magically thought-provoking internets #1

I recently submitted one of my tattoos to fuckyeahtattoos on tumblr and today it was posted. No big deal, just sharing my skin with the world. Gulp.
Out of the hundreds of likes and reblogs there's this:

(CENSORED) said: good job covering your hand like a ~*~*~badass~*~*~ when from what i can see you don’t have any visible coverage close to your hand. you look like a dumbass, have fun regretting that later on in life trying to catch up on your~*sleevez*~ ugh 

Luckily I don't take this kind of trolling serious but it did cause a few threads of thought including but not limited to- why would I scramble to cover my skin? I've only made it half way through this life and part of that was spent shitting in my pants- how could I imagine that I know with absolute certainty what I want on my skin for the rest of my life without living it all? 
I plan on getting tattooed regularly throughout my life, not all at once. To do otherwise is akin to assuming I know everything, have felt everything. That I'll never change my views, likes or dislikes. My body would be locked in a sort of color book stasis. Arrested tattoo development.
How closed minded. How small.
 Thanks, internet, for reminding me why I'm not in any hurry to sleeve myself up. You're the best.

Peace

Uhm, sorry to bother...maybe this is a bad time but...

Yes. Absolutely. Rape is horrible and vile. Yes, absolutely, victims of near all-consuming hate such as that have every right to abort a child produced from it. I'll back you up completely on that one- I'll wave signs, walk parades, wear buttons, reblog repost retweet- anything to fight for a woman's right to govern her own body in any way she sees fit.

 Anything... but think outside your pain and outrage for just a few minutes.

  Before you start carelessly throwing around words like "monster spawn" or "rape baby" I want you to consider another angle. Because these children are worth your consideration.
  I'm not saying that, if raped, you should keep the child. That's a decision that should always be up to the woman faced with it, no one else. But I am saying that sometimes, if you can look past the horrific conception, you might see your daughter or son, worthy of your love. Not just a product of "damaged DNA".
  If we truly are to be in control of our own bodies then we need to acknowledge that the child, any child, growing inside belongs to us- or would you allow the man who raped you take that as well?
  I didn't used to feel this way. After I found out about my conception I went through a long period of self loathing. For years (long, gothy years full of black eyeliner and -possibly- too much Morrissey) I wished my mother had decided to have an abortion. Sometimes I wondered if I might turn out like him; twisted, broken, hurtful. I knew I looked like him because I didn't look like my mother. I hated the very idea.
  Mother never allowed it to color how she felt about me. She was strong enough to love me unconditionally. When she looked at me she saw her daughter- even when I was a horrible, selfish, spiteful teenager I was her horrible, selfish, spiteful teenager. Behaving like a teenager, not a teenager going through early warning rapist personality issues. I wasn't a constant reminder of a terrible act but a source of love and joy as are all children, no matter the origin.

  In time I learned to share her views on the matter...mostly.

  But it's still a sensitive issue for me. I understand that some people can't get past the ugliness of rape, that it's something you carry with you for the rest of your life and that they feel a child born of such is a nightmarish souvenir. That the casual way some politicians bandy back and forth rape labeling and women's rights is atrocious, insensitive, caustic to our nation's basic freedom. I can't argue with that. I wouldn't.
  But as you rage your defiance against the violations our government tries to lay upon your body please remember that there are those of us out here that feel the bite of your words.
  Strongly.

so far so mediocre

So how have I been since mom died? I'm going through the motions. Making up daily/sometimes hourly reasons to keep busy, to keep moving. At first it was the after death details- what to do with her remains, planning out her potluck farewell, dealing with her possessions, her bills, her friends. Most of that is all past me now so I come up with new reasons, new plans to keep motivated. Moved into a new place after two months of searching now I need to unpack, buy household items, nest. I'm running out of boxes to unpack which worries me. I also quit the soul-sucking job so that also takes away from my schedule considerably. Maybe I could take up jogging...But surely that would be a sign of losing myself entirely. Bruce Campbell (in his infinite chin-y wisdom) once told me to make stuff and never stop. Once you stop creating, once you lose momentum, you fail... Of course I'm paraphrasing here; like I'm going to remember what ANYONE said to me in the 90s? So then the next step is creation...

