Friday, December 8, 2017

sense of irate dis-ease

As the flames approached the elite San Luis Rey Downs training facility for thoroughbreds, many of the more than 450 horses were cut loose to prevent them from being trapped in their stables if barns caught fire, said Mac McBride of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.
Herds of horses galloped past flaming palm trees in their chaotic escape of a normally idyllic place. Not all survived.
Horse trainer Scott Hansen said he knows that some of his 30 horses at the facility died.
“I don’t know how many are living and how many are dead,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to figure that out in the morning.”
Sometimes I really do wish my logical serenities could convince my visceral outrages. But I fail and must concede it, as this morning when reading the story of the blast furnace wildfires savaging California and the pedigree horses cut loose against the encroaching flames. Like lightning, my mind pounced and yowled and wanted to blame-blame-blame. Dumb animals taken cavalierly into the care of well-coiffed owners are left to fend for themselves ... responsibility set aside because, hey, what the hell, you can't fight Mother Nature. Somehow, I am sick of it and angry. Furious as a California ember.

Everything seems to be a mess and getting messier and the horses, which, left to their own devices, would naturally have fled, are constrained by a tony set who 'love' their animals but fail to demonstrate a substantive and responsible love.

Fire, like food and air and water, is serious. It burns the well-heeled and the impoverished alike. Isn't it enough to cope with what cannot be escaped and stop manufacturing situations that are awarded a focal concern? Hurricanes strike in the Gulf of Mexico ... the devastation is terrific. Police shootings of unarmed black men waxes. Some blacks plan to skip the opening of an African-American museum in Mississippi after the nation's highest office-holder says he will attend the opening. Donald Trump declares Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Artworks by some of Guantanamo Bay's 41 prisoners, some held without trial for over 10 years by the 'democratic' United States, are under threat of confiscation and/or destruction because of a display at New York's John Jay College. Minnesota Sen Al Franken becomes a recent casualty in the endless line of flabby, aging men in power stepping down in the wake of sexually-inappropriate activity years ago. The sex tsunami has political operatives on edge ... but neither Republicans nor Democrats have any functional plan for addressing it outside figuring that they'd best stick with the donors who will pay for them to be re-elected. Donald Trump promised to "drain the [Washington] swamp." He, as a man who has never conceived a policy or appointee he couldn't back away from, is refilling it.

As hoped by the pre-election Trump constituency, their knight in shining armor is shaking the trees. Their anger and frustration is being addressed (though not with the jobs or Mexico wall or dismantling and replacement of health care as promised during his campaign) ... and in the process has managed to encourage the rest of us to shut away a capacity for decency and caring and more-or-less truthfulness ... and concern with the country as a whole. I am sick of feeling on edge and held in thrall, via a largely compliant press, to an idiot and coward and bully. I'm sick of it and simultaneously sick of my own sissy righteousness that can do little better than point and whine and sneer.

When was the last time some action addressed the things that cannot be escaped and stopped creating stuff that then needs to be escaped? I am sorry that people are hurt ... in California, in Puerto Rico, in wherever. I am sorry that horses had to die. But within it all, I am sick of feeling sorry and on edge.

And somehow, the horses of California rose up in my throat this morning. Perhaps those horses could be put to good use, Donald ...

What a frustrated little twerp I am.

3 comments:

  1. Not sure where it came from, but I heard it from dad...

    When in trouble or in doubt,
    Run in circles, scream and shout,

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  2. I think that, like virtual everything else, one has to learn to recognize certain disconnects, then decide how to deal them.

    With respect to the associated emotion --usually on the anger, fear, sorrow and / or self-pity spectrums I try to calm myself enough at least to decide on a course of action.

    While relatively easy to articulate, in real time this take time, sometime just hours but sometimes it can take many days, even weeks, months, years, and, sometimes, the better part of a lifetime.

    Recognizing that one is powerless, is at first be upsetting, but, one needs to do one's best to move past the wallowing in the feelings of helplessness and investigate if it's possible to change that and, if so, how to go about doing that, and if not, how to cope with that.

    While some think it's trite and others think it expresses as a dependence on divine intervention, I sincerely believe in the essence of the assertion:

    The Serenity Prayer
    - Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971)

    God, grant me the serenity to accept the things
    I cannot change,
    Courage to change the things I can,
    And wisdom to know the difference.


    Sometimes. just getting started, finding the serenity in which one can function, can be problematic. This is where the current notion of stress reduction begins. What reduces stress can be personal. It depends to some extent on a acceptance that doing a certain activities does reduce stress. Some forms of stress reduction include
    Breathing Exercises / Deep and Slow Breathing /
    Pranayama
    Progressive Muscle / Body Scan Meditation /
    Deep Relaxation.
    Focus On / Being Aware Of the Breath
    Rhythmic Movement And Mindful Exercises (Yoga,
    Tai Chi, Running, Weight Training, Calisthenics)
    Visualization Exercises

    Once one has regained one's composure, one can better accept and problem solve.

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  3. At the airport in Singapore enjoying the free wifi, usb charging and electricity socket, thought I would pop by again since there is nothing of absolute urgency as Christmas nears. Singapore supports a two state solution in Gaza, this means that we are keen on recognising both Israel and Palestine, pretty much what Trump is saying too. The terror threat in Singapore is still around, yet since I am Buddhist every now and then, the Surangama Sutra does not require me to go around smacking anybody in the face without properly defining a problem. I am quite neutral about it all, this thing called religion, and I do not necessarily need Abrahamic religion in at least one way. In a Bodhi sense, may one and all be well, happy, safe and peaceful.

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