getting well

i have a pocket of favorite things about not celebrating religious, imperialist, genocide, or otherwise power/consumption/faith/fallacy based holidays that i don't support.
the pocket is rolling solo on those days.
my quasi tradition.
now that Penelope Beatrice is old enough to share thoughts and feelings with me in ways we both can understand, i am going back to living life in this way that feels more honest to me. the way i do things i believe in, and act against things i do not. i feel confident that Penelope will understand.

one of those favorite things is occasionally empty streets and open spaces. it feels like maybe the few humans i see are those the earth is comfortably able to provide for. it's possible this is the number of people we are capable of kindly interacting with.
those of us who are not celebrating get to hear the leaves rustle uniquely once or twice each year.
i get the sense that we are all calmly appreciating perennial defiance, and the things iconoclasts (& folks with all other motivations) get to experience.
i know i am.

looking toward ending homelessness: not a utopian approach

there are plenty of organizations trying to help folks who do not live indoors find shelter, and the skills and means to maintain it. below are some things i think could greatly help in those efforts.

upstream:
1. abolish free-market capitalism and replace it with a community health and welfare oriented socialism.
2. ban corporate welfare in all forms and put those millions of tax dollars into free education and social welfare institutions. make this action retroactive.
3. defund the military, minimizing defense to a small national guard.
4. stop paying war debts. if the USA owes other nations money that was loaned during wars, too bad. they are existing without that money.    
5. imprison all rich business leaders in power situations of similar to Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump, and freeze their assets for public use. then figure out how much money they owe. then put them on welfare and let them live in the public housing projects....or just take what they owe and let them go.
6. defund the prison industrial complex. release all nonviolent criminals, and mandate expedited legal proceedings for prisoners who are awaiting trial . release all prisoners who are awaiting deportation to their countries of origin. knock down prisons, and replace them with community gardens.
7. legalize all drugs, create safe and clean places to use them, and offer recovery and rehabilitation services to addicted people.
8. direct much of the prison, corporate welfare, and military funds to create the best mental health services and research universities possible. make all mental health services free, non-institutionalizing, and create campaigns to destigmatize mental illness (with an attempt at giving mental illness and physical illness similar footing).
9. mandate that all states and municipalities legalize all forms of abortion and birth control. people who do not want children are often not the greatest parents. this in itself would greatly reduce the number of unsupported youth who have a higher likelihood of living on the streets.    

downstream:
10. give people housing (also somewhat upstream)! it is uber difficult to obtain a job or go to school when you have no mail address, or place to keep your things. it is also difficult to do these things when you have to spend a large part of your day finding your place to stay, or queuing for a bed.
11. do many of the upstream things for the current population of folks living without shelter.

iconoclasts eat last

stages of grief: my parents begged me to read part of your book. you write specifically about this year. the year that the person we grieve has been gone as long as they were here. i recall a note about how i would be thinking about that person once a week or less by this point in the "stages of grief". i ask myself what you, as an author, knew about my experience. how did it serve you to create these metrics of forgetting? why is the infrequency of my remembering something to look forward to? why did that seem like a comforting thing to write? what does this say about your experiences? would you write it differently now?

today my sister, Becky Denise Gerow, would be 36 years of age, had she not died in a car accident 18 years ago. if i were able to talk with her this evening i would ask a lot of questions. i might share some things as well. here are some of those things.

i might ask what afterdeath really feels like, if it does.
i would ask how it feels to have believed in what it would feel like, and know now what it actually feels like. assuming it feels like anything, or exists for her.
i might admit that i wish i could believe in some place we would hang out together once i die, and that i do not believe and we can't.
i would ask her if she recalls the time we laid under the pines with our dogs. the ones the lightning took.
i would ask how it feels to be remembered by a tree, a license plate, and some hand scrawled songs -- if it feels at all.
i would beg for her voice on the state of our parents non-comital-non-retirement.
i would ask what she thinks of our family now. the distance and silence we have all grown like moss on the roof of our relationships.
i would hope she would have an angry voice to speak of the way our relatives deconstructed the cabin we grew up in, and the stale mansion that stands supplanted.
i would ask her if it is okay the way i feel about spending time with happy people. how it is scary because i worry that i can only make them less happy. i would ask if some folks get to stop being sad when they die. if she had a way to know that. i would ask if sad folks at least get longer breaks from being sad then they did in life, if they exist. if they have reasons to recall.
i would want to thank her for being my only friend during some of the harder parts of my life, and share how much it would feel good to tell her that.
i would thank her for being the kid our folks always wanted. i would thank her for pushing space to let me be myself, even when she knew it was an unhealthy self.
i would thank her for the trips to the beach, the cigarettes, the dirt bikes, rodeo dances, for go-cart hair fling, and for taking steps i would need to take later.
i would say thanks for the day i left before she did. i looked out the window of my green car and said goodbye. it felt like the time i said goodbye after we dropped her off for college in Colorado, and i sat in the back seat and cried against all my might.
i would say that i love her.
i wish i could tell her these things, and endless other things, but i can't.
that hurts a lot sometimes.