If you are unable to sit in the stability of simpleness – a simple life – there will be no satisfaction in more. If you are not grounded in your core, more will never be enough, different will never satisfy, because your nervous system has not learned to be still. Once simply being is a place that doesn’t make you anxious, you will be able to step into new levels of growth because you will see there is not starting over or failure, but simply rebirth and completion. Simple does not mean less, but rather simple means To Be.
Author: Kati
Essayist and storyteller. Nothing special going on, just changing the world.
american empire
During my trip to Guadeloupe, I’ve noticed an influx of American products, music, knock-off products, and radio transmissions of American sounds. I notice this whenever I have traveled out of the country, but Guadeloupe was the first country where speaking only English was a communication barrier (but patience & effort to speak French got me through) so the juxtaposition of American influence was more acute.
Even if you never travel out of the country, there must be a recognition of the influence of the American Empire. Let’s not be pedantic- though our government theoretically controls only our land masses and territories- American corporations have snaked their tendrils into every far reaching point of the globe. Though I’ve only encountered two Americans while on this trip (my seat mates from Miami to Pointe-à-Pitre, I’ve heard and seen reminders of my home culture multiple times everyday.
Even while people I’ve talked to are disturbed by the current administration, there is no lack of excitement to practice English and every time I say I’m from Texas I am asked if I know cowboys. There is a general fascination with the America that Hollywood has packaged for easy consumption.
It is an understatement to say we have our generous share of social & economic issues, and I feel I am more ‘woke’ and aware of social difficulties had by a great number of people than some Americans might be, but for folks from less industrialized places, America remains a gold star standard for a quality of life people fantasize about living. It holds aspirations of success that people believe can only be achieved in America. Our country is an intoxicating poker game.
Meanwhile, I see people here with limited employment opportunities, having to mange water consumption in ways that would destabilize us, limited air conditioning, conservation of power (always turn lights out, only plug refrigerators in during certain hours)- but they have something we are missing. They are in community. There aren’t tvs blaring in every cafe (people can’t afford the electricity), people sit outside and talk into the night. There is a hitchhiking culture unlike anything I’ve witnessed. They rest in the afternoons and children play openly without the distraction of iPads and phones. Here people are connected to each other and that is a next level aspiration they don’t realize we are lacking amidst our seeming abundance of resources – much of which is taken and derived from the far reaches of the globe where people live with abundances we’ve dismissed.
hot baths
I love hot baths maybe more than is sane-
Hopefully they never give me a brain aneurysm –
If they do, then please cremate my body and it would be amazing if ashes were spread around the world.
But I’ll be dead.
So if you want to use spreading my ashes for a world travel opportunity, go for it. And if you don’t, that’s okay too, because I’ll still be with you either way.
And let’s hope that the brain aneurism thing ever happens, but if it does that’s my ask.
food for death
Women were invited to receive aid at a U.S. run GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) food distribution area, “Tomorrow, during our morning distribution at our Saudi Quarter location, women only are welcome to come and receive a food box. Our local staff will direct women to a designated area where each will be given a box. Men should avoid the location during this time.” The welcome was intervened by Israeli soldiers who opened fire on the women. This is not the first aid station massacre, since May similar attacks have killed over 1,000 starving people and, as of today, negotiating teams have been recalled from Gaza ceasefire talks.
Meanwhile in U.S., we (the media, social and so-called news) are obsessing over the Epstein files instead of taking any action to protect vulnerable people- ANYWHERE. Those damn files are doing more harm than good- they are a DISTRACTION. Sure, open them and find out what we know – rich men have been abusing girls & boys. Epstein is dead & there’s another pimp who has picked up his work – s/he just hasn’t pissed off anyone enough yet to have their cover blown.
Meanwhile, starving women, mothers with babies, are being lured in for food, then beaten & executed in Palestine. “Distribution of death,” said a woman Raghad Abu Odeh who went to the aid station organized by the American group GHF (executive chairman Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical leader and businessman). Her father had been previously shot at another aid station.
While people are being murdered as they try to get aid and the fires around The Epstein Files are being fanned. While the fans are hot, let’s all remember that child marriage remains legal in 34 states- with no minimum age in California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, & Louisiana, and 15 in Kansas. 16 & 17 in most other states. Unchained At Last is an organization that provides
Let’s remember, concentration camps are being built on American soil and filled with people who are guilty of nothing but being born non-white. Along with immigrants, who are guilty of nothing but crossing a border to seek a better life and often taken through severely brutal means while pursuing legal channels of citizenship, now U.S. CITIZENS are being swept up at a more frequent rate.
