Is there anybody out there?

During the first seventeen months of my journey down Parentage Lane, I have carved a cave out of urbanization where I casually and safely perch at all times. Even while engaging in the inevitable social settings of the outside world, I remain in my sacred space. No eye contact. (What has happened to me?) I have fortified this safe place by disregarding the pressures of societal expectations of connubial relations with my partner, securing an entourage of peers that accept, encourage, and emulate my life-style, and avoiding the outside world of critics, oppressors and drooling, snotty, diseased youngsters and their mums and pops. (The kid as never been sick!) Doing so has allowed me to completely surpass the inevitable struggles of raising a breast-oriented, unvaccinated, vegan babe in this world, with my radical and over-analytical mind full of thoughts such as: “keep your hateful, fucked-up school system and its ill-teachings away from my holy kid”, or “ No you fucking idiot, just cause she intakes my breast milk does not mean that my vegan child wants your shitty puddin’ cause it is “dairy-based like my milk”(HA!) or how about this one: “I really don’t want her to go to the slumber party cause they will force her to eat foods with processed sugar and animal-products”. Am I really the weird, anal-retentive mother that I recall from my youth? The one that ruins all of the fun cause she imposes “different” regulations and rules on her child? Or will my child love the way we do the things we do? Will she understand that animals are her equals? Will she love and support our holy notion of Veganism? HEY MAMAS OUT THERE THAT UNDERSTAND- I NEED YOU! Let’s take over the world and create a friendlier place to raise children! A place where “they” don’t judge and ridicule our choices as parents! A place that supports and understands the very breadth of a hard-working stay-at-home-mama. Shit ain’t easy, yo!

I can feel my safe temple crumbling as I am moving more into the light and dark of the outside world. A world where family is right around the corner and we will no longer have the excuse of “well, we don’t really know anybody or really any place that is babe-friendly, so let’s just hang around at home where mama can be topless so the babe can suckle as she pleases, daddy can put his pj’s back on at 3 in the afternoon and watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report reruns, and where we don’t have to worry about scheduling our lives around social gatherings or plans—cause ya know, we are hardcore homebodies.” How will I react to the outside world? How will I react to society and its fangs and claws plunging at my throat? How can I express to the “others” that I don’t like the idea of public schools, even though I come from a long line of teachers? How will I remain close to my child when I need to make financial ends meet? This child needs to run in grass and pick wildflowers not fall on concrete and mounds of chicken bones.

I want to live under the Golden Canopies. Run free. Drink pure water. Eat good food.

Oh, dearest bubble; don’t burst on me now…you control the Monster of Anxiety that is caused by Post-Partum Depression.

The calm is dying as the sun begins to set beneath the thunderclouds.

Civil Inequality

Our country is allowing unconstitutional inequality to plague our homosexual community. Not only should the government permit “contractual civil unions between gays and lesbians as a matter of equality and fairness,” they should permit and advocate equal marriage rights, equal acknowledgement of those rights, and equal respect of those rights. In addition to providing equality to all citizens by allowing same-sex marriages to occur, the American public and government should focus on the usefulness of same-sex marriages.
An individual’s unalienable rights, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Homosexual American citizens are just as deserving of these unalienable rights as heterosexual American citizens. Impeding on a homosexual individuals right to legally commit his or herself to a member of the same gender in a legally binding contract is in direct violation of his or her right to pursue happiness, right to obtain privacy, right to be treated equal and have equal protection under the laws. We must learn to balance the interests of individuals (including individuals that are homosexual) with the interests of the general public, state governments, and national government. If we continue to perpetuate civil inequalities and our strong democratic government continues to fail in alleviating this discrimination, we are surely headed in resolution by revolutionary force. We cannot continue to violate certain minorities’ fundament rights. Oppressed minorities seeking freedom founded our country. Those particular founding fathers declared to protect minority rights by ratifying the fourteenth amendment, which states:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of laws (qtd. in Wayne, Mackenzie, Cole 625).
Same-sex marriage is still controversial in the eyes of traditional, conservative members of society, and more importantly the judges on the Supreme Court. The idea of same-sex marriage also stimulates federalism issues of power between state and national governments. Can the national government force the individual state governments to uphold other states decisions to allow same-sex marriages in regard to the “full faith and credit” notion? These issues will not be resolved without controversy, yet it is crucial that we proactively engage them. As Stephen Wayne, Calvin Mackenzie, and Richard Cole argue, “Indeed, whenever the Court sides with the individual or with a minority against the state, its decision will be controversial” (136). Similarly, focusing on the benefits of same-sex marriages is still controversial.
Instead of imposing on the unalienable rights of homosexuals, opponents of same-sex marriages should busy themselves by advocating saving millions of orphaned children’s lives. Two inexplicably linked salient issues in the world can refute arguing that marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples based solely on the biological need to procreate: overpopulation and orphaned children. Allowing homosexual couples the right to marry and adopt some of the millions of orphaned children worldwide will aid in our crippling overpopulation crisis. This basic premise is only one of the many reasons to support the fundamental right for homosexuals to have equal marriage rights.
Homosexual couples are not demanding unfair, bias rights; they are demanding basic, equal rights that heterosexual couple’s are so easily granted. Until this issue is resolved, we will remain a society that harbors minority discrimination and inequality: a condemning characteristic we have spent decades trying to overcome.

