Red Room Where the Writers Are

Ah, indeed, my head is swirling today. It didn't start this way. Before my eyes opened I said my normal prayer, "Dear Lord, please kill the demons before they know I have arose?"... demons being those negative little buggers who like to greet me in the morning... you know, the voices that start as soon as my eyes open, "Hellllllloooooo, Barrrrrrbarrrra, we have been waiting for you to wake up...." The ones that have me fired from my job and dying of cancer before my head has left the pillow? And if you are one of the fortunate folks who doesn't have'em... DON'T THINK ABOUT THEM... THEY LIKE TO SHARE! Once they perch themselves on your bedpost I am not sure if they ever go away.

Anyways in my artist little chitter-chat with my Creator this morning many recent happenings came and left the depot of my brain... now not being the conductor I cannot stop what makes its way down the tracks. Indeed I give them their voice, their time, and eventually the whistle blows and the next train has arrived. . .  some times, many times actually, those little trains will be somehow connected. Today was no different.

For some reason some things my new Swit friend asked me stuck in my head...He reported he had spent a few days in Santa Monica before coming to San Diego. I asked him what he thought of it... personally I love Santa Monica... and his response was there was a lot of beggars. I had to think about that for a moment, putting cultural differences into perspective. My knee-jerk was not really yet I, yes bit my tongue, gave it a thought and said yes i suppose there is. Like San Diego, I responded, I assume it is because of the warm weather they migrate/stay here. His instant, and I do mean instant, response was "well who cares for them, yeah?" Although posed as a question is wasn't a question at all. It was a statement. It wasn't the only time such a statement was posed through-out our conversing, mostly somehow tied to politics or American way.

Then it was this political hoopla train about Ted Kennedy (yesterday I recvd a request from Congress asking me my thoughts about naming the health-care bill after him--my response, sure give the dead guy a dead bill), and indeed the Kennedy thing provoked the homeless youth runaway that would sleep in the back of folks car that left them open to protect herself from the cold Mass winter and the uneducated single parent who briefly lived off govt funding and indeed in what many considered to be projects. Suppressed by a govt that gave you barely enough to get by yet never enough to survive or get out. . . which of course than leads to the lying, cheating, physically emotional woman beater drunk train--you know the things a woman will ignorantly tolerate trying to dig her way out and pay the bills and put food on the table while she is giving the baby the nurture it deserves, cause after all the child wasn't asked to be brought in this life and indeed because of similar choices there was not family left to depend on, you burnt that bridge when the parent died and you ran-away from the upper-middle class home train... Ikes!

Then of course the other Ted train rides in tied to the last two questioning if Ted ever lived in the projects or off Federally funded subsidiaries  or the seedy side of town where rent is cheap or stayed in a government shelter where the drug deals are abundant and indeed it is safer to plant your tired ass under a tree?... or was ever made to pay for milk with WIC or bread with food stamps?

The Ted train stays awhile... ... ... ...

I wondered if Ted Kennedy ever experienced, despite the govt suppression of the poor, what it was like... I mean what it was really like to earn your place in a society? To have absolutely nothing, no education, no family, no means to support yourself, no food, no home, no utilities... or to live a life where one always must let one thing fall to have the other... constantly bartering in-between... to endure the inexplicable just to be able to survive to the next day... to have that and to rise above it. . . like my grandmother did on her arrival her from the old country?. . or like I did in my survival of existing? I wonder if Kennedy would had felt the same had he lived the life I did... or the life my  Irish nana had through her initial days here? And trust me, as crude as this may sound, and god forgive me, I never ended up in a in a car in the water with a dead person beside me... but I did end up with an ass that forced me to once do something illegal or take yet another serious beating... and I am here to tell you only time got me out of that poor choice... govt funding certainly didn't make my bail, nor did it give me the freedom to make a choice to not get in that fix to begin with (yet my choice to do so did keep me breathing to tell the story)... And while he kept his seat in the House I watched the bars close behind mine.

In a prior blog, "What color blue do you see" (I think is the name of it) I touched on this philosophy. I just wonder, if old Ted Kennedy saw what I saw, lived what I had lived, endured... would he feel so charged to still believe that govt supporting the poor in any way was a good thing?

Now let me take that one step further...