And while all of that continues to happen and the media focuses on The Epstein Files, an executive order has been signed to restrict services for the mentally ill and homeless population under the guise of “ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS,” effectively allowing for non-consensual institutionalization of mental illness: “Federal agencies must promote the expanded use of civil commitment for homeless individuals with serious mental illness or substance use disorders, including by seeking the reversal of judicial precedents and termination of consent decrees that obstruct institutionalization.”
And mothers are being murdered in Palestine for picking up food that is offered at aid stations.
But sure, let’s get those Epstein files opened. Maybe then, with just a Mary Poppins snap, all child predators will be locked away and we can focus on systemic change to protect all vulnerable populations, and food will be delivered without fear of a death sentence.
sixteen returns
I was contemplating all the things I contemplate when I masturbate. The places I’ve been, the things I’ve done, a couple of the people I’ve done- because they’re only a couple that really turn up in the darkness of my solitude- and amongst all of those thoughts 16-year-old me came roaring through and mad-as-hell.
Suddenly, we were back together on a train in 1991 and heading into Athens, Greece. She looked at me and said, “What the fuck happened to you? We were going to see the world, learn languages, fly planes, embed into war zones. TELL THE STORIES. Where you are today … that is not US, but I am stuck with YOU. I did not sign-up for the bullshit life your decisions have made for us, but there I am- sitting with you in a fucking office- day after day- feeling blood pressure and cortisol spike.”
“I get it. I don’t want to be there either, but Arwen is my heart and I can’t live all those dreams things until she’s launched.”
“I love her too, she’s my kid too and she wants the adventurous life you HAD, but better. SHE said it. So why did you fuck it up? Why did you stop being free and living your adventure?”
“I fell in love a man who had potential.”
“Was it really love,” it wasn’t a question, she knew the answer.
“We know now it wasn’t … it was hope, but it felt like what I thought love should feel like. I fell into the arms of what-if and potential felt safe.”
“You/me/us. We were the ones with potential. We always made our-self safe. You let us down.”
“I am fully fucking aware, but I love my kid and WE will get to launch soon too. The dreams never stopped, they just got delayed.”
It was enough to calm the 16-year-old that still sits within my heart. Her dreams will come true.
I’ve been too shocked to write. My brain overwhelmed- short-circuited if you will- which is the point of all the rapid fire fuckedupedness of the last month. But I’m rebooting motherfuckers.
A friend said this administration isn’t the supervillian they imagined. To that I say:
Let’s be real … Hollywood is aspirational and always shiny, even in its darkness- red coat little girl- would one more name ever be enough. This is not Hollywood, this reality and it’s the underbelly of the swamp turned over by mass consumption of fools. PT Barnum is said to have said (tho not confirmed) “a fool is born every minute,” but that ratio of fools would be too few fools for this level of fraudulent foolishness- pure evil is also not to be equated with foolishness, but I digress.
This rattle we are living within is not that of supervillains, but the heavy asphyxiation of a nation by a level of megalomaniac narcissism we’ve not experienced in several generations. Instead of children telling on their neighbors & parents, we have forms to complete for “investigations” against schools or teachers who aren’t aligning with The Assministration. This is stranger than fiction and that’s how we know it’s not Hollywood, but cold reality.
I hear intonations indicating people are coming to from the bitchslap that was the 2024 election. People are sliding crowbars into the gears of The Assministration. Voices are joining, action is building, resistance is growing. Let’s just not stop acting. They don’t expect The Others to fight back. But there’s 99% to their 1% and we are scrappy and have less, but more to lose (nothing and everything).
This isn’t Hollywood and they aren’t supervillains. This is a fight they’ve been planning and, sadly, at least half of the 99% thought it was Hollywood and their trusty hero was a bumbling good ol’ boy who just wanted to do good for his teammates. Thing is, that good ol’ boy is the drunken quarterback of a losing team that peaked in high school and has been stroking his dick and revising his legend for the last 40 years. Fuck that guy.
It’s time to kick him off his stool and make him as irrelevant as possible. It’s a heavy stool but we can knock it over. Do I know how, no. No, I do not, but I know we can keep mucking up the cogs and hijacking their hijinks. It’s not gonna be easy and it’s gonna get messier before it gets better, but this country is a shitshow worth fighting for- and by that I mean the good people that are my neighbors and your neighbors and their neighbors. This country is a shitshow, but it’s got some good people and they are worth the fight.
