The Atlantic Ocean in April. Just me and my thoughts.
As I sat on the deck of my cabin, I began to think about everything that transpired to get me where I was on this particular Sunday evening. I thought about all the broken promises. I recalled every truth that suddenly - in the blink of an eye - became a lie. My mind began to overflow with emotions that I tried so desperately to hide from the outside world. With each memory came a flow of tears. With every thought came an ache in my heart so severe, I would double over from the pain. "Why? How could this be? Was it all a lie?", I kept asking myself, over and over again, hoping that someone could provide an answer. But there was no one there. Just me, the sun, and the sea.
For some reason, I began to think about my middle school teacher, Ms. Whorton. Whenever we got loud and out of control, she would say "Peace, be still". Of course, at 14, I had no clue what that meant and would just be quiet. Why was she on my mind. I was hundreds of miles from home. What made her memory special enough to attend my "pitty party"? I put her aside but her words never left . . .Peace, be still.
I started to recite the words to myself. "Peace, be still. Peace, be still." With every crack of the waves against the ship,"Peace, be still. Peace, be still." Soon, I felt at peace. I knew it was time to stop drowning in my sorrows and to enjoy everything God had placed around me. I decided to stop fighting this battle alone and just let God have it. I realized the tears were gone, the ache in my heart had been replaced with hope, and I was no longer sitting, but standing and rocking against the railing. When I looked around, the bangs and slams of neighbors exploring the ship had been replaced with quiet and calm.
I decided from that moment on to be at peace. I took a picture so I would always remember what peace should look like. . .
Peace, be still.
I just surfed onto an Italian talk show: the hostess was a very plus-sized young woman, with a strikingly gap-toothed smile. She wore a glamorous black, low-cut dress; had expensive TV makeup & hair. She was gregarious, lovely and quite a major hottie I will admit.
| Greed: | Very Low |
Tell us a little something about your first girlfriend/boyfriend.
First girlfriend: N.
- In my prairie hometown, Saskatoon Canada
- I was 18, she was 15. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that now but in 1978 that seemed OK.
- I was a virgin, she wasn't quite - thank god one of us knew what we were doing.
- Her dad was a cop. One time he caught us in flagrante (Yikes!), but never said anything. Cool guy.
- She was very intelligent, sweet, and had distressingly low self-esteem that I tried vainly to uplift.
- We were way too serious about each other and were together 3 years, even lived together
- I moved to another city and she married someone right after that.
When did you first realize that you were ___________? Was it a positive or negative experience?
Question submitted by George.
...of an uncomfortably different "social background" than my peers & neighbours were.
***********
In the 1960s-70s I grew up in a very blue-collar neighbourhood, going to school with kids from mainly blue-collar familiies. My parents were professionals with some university education - seemingly the only ones within miles who were. Mom was a teacher who instilled in me a love of books, language, and ideas. My parents' careers didn't translate into higher income than our neighbours necessarily had, but their education & backgrounds made them very different I eventually learned.
Once I was about 8, I began noticing just how much I stuck out like a sore thumb in my world. It took me a very long time to figure out why; I just knew that nobody seemed to accept me and so became quite a loner. I wanted very badly to be blue-collar myself, hoping to be a mechanic when I gew up. This seemed like the ultimate goal.
I remember feeling not very proud of my parents. Why can't Dad do a real job like construction or truck driving? Why can't Mom stay at home having more babies and cooking all the time like the other moms do?
I learned the hard way not to use "fancy big words" around my peers, or to let on that my reading level was years beyond theirs. One time, one of the tough kids asked me "How come you're so smart?" I felt crushed and afraid, like he'd indicted me and was about to kick my ass just on principle. I quickly assured him that I wasn't smart, and made sure I always played the part as best I could. I tried not to excel in school, even briefly dropped out of highschool once, and never did attend university. This despite what my parents wished for me; I felt it far more important to somehow fit in with my surroundings than to please my parents. I've often wondered if my early wish to "not be smart" became self-fulfilling; by about age 25 I'd ground down that mental sharpness & focus which earning a university degree requires.
One of my early jobs involved operating forklifts and fairly large trucks. I remember feeling quite manly at first and that I was doing a "real" job, unlike the weird soft professions that my parents had. I felt that I fit in my community at last - for awhile. Eventually I was to leave that neighbourhood and city though.
Do I now dislike all things blue-collar? Definitely not. But I feel there was a big social and experiential dissonance between my family/myself and our neighbours. Adults have the means to bridge social differences, but I'm unsure that children are equipped to do that. I feel that dissonance deeply affected and shaped me in many ways, for good and bad.
The BrianGate is an implantable microelectrode array that combined with a digital signal processing system has allowed individuals to exercise control over electronic systems through the power of thought.
In 2003, the budgets allocated to the apprehension of the US government’s top criminal targets were as follows: $25 million for the head of Osama bin Laden; $15 million each spent for information on the whereabouts of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the sons of Saddam;
and $12 million spent to apprehend one Thomas B. Kin Chong.
I saw the documentary A/K/A Tommy Chong Saturday night, and it easily rates 5 Stars.
Tommy Chong (of the 1970s comedy act Cheech & Chong) lent his name/image to a company his son ran, which sold glass marijuana smoking bongs. Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft considered 66-year-old Chong such a dangerous threat to the nation that he oversaw an expensive entrapment operation which put Chong in federal prison for 9 months.
The documentary decisively shows that Ashcroft's case was not at all about stopping the sale of "drug paraphrenalia" - it was completely about punishing and humiliating Chong for the satirical comedy films & records he'd made 30 years ago.
Marijuana pipes are quite openly sold nearly everywhere in the US; only 2 states ban them. And if you can't buy one, every user knows how to build their own pipe in 5 minutes using stuff lying around the house. Jailing Tommy Chong didn't reduce future marijuana consumption in the US by even one molecule.
There's a political mindset within the Republican party that's maniacally obsessed with "Reversing the 60s", by trying to negate every hard won social change and freedom gained during 1960-80. Part of The Right's "cultural war" is to go after symbols of irreverence and personal freedom like Tommy Chong. No matter that Chong's heyday was decades ago and that he was largely forgotten by the American public - the Right considers it vital to regularly send chilling messages of "No matter how old you are, sooner or later we'll come to get you - don't think we'll ever forget".
