XXIII
The unknown seems to inspire and provoke curiosity that creates waves of change. We strive to explore and understand what is beyond our exposure. We interact with the world each individually and the connection we all make transforms meaning.
For me, the most profound discoveries are the moments where I accept what is within in me (all along)—and that feels new, fresh, like it is the first experience with a new soul tool. I like to understand myself, and it is all so much simpler than I make everything out to be. I am working on that. One thing that I encourage myself to let go of is possessiveness. Ownership is such a fallacy. Depending on how your worldview turns, attachments and possessions (of material or people) can be an additive in life that is just unnecessary. I realize our emotions and well-being are tied to healthy attachments, but I find myself very unhappy when invisible boundaries and ball & chain are apparently a part of me. My good friends say that I cannot write in meter, or form, or structure—and their description is that perhaps my spirit is too free—I am not sure either way. But I do know myself, at least today I do, or I feel like I can identify with the face starring back at me. I say to myself, “Okay, I can do this”, and I step into the world. Perhaps I am not meant to conform or confine myself to others needs and wishes—necessarily—but I do know that I am ridding the ripples as I skip like rocks across water tops. I like to break limits, create movement in the shift, and put a new twist on expectations. I used to be rebellious—now I attempt to be subtle—but somewhere in the middle is my goal.
When I look up the word discover in a modern dictionary, the term is described in a sentence like, “Columbus discovered the new world in 1492”. Get the fuck out of here. Propaganda has been moderately successful due to our history lessons and ditties to learn how we relate and interact with the modern world. I remember coloring Columbus Day pages 25 years ago, and it kind of makes me sick when my son comes home with the same presentation of work from preschool this week. I guess we are still facilitating lies to the youth because we can? I did get kicked out of history entirely—which lead up to them ultimately kicking me out of high school—for standing up and informing the class that the US history that they were describing were lies. I do not claim to be cognizant of the ‘truth’, but I know I didn’t trust the message. The people who write the books always win—right? Anyways, today I feel secure in my own self-discovery and I embrace the notion that awareness is a key in life.
I focus on the here-and-now, and the more discoveries I encounter the more I can over-stand life.
-Sunny
Discovery Channel
Sometimes it took writing it to discover those feelings. I tend to do that when I'm avoiding things within myself. I let go of the wheel and let my will steer itself. That lack of control can be scary but I found that once I discover what I need it seems its in line with what the world wants to give me.
I channel this energy every now and then. I get consumed with this dandelion head lifestyle and drift listless with the wind. It's different than just being on my phone or playing video games all day. No distractions to keep the breeze from carrying me. I start to lose all sense of ego and realize 75% of life is a lie. We create paradigms and call them expectations of others once we step out of why they would consider normal. Change has never been easy to swallow. I should know, I almost died as a toddler trying to eat a pair of pennies. But take anyone's two cents with pinch of salt. We will all come to know what we need to do if you seek the path that releases you of the chains of excuses and the mental shackles we all wear when we feel like we're in the custody of someone else's happiness.
If we can just be us, you will discover it all works out. There is a universal answer when it comes to your happiness. We just have to stop fighting it and let ourselves reach for it.
-DCR
October 18th, 2013
Columbus Bollocks
So we have what I consider to be one of the more pointless, useless, and most offensive holidays Columbus Day.
Columbus was a liar, a rapist, and a self-serving opportunist.
When he landed in Hispaniola searching for gold the first time he noticed that the natives were docile and mostly peaceful.
On the second visit to Hispaniola he was greeted by thousands of native Indians: “The Taino”. He enslaved them and developed what essentially was a child sex slave trade.
Columbus actually wrote to a friend of his in 1500 stating that the purchase of 9 and 10 year old girls for sexual slavery was in high demand.
Prior to his visits scholars put the indigenous population from 1.5 million- 3 million people. By 1555 every single one was dead.
Now, of course, there are many instances of events similar to the one mentioned earlier throughout history by many countries and individuals.
