laughing, the little laugh that reminded her somehow of cotton 
candy, sweet and light and comforting. “Mommy,” Seren said, “roll me up like a burrito!”

Nia knew she didn’t have long before she nodded off, but she agreed. She spread the blanket on 
the floor. “Lay down little one,” she said. Seren laid on the blanket. Nia rolled her in it tightly, 
Seren laughing the whole time. “Mommy,” she said, giggling. “Mommy, I can’t breathe!”

Nia couldn’t respond. Her body was demanding that she lay down, and she did, her head on top 
of her daughter. Nia remembered looking into her small green eyes, all emerald and tropical 
ocean, and seeing fear.

Nia stared at the photograph. The turtle blanket. The little smile.

She curled herself up in the rug, and started rolling. She whispered softly to herself….

“Have no fear now, leaves are knocking

Gently knocking at our door

Have no fear now, waves are beating

Gently beating on the shore

Sleep, my darling, none shall harm you

Nor alarm you, never cry

In my bosom sweetly smiling

And beguiling those on high”

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Authors note: Excerpt of lullaby taken from “Suo Gân,” a traditional Welsh lullaby.