sweet nothings

This is definitely an older one but only by a few days. It was actually saved in my own personal chronology. I wrote this at home one night after a lengthy visit and conversation with Tara Beach, wife of actor Adam Beach; who had opted to deal with a derriere dog bite. So there I was, or we were, sitting in my living room. Her gorgeous self emitting enough to be an actor, but isn't.

"I'm a housewife," she laughed. "Bet you don't hear that often."

It must have been an even day, I suppose. I was sitting there munching on my Popeye Cigarettes - before they changed the magic formula and made them taste like shit. Perturbed as I chewed, we came up with one all encompassing reason why people love to get all worked up about absolutely anything that they can sink their teeth into. And once they get all worked up about something it's all anyone can talk about. What a disgustingly predictable lot we are.

Tara smiles up at me with this look on her face like the world’s not really a bad place and all the snowballs in hell are neither melting or under any false pretences about what they’re doing there. This makes me worry, of course. I’m never without a rigid facade; trying not to smile in the vicinity of anyone. So right away I’m a little confused. Putting worked up into affect was another matter altogether. So I went out to go get some chips and dip to get ready to get all worked up.
She explained her arrangements on visiting the rez sometime soon with Adam. Being a celebrity, he had been faced with numerous challenges against becoming immersed in artificial realities. As I imagine, they’ll be traveling to participate in a cleansing or “coming home” spiritual ceremony. I myself, someone who had not grown up on a reserve but is First Nations, asked myself when did we (as in my mothers side of the family) leave the reserve in the 70s to be assimilated into Canadian society. I think we’ve witnessed what happens when there’s a breakdown in ones own culture. One of the main reasons, I believe why many chose to remain in such impoverished conditions is due to trauma of being out in the “real world” where they suffered every kind of abuse known to man. Provided: living on a reserve has a safety net community.

I still hear today new horrors.

I wanted to ask; I’m sure that a time or two you’ve toured a community, you’ve actually experienced the history of abuse suffered at the hands of those who promised to protect and respect rights of the First Peoples of this land. Again, one may never understand the reasons why people “choose” to stay when in fact they can choose to leave.

Considering what we’re capable of hearing through the administered media, using the limitations of this added constraint to the level of our conscious understanding, the living conditions on the rez where, for one, water contamination and living conditions is a major problem, residents may close their eyes, probably because they believe it is a lot safer than walking amongst the “civilized” who believe that they pay for your car, house, lifestyle so that affords them the luxury of being called names, perpetuating the myths that we’re third class citizens in THEIR country.

There's a new world order.

Then It dawns on me.

I’ve nothing to say today that hasn’t been said more than once in the past. All one need do is scan the pages of the world’s newspapers to realize we’re on the brink of something, that this is a time to choose to either make your voice heard or bury your head in the sand. What will I tell my children when they are old enough to understand the importance of this global fight, of this crucial time in our shared history? That their parents willfully chose to remain ignorant and silent when they could have involved themselves and lent their voices to a growing global choir demanding justice and accountability for more than just themselves? I cannot, in good conscience, live with being guilty of such irresponsibility. Because this isn’t just about one war, or one reckless government, or the exploitation of one country and its people. This is about the path that we, as citizens of free nations, must work to alter. This is about becoming more than votes within a system, more than a marginal voice in a landscape of apathy and easily disregarded public discontent. This is about ensuring that we are not so easily bemused, not so ignorant that we don’t know the difference between manipulation and information. We must work to reclaim the dignity of those practices that have been stolen and sullied by corporate interests and the greed of those who profit from our continued degradation. This is about taking responsibility for the actions of our governments, not claiming ourselves innocent of their crimes because we lacked the courage to forcibly confront them.

We have reached a crucial point of decision. Do we raise our children in a world in which we continue to be regarded as peons that represent little more than means to political ends, or do we raise them in a world in which people actively embrace the realization that the status quo is something that must always be challenged and questioned? For if not by us, then who? If not now, then when?

Of all the things, I’ll throw down, I remember this piece of crap the most. It was one of those things that you write when you’ve come to the end of your rope and the only thing that’s keeping you going is the fact that you can’t remember how to stop.

"Easy isn’t for the free. Easy is for the willfully confined. So how easy do you want it?"