But to foolishly think that people like Columbus, who were sent on missions for gold, to not make some kind of profiteering for their King/Queen/country/themselves is blatantly naïve.
The culture that we live in, and the subsequent thinking that goes with it, believes that if somebody has something we need or want, and they don’t give it to us, then if we have the means to get it by force or to kill to get, then it’s perfectly reasonable to do so.
Conservative Darwinian economics and the mind-set that comes with such evil practices continues to this day and is only getting stronger.
To justify enslavement, child sex slavery, and other human rights atrocities by saying that it’s a God given right because we can is, again, pure evil.
-TDB.
Growing Dreams
At age five,
My pudgy innocence
Decided it wanted to be
A supermodel.
I had my fair share
Of colored boas,
Restricting me from
Seeing beauty behind makeup.
At age seven,
My frizzy haired
First grade mindset
Decided it was equivalent
To Sherlock Holmes
And detective work
Was my cuppa tea.
But never could I figure
Out who really let
The dogs out…
At age nine,
I wanted to be
A soccer superstar
Because Mia Hamm
Was a woman of action.
I kicked around enough
Balls in my day.
At age eleven,
I was writing my first novel,
Entitled The Venom of Death,
In which EVERYONE died.
I was definitely in the running
For becoming the next
JK Rowling (in her grave).
At age thirteen,
I decided that acting
Was a fine goal,
And that a lead role
Was spelled out like
“Waitress.”
At age fifteen,
I decided on my life’s work, sort of.
I wanted to write poetry,
Change the world,
Be a lawyer.
I wasn’t entirely sure how,
But Emily Dickinson
Was pretty damn cool.
At age seventeen,
I discovered world politics,
Decided I wanted to change
The world completely
With my words,
Wanted to stop
Ignorance and racism.
I was still writing poetry.
Now, I am nineteen,
An English and Political Philosophy
Major/minor, changes
Happening every day.
I am a freshman in college.
People here are different,
Beautiful, and I admire them.
They are timeless in their goals
To change standards acceptable
For our world.
I wonder what age twenty-one
Will bring if I keep growing
My dreams like saplings
Turning into trees?
-Seraphine
Castilian Invasion of the Bahamas Day
Indicative of so much of what is wrong with this country, the annual celebration of Columbus day, is and should be , blatantly offensive to anyone who values human life, freedom, and who opposes genocide, slavery, and the wide spread abuses of essential human rights. Force feeding children a fairy tale about a man desperate to prove that the earth was round ( a well known fact at that point in time), the true story is far more violent, and illustrative of the depravity that exists within the human behavior.
One of the most powerful sources on the actions of the spanish during their conquest of the Caribbean, comes from Bartolome De La Casas’s work A brief Account on the Destruction of the Indies, and features such powerful passages as “It was upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold, or like tigers and savage lions who have not eaten meat for days.” (De La Casas) Continuing, “Spaniards still do nothing save tear the natives to shreds, murder them and inflict upon them untold misery, suffering and distress, tormenting, harrying and persecuting them mercilessly.”(De La Casas)
Honoring not the memory of the millions of native people lost to the spanish conquest, but rather the barbaric acts of genocide, according to De La Casas,“The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.” As such, the columbus day holiday, can be seen as a commemoration of greed, misery, and violence, and a complete disregard for the fact that “the indigenous peoples never did the Europeans any harm whatever; on the contrary, they believed them to have descended from the heavens, at least until they or their fellow-citizens had tasted, at the hands of these oppressors, a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all other manner of trials and tribulations.” ( De La Casas)
Allowed to remain for far too long, it is time that we say collectively that celebrating mass murder should not be part of national identity, and will not be allowed to continue. Requiring at the bare minimum, a simple renaming of the holiday to something more empowering and far less offensive, devoting this entire week every year to increasing awareness of slavery, imperialism, and sanctioned violence would a notable step in the right direction.
-Joshua Genius
