Baroque and Blue

For Eddy, with love:

My family is a rainbow of different races, religions, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views.

Some are carnivores, some vegetarian, some drink ginger-ale and some booze,
some like Broadway and some play the Blues.

We agree, and we disagree about how we live our lives, teach our children,
gas or electric stoves and cars.

Some love animals, some are afraid, or allergic, or ambivalent;
none of us is abusive to other living things.

Some are far-sighted, some very, very myopic,
some are going blind, losing their hearing, balance, and wits,
but we are a family, and we love each other even if and when we disagree loudly, or only in silence.

This was brought into clarity for me this week by the loss of a loved one who hadn’t the chance to say goodbye.

Don’t waste precious time protesting the differences… there is never enough time.

Someday there won’t be another chance to say I love you, to say I’m sorry,
or the opportunity to say farewell.

The HUMAN family, the GLOBAL family needs to realise that we are one, while there is still any time.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 5 June 2018

Vindicated or Vindictive?

I am astonished by kindness, awed by talent and beauty, and overwhelmed with anger and sadness by blatant, reckless thoughtlessness and unwarranted hate.

It seems, the older I get, and I’ve aged rapidly in the last couple of years, the worse people have become, and the less tolerant I’ve become of unabridged ignorance and unbridled animosity.

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but I remember a time when the public odium was not this prevalent; when we expected, not just hoped for the best in people. Once there wasn’t a 100 foot, unscaleable barrier between everyone; we didn’t discuss religion or politics with the singular intention of blame and ridicule, we didn’t call authorities on strangers because we disliked what they looked like or for what they believed…

Yes actually, people did, but that was supposed to have disappeared with the fall of the Third Reich, Tail Gunner Joe,  “No Irish, Jewish, Chinese, or Italian need apply”, along with forced segregation and Jim Crow Laws. What people didn’t do was threaten people by the calling in of false bomb threats, ‘Swatting,’ or bullying the helpless, hopeless, homeless, and victimised.

We didn’t let our children be killed on playgrounds, in schools, religious services, or in their homes by drive-by shootings and semi-automatic strafing planned to get the agitators’ names broadcast all over the media. We didn’t deliberately drive people off the road because we didn’t like their bumper stickers or their physical attributes. 

We didn’t spew vitriol to total strangers in public, whether in person or via forms of communication meant to bring people together instead of ripping them apart. We fought for each other, not with each other. We said please, thank you, helped strangers with directions that didn’t consist of curses and suggestions of impossible sexual acts; we ate together, talked to each other, greeted new neighbours with food or flowers and not fear and weapons.

Once we believed in the American Dream instead of the American Nightmare; once we were proud, respected, upwardly mobile, but now what is left to us other than embarrassment, fear, and hate?

Well, it's only my opinion, and no doubt I'll get plenty of other conflicting opinions giving me the diagrams for those impossible, physical acts.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 7 June 2018

Anachronism

"I am an Island"

(With thanks to Paul Simon)

I am an outlier for these times:

I speak in complete sentences, choose my words with deliberation;
speak and write about actual ideas and complex thoughts instead of sound bites, memes and vitriol.

I write as I think, as I speak, feel;

I am neither hair-triggered in my reactions, nor am I prone to over-reaction or simplistic responses.

I see no purpose in responding to other people’s random comments by spewing unrelated invective
and running around with my hair on fire.

I take other people’s sensitivities and their understanding of my words into consideration;
I do not jump through hoops though to be constantly today’s de rigueur, politically correct
by tossing out a life-long vocabulary based on literature and travelling because someone, somewhere may misinterpret my intent.

I do not call people names; I either respond with deliberation, or I ignore them.

I do not make assumptions about people by their ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality, or political party.

If I find someone to be an uninformed, vindictive, prejudiced ass, then I judge that person by themselves and not as a member of a specific group other than a group of other similar jerks.

On the other hand, I’ve been told that I am overly sensitive to other people’s remarks made to me;
if I’m hurt, I might respond in kind, but please keep one thing in mind,
when I get really angry, I become silent.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 6 June 2018