Neither Here Nor There

So.  Another week, divvying up another passel of things-that-gotta-get-done among the greedy minutes, and all in a rush, it’s Sunday again.

That lead-in sentence up there?  I tried out “zig-zagging through another week” and “plowing through another week.”  I finally found the word that nailed it, but it didn’t scan.  Spiralling.  Spiralling through another week… it’s Sunday again, and I’ve just enough time to throw a few words on the page and post them before my self-imposed midnight deadline chimes and I turn into a pumpkin.

It doesn’t feel like pressure (though I’ve got people waiting for me in the room beyond).  It feels like a pattern.  I don’t feel rushed (though the clock is ticking).  I feel comforted.  Settling into my chair to write feels like settling into the ghostly outline of the me who was writing here last week.  It feels like home.  Unfolding the patchwork quilt of my journal, I lay it before me… and add another square. 

I met my lizard neighbor today.  Briefly.  I know it was her — I’d know that scale pattern anywhere.  She was oooh, lovely.  Healthy-fat.  Brown mostly, a little black and a little ivory on the back.  A mandala of earth-colors, slithering deeper into her dwindling home, rustling the dusty, dead oak leaves as she scurried to hide.

Last time I’d destroyed her domicile, it was a gigantic mound of potato vine by the stone steps on the side of the house.  As I’d hoped, she’d found new digs.  Fleeing the devastation my clippers had wreaked on her geodesic potato vine dome, she’d found refuge in an oak-wood villa — a huge pile of sawed up wood that’d been left too long in our back yard.

Removing the pile from the yard and stacking it under the front deck has been on my husband & son’s “to-do” list since last March.  I moved it to my own list in August, where it’s been steadily climbing toward the #1 spot.

Today it arrived.  The wheel is turning, the rains are coming.  Either I moved the wood today and stacked it with the other logs I’m aging, or it would sit out in the elements, melding with the earth all winter long.

I was on my third armful when she shot like smooth, undulating lighting from the part of the pile that was vanishing to the part that was still intact.

Damned if I was going to play Snidley Whiplash to her Nell a second time.

I left her a cottage.  All the comforts of home.

A lousy, little knot has been tightening in my belly since I got that email this morning.

The missive provided me a link to a site called “Watchdog” and promised that if I fed the site my address, it would regurgitate the data as a map of my home and neighborhood; a “house” icon surrounded by colorful dots.  Click on the dots, the note urged, and pictures of people would pop up, along with their exact addresses and descriptions of their crimes.

Clearly, the email is designed to tie stomachs into knots.  It’s supposed to make me think, omigod, I’ve been blithely walking the dog, strolling down to the cinema, picking up the mail at midday and taking out the garbage at night completely oblivious of the fact that dangerous criminals are lurking behind some of the doors I pass on my perambulations.  In my ignorance and naïveté, I’ve said “hello” to the guy — no, the stranger — trimming his verge.  I’ve smiled and nodded to folks I can’t name as they pull into their driveways, never stopping to wonder what they’ve got stashed in their trunks.  I’ve struck up random conversations with other dog-walkers, though for all I know, they dwell in dotted houses.

Before the website’s creators start congratulating themselves for having elicited in me the desired reaction, I must protest.  No kudos are in order.  A sour pairing of rogue’s gallery pics with laundry lists of nasty business isn’t going to goad me into raising the household fear level to Orange.  I’m not scared of my neighbors.  I’m scared of sites like Watchdog, and the rampant social paranoia they represent and exacerbate.

I am absolutely, unequivocally certain the person who forwarded the email to me did so with love and friendship and in the belief that the site is a useful tool that can help keep us, our loved ones and especially our precious children safe.  I really have to ask, though — safe from what?

Are there evil and crazy people in our society, living among us?  Yes.  Yes, there are.  Do they all have mug shots on file and police records?  Nope.  Not even close.  Can innocent people be wrongly convicted?  You betcha.

Lumping the innocent in with the guilty doesn’t keep us safe.  It puts us in greater danger by fomenting suspicion and distrust in our communities, our society and our world.  It’s that kind of mentality that justifies obliterating an entire village because intelligence reports it may harbor an anti-American teenager who might one day grow up to be a terrorist — and we can’t take that chance.  I’ll take it.  I’ll take that chance.  It’s the best chance we’ve got at surviving as a people, as a species and as a planet.

Teaching kids to snub the woman who lives down the lane just teaches kids to be rude.  Encouraging kids to run away from the face on the computer screen encourages them to think danger has an identifiable face.  Pretty soon, they start believing they can trust their eyes and governmental authorities to tell them who to fear, who to shun.  Who to hurt.