I am not proud of some of the things I have done, choices I had made, parts of my life I endured. As I have shared in past blogs, I am just a gal who did and does the best she could and can. Sometimes life handed me some hard blows and other times I tried to take the path to least resistance ignorantly just trying to survive... and everything, absolutely everything holds its purpose.

Despite it all, the blows--loosing my mom so young, high school drop out, loosing my family, running away, foster care (and if you think federal funded programs work, try being stuck in the foster system and tell me how you feel about them), living on the streets or the beach, teen pregnancy, violently abusive relationship, literal escapism, single parenthood and indeed my govt desire to suppress me there... I rose above. I, one at a time, and indeed as our founding fathers so laid out, one dream at a time I prevailed to life, liberty, and indeed happiness. By my late twenties I had a financially successful career and by my mid thirties I had my own business making a sizable profit each year. And above all that I rose to such levels with dignity and indeed truth. And every spare penny I had went to the man behind me.

I am the flipping poster child of the American Dream... the little runaway that thought she could.

And I am here to tell you: DEPENDING ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO GET ME FROM THERE TO HERE WAS NOT WHAT CHANGED MY CIRCUMSTANCES. . . on the contrary.

That is a fact.

As a matter of fact, when Jen was a baby I indeed lived off welfare for about two years... and I did illegal things to supplement my income. I had to. I am not proud of it. When I made the decision to no longer live off federal govt my life began to change and change in a huge way, a huge better way. And I indeed stopped taking their help. I was young. And I saw the women in their 30's and older still depending on Federal Assistance... not a pretty site (don't believe me? Go rent yourself a flat in the projects. Live with the folks. Walk their neighborhoods. Watch their children. Watch them escape into the alcohol and the drugs to forget how things will always be the same. Multiplying the kids to get the cash or cause they are bored and uneducated. Shit take their kid to the hospital and hand over the medicare card and tell your friends what that feels like. Watch what they do with the govt checks when they come in, how quick it disappears... and in many cases on alcohol and drugs and not food and gas... and in the cases that are not spent there, watch how well it pays their bills--it is a system built to keep people down. Live it and tell me different.)

Like our founding fathers, I came to rely on the Creator for all things... and not the United States Government. Then and only then did things begin to change. I took small obvious dreams and made them a reality. My high school diploma, a shit job that paid good money, an apartment--away from the socio-economic repression, second hand furniture and indeed hand outs, utilized the library and taught myself, picked a mentor and followed advise, took college classes, lived by sound principles to spare my daughter lessons learned, learned to appreciate my parents for the breath they gave me and the lessons learned, walked from any man with issues of anger, refusing any form of govt assistance... I lived within my means... and more importantly giving back... reaching out to those behind me on the path and cheering them on, being the best mom I could, loving in the best way I could, repaying in every way I could... and NEVER EVER believing that I would ever need to live my governments life ever again... never!

With my writing career I did the same. A dream. I had a dream. I planned. When the time was right I went to my Creator and I included Him. I kept my eyes on the prize. I stayed determined. Only in America. I learned and I studied. I said no to big corporations and bank loans and federal funding. I put one little American foot in front of the other. I endured the critics and the skeptics. I learned when I needed to. I forced myself to participate when I didn't want to. I kept my eyes on the dream. I trudged. I learned. I persevered. For over ten years I did everything necessary to accomplish my goal... for my slice of the American Dream. No one gave it to me. I didn't inherit it. And I certainly didn't let anyone else's thought impede it... indeed like me Irish nana, I stood strong... I endured.

And you all are buying the bloody thing off the shelf like crazy.

Indeed, I wonder if Mr. Ted Kennedy had had my life instead of the one handed to him if he would indeed still believe that government interference was truly the way.

Am I fearful about the direction of this Country. You betcha! And no, it absolutely has nothing to do with Hannity or... whose that other guy folks pin as a fear mogul?... oh, Beck... I have eyes. I can see. I have ears. I can hear. I have a brain in my head. I can think for myself.

I didn't work my ass off 35 plus years of my life, enduring and surviving the impossible to have my govt come in and tell me how I should be of service in a life filled with service. I wish to keep the American Dream I made for myself... and indeed worked flipping hard for...

If I can do it... anyone can. I know that as fact and no one, absolutely no one will change my mind on that issue-- to my death.

More importantly I have a past and a present that tells me with specific detail just what color blue I see...

Have a grand day all. Peace.