Unimaginable

I've just watched a video by and about a woman who uses puppets to help herself and others recover from trauma.  The trauma she is recovering from is having been sex trafficked by her parents when she was a child.

Sex trafficked by her parents when she was a child.

I have a pretty good imagination, but I swear, I'm having a terrible time trying to imagine the conversation those parents might have had.  "Edith, it's time little Cindy Sue helped out around here.  I know she's only seven, but she needs to earn her keep."  "You know, Joe, I was thinking the same thing, and I have an idea.  Some people might think it's wrong, but just hear me out...."

I know the above makes bad comedy out of something unimaginably horrible, but honestly, I just can't wrap my mind around what her parents could possibly have been thinking, how they could have justified themselves, what sort of twisted psyches they must have had (or have still) to do something like that to a child.  To anyone, of course.  But to a child?  Their own child?  Did they think of her as property rather than as a person?  Did they figure their need for money outweighed the damage they might do to her?  Had they been so disgustingly abused by their own parents that they truly didn't know any better?

I realize that every human carries within us the possibility of every kind of thought and deed and emotion.  I probably, under very different circumstances than anything I've experienced before, could become primitive or cruel, vicious, indifferent to others, capable of the most heinous actions.  I don't deny it.  But I can't find any place in myself, even in fantasy, that could knowingly, purposefully abuse a child.  I just don't understand.  What were they thinking?

Why stars are stars

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I love working out.  Sometimes I go to the nearby rec center with Sweet Hubby or for a hike or vigorous walk, but mostly I work out at home to one of the 40+ DVDs I have: yoga, Pilates, step aerobics, low impact aerobics, weights workouts, etc.

One of the DVDs is produced by Flirty Girl.  The workout is for hips, thighs, and booty (butt), and is led by a very fit young woman who looks as though she could be a professional pole dancer.  The workout is quite strenuous.  Ms. Main Flirty Girl is helped by two other young women, one of whom goes through the moves easily.  It's the other woman who catches my attention.  She's the one who does modified (as in easier) versions of the exercises, and even so, has a really hard time getting through the workout, sometimes squeaking adorably about how hard it is.

I love this woman, and I think FG made a smart move by including her, because most of us at-home exercisers probably also have a hard time getting through the workout.  It's so encouraging to see someone struggling as I struggle, especially when that someone is much younger and more in shape than I am.

The woman who leads the workout, though, does the exercises with ease, even as she talks though the moves.  And I have realized that that's how people become stars.  They do what the rest of us struggle with and make it look easy.  Staying in tune while singing is not easy,  and neither is delivering a song with verve and style.  Acting with deep emotion while standing on a set or in front of a green screen, surrounded by dozens of crew members, is not easy.  Shooting a bull's eye, landing a triple axel on ice, pounding someone in the face while he pounds you and outlasting his pounding - these things are not easy; for most of us, they are not even possible.  There is a reason people become stars in their fields.  They're the ones who have done the hard work and kept their focus laser sharp.

There's a reason I'm not a star.  I have never had that kind of focus on anything.  I'm not like a laser, but rather more like the sun.  I want to do everything.  I want to nourish all my relationships.  I want to play as much as I want to work.  I want to write and act and travel and take care of my house and go to theaters and take classes that interest me.  I had fantasies about stardom once, but I get it now.  I really didn't have the stuff for stardom.  And I'm finally okay with that.

Those who came before

It's not as though it's my fault I was born in the 20th century.  There wasn't anything I could do about it.  If I'd been born earlier, I would have been one of the ones who paved roads, laid tracks, carved out stones for cathedrals, explored and discovered.  But I wasn't and I didn't.

And so I - and we - owe a great debt of thanks to those who came before us.  The ones who turned footpaths into trails, trails into roads, and then paved the roads I now drive on.  Who rode beasts or walked.  Who had to fight for their survival, fight nature, fight each other, fight their way from ignorance to knowledge.  Who discovered a hundred different ways to save me from the thousands of diseases that want to kill me.  Who brought babies into this often violent world.

Most of all, I am grateful to those who had the courage to look beyond the mythos of their time in order to understand the world as it truly is and not as their fear told them it is.

How is this possible?

