Hello. I’m back.

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on June 8, 2023

😊

Guns win, Victims Lose

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on February 27, 2018

Why is it in these ongoing (U.S.) mass shooting tragedies, the guns still win and victims still lose?

I am frustrated and angry hearing on the news “There was a colossal breakdown,…” in how the events transpired in the latest shooting. Yet another way to divert part of the main issue: availability of guns. Blame is being placed on the FBI missing warnings, background check failings, lack of action by the sheriff’s deputies at the school… what about the gun, especially the AR-15 semi automatic assault weapon?

I am torn on the (lack of) efforts by the sheriff’s deputy(s) at the school. Are these guys supposed to be trained for active COMBAT style shooting at schools? Should we be putting soldiers in our schools instead?

Training our teachers in combat to protect and assist with potential future shootings? wtf?!

In an article I read, ‘But so many mass shootings become mass shootings “because the AR-15 was used,” he said, adding that the damage the weapon does to the human body pales in comparison to a handgun. “I’ve talked to ER physicians,” Chipman said. “Rifle rounds are so devastating to the human body.”‘

And then this one from a congressman on this morning’s news, “…the 2nd Amendment is my god-given right…” What? I call bullshit. Where I have much to say about the 2nd amendment, I will only say, I’m pretty sure God did not write our Constitution.

I’m tired of hearing, guns don’t kill people, people do. Think again. The guns, used by a human, killed these 17 innocent victims on 2/14/2018 (FL); 25 on 11/5/2017 (TX); 27 on 12/14/2012 (CT); 49 on 6/12/2016 (FL); 58 on 10/1/2017 (NV)… the list goes on and on.

We have much to do in understanding and better handling mental health issues. Much to do in allowing our protection agencies the resources to fully vet and act on potential threats. This won’t happen overnight but it can, must and will happen. In the meantime, let’s make the accessibility to these weapons our first order of business. It should be that simple. Human lives matter.

it’s just a story.

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on October 6, 2017

I wrote this s few years ago but couldn’t post. Now, I will.

it’s just a story.

have you ever been hit by a truck?

i was. fortunately, i am still alive.

unfortunately, i still relive the impact every once in a while.

it’s not the first time i’ve been hit. but still, it hurts like hell. i lost something in the accident. sometimes i want to believe it’s still there. my phantom limb. that hurts like a mother fucker too. i hear that pain will recede. i hope so. i am not always strong when i need to be.

i learned something. the difference between cannot and will not. will not is a conscious decision to do or not do something, what that something is, is irrelevant. cannot is usually the cop out for will not. cannot is the hiding behind some force or power that you believe is stronger than yourself. cannot is the conscious decision to remove yourself from responsibility as as if the choice was never yours.

a different accident.

remember when you were six years old? coming home from school and seeing daddy drunk, sitting on the hallway stairs? again. and you tried really hard not cry, because he got wicked angry and would hit you. but you cried anyway. but you promised, daddy… you promised. i think he felt a little bad. at least at first. he made me sit on his lap. and i’d be crying hard by now. he said he couldn’t help it. and once he finished the bottle, which was closer to him than i would ever be, that would be the last bottle. in fact he would quit tomorrow.

but it didn’t happen. by now he would get so angry at everything you did, so you quit saying anything anymore. smaller than a comma, insignificant as a cough. but you kept believing because you wanted it so badly.

one day he would. one day he would quit. one day he would notice me. not an object, not a portal. one day he would love me like he was supposed to. one day he would stop hitting me. one day everything would stop. one day, an angel would brush my hair, seventy seven strokes, and my horse would come riding by and carry me to the water with my angel flying beside me. one day. everything good and nothing bad.

where was i? i think i fell asleep.

so that was that and this is this. but the process is the same. i couldn’t make it happen. and that’s not a cop out. sometimes can’t… is just can’t.

the hating doesn’t happen anymore.. as it did when i was younger. i’m not sure why. but i know i am glad about it. the little shit storms are still there though. the ones that i fall into on occasion. sometimes i stay there for a while. i just do.

until the pain from the impact is gone.

Brown Girl Dreaming — Jacqueline Woodson

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on September 26, 2017

Some excerpts that move me…

Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen.

My mother tells me this as we fold laundry, white towels separated from the colored ones. Each a threat to the other and I remember the time I spilled bleach on a blue towel, dotting it forever. The pale pink towel, a memory of when it was washed with a red one.

she stops, midfold, and looks out the back window. Autumn is full on here and the sky is bright blue. I guess I believe in right now, she says.

I believe in God and evolution. I believe in the Bible and the Qur’an. I believe in Christmas and the New World. I believe that there is good in each of us no matter who we are or what we believe in. I believe in the words of my grandfather. I believe in the city and the South the past and the present. I believe in Black people and White people coming together. I believe in nonviolence and “Power to the People.” I believe in my little brother’s pale skin and my own dark brown. I believe in my sister’s brilliance and the too-easy books I love to read. I believe in my mother on a bus and Black people refusing to ride.

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on September 11, 2017

Some excerpts that move me…

Who knew love could kill you?

For Werner, doubts turn up regularly. Racial purity, political purity — Bastian speaks to a horror of any sort of corruption, and yer, Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it. Each bite of food, each particle of light entering the eye — the body can never be pure.

So really , children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add ans subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

It’s embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.

[In looking at the ocean] Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.

Is she happy? For portions of every day, she is happy.

He made such a faint presence. It was like being in the room with a feather. But his soul glowed with some fundamental kindness, didn’t it?

Every hour she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out the the world. … We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

Inspiration

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on March 21, 2017

“I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

my grandmother asked me to tell’s sorry – Fredrik Backman

Posted by millionindentationsofhappiness on February 17, 2017

Some excerpts that move me.

…”All daughters are angry with their mothers about something. But she was a good grandmother.. She was the most fantastic grandmother anyone could imagine.”

The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it makes the people left behind want to stop living, she thinks, without remembering where she heard that.

..I think it could mean that if you hate the one who hates you, you could risk becoming like the one you hate.

It’s snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them, You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits.

“‘We want to be loved, ‘” quotes Britt-Marie, “‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.'”