back and forth

Today, when I stepped out of my house, the wind was out of the north - cool and damp. I had been working under a big head of anger - just anger generally at people who inhabit the world and how self-centered and horrible they can be. But that cool north wind - the autumnal wind - made my anger evaporate. Mostly what's left behind now is sadness.

the whole Foley mess. Look, I don't care that he was molested by some religious leader as a kid. I don't care that he's an alcoholic. If he did anything to any of those pages...and his whole coming-out thing. Isn't that what so many gay men have to fight against? The stereotype that they're pedophiles, when for the vast, vast majority of them, the thought of sleeping with an under-18 is as horrifying as, well, the thought of me dating one of my 18 year old college freshmen. Shudder.

Fall is an introspective time, and I wonder if maybe fall and winter tend more to be the favorite seasons of introverted people - they related to the closing down, the looking within, the faint nostalgic smell of woodsmoke in the air.

Maybe we just need to throw all of Congress out, start over from scratch. Maybe we need to make it a law that you can't be a professional politician or even a lawyer to run for Congress. Maybe there need to be ethics tests...but you can lie on an ethics test; it's entirely possible to KNOW what's ethical but not DO it.

I don't like summer much. I've established that already. Actually, the truth is I don't like Southern summers - where it gets hot and stays hot and there's no relief for months on end. When I was a kid growing up, up north, we'd get cool days in summer and even rainy days. Days when the wind wheeled around to come out of the north, wind that had passed over Canada and picked up moisture from the Great Lakes - and you could almost smell the wide open Canadian prairies in it. The wind felt like that this morning - it's too warm for it to really feel like fall, but it reminds me of a cool summer day "back home."

And what was that I heard on the radio? The Phelps-ites were planning on spewing their brand of hatred that they call "Christianity" at the funerals of the Amish girls that that bastard killed? Good God. It makes me embarrassed to call myself a Christian if they also call themselves Christians. That's why I sometimes encounter people that, when they find out I go to church, take me to task, tell me it's a hateful religion that should be abolished...and then spew their own brand of hatred all over me. And I have to try to deal with it and also explain myself at the same time. And it's especially horrible when you're a captive audience, like that one time I was traveling and had to sit next to the angry self-styled Buddhist (who was also close to Michael Moore-size) who kept telling me how hateful and angry Christians were.

The air makes me think of making soup, and baking bread, and staying in as the darkness falls earlier and earlier. And lighting my little candles on the mantel and the ones I have in the fireplace and watching them flicker as I read my book or work on a sweater. It's good cozy weather and I'm ready for cozy after this summer.

I wonder how much of this can be laid at the doorstep of the 24-hour news cycle? Where there always has to be some new atrocity to froth people up and keep them watching? How much to I fall prey to it myself? But still...there seem to have been an awful lot of school shootings this fall. There seems almost to be a plot afoot to divide people, to make them angry and mistrustful of each other.

What I'd really love to do would be to take the whole weekend - I can't, though - and go antiquing. Just withdraw some of the "mad money" I've stashed in my savings account and drive somewhere with lots of antique shops and just spend the day looking for wonderful things. The fall issues of my decorating magazines have come (and when did Better Homes and Gardens hip up? It's looked really nice lately) and there are so many things to tempt me to go out and look for those lady-head vases or old Jadeite glass or old lithographs like the ones that gas companies used to give away on their calendars. My house isn't grand, it's just a little cottage, but so many of the shops now have the cottage-style stuff or Shabby Chic stuff that it's relatively easy to find things that are neat.

And back to this Fred Phelps thing. These people offend me deeply, on so many levels...first of all, there's their sheer misunderstanding of cause and effect. Dear Fred Phelps people: the fact that we have not interned gay people in reeducation camps has NOTHING to do with the fact that terrorists are making IEDs to blow up our soliders. I wonder what you make of the fact that the terrorists who are carrying out what you seem to think is the will of God are a totally different religion altogether? Then there's the issue of...well, I think the words UNSEEMLY and ODIOUS fit well - the way you behave at the soldier's funerals. I don't care what you think (my disagreements with many of your fundamental beliefs aside). But it does offend me on a very deep level that you are going to thrust yourselves in the middle of a grieving family and grieving community and make it All About You. Fundamentally, what you are doing would be no different from Tom Cruise showing up at a Southern Baptist wedding to talk about HIS "religion." (Except even THAT would be less offensive). And then there's the issue of your deeming to judge. Who died and made you God? I may discern, I may call people on things I regard as morally wrong - but I am not going to say, "God has abandoned this country" and I am not going to say "you are going to Hell." Because that's not my call. (And thank God for that.) I wish you'd shut up because you all make it harder for the rest of us Christians - those of us who are more interested in helping people than in pushing our agenda forward.