It's the day after the announcement of President Trump's impeachment, and like a good and fervent Democrat, I should be rejoicing, but instead I've spend most of the day crying.  How is it possible that it’s not illegal for at least two of the Senators who will be jurors in President Trump’s impeachment trial to openly declare that they will be taking their orders from the defendant himself?  I’m speaking of Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, although there are probably other Senators who have made up their minds just as firmly to clear the President of all charges.  In any other trial, a juror so blatantly, openly, breathtakingly biased would be dismissed.  Is there not some way to ensure that the impeachment trial will be conducted with as great a degree of impartiality and fairness as our Constitution demands?  How is it possible that this country’s standards of legal justice can be so publicly corrupted by the very people who have been elected to serve and enact those standards?  My heart is breaking.  What has happened to my beautiful country?  I know that history is going to deal very harshly with those who have enabled this President, but that is very little consolation right now.

Ho ho hum

At what point do you suppose retailers decided that the earlier they started hawking their holiday wares, playing carols, putting out the decorations, etc., the merrier and more eager to spend money the rest of us will feel?  They live in this world too, don't they?  Don't they find themselves thinking "Aw crap, it's not even Hallowe'en and here we go with the "Oh Holy Night."?  How can they not see that, rather than seeming full of Christmas spirit, they actually come across as rapacious, greedy and cold.  It doesn't make any holiday more special or festive by putting out its accoutrements 2 months early.  It simply puts us all in a state of holiday fatigue.
One way I celebrate the holidays is by not giving presents.  I haven't for decades.  And lest you think I'm awfully rapacious myself, I also implore my friends and family not to give me anything, and I mean it.  I most absolutely and definitely do not need more stuff in my life.  If you want to give me something, write an actual letter, or come for a visit, or take me to the theater or out for a walk to look at decorated houses.  Invite me to go caroling with you and your neighbors, or invite me to a night of games and hot spiced cider.  These are the things that make the end of the year holidays special, that give the glowy feeling I look forward to.  Walking into a coffee shop in early November and seeing red and green, holly and gold glitter, listening to yet another version of Frosty the Snowman, doesn't make me glow at all.  It makes me cranky and sad.
I know I'm shouting into the wind.  The world is the way it is.  In the larger scheme of things, this is a very minor problem.  But of course, like most minor problems, it bespeaks the very major problem of consumerism, which threatens a heck of a lot more than my mood.

Naming and choices

Who comes up with names for, say, perfumes or soaps or cars?  There's a liquid soap in my bathroom called Endless Weekend. How did someone come up with that?  Did she take a sniff of the new, unnamed soap, and then muse for a while on how it made her feel?  "Hmmm, this fragrance makes me think of, of... Freedom.  No, free time.  Lots of free time."
Did a committee kick around ideas?  "Patriot's Dream."  "That's stupid, Bob.  This is soap, not a country song."  "Okay, how about Crystal Palace?"  "Come on, Bob, be reasonable.  Do we want people thinking about crystals and palaces when they wash their hands?"  "Well then, how about Cookies and Ice Cream?"  "Think, Bob, think.  This smells nothing like cookies and ice cream."  "Is this meeting never going to end?  I've got soccer tonight."  "Endless Meeting.  Ha ha ha ha, that's a clunker."  "Hey, yeah, how about Endless Summer?"  "That's a movie."  "Okay, Endless -  Endless - what do we hate to see end?"  "Sex."  "Parties."  "Binges."  "Weekends."  "Bingo!"
Were polls and surveys and studies done to statistically reveal what soap-buying demographic groups respond to?  "Fresh!"  "Crispy!"  "Sweet!"  "Golden!"  "Radical!"
Somebody gets paid a lot of money to name that paint chip Arabian Noon instead of Sort of Light Sand.  How is all this decided?
Do I have any say at all when I choose a product, or am I simply one of Pavlov's consumers, trained to drool at certain images or cues?  "Want these abs" to men and women.  "Fuller hair is more beautiful" ditto.  "Having friends and going to the beach will make you happy."  "Be thin and look ready for sex" to women.  "Be strong and slightly bad" to men.
What would it be like if I could somehow find a way to respond to my own purest desires?  I wonder what I would choose.