2003-04-27 - 2:20 a.m.: formula

sometimes a feeling washes over me that makes me feel completely.... belonging. i don't know how to describe it. none of my questions are answered... not intellectually, anyway... but i feel so *right* with everything around me... so inside of it and part of it that there's no questioning it. the not-rightness of the world seems right, at those times, and the strangeness of people--our absurdity--seems quaint... delicious... something to be loved, valued.

other times everything seems so wrong i want to cry.

my brother has a pet quinea pig, who lives in a small glass cage with a bowl of food, some cedar chips, and a water bottle. he spends his time looking at the bowl, the cedar chips and the water bottle. sometimes he eats, sometimes he drinks, he falls into hysterics every time someone approaches the cage and he sleeps in his own shit. every time i go home, i spend a while with this guinea pig. i wrap him in a soft towel and hold him close to me. he's never afraid...and i think he has no idea that i'm not a very large, very warm and rumbly mother. i would take him home with me and care for him if the wrongness of the whole set-up didn't make me sick.

i must be extraordinarily selfish. but i'm not the only one.

i wish that humanity had a stronger conscience. i wish it was louder. i wish we could look at things freshly, without the lens of 'convention' blurring our sense of right and wrong. how could people think it's okay to keep animals in cages too small for them to move in? how could anyone think it's okay to treat a life as a commodity? how can we think it's okay to waste what some would die for? why is our culture created in a mold? where did all the art go? where are the minds creating for the sake of beauty? if i'm offending you, i'm sorry.

but...why haven't you been offended already?

this isn't all about animals. or people. or anything. it's just about... HOW DO WE SEE THE WORLD? i mean... where do our world-views come from? are we so socialized that our sense of the world is defined by the yes's and no's of our families, friends and neighbors? is there anything ingrained in us? is there anything pure?

i think there is. i think we're capable of seeing more than we acknowledge. i think we look away because it hurts us.

how are we supposed to evolve?

i'm sorry. i just watched powder. it was beautiful. it was created by a man accused of molesting children. i don't know what to trust.

please try to find that purity inside yourself today, and hold it close to you for just a little while. wrap your mind around it. you are its mother, and you should take better care of it.

(not angry, and nothing personal....unless you're me)

inward...outward