I'm glad I took an evening this week and cleaned house and did laundry. There's something very right about having a totally clean house, especially when it's cooler out and you can look forward to spending time indoors. I should bake some bread this weekend and maybe figure out another kind of soup to make - or something; something so I'll have leftovers on hand for next week so I can just heat stuff up when I want dinner. Or maybe I should bake cookies; I saw a good recipe for white-chocolate-chunk-dried-cranberry cookies that seem nice and fall-ish. I could bring the extras in to my department on Monday.

Looking at all the crap that's going on - not just globally, not just nationally, but also local and specific crap - it makes me wonder at the human race. At our selfishness. At our capacity to hurt each other. How did we get to this point, and can we ever come back? Or have we always been at this point but I never noticed before? I'm too good at seeing patterns; I need to avoid the news for a while or I'll be getting out a map of the U.S. and trying to connect the dots of the localities where 'bad stuff happened' to see if it forms some kind of a pattern. And that way lies madness.

Dammit, I wish I could find what I did with the most recent Daedalus catalog that came. I had circled a bunch of stuff in there I wanted to order - for once, several books I had contemplated buying at full-price are in there on a good sale. But I need the catalog so I don't forget one of the things I wanted to order.

I just wish people spent more time looking after their OWN lives before they tried to interfere with other people

I also need to buy another bookcase sometime. Or maybe two; I'll fill them up fast enough.

I also wish that the Fred Phelps followers (and others like them) would look at problems and instead of looking for a way to blame, look for a way to help. Sure, it's harder to sit and hold an AIDS patient's hand so he's not alone while he's dying than it is to berate people for behavior that makes them at greater risk for contracting HIV...but it's more worthwhile in the end. It's not just you opening your maw and letting darkness funnel out...it's you, trying to bring a little light into the world.

I think it's also time to start making a Christmas list. I'm toying with the idea of driving to the nearby artists' colony and trying to find a small but nice piece of artwork for each person on my list - pottery, or a framed photograph, or a collage, something. That would be an easy and different way to do it. But I don't know - my parents are beginning to enter pare-down mode - would they really appreciate another thing that required dusting? What about ordering food as gifts for everyone this year? Chocolate, or nuts, or good citrus depending on the person's taste and diet? Or maybe buying books for everyone? That would be appreciated, provided I could find books they didn't already own. Or maybe some kind of craft kit for each person out of Flax...would be hard to find a good one for my dad though.

And I wonder if we're going to have to put up with that inane "Assault on Christmas" thing this year. Look: if someone celebrates Hanukkah, I'm gonna wish them happy Hanukkah. If they are pagan, I'll wish them a good Yule or Solstice or whatever. If I know they're Christian, then Merry Christmas...but if I don't know, I'm not going to assume. I'm not saying "happy holidays" so I can take God out of daily life; I'm doing it to be polite to someone I don't really know. But I do ask that I be allowed to celebrate Christmas and to wish a happy one to those others who do...

for my own list...well, I saw that three cd set of poetry read-by-its-poet. Even crazy stuff - poets you'd think wouldn't have still been alive at the dawn of recording. And books. I'll have to start writing down titles as I think of them. I'd really love a satellite radio set-up, but I should probably buy that for myself - it is not the tradition in my family to give extravagent gifts at Christmas, and even though I'm sure my dad would buy it for me if I asked, I kind of think that since I'm a grown-up now, I should buy it for myself. And I should finally get a dvd player; then I could ask for dvds of things I like. Maybe a yoga dvd.

You know, a lot of this stuff: the Phelps-ites, the "Assault! On! Christmas!" people...all of that borders on what someone, on some blog - I know we were talking about it in the comments on Sheila's blog - referred to as an Insane Lifestyle Mentioner. Even though I'm in some ways an inflexible person, I guess inflexibility in general - especially self-serving inflexibility - pisses me off.

I should get back into doing yoga again; I was calmer and happier when I did it. It made me concentrate instead of lapsing into my habit of being almost ADD about things. And I slept better. And my neck wasn't so stiff. I think stress is getting to me; my neck and shoulders are starting to hurt again. I could go get a massage, but...the one massage clinic here in town, the guy who runs it has the reputation for being creepy. So maybe not. Maybe just take a nice hot bath tonight in my nice clean tub with its new shower curtain...I could take the mystery novel I'm currently working on and read it while I soak...I'm glad it's nearly the weekend, I'm TIRED and I want some home-time.