Hollywood could never make this shit up. We are way better than Hollywood.
getting by on less
A week or so ago, I knocked a stack of glass votive candle holders out of a cabinet. They shattered with epic velocity and shards of glass were everywhere. While vacuuming up the mess, my vaccum got jammed. I didn’t have time to mess with unjamming and managed to sweep up what remained of the glass. It was a situation passably managed & I left the vacuum staged near my kitchen- like a low-priority patient in an understaffed ER- to be dealt with in order of urgency.
Today, I finally had enough bandwidth to look at the wounded warrior of domestic convenience and, wouldn’t you know, it took ten minutes to get the vacuum working order. I just had to pull off the long hose and fish out the mangled mess of glass wrapped with dog fur. With a few jabs and shakes, I fixed my vacuum! It worked again – I double tested it by sucking a whole new batch of dog fur. Pleased with myself, I was.
But with that fixed, now the a/c in my truck is more balmy than cold. I’ve been dreading this moment, but getting by and by with an occasional coolant charge that isn’t hard to perform. Now, however, it’s more mechanical, becoming another thing I’ll need to handle.
The only thing I’m certain of, as I age, is that there will always be something to keep up or repair or retire & replace.
Anyone who ever tells me “everything is great” is fully suspect. I once had a friend who answered, “How’s life?” with, “Oh my life is great, for a kid in Haiti, so I can’t complain.” What he was saying is it’s all perspective and you can be “blessed,” have all the general necessities covered and even some luxuries, if you’re lucky, but the reality is life, & everything in it, is in a stage of decay. Nothing will ever remain perfect.
I try to listen for those perfect moments and find them outside of all the Life Things that will inevitably break down and fuck up and cause us angst, but some days it’s harder than others. Some days boundaries are crossed or you just can’t seem to get traction in life and on those days that things aren’t great and there’s no reason to say “everything is fine.” Some days everything is shit and that’s just the angle you gotta build from- those are the days your attitude will make or break you. On those days, it doesn’t mean you don’t show up, but also don’t be shy to say, “Fuck it. This is all I got.” Here I am, fighting the good fight- sometimes with a drier tank.
Resistance
Watching the country unravel under chaos puppets and knowing so much is up in the air so taking deep breaths, staying vigilant, and ready to step up if I see something going down. I know what to say and what my rights are and the rights of others- papers for me & kiddo are in order (though I do need to make copies). I’ve frozen my credit & opening a bank account with no connection to other companies or IRS. Building community and finding ways to be joyful.
As I watch what’s happening though, hearing about more folks in hospital for flu, avian flu decimating flocks, immigrant workers refusing to go to work for fear of ICE, and recently learning that prisoners are regularly allowed to fight fires in California for barely any wage. All these together send me to predictions. Our population will get hit with another pandemic soon- it may spread past our shores. Labor will get harder to fill for low wage jobs. The prison pipeline will become a larger economic boon to the government and their private contractors cronies. Soon immigrants will either be sent home or put in labor camps and victimless crimes will be prosecuted more harshly to provide able bodies for jobs from farming to firefighting. For the systems that hold power in this country, empathy has had its hands bound and voice gagged. The company store just gained an exponential boost.
Everything has a wave- a high and a low- good & bad- toward & back. We’ve just lived through a high spot in history- improved quality of life, equality, and a move in the right direction towards equity. It wasn’t the best, but it was high for the history of this nation. Now that we’ve had the high there is a low that must be survived and that part of the timeline has begun, but we can fight it from tipping too far down. We must see each other & within communities we must look out for others, pick up those falling behind. We can watch out for others and build longer tables. Come together in love and acceptance – embrace those who simply want to live their lives. Love has always been and will now continue to be the greatest resistance.
new year, new day
happy new year … time is shorter than ever for us and I intend to sop it up with glee. I will write more and read more and walk more and watch the world instead of screens and meet new people and try new things. I will keep in learning to fix old things and re-use instead of replace. I’ll meet more dogs and observe more birds. I won’t keep my mouth shut when my soul nudges me to speak. I hope to share most of my days with friends, and maybe lovers, but space and time will not be wasted begging people to join me in the joys of life that I have left to celebrate.
Some days will be hard. Some days will be sad. Some days I will want to be entirely alone and feel even more empty, and it will all be too much, but those days will pass, as they always have because life is cyclical.
