Freedom

It occurs to me that freedom is an overused word

Freedom to abuse the earth

Freedom to abuse women

Freedom to spend money you don’t have

Freedom to put toxic chemicals in food

Freedom to market dangerous drugs as safe

Freedom to censor news

Freedom to force workers to work unpaid overtime

Freedom to raise prices and rents indefinitely

Freedom to rob from pensions & social security to pay for wars

Freedom to use those excess oil reserves

Freedom to drill anywhere you please for oil

Freedom to spill oil in a gulf

Freedom to spill radioactive waste into an ocean

Freedom to allow fracking waste to pollute soil and water

Freedom to bomb people with drones in a foreign country

Freedom to drive a car without emissions controls

Freedom to dump waste in a fresh waterway

Freedom to arrest and torture people

Freedom to jail immigrants on suspicion alone

Freedom to spy on people’s emails and conversations

This is different from

Freedom to marry whom you choose

Freedom to worship God, gods or nothing at all

Freedom to express yourself on the internet and elsewhere

Freedom to travel outside your country

Freedom to buy a house in any neighborhood

Freedom to apply to any college or job

Maybe freedom isn't what we mean anymore.

I Published a Book - Now What?

I was reading this essay by a novelist who got really depressed when she finished her novel because she had expected that it would have given her a sense of happiness, a sense of freedom and completion. But no.  Instead she felt empty and burst into tears driving down the highway.

I felt something like that after publishing "The Silver Reindeer."  I didn't get that writer's high I was expecting. Not even when I finished the final draft and put the last touch on the painting for the cover.

Huge breakthrough.  

Achievement is not happiness.

There is no end to the string.  It's a continuous thread that may or may not meet itself somewhere on the other side of the universe and form a circle.  And even if it does, I may not be around to see it.

I tell myself (and you, dear reader), if you want to paint a painting, there is no goal.  There is no end point to be achieved.  It's an experience, something to enjoy deeply in the moment, an experimental effort that may or may not find a pleasing place to stop.  You might say, okay, let me stop here before I screw it up.  Or you might say, hold on - I think I'm going to start over.  Or you might just say, "Cool."  Stop and have a drink, and admire it where it is, in all its unfinished glory.

As for the books, the poems, the stories, instead of seeing each one like a little mountain of endless tasks, why not enjoy the process again?  Read them over again just for fun, and not pick away at every phrase and paragraph?

I'm Tough

I’m really tough

I’ve been hurt

I’ve been destroyed before

I know how to do it

I know how to curl up in a ball

I know how to cry with desperation

Until my body is empty

The first thing to understand about me is

I’m not

I’m not one

I’m not consistent

My history doesn’t belong to me

I have no claws clasped around a jar of identity

I’m a tunnel

All are welcome

They flock through

Like cars jostling for position

You will never catch me

Because I’m not there

We all are.