kiya

Before the Kickstarter finished up, Recognize Fascism declared one final stretch goal: to send a copy of the book to every member of the US Congress and Supreme Court.

It was another seven and a half thou, I didn't think it would happen.

It happened; we closed out a bit above goal for that.

Holy shit.

(Also, that's terrifying.)

The thing about the missing stair people that always gets me is that I have never been confident of being sufficiently in the in-group to be one of the ones who knows.

This is not why I never leave the house if I can help it but it does kind of sour me on lots of social groups.... Large gathering? What do I need to know that nobody's bothering to tell me? Don't know. Can't know. Better stay home.



(If you think you know what I'm talking about, it's more than that. No, more than that too. And that.)

Also ridiculous.

Failing. (YouTube link.)

(From coraline.)

This is a first draft, I'm trying to get my thoughts in order. Suggestions for useful revisions are extremely welcome.

( 'God' is a service role. )


The Unitarian Universalist church I attend opens each ceremony with a short prayer, an affirmation, which begins "Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law." (Or 'goal'. Some do it differently, and I can't recall which one is in the order of service right now.) It and I are both descended from the Puritans, who would probably not approve of aspiring to godhood or teachings about finding the divine, holy spark in each other, but nonetheless here we all are.

There is a little playground about a quarter of a mile down the road, hidden in the trees and fences such that we only noticed it was there when we saw a tandem stroller trying to make the cross to get to it.

Today I brought KJ there.

It was ...

She spent a while sitting snuggled in my lap filling my socks with sand, and a more apt metaphor for parenthood I know not. I sang to her, and she jumped and startled every time a truck went by beyond the fence.

After a bit, I put her midway down on one of the plastic slides - there was a sort of twin slide, and I put her on the inner curve - and slid her down. We did that one or two more times, and then she sat at the bottom, dug her toes into the sand, turned, and started to climb.

She clambered up the slide to the first curve, and slid down. And dug her toes in, planted her hands flat on the blue plastic, and kept going. I lay down on the other slide and watched her climb. Every failure made her laugh, gleeful in her experience of unsuccess. She gripped the sides of the slide, pulled herself to her feet, and clambered, a little higher this time, making it partway up the curve before she slid, cackling, down to the bottom again.

Each setback inspired new joy, new experimentation, and each slide to the bottom was a reward.

And there is a lesson.

I stood next to her as she climbed, and as she reached the curve, I rested one hand under her foot, giving her just a little more purchase.

She made it around the curve. I put my other hand under her other foot, and she kept climbing.

We climbed the slide together, like that, her putting forth the effort, the drive, the desire, and me giving her a place to stand.

She reached the top, and sat there, turning back to me, radiant and laughing, triumphant. She had done the work, and I had helped her find her way up.

A more apt metaphor for parenthood I know not.

REAL BOSTON TEA PARTY

Tomorrow, from I believe 10 am until 1 pm, Boston Common: permit achieved for near the visitor's center which is I believe by the Park Street T. While our festivities are in response to certain gentlefolk who have contributed to the decline of civil discourse, we intend to be genteel in our gathering.

Should you desire to attend for tea, kindly do endeavour to bring an appropriate contribution: cookies, wee sandwiches, other appropriate foods; tea, of course; drinking vessels and similar supplies. Do dress in a manner appropriate to polite society, and, "if not to the nines, at least to the four and a halves". Polite signs in favor of decorum, cucumber sandwiches for ready money, and excellent tea are encouraged; the official website has some suggestions.

KJ and I will be in attendance, barring disaster of the transit variety or rain. I will, of course, be wearing my morning coat and hat. Unfortunately, it will not be warm enough for KJ to dress for the occasion in her summer sundress, so the babe will be garbed in a prosaic and undistinguished fashion, alas.

Hope to see some of you there!

Ta!

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

Love is radical.

It is time for us to acknowledge that our love is an act of war.

It seems distasteful to say. It feels wrong. Our love, our lives, our nurtured gardens and families, we say, these are not weapons. These are not acts of violence. To us, they are not.

Love is radical.

Love is radical, and I light a candle to shed red-glass light on Lilitu's owl-clawed feet, because today I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love will shake the world, fan out like the peacock fan that spreads behind Her and glows in the firelight in honor of strife and compassion.

Love is radical, and its tears will extinguish Hell, but only if we burn with it. It is not enough to love quietly, mousily, in the safe spaces, because love is radically unsafe. Love will throw you through Hell and walk with you on the hike out. Love does not let you hide behind walls, it will slice you open, it will make you bleed.

Love is an act of blood. Love is an act of bone. It is your breath.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love will rip up the foundations of the world if need be. It will tear apart your safe spaces. It will not let me be silent. My love is a claimed conspiracy to riot stashed in a jail cell awaiting judgement in Minnesota. My love does not wait for a permit or follow an established route. It is here now there then always not with a whimper but a bang and if your world is ending for it then remember that love will divide your families, set kith against kith and kin against kin, that you were warned and said you believed.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love roars like the hollow wind. My love comes for the children. It does not listen to the doors. My love sees people married without checking their genitalia at the door, without evaluating the colour of their skin, without seeing if they have a hollowness that will be filled with a baby. My love sings and screams and goes to the ballot box dancing with the joy of holiness.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. I walk a warrior path of love, and follow the song of my heart. I hold sunlight in my right hand and shadow and storm in my left, and am born of the serpent's dance with the falcon. I have the restored Eye and I offer it to you, that you may live.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. I am one of the ones to fear, who goes stealthy through today in my cat-print pyjamas passing for one of you normal ones, the sane ones, the pretty children who went to school and then to the university and got put in boxes and came out all the same. I am the pervert among you, the polytheist, the deviant, the one whose world is wider than you can face, I stand at the open door in the desert from which there is no return.

There is no male or female, no free or slave, no line of race or creed or colour in love. Fear me, for I love you.


[ Apologies to those who get it twice. It matters enough to risk my semi-anonymity on the blog. ]

John M. Ford memorial.

rasfc is currently having a discussion of sorts on the subject of intelligence and what it's good for, and whether it's an important factor in appreciation of books, and so on. Overall, it's one of those conversations that I find fascinating in the "I want to poke at this" sense but am wary of saying anything in, because the embroilment potential is very high.

There's something of a cultural divide going on, I think, though I can't figure out where the boundaries on it are, quite, since bits of it appear to be me and folks in the UK (or Commonwealth nations) on one side of the line. (I theorise a little that we're back to Yankee-people-and-their-culture on this, but who knows? I was raised in a culturally odd environment.)

( This may wind up being long. Cultural and class stuff, intellectualism stuff, snobbery. )

Preferring to run social interactions on gift economy should have an error-check mechanism dealing with cultural significances attached to gift transfer.