A Typical Day, in our Typical Way

What do we do to pass the time? How will I remember this period and phase of my life? I am almost 24 years old, which seems so young to me. It is hard to grasp numbers and what they mean. What have I done for 24 years on planet Earth? How have I grown? Have I been a cooperative vessel or have I stunted my physical and spiritual growth? ( insert dry joke from my dad that he repeats over and over at family gatherings:" Well, hehe, Karla stunted her growth by smoking cigarettes at such a young age.") Okay pops, funny, funny. We have laughed a million times....Although, now that I think of it you are pretty short yourself. By your logic, you are either keeping something from us, or perhaps we are both genetically shorter than others.

Huh.

Anyway, what I have I done? Well, I have breastfed, I have learned my shapes and colors (without you BABY EINSTEIN), I have urged forward and onward...I am now a mother, a transient being that absorbs emotional, factual, and subconscious influneces. I turn those influneces into adaptable and viable resources for emotional, physical, and spiritual survival. I am becoming myself again and again year after year. And on Feb. 8th I will have renewed myself 24 times.

SO, what is it that I really do to pass time? I spend virtually every waking moment with my little child. WE HAVE to have goals that are timed to survive. So, we laugh, we read, we watch dvd's and public broadcasting television shows, we cuddle, we sleep, we build things out of nothing. We bathe. We sing and snicker. We run in circles...

We change. We move to the beats of our hearts. We plot to take over the world...Or at least create a space to exist peacefully.
We eat good food. We listen to good music. We find comfort in breastfeeding, which we love and love...

Most importantly, we learn from eachother.

I teach her restraint and she teaches me spontaneity...

Sweet Songbird at Sixteen Months

Photographic documentation of the subtle changes in my daughter over the months, really, really, really freaking excites me. Here ya go... 16 months and ONWARD WE MARCH!

State of Repose

Let us consider being still. Extroidinarily still. Like a praying mantis. No movement. No busy mind. Just allowing yourself to engage in the deep melancholy of all the things happening in and around you.

I know we all have urgencies, duties, and obligations, but it is necessary to be calm.

To Recharge.

To be Still. Motionless. Quiet. Introspective. Bare.

Even the Hummingbird Rests. The bustling, wild, eccentric, energetic, lively, and tiring Hummingbird.

It only takes one moment to stop and sing to yourself,
"I am breathing in, I am breathing out. And this is all I really have to do."

(Now if only Salem could appreciate this.)

I Have Learned To Use My Hands

I am learning to rely less on others. I am learning to survive with less affection and love from a multitude of other people. Perhaps this was not my aim, but I am easily adapting to this new sense of freedom. I draw from the few people that I need and love, some are far and some are near. I have retired from my past as well as my future. The ever-present Now is my manifestation. I do not need to look beyond or behind myself any longer.

The food I eat serves a greater purpose.
The words I read inspire me more.
The words I write relieve me, create me, and perpetuate substantial growth within me.
The loved ones I cherish extend an abundance of love to me.
The love I have I extend in abundance to my loved ones.
I find a more sacred space for myself in between breaths.
I have learned to release objects, feelings, people, and places that do not serve me.
I have grown towards acceptance and buried rejection.
I know how to release the tension held in the small space between my eyes.
I have learned to use my hands.
I am at peace with my solitude.

I am a good woman.

"Collective Progress" or "On Waking Up Tomorrow"

Did you know that the rain falling onto the N.E. seaboard of the United States, Eastern Canada, and California, Oregon, and Washington is as acidic as tomato juice? We are relying too heavily on burning coal (coal has sulphur and burning it creates sulpheric acid which, directly produces acid rain).

It kills fish.
Think about that.

That means it is also in your drinking water. Hope your cities have the funds to go to great lengths to extract some of the 200+ hazardous materials in drinking water...

And another thing...

Did you know that it will only take a 12 cm rise in sea level to flood cities on coastlines such as New York or Los Angeles? Currently, the sea levels are rising because of the melting glaciers...And the levels will only continue to rise.

And come on people, stop building your shitty homes on geological disaster zones...

I know, you don't know any better. Neither do I. But we should and we can. It just takes effort.

I don't want to build or buy a home that rests on top of an old waste dumping site. Nor do I want to build or buy a home that is on an active fault( all faults that have been active in the past 10,000 years are still considered "active") , in flood zones ( the process of flooding from rivers is usually a few meters per second) or at the base of a potential landslide. First, we are running out of room and that "forces" us to develop on inhabitable land. (So hey, you religious conservatives, stop refusing to embrace contraceptives, same-sex marriage, and abortions. If we put our personal opinions aside about those things then maybe we could help with our BLATANT overpopulation crisis on Earth...Wow, did I really just put that out there?)

Second, we are greedy and work too fast making decisions that can only afford us temporary satisfaction. Just because we want to build on that gorgeous cliff doesn't mean over time we won't just slide right off into the ocean due to weak rocks beneath the foundation of our home or an eathquake that shakes, shakes, and shakes the foundation loose. Can't you see that my concern is for both the precious, beloved, environment and equally my precious, beloved brothers and sisters?

Don't get me wrong. I am not an expert on environmental geology or engineering. But, I am taking a small amount of time out on this Saturday evening to consider the relationship between Humans and Nature.

And For Fuck's Sake, start recycling. That is a very small and usually effortless contribution ( unless you live where I live and instead of a nice little recycling pickup at your curb you have to drive to three separate places ranging 10-45 minutes away in order to properly recycle all of the recyclable objects you "use"...yes, it does take effort, but ususally Salem gets a good nap in during that time anyway) to prolonging our resources on Earth.

If you have made it this far in this post, I love you. Please know that. Because it will take people like you to make things better round here.