The current elections are rife with this repugnant brand of profiling.  Why do McCain/Palin supporters shout “Kill him!” and “Terrorist!” when the Democratic presidential candidate is mentioned?   Because their candidates, the present political machine and the media they prefer have deliberately and successfully linked an entire culture and specific physical characteristics with “danger.”  A middle name and a Kenyan father is all it took to associate an upstanding American senator with Evil and to tap the lynch-mob ugliness of a frightened constituency.

Here and now, is your neighbor a good neighbor?  Then treat him like one.  Making a pariah out of anybody in your neighborhood that’s ever made a mistake and got caught isn’t going to keep our kids safe.  Their safety depends on learning rules they can apply across the board, sane stuff they can own and that empowers them recognize the people they can talk to, ride home with, take candy from, and hug back.

Spying on each other won’t make us safer.  Hating each other won’t make things right.  Fear thrives on the poison of prejudice.  We’ve got to stop feeding the beast.

Gosh, look at all this amazing new stuff we taxpayers own since we started saving the economy!  Manchester United Football Club, Bear Stears, Fannie & Freddie…

What?  You mean… we’re not following Dennis Kucinich’s sensible-sounding proposal to give Americans partial ownership of institutions receiving bailout money?  Hmph!  So, I can’t spend my tax dollars to fund environmental protection, social services, health care, education, public transportation or alternative energy, but I still get to pay for an insane war and bail out multi-gazillionaires?  Well, gee.  Thanks.

Still, last week’s financial plunge was only one element of an astonishing barrage of breaking news — just more fuel for the fiery and, dare I say, colorful Obama – McCain contest.  Ok, it’s old news and well-reported, but my eyes are still wide, my jaw is still resting on the floor.  It was a simply incredible series of events, and I simply must join the multitude of re-cappers.

It started with McCain and Palin intensifying the fear/hate component of their anti-Obama campaign (as evidenced by the fact that a flat 100% of McCain’s Wisconsin TV ads were “negative” ads impugning Obama’s character and questioning his loyalty to the nation; not even 30 seconds of promo on the Republican candidate’s policies and positions).  The McC/P effort to “consolidate their base” by smearing Obama incited the crowds at their rallies to a frenzy of mob mentality.  As their supporters got ugly, McC and MsP got uglier, allowing blatantly racist invectives and threats of violence to go unchecked and unanswered.

Until their tactics backfired.

I can’t remember it happening before.  Not ever.  People think in pictures, so it’s the slimy images voters remember, not who threw the slime.

Only this slime somehow stuck on the McCain/Palin base; it triggered overtly racist and hostile reactions from pro-McCain/Palin crowds.  Not pretty.  Americans may be racist, but we don’t like to think of ourselves that way.  We may be war-mongers, but the looming Depression has piqued our interest in the country’s economic health.

The icing on the cake?  Friday evening, as the stock market closed its door on its worst week ever, Palin was found guilty of abusing her gubernatorial powers in the pursuit of personal ends — a decision that could lead to censure or impeachment.  That same day, McCain capitulated to poor poll numbers and media pressure (pressure not just from left and mainstream media, but from right-wing pundits and commentators) to show some honor and decency and stop using his “town-hall” meetings to foment hatred and suspicion in a nation with a long and bloody history of racially-motivated assassinations.

A couple of months ago, when the conversation turned to the news of the day, my stomach would crunch into a knot and I’d flee the room.  The night before last, I stayed up talking politics till 2:00am.  Seems thrashing through the seas of financial disaster amid the wrack of political storms has wrought a sea-change upon me.

Three weddings and three funerals in three weeks.  You don’t have to be a mystic to note the numeric significance.

On my calendar, this synchronous cascade of life-and-death events has been tumbling through the waning Hazel Moon and into the waxing Vine, bridging the dark transition between the two and spanning the Equinox-tide.  In my lexicon, we’re talking about the fruits of our deeds and intentions, about inspiration and intoxication, about brief balance and Summer’s decline.

But mine isn’t a jealous Goddess.  I’m free to observe that this triad of triplicity coincides neatly with the Jewish New Year – where the same message is repeated.  The Jews aren’t the only ones to link rituals of penitence with rites of rebirth, but they do make the connection direct.  From Rosh Hashanah (The Head of the Year) to Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), the devout spend the High Holy Days in introspection and self-reflection and devote the 10^th and last day to fasting and prayer.

Fasting, meditation… a deep, unblinking look inward, into our souls?  It’s plainly time.  The rituals are there to guide us, if the tried and true paths appeal.  But whether we do it consciously or plod on through the daily routines and distractions with blinders on — the jobs and meals and laundries and elections — no matter.  It’s time to pay the piper.  Either we’ll balance our karmas consciously, or we’ll balance them in our dreams.  Either we’ll face ourselves in the mirror, or we’ll see ourselves mirrored in each other’s eyes.

No guilt, no blame.  It’s as it should be.  Age, illness and accident are claiming their due.  Love, trust and hope are pouring balm on the wounds.  It’s a time of reckoning.