I was corresponding with a friend who is in a tough situation. I was about to write that to him when I recall that it applies equally to me ... so we will see if tomorrow can be more productive than was yesterday. Stay tuned for updates!
Lucinda Williams shared an article that about her writing. You can check it out here.
"Lucinda Williams learned an important lesson from her poet father, Miller Williams: Never censor yourself."
That just resonated again with my contretemps with R. While I subscribe to moderating oneself, perhaps, why should I censor my experience? In the situation with my father, I did nothing to cause the abuse, inadvertent as it might have been.
And why should I shut the fuck up?
He's welcome to not listen.
He's not welcome to silence me.
He is welcome to question me.
He is not welcome to judge me.
Grrrrr.
I am a bit testy. I have to remember my compassion and that each meat suit is a difficult fit for each wearer. Some like it to be a tight smooth fit and to look like the past. Some of us like it to be a bit loose and stretch it in different ways. But, kids, too tight can ruin your circulation, maybe permanently.
Much of the rest of the day has been taken up with grief and astonishment at the Penn State U crime spree and cover up. The many dimensions of this make it difficult for me to wrap my little brain around it. Or perhaps I am dumbstruck with the magnitude and power of denial. I just cannot understand for a NANO-SECOND HOW SOMEONE COULD SEE A TEN-YEAR OLD GETTING ANALLY RAPED IN THE SHOWER AND NOT STOP IT. I cannot compute that. I do think my impusle would have been TO MURDER THE PERP. Hear me. MURDER.
Okay, I'll give the guy a minute to be shocked. But what? He gave Sandusky HIS PRIVACY??? Jeez. Guess it part of the code to make sure you don't interrupt someone BEFORE THEY COME.
This from a very difficult article on The Daily Beast site:
(Note: we need to stop the daintiness and describe the alleged offenses for what they truly are in the vernacular to somehow try to capture the monstrousness. Not anal intercourse or oral sex, which sounds clinical, but butt-f--king and blowjobs and cock-grabbing and pants-groping and other assorted acts that the 67-year-old Sandusky allegedly inflicted on eight minor victims over a 15-year span, according to the 23-page grand-jury report, and resulted in 40 counts of serial sex abuse of minors.)
I think the answer to the question of inaction is simple. It wasn’t a matter of university officials and football staffers in Happy Valley not wanting to deal with it (which they didn’t), or not following up (which they didn’t), or having better things to do like attending Friday-night football pep rallies. There is no great conspiracy theory at work.
What happened, or more accurately did not happen, goes to the core of evil that major college sports programs in this country have become, equivalent to Mafia families in which the code of omertà rules and coaches and staff always close ranks around their own, even if it means letting someone who was first accused of inappropriate sexual conduct in 1998 continue to roam.
The horror of it all, both in terms of what Sandusky allegedly did and what Penn State officials did not, can be summed up by a single sound.
It is a “rhythmic, slapping” sound, according to page 6 of the grand-jury report. It is heard by a 28-year-old football graduate assistant named Mike McQueary in the locker room of the Lasch Football Building on the Penn State Campus at 9:30 on the Friday night of March 1, 2002.
Need I add that today was singularly unproductive.
It does make me wonder why this levels me even beyond what the church did.
Because you expect it from the church.
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