Listening
Machines of Loving Grace, Machines of Loving Grace

done with my sixth day at work and I've been exhuasted since Wednesday.

got a couple of hours before my mage game is scheduled to get underway. i don't have high hopes of many people showing up. folks are either out of town jsut lame. but on the whole i wish i weren't running it cause, damn, I'm tired.

I have what I think is a few cool ideas for people to start flexing different sets of muscles and really get into their paradigms and stuff...but heaven only knows when I'll be able to get a cohesive enough game to move in that direction. *sighs*

I hope no one shows up. I told Molasses that if it's just him by nine we'll call it quits and go dancing. I don't know if I'll have energy, but I haven't gone to a club in ages so I don't care.

Tomorrow we'll head down in the afternoon to hang with his great aunt and uncle. I like them, especially his Uncle Ray who reminds me a *lot* of my dad. Maybe we'll get a chance to go to the Laguna Art show. I'm not sure if I've ever been, if I have it would have been when I was toddler.

I've been feeling kind of guilty lately, in that sort of Catholic kind of guilt, only not for the sort of Catholic reasons. I try to keep up with the news and stay informed and try really hard not to make opinions without large quantities of information to back it up. But as most Americans have realized in the last ten months, having an opinion doesn't mean shit without any influence. and I feel bad that I've been spewing off so much hot air without really trying to get out anywhere and essentially practise what I preach.

Back when I was gearing up to do the Revlon Run/Walk for Women I was feeling super stoked just cause I was I was getting out and phyisically doing something about an issue that I think is really important rather than just talking and getting irritated that other people weren't acting.

I want more of that. Maybe if I could get more education I could protest/agitate/lobby for other causes. What's worse than a loud-mouthed troublesome liberal? A silent, cynical do-nothing liberal (aka most democrats...oops did I just write that?).

I am really just burning to get back into theatre. AT this point I'm waiting on other people and so I guess I should feel ok since I've done as much as I can at this point, short of looking for actors (I guess I should call around and find out which is the best way of getting the word out).

It also dawned on me a little while ago that I don't really have any plans to keep myself from helping to perpetuate a lot of society's ills simply by playing along. I occasionally talk money with Squire or Molasses and we're always making plans about investing money here and there and try to find some magical system that'll make it so we don't lose even more money. Both Molasses and Squire got burned in the stock market over the last two years (ask Molasses, everytime he talks about it the money he's lost goes up by several orders of magnitude...).

But it was in the middle of one these conversations that I realized that I've effectively bought into the worst parts of the American Dream - the one where we can each of us grow up to be filthy rich, if we're just smart about our money. As if anyone who actually was money-smart would continue to live in Southern Californa.

I want to be able to use my resources to help other people, but I currently can barely use them to help myself right now and I can't help but feel that's because I've screwed things up somehow. But I'm always paranoid about money, having been more used to not having any rather than having just a little bit less than what I need. I don't really believe I should be concerned with retirement because I hope that I'll be well entrenched in theatre by the time it starts to matter and I'm pretty sure I'll never want to leave. But I do believe in getting old and I am perfectly aware that being old is expensive.

but the stuff I really want to do really, really does not generate an income. I've always admired troupes of travelling entertainers and love hearing about the groups like Teatro Campesino who roved about agitating for this or that cause while dispensing support and hope to those that needed it most. Wouldn't I just love to put together a guerilla theatre some summer and for a week in summer run around downtown during the lunch hours performing skits around Bunker Hill and Pershing Square, inviting people to really question what it is that they're doing with their lives, and, more importantly, what they're allowing their companies and their governement are doing to their lives. Ah...but that's just a dream. Like many of the wild ideas in my head.

But how can I make being an idealist come together with reality? I can't realistically just make the money machine go away, but using/collecting/investing my money is inherently tacit approval for the system. I've heard of hedge funds that consumer groups put together that look to invest only in companies that are socially responsible, kind to the environment and good to their employees. That sounds good. Of course, you never know if you're being lied to...just ask the (former?) CEO of WorldCom.

And what should I buy? It's an issue that lots of consumers deal with, trying to find the product that meet their needs and desires and are cost-effective while not ruining too much of the world. Deitrich (my old car) was a real gas-guzzler, plus she swallowed oil like their was no tomorrow and was constantly falling apart. I'm embarassed just how much driving through hither and yon during my temping days contributed to the smog in LA, but hey, she was free. I didn't even pay the insurance. Low to non-existent cost, with a middle-ground of benefit, on the whole a fairly sweet deal. but...still...Bad.

*sigh* it's a tough walk, and in the context of the scale of civilization quite possibly not worth the effort. But I've spent so much time being disgusted with the Dick Cheneys and Donald Trumps of the world that just retreating to my dark jaded corner feels like defeat and I *know* in the larger scale, that's what they're counting on. That a little Nobody like me would never make the effort to challenge their lives of convenience. I can't afford to prove them right.

From "X-Insurrection" by MLG:

Well God help us when South Africa burns
we're vicious creatures and we're all taking turns
Well God help us when the insurrection rages
we've got a a drug we're burning pages of love....

Well God help us when America burns
we're vicious creatures and we're all taking turns
Well God help us when the insurrection rages
we've got a a drug we're burning pages of love....