The New Normal

right now i’m listening to an angry-liberal anthem called “rise,” by an artist called “bitch.” she may be a bitch but by god she has a point.

in another song ani defranco recalls being given an IQ test as a child. during the test they showed her a board with 3 pictures of one object and one picture of another. then she was asked “which of these things is different and does not belong?”

and so in the song she says that’s the day she learned that different = bad.

….and i never thought about it that way but yeah, when you say “one of these things is not like the others, one of these things DOES NOT BELONG”, that’s pretty much what you’re saying, now, ain’t it?

anyway.

i’m so tired, jonah doesn’t even sleep right anymore, he takes his 1pm nap at 2:45pm and then he doesn’t get up again till 5 or 5:30pm and then of course he won’t go to bed and then he’s up like every hour during the night…

and i had so much work (thank god for the moment it is finished) this weekend, and i sooooo didn’t want to do it…

and maybe andy has the flu or something but he’s been just struggling to get around all weekend and today he luckily had already said he was taking the day off so he stayed home and rested…

today he was supposed to be coming with me to look at two more preschools — as it turned out i went to one alone and he watched jonah at home… then i came back and got jonah and brought him along to the second school.

i don’t want to blah blah blah about the schools except i wish i hadn’t brought jonah along to the second school (at the center for the disabled) because he cried and clung to me and whimpered and got all boogery.

god that kid is fucking heavy.

why must so many severely disabled individuals be physically grotesque as well?

all through the hallways are disabled folk. a few were profoundly retarded people, twisted, knotted up disabled people and i’m thinking i’m in a nightmare, or a farrelly brothers movie, or some reality tv show conceived by an asshole, and maybe it’s part insane asylum too because this can’t be me standing here among the ghoulish vacant drooling child-adults, i can’t help but feel horror, i hate myself for wondering why they all have that awful open-mouthed gape and i hate myself for feeling uncomfortable and i am thinking every human here has a mother and i am wondering where she is, is she in the grocery store or at the mall and i wish i could identify her because i would fall at her feet and wash them with my tears, tell her i’m so sorry, so sorry…i am sorry to be so emotionally unequipped, my compassion crippled by too harsh a reality…

i am tired, i keep saying i don’t know if i can do it, raise this child, be this individual inside this body. i am pulled in a thousand directions by so many people, and is there enough of me to say the right things to be the wise woman the gentle one the patient pal the mother the writer the listener the friend?

chugga chugga chugga
i think i can
i think i can
i think i can

and i pray to be the person each person needs me to be, i pray to present loving-kindness at all times, to take every opportunity to understand, to forgive, and give…

“i hope that we all…..continue to live…”
~ paul simon, live in concert (1980)

“don’t dare me to rise, baby, cuz i’ll fuckin rise!”
~ bitch