Ravings of a BiPolar Gothic Witch
     Occasional commentary, observations and tidbits as well as other random thoughts

Tonight I had a coffee thing (I don’t think I’d call it a date, because I don’t think the guy I went with thought of it that way even if I hoped he did). He and I have some things in common, and he’s funny and I was hoping we could get together and maybe have some fun.

It was a complete and utter flop. I’m sure he thinks I’m a flake. And he doesn’t talk much, so in my nervousness I rattled on and on. But it’s hard to carry a one sided conversation. I don’t know maybe he thought I was a flake already and was just going for coffee to confirm it. I know he’s really nice, but we didn’t really see eye-to-eye on anything. I have a tattoo, he doesn’t even wear jewelry. I am spiritual, he is an atheist. I really hate stupid people, which seemed to offend him, since he offered up that everyone is stupid somehow. We did agree on the fact that we both feel we don’t teach well. But he does and I don’t (at least not yet). He thinks dancing is stupid, it is a pretty big part of my life. He seemed to be fatalistic about how the world is and runs, and I want to change it. He believes in concrete evidence, I see infinite possibilites. The only thing that might have been worse is if we’d resorted to talking about the weather. Which we did, at least a bit.

He did share a little about himself. He really does have a soft spot for animals, and cares about the planet. But most of it was me asking questions and him giving a few word answers. Nothing really engaged a conversation. And there was a couple of those sort of uncomfortable pauses. Uggg. This whole dating thing is awful. And at the end he was looking around for a clock and when I told him the time, it was like he was thinking I’ve stayed for a cup of tea, it’s been long enough to be polite, I’m outta here… And he practically ran out. So much for that.

Maybe I’m totally misinterpretting. But I’m betting he doesn’t reciprocate and ask me out to coffee…

One neat thing that came out of the experience is a phrase that I’d never heard before but does fit me quite well. He called me a social darwinist. Apparently it is a term from the mid 20th century and I really like it. To be honest, I was relieved to see that in his own way, Einstein too had something to say about the continuing stupidity of humans:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe. More of his quotes

I know for me it fits. I do think that there is something wrong with human beings, and that by separating ourselves so dramatically from nature that we no longer move with the earth’s rhythms. Therefore, for example we don’t live by the rules of nature that the best adapted survive.

I don’t know. Maybe white rednecks living in trailers are perfectly adapted to their environment. And I say that having lived in a trailer. But it’s the environment there that I guess I object to, and somehow feel that the people who adapt to it are defective. Yeah that is harsh… so is the world.

I am an equal opportunity kind of gal, however. I’m not too hot on the environment of the “have it alls” either. I don’t think they are exactly adapted well to the world either. They live in their own world, separate from the rest of us lifeforms. It’s just hard to find decent human beings, who have enough intelligence and caring to be of benefit to others. We don’t cull the herd. Instead we ruin the earth, ruin each other and generally just live out of touch with everything.

Granted, Gaia is working her ways toward culling us with more and more determination. She’s made bacteria more dangerous, invented diseases (even if they were “thought up” by really evil scientists) that cause horrible death and are extremely contagious, made the earth have more and more natural disasters, and helped us to create more and more violence. She will eventually win. She always does. Even if she gets help from outside her realm, like an asteroid. Eventually she will either tame the beast of humanity where we can live in harmony with the rest of her, or rid herself entirely of the whole human plague. As I’ve stated before, I’m rooting for her. I’d rather see a world where we live more in harmony, but if humankind can’t learn to control it’s greed, gluttony, hatred and utter chaos, then perhaps she should start over from scratch.

If all that makes me a social darwinist, then so be it. I take it as a compliment, although I don’t think he meant it that way.

Christmas Lights. Lights in the trees, on bushes, edging houses. The beauty of this has always captivated me. When I was growing up I don’t remember it being a big thing, at least not in small town Iowa. Maybe a few lights around a window, or maybe a small display in front, but nothing like people do today.

I love the lights. Even when I have hated the holiday season. Even when I’ve felt like the grinch, without the ending. Even when I felt the loss of my birth family so keenly that I cannot move. Seeing the lights always made me feel some small joy. Whether in New Orleans or Denver, snow covered or bare, colored or the stark beauty of clear or white. My particular favorite is seeing white lights on a large tree, covered in snow. There is something magical about that. My son asked me the other night why the snow doesn’t melt. I don’t know, but I am glad it doesn’t.

The only thing I really hate about lights, is the same thing I hate about the rest of the season. The excess. People constantly having to do more, buy more, eat more, spend more. It’s a never ending season of to dos. But I have usually avoided the whole debt thing. I read somewhere that the average family goes into debt $5k for the holidays. That to me, is just incomprehensible. We have never done that. We felt priviledged spending $200 a kid one year. We’re just not into spoiling them in that way. US kids have so much compared to other kids around the world. I don’t want to teach them that the world is about things. As a nation we’re so focused on being consumers already I don’t want to contribute to that.

But the thing I think that always bugs me the most, cuz I control the rest by staying out of stores as much as possible and keeping my head down and not looking around. The thing that bothers me the most is the utter evidence of this by people who put up the huge and overwhelming lights displays. You know the ones. The Tim Taylor displays. The electricity generated for a month probably costs as much as it would cost to sponsor at least one, if not many families to have a Christmas. It makes me furious that they waste so much money, and heedlessly waste energy. Yes the whole lights thing does to some extent, but the Tim Taylors of the country are an example of going way too far. And there are children for whom there is no Santa because of it.

UGGG.

I have to start out by saying I really love holiday lights. They’re one of those things that regardless of how I’m personally feeling about the whole mad commericialized holiday BS I still love seeing beautiful lights in the trees, on the houses, and at events, like the lights at the zoo here in Denver, or Festival of Lights, sadly not happening this year, in New Orleans City Park.

I actually read a few days ago that they are using a section of the park there for a dump. It made me cry. I always felt that City Park must have put Central Park to shame. Not that I’d ever been to the Big Apple, but City Park in New Orleans was big, beautiful, and in some places kind of wild and unknown. Trees from the time of the civil war existed there. There was a tree known as the “Dueling Oaks” because that was where young men came to duel and die. There was a part of the park, back behind a sports field that was rarely even visited, and all the grass had grown up around it, and blackberry brambles had totally taken a circle that surrounded a beautiful grove of trees. They had clearly been planted together and with purpose. They were a circle, and in that circle you could actually feel the magic and energy of the place. The blackberries that grew there were the biggest I’d ever seen, and I have found memories of that place. It was like a hidden spot in the middle of the city that was special.

There were what seemed to be ruins in other places. Stone buildings of some nature, with columns that had been open to the sky, that had partially fallen down, not nearly as old of course, as ruins anywhere else, but still beautiful. And it was a big park. I forget exactly how big, but it was the 2nd biggest in the country (if not the biggest) beaten only by Central Park. It had a miniture amusement park with a carousel that had horses that had been restored from some time long ago with hand painted eyes and tails. It had an entire themed nursery story land with a ship from Peter Pan, and whale that you could walk into. It had a huge botanical garden full of all kinds of flowers and plants that thrived in the south.

And all of it gone. All of it. Dead and dying. Hundreds of years old trees, beautiful live oaks, standing like skeletons over the brown dirt. And worst of all, this beautiful place that I loved, being used for a dump of all the refuse and garbage from all the destroyed homes and buildings. More than anything I’ve read, that makes me so sad.