Some Days...

Some days I think I'm going crazy. Some days I know that I'm crazy. But most days I'm fairly convinced that I'm a wholly sane goddess and it's the rest of this little overpopulated tennis ball that is out of its fucking mind. Though even admitting all this makes it look like it might be me who is the crazy one, after all.

One of the hardest things to do is to lead a good life, and a good life to me doesn't mean only enjoying life, but also trying to do something with it, trying to not at least hurt others more than one helps them, trying to leave the planet no worse off than it was when one began. All this and trying to eat as much chocolate and have as many orgasms as possible. This is my life plan, and the reason for it is that this is what feels right to me to do. No promises of paradise. No fear of hell. Just some internal judge or divine making me feel like a slimy piece of shit if I don't follow certain elementary ethical codes.

When I die I will go back to this earth, back to her arms. I will become something else. Perhaps the wings of a butterfly or the snout of a worm or a leaf in a maple tree. Or all of these. But whatever I become, I will still be here, still be in the wind and the soil and the water and the heat of the sun. And whatever I let happen to this planet today will affect my future incarnations. I might be born as the seventh leg of a very sick frog, for example. Or who knows, I might come back as the next queen of the universe. Either way, what I do today matters.

I have always thought that some universal justice would be beautifully served if people came back as whatever they have most hurt during their lives. Don't you just love it? All those who tortured little kittens will be reborn as kittens. Ayatollah Khomeini has just been born (the seventh time) as an unwanted little girl in some fundamentalist part of the world. And so on. - The only problem with this theory is that I might be reborn as a wingnut man as I do try to stop their dreams from becoming reality and in some heavenly book of punishments that might be judged as hurting them. Probably better not to know what happens to us after our deaths, if anything much.

What is the point of this post? Just that I have read too much that is totally absurd today. Some limit has been reached and the absurd has seeped into the rest of my life from the computer screen. I have learned that Theresa Schiavo was blind and extremely handicapped, that the whole hullabaloo about her chances of recovery was utterly, utterly idiotic. I have learned that almost any kind of governmental scandal can be swept under the rug in this country. I have learned that George Bush is like a train without an engineer, careening out of control, towards some destination that only he can see, and our reactions are pretty much to look away. Mind your own business, the rule seems to be.

But what is your own business? If you want to lead a good life, how oblivious can you afford to be? And if you are not oblivious, what is enough? What is enough for all of us who care? And how can we make a difference?