today was the day, beautiful reader, that i renewed my commitment to movement as gratitude. this is great progress because, if this were last year, it would’ve taken at least one full moon cycle before i rededicated myself. if this were a few years ago, it would’ve taken at least a season. two weeks it took this time before i returned to the practice, and on a sunday! who goes to the gym on sunday? who really does anything on sunday? not me. sunday is the day i get to set it intentions that i say i’ll act on tomorrow. starting monday is the most consistent lie i’ve told myself. i also filmed the job video, finally, and i think it looks good. solomon next, or maybe david and bethsheba, then solomon the magician and the queen of sheba. is the sheba in both names a coincidence? we’ll see.
tomorrow morning we’re having our last alchemy lesson of the season, and i’m still reworking the lesson plan for the hundredth time. i’m always heartbroken when something ends.
when i was nineteen i met a girl in beirut who was a method actress and musician. i thought she was so cool, because of how severely uncool i felt around her. she seemed so confident, so grounded, sure of herself, independent. i was in my second year of uni, studying to be a mechanical engineer (lol), she was skipping uni to pursue her art, and i was so jealous.
we’ve been watching the middle lately, or playing the middle in the background while we do other things like write these words. when at a loss, i’ll always fall back on a sitcom. in one of last night’s episodes there is a bully family in the neighborhood known as the glossners, four boys who wreak havoc on all the neighbors, beat up kids who come out to play, steal things and hide them in their garage. and they’re being raised by a mother who’s always wearing a bra as a shirt and smoking with red eyes and a discolored face. the sitcom is a genre that presents all things as they seem, character is communicated quickly, and very little if anything at all is left under the surface (except for comedic purposes). so, a villain, like mrs rita glossner, played by brooke shields, is presented as the chain-smoking, beer-chugging, trashy neighbor. the reason the glossners have been able to wreak so much havoc on the block is because they’re bullies, no one wants to deal with them because interacting only makes it worse, so the episode opens with our protagonist, frankie heck, playing ball with her son, brick, in the yard when the ball bounces over to the glossners’ yard. frankie and brick look at each other, shrug oh well, and head inside, and frankie narrates to us the reality that getting into it with the glossners just isn’t worth the struggle. as the episode progresses, the boys’ behavior is getting out of hand, so frankie’s daughter, sue, decides to stand up to them, and ends up getting pushed over and having her boom box stolen. then frankie’s husband mike decides he’s going to go talk to the mother and ends up getting flashed and yelled at.
later, frankie sees rita at the grocery store, struggling with the boys who are ripping apart ungodly amounts of bread, and frankie (and we) thinks, maybe rita has just had a hard life and isn’t a villain at all. so frankie decides she’s going to take her some groceries. when she arrives at her doorstep, we’re expecting rita to be too proud to take the help, or offended, or in tears of gratitude. instead, she takes the bag and slams the door in frankie’s face. and even though frankie tries to talk to her, she just keeps getting more and more rude, and frankie (and we) realizes: actually, rita is exactly the trashy villain she appears to be. and so frankie stands up to her, and calls the whole neighborhood to come get their stuff back. the episode ends on the hopeful note that all it takes is one person to stand up to the bully. but what if the bully wasn’t a single, low-income mother with a drinking problem? what if it was a gun-owning father, with a drinking problem, , in a country where it’s legal to shoot someone if they’re on your property? would peaceful protest and killing him with kindness before having the whole block clear out his garage be enough?
until tomorrow <3
Ahahahahahahhahaha this is another good one
Or you’re a Palestinian on the West Bank and the faux Semites can kill your olive trees, your animals and you too?