not waiting anymore

On the eleventh of May, 2012, around a month and a half after she was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, Mary Peters (otherwise known as my momma) died. I'll probably go into detail after I pick up a few more pieces.

yup, you guessed it

-would you believe we're still waiting for the now group of doctors to, at the very least, find out whether or not the cancer is treatable? And mom is wasting away, unable to eat, getting more alarmingly yellow day by day.
I'm not even angry that she has cancer. I'm angry that I live in a world where it's necessary to be a squeaky wheel just to get attention that every person alive should be able to take for granted.
She fell down the other day as she was getting out of the shower.
She's not even strong enough to climb stairs without taking a break ON EVERY STEP.
She wrote a grocery list for me and her normally perfect writing was illegible when it wasn't scratched out, scribbled. Shaky. Her attempt at drawing a simple smiley face at the end was heartbreaking. It took her two tries.
You've got to realize that this is a woman who raised three children on her own at a time when that was frowned upon. She was a volunteer fire fighter while she was pregnant. She drove taxi in the 60s. In Seattle. At night. She worked at the post office for more than 30 years and didn't shoot anyone. She's fucking Superwoman for god's sake.
This doesn't happen to Superwoman.

...Wating...

Waiting.
Waiting waiting waiting waiting. And then some more. Also, there's waiting, in case I failed to mention it. Waiting.
Look, I don't care who else you're treating/helping/saving/bandaging/medicating/killing with kindness/preforming surgery on/putting an i.v. in/giving staff infections to/breathing horrid breath on/sedating/draining of precious fluids/or euthanizing. She has limited time left on this planet and it's fucking killing me that she's spending it waiting for you to let her know lab results! FUCKING GET ON THE FUCKING JOB, PEOPLE!!!

So, well, this sucks.

For what it's worth I never really thought much about cancer outside of how it must be sucky and thank god I don't have it. Yet.
Shallow? Self centered? Yes, I agree. And this after watching my grandmother die of it when I was much shorter. It didn't enter into my thoughts, but hovered on the edge as a nasty possibility.
But that's normal, right? Living in a family with cancer in its history is like that. You don't go around with a giant black cloud over your head, waiting for the inevitable lump to form, do you? You go on you live you breathe you move, love, feel and take life as it comes.

And then you go to the doctor with your mom one day and he tells you that she has a 95 percent chance of having only 6 more months to live. And your initial response still isn't as dramatic as, say, anyone else. Ever, if the doc is to be believed.

It has me rethinking my mental state in general.

I'm shaken, but not thrown. It helps that she and I believe that we'll see each other in the next life. That this is change, transition. There's a certain amount of melancholy but we're keeping it in check.
It's certainly possible that I'm dealing with this through a haze of shock but I don't think so. I'm either very well adjusted or emotionally malformed.
Because I guess it's not normal to joke about burying your dead mother in the back yard and bringing her out for special occasions right after you find out her shelf life is about to run out. It's not normal to refer to the last few months of your mothers earthly existence as shelf life. It's certainly not something you want to pass around online like an emo trading card.

As we go through the stages of this I'll be laying it out here. It's past time I use this blog-thingie as a sounding board. Just understand that I'm doing this for my own edification, to help dissect my thoughts and find justification, purpose, sense in the senseless.

more on that, actually...

-Now that you mention it (ok, I mentioned it, whatever) a blog seems to be exactly how it sounds when you say it out loud. It's a blurb in an otherwise lengthy & bustling life. It's a side note, an "oh by the way", a burp, a hick up, a sneaky way of passing literary gas. It's silent but potentially deadly boring. (case in point. Ahem.)

No, really. Say it now out loud to see what I mean.

Weird how different it sounds when you think it, huh? Almost like your brain recognizes ir for the seriously throwy-upy word it is so it kinda breezes over it. Glosses over the crudeness of it. Like shellacking a rabbit pellet.

...in other news, I'm writing again...

where were we?

You know, the more I look around at other blogs the more I realize I don't have the time or patience for it. I see all these people with something to say. Some of it actually sounds most profound. But as I check out these blogs, profound or not, my inherent feeling of irrelevance deepens- who cares what the hell I have to say, think, or feel? Aren't there more important issues at stake here? I should go look into that...