We got into the Leaf Festival. I was unaware of how much I was pulling away from faith, mysticism and the Truth until I watched this video. I have been worrying about bills, money, and bullshit and forgetting about miracles, beauty and truth. Logistics are a lie. I am blessed and amazing and God is good. I’ve got nothing to worry about.
Everything is better than okay. I got into the Leaf Festival and have nothing to fear but fear itself.
:]
-Mushpa
Last night I was watching Criminal Minds. It is great-ish show. I have a somewhat odd interest in serial killers, sociopaths, psychopaths, and the un-rested. At times I have to mute it and look away, which thankfully confirms I am not a sociopath. ;]
I am interested in things that are a conundrum of the norm. Events, circumstances and people that make me question, that propel me to discover more through knowledge and my own truth that comes from wherever it comes from. I also like the nerd factoids and of course the quotes.
On to the point, this was a long intro to basically let people know that I am going to start posting some of the quotes from this show on a regular basis. Yes, I am that nerdy. B] I like quotes because they inspire me not only to be different, but get me interested and/or remind me of people, books, periods that help me evolve, to understand things, and to not feel so alone in this world. They move me. Anything that gets me to pick up a book is a good thing.
The quote from last night I am posting is by William Faulkner.
“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” – William Faulkner (The Paris Review interview (1956) with Jean Stein; later published in Writers at Work)
Anyway…hope you are into it. I am going to read, “The Sound and the Fury” because of this and because I am living in rural North Carolina, I know nothing about Jefferson, Mississippi and my cat’s name is Jefferson, so let’s do this.
– Mushpa
All she wanted was to find a place to stretch her bones.
A place to lengthen her smiles
and spread her hair
a place where her legs could walk without cutting and bruising
a place unchained.
She was born out of ocean breath.
I reminded her; ‘Stop pouring so much of yourself into hearts that have no room for themselves
do not thin yourself, be vast.
You do not bring the ocean to a river.’
– Tapiwa Mugabe, You are Oceanic
Americans are funny. I went out with Mensa and a bunch of friends yesterday to watch the World Cup in a mammoth of a sports’ bar, America was playing the Republic of Ghana. It was interesting to me how the men were all rooting for the USA. All America boys of all colors, religion and race, but the All-American girls kept saying to me they hope Ghana wins. I thought, that’s so strange. Mensa for one, growing up a few years in Ecuador, would never had said I hope Switzerland wins this last Sunday, what made her wish a country she knows nothing about, never visited, nor befriended anyone from would win over a country she is a citizen of and has lived in longer than anywhere else, including Ecuador? What is it that makes so many “liberal” ladies (and feminist men) so anti-American? It reminded me of this Mark Twain quote from his book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: “My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”
Our government and corporations in America are in a horrible state of affairs for the time being; it is very true that something needs to be done about that, but that has nothing to do with soccer. Our soccer players are not billionaire baseball, football or basketball stars making a fafillion dollars off of corporate money (Only 4 US Major League Soccer players make over a million dollars. The league’s average base salary is $186,258, while the league minimum is $36,500. The minimum salary of a Major League Baseball player is $500,000 while the average salary in 2013 was $3.3 million.). They are Americans, representing us, the people, not the institutions or politicians of this country, so let it go and like every other countryperson let’s root for our team. Trust me, they need all the help they can get. ;]
Go USA!
– Mushpa
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Mensa Responds:
I struggled with the idea of belonging, like many people do. I belonged to one country when I was born, when I grew up, and then I moved, and didn’t belong anymore. I moved here, and that’s where I finished growing up, but I didn’t fully belong, I just got used to it. And here is where I find myself, not truly belonging anywhere, yet struggling to find where I fit. And I’ve done this, and had this conversation with many people, discovered different ways of aligning myself with people who struggled with the same issue, finding niches but then getting knocked out of them because, there again, I found something that wasn’t quite right. The loyalty I have to the country I was born in, I find that it might be only there because my family is still there, maybe. I don’t think that I would be as loyal, as connected if everyone lived here. I am loyal to my childhood, because that’s what I experienced there, and my childhood was pure, and simple. I am loyal to those memories. I always hated growing up, dreaded the idea of growing up, and I did that here, in this country, in a very different place. A place with many virtues, but also many flaws. But I grew up, and I learned and struggled to cope with those flaws, focusing more on them rather than seeing the virtues and privileges I was given by this land. Now that feeling still lingers. After being here longer than anywhere else, I still haven’t let myself fully belong. Because it’s political, it’s social, it’s controversial, it’s trendy, it is what progressive thinkers do. But it is not progress. Hate, criticism, protests, it is not progress. Hate speech, controversial conversations, protest songs, and open discourses, all done in closed minded environments, are not progress, they are words. Words have been powerful over the centuries, but it is also what has enslaved us, as we have taken words to be truth rather than, just thoughts, which derive from experiences, which are just a direct reflection of our actions.
I don’t know if any of this is making sense now, but I struggled rooting for the team yesterday. I knew I fucked up saying I was rooting for the other team, it was not right, it was not my land, not my country. And I tried to get excited and stay in the game, with my now land’s team, but something felt off. Something didn’t fit. All that hate speech, those controversial conversations, those protests songs, and discussions, have tainted the soul of this land, and my own soul, as if someone other than human beings live here. It’s so tainted, its so ingrained in my brain, that I could not root for my own team, a team made up of MANY different people, all who once and maybe still didn’t feel like they belonged. I felt uncomfortable celebrating this success. But the truth of the matter is that yes, the tainted words from the criticism of the institutions have mangled the spirit of loyalty and solidarity of all people, all human people in this land. The truth is that not only are these institutions, the ones we normally think of, media, religion, or institutions of racial-gender-and socio-economic inequalities, so prominent. Something else has brewed up. Something much uglier and complicated, that has lead us to believe that we are having conversations about progress, when we are only alienating each other more and more to the point where no one truly belongs, anywhere. I should not feel like this. It is not fair.
Yet I am guilty. I struggle to be loyal to the rest of the souls of this world.
I will have to fix this.
-Mensa
“This letter, my dear, will be very long. I am not very fond of writing. I have often read that words falsify thought, but it seems to me that written words falsify it even more: you know how little is left of a text after two successive translations. Then too, I do not know how to go about it. Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits such a succession of chords. A letter, even the longest, is obliged to simplify what should not have been simplified: one is always so much less clear the minute one tried to be complete. I should like to make here an effort not only of sincerity but also of precision: hence, these pages will contain many erasures; they do already. What I would ask of you (the only thing I can still ask of you) is not to skip over any of these lines which have cost me so much. For it is difficult to live. It is even more difficult to explain one’s life.”
– Marguerite Yourcenar, “Alexis”
I like it because it’s true and I like to read it over and over again and go, “Yeah…“. :]
– Mushpa
Truth.
-Mushpa
I just finished this great book by Dr. Eben Alexander called, Proof of Heaven. I’m not going to go on and on about it. If you want to read it, I think you should.
My dad’s the one who gave me his copy. He said it reminded him of the places I describe when my blood sugar drops real low (I’m diabetic). It’s true. This book gave me the chills. Those chills you get when you know the unprovable is in actuality the truth…just because.
– Mushpa