I will miss some things and be surprised by tripping into others- I won’t be stingy with my presence by worrying over where I could be- I’ll open my heart and marinate in where I am. If I am no longer engaged, I won’t lose myself in wondering if I should stay, but arrange a graceful exit- or just cut strings depending on the situation.
In this new day, let it be known both my home and heart are always open to break bread & hold space for others who want to grow, heal, love, and live. I am here to celebrate each of us and to hold you when all you can do is cry because the tears prove we are still surviving.
We are each a beautiful soul- each a speck of the universe that is a universe in each of us. It is inconceivable that we are in these meatsuits topped with an organic computer, the likes of which the most advanced of the organic computers can barely conceive, and we just incoherently fumble through our lives- barely looking up from the machines we’ve made and are now using as oracles to guide us on how to live. It’s an obscene waste of the miracle of life’s magic and while they are useful, I vow to re-connect with the world beyond the screen, using these machines to grow human connection, rather than limit my time from others. I’m 50 this year and life is only going to get bigger. I’ve been learning and letting go and now I get to use all those tools to really begin loving & living.
From those of you near my age (or for godsake younger), I don’t want to hear how your body is too old now or how something you loved can no longer be done. Do not excuse yourself out of living because you’ve lived your days into a bored or stifled place. Your body may ache from inertia, but it’s not done unless you let it be. Each day is a new day and each day we are gifted a choice whether or not to let our soul shine brightly through the conduit of our meat suit or to let our soul dim. Our big ol’ brains will work to compute a shoulda-woulda-coulda triangulation of the easiest path of decisions on living to draw out the baseline shelf life of your meat suit, but is that really that life your soul deserves? In the end, our brains short circuit and our meat suit ceases to function, but that small voice that has believed in you more than your brain could ever imagine … that soul light wants to shine. Your soul doesn’t want to live at baseline, your soul wants to be the MVP of it’s universe and as we are each a speck of the universe and a whole universe within- BE your MVP.
I will do nothing if not encourage others to declare the same joyfully reckless assault against inertia & apathy. We haven’t survived all the bullshit life has thrown at us just to sit in the corner and wait to die. Every day we wake up, life is a new opportunity, a new story to write. Let your soul shine. Claim your story.
Children Unwinding
No one tells you what a shock it is when your child gets their first vehicle- thereby extracting themselves from the calendaring of your daily life. This extraction is far from entire, of course, but their new freedom allows them to come and go on a schedule that no longer requires your time for them to accomplish their goals. With the turn of a key, your purpose as a parent shifts from absolute provider to a supporting role of sorts. Sixteen years of habits, shifting with the swiftness of an automatic transmission.
You will still provide food and shelter, but not as much food because they now have a job and they go out to eat with their friends. You will still provide shelter, but not as much shelter because they’ll be sleeping over at a friends’ houses more often. Your advice is no longer sought first because they will have already unloaded to their friends so your thoughts become just another layer of consideration and really they just want you to listen so they can process everything that’s coming at them from the world. A world they are more immersed in than the four walls that have been the space where your love lives. And while your heart has been outside of your body since their first breath, it now lives beyond your reach.
They are learning to become adults. They are practicing living in deeper waters and sometimes they may choke because they aren’t as strong a swimmer as they believed and you may never know or they may come running back to your arms. But no one tells you how empty and eerily quiet your home becomes when your child has the freedom of their own car and that first job. How you must suddenly learn, with a swift immediacy, that the emptiness of your home is not an emptiness of your child’s heart.
Just when your house feels totally empty & your heart is aching for a hug- they will come barging in with stories and questions and friends and the ability to wipe out your pantry in 30 seconds flat. They’ll come home late and the next morning you’ll see them sleeping in their bed at 10 in the morning arms sprawled, hair a mess, and they’ll be a whisper of that sweet baby of the past. That child who would’ve already been up tearing through the house. That sweet little baby whose ass you would’ve had to wipe and fed them and taken them to the playground and answered 10,000 questions all before 9 AM.
But you did a good job mama and papa and now that sweet baby has found their friends and has found a first job and is learning to get around the world. It may seem like they don’t, but they still need you, even if it is not as apparent. They still want to be part of your life even if they don’t always say so. They’re simply pushing off the shallow end of the pool. They’re testing the waters and figuring out what they’re gonna be like as an adult. So give them a little space and let your little birdie fly. You will always be connected by the blood that runs through your veins. Let them know you care, listen more than you talk, learn who they are becoming and what they enjoy, ask questions that let them teach you and give them space to learn how to love you on their terms.
Spread Your Dreams 