Tag: human-rights

One More . . .

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 7 Comments

3-One

5-One

1-One15-One

One more trip to the doctor.

One more admission of humiliating symptoms.

One more physician‘s persevering uncertainty.

One more hunch about drugs even after repeated failures of 6 week trials.

One more hopeful bottle of toxins to ingest.

One more set of side-effects to endure.

One more crippling debility: Illness’s strong swing of a sharp ax into the pulp of my dignity cutting deeply.

One more intentional assault leaving me with a staggering and teetering propriety.

One more debility before I’m disqualified from sovereignty; stripped of my liberty, freedom, and independence, my self-reliant character reverts to childhood, a time of absolute dependence for survival.

One more obedient abdication of my extinct identities and forthcoming dog’s age.

One more no more.

 

Our Cultural Conflict: “I-centric” vs. “Us-centric”

~ Harlan Didrickson

I’m still crying.  Especially for the amount of preciously rare innocence lost that day.  I fear a crevasse of cruelty ripped open our discouraged plains of humanity and swallowed acres of hope, kindness, and gentility.  The displaced societysurvivors have been inoculated with indifference.  Recently, our society welcomed the technological efforts to promote the importance of the individual thereby neglecting the citizen’s toil required to maintain a individualcohesive and unified society abiding by civil law, ethics, and respectability.  This change strongly suggests a recent shift and an alarming unraveling of the knotted threads which bind us together as a cohesive society.  It  suggests that the aggressive “me-me-meism” trumpeting self-importance repudiates the codes of propriety and civil obedience.  It’s appearance is fueled by social networks promoting the innate yet invisible importance of the individual, and their  dull and oft mundane daily rituals as provocative, riveting, and jocular.  This “I-centric” movement supplants the laws of society with a horde of myopic pronouns (I, me) living in the surreal world developed by the late physicist Dr. Berners-Lee.  This environment is wholly the fabrication of a society of scientists working together while at the same time relying on fixed rules, regulations and laws.  The “I-centric” movement relies upon the ICQ protocol to herald their importance and distinguish themselves.

electricity2 That is, until the power goes out.

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Newtown Might Be Anytown

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 7 Comments

cryingobamaSince I first heard President Obama fight back agony so wrenching it overwhelmed the indomitable propriety of his office, I sensed a depth of heartache rarely freed by a sitting president.  President Obama’s valiant attempt to sandbag the stalwart character of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was breached nevertheless as the surge of emotion overwhelmed his duty as the harbinger of serious information to America‘s citizens.

Every time I read an article, listen to President Obama’s painful pauses, or watch television coverage I simply cry for everyone involved.  And everyone is involved.  By everyone I mean everybody; all of us; each of us.  It’s impossible to locate anyone unmoved by this horrific incident.

It’s all part of an escalation of rights protected by the constitution, to the safety of the innocent, to the invasion of privacy at pat down check-points, to righteous citizens hawking firearms at uncontrolled, unregulated gun showgunshow free-for-alls at which anyone — anyone regardless of their background — can purchase a firearm because, by law and by money and by lobbyists and by radical firearms enthusiasts, gun shows are not gun shops, gun shows are for the gun collector, the gun enthusiast.  But what do these collectors and enthusiasts feel or imagine as they feel the firearms heft, the iciness of the steel, the clip or chamber, the single cartridge trigger or the semi-automatic trigger; what do they feel or imagine that propels them to dodge laws, drop a few hundred dollars, and leave pleased as punch.  They must imagine the kickback of that first round, the power the firearm possesses, the. . .the. . .____________ of ownership.  It’s the blank I’m curious about; the “what” as to why they insist on owning firearms.

Which is their constitutional right: “To bear arms. . .”   But the Constitution doesn’t mention ammunition.

policefront deskSo here’s my idea:  Treat ammunition for publicly owned firearms in the same manner our society treats prescription drugs.  If you want ammunition you need to go to your local police department; there pharmacythey’ll write you a legal dispense order for thirty rounds only and non-refillable within a thirty day period.  The federal government would monitor ammunition shops like they monitor pharmacies.

Have all the lawless gun shows you want!  Have all the gun shops you want!  Let everyone carry concealed weapons!  And most of all, appease the self-righteous, entitlement-wielding, insensitive and ignorant myopic NRA by letting them bear as many bloody arms as they can carry!

But you can’t have any bullets.

 

The Crisp Season of Change

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 2 Comments

At last it’s arrived, like a visit from my favorite uncle who told tales of unimaginable childhood freedoms (having been raised on a fruit orchard farm).  At long last it’s arrived, the darkness of dawn mornings and the dimness of late afternoon twilights.  Finally, finally it’s arrived, the season of the apple and the pumpkin and hot cider.  And thank God they’re gone, days that grated like my cat’s yowling or, tortuous days akin to the incessant presence of my just-turned-teen sister and her coterie of screeching and cackling teensters (defined as a pimply, high-pitched, recently teened and obstinate-as-hell, alien transmutation); those chronically simmering days followed by feverous and languid nights, the forecasted but broken-promised breeze failed to arrive like those letters from your summer camp romance.  Relief has clocked-in, elbowing out a tireless summer which dropped anchor like a battleship of fervent seamen and remained well past dry-docking the sailboat.  The ease of fruit pie-like single-layered simplicity (shorts sandals shirt) has given way to the time-consuming layered bundling like wrapping grandmamma’s Chatsford teapot for shipping, encasing oneself with layer upon shedable layer.

I’ve recently concluded that I prefer seasons of change (Spring and Fall) over seasons of suffering (Summer and Winter).  I enjoy the initial imperceptible adaptations which occur in the early spring and early fall: Spring’s first cautious knock of Snow Drops; fall’s tentative nips of brusque breezes.  Of course these trepidations soon give way to Spring’s salvo of elevating stems topped with an eternity of color and Fall’s broad strokes of vividly colored canopies which subtly cautions us of life’s temporal cycle.  The seasons of change also highlight our world’s overwhelming beauty and diversity; it’s also a testament that every piece of (what we call) life patiently waits its turn to express its individual magnificence, it’s solo, when the world recognizes its achievement during the season’s glory!

If only we, as part of nature, would patiently wait for our turn to shine with respect for each other (and our colorful diversity).  And that we, as a Snow Drop or a stitch in Autumn’s auroral quilt, are an irreplaceable verse in life’s grand narrative.  

The (Un)expected Outcome(s)

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 5 Comments

Fear stops me like a two by four to the back of the head.  Real fear.  Not anxiety, not nervousness, not hesitation.  The kind of fear that rushes to a moment of quiet like children playing musical chairs.  Real Fear.  Life or Death Fear.  My fear has been the writers-block-in-residence for the past fourteen days.  My fear was a distraction; then my fear developed into an annoyance; then fear and I were bedfellows, fear being the last thing at night and first thing upon waking that knocked on my mind’s front door.  What is my fear?  I’m afraid I’m dying.

As you know, in November, 2008 I was classified as bipolar.  This determination included established and biased reasoning for my life on a seesaw: I was predisposed to life as a yo-yo by genetic roulette.  This milestone was marked by a simple psychiatric ah-ha.  Their specialty professes its ideological conjecture as formative and their ignorance evidenced by the devastating news that they can’t offer a cure, or even a likely protocol.  Instead they offer an indifferent forecast of pharmaceutical trials often resulting in failure and cautioned of a likely future weathering mania-driven misjudgments followed by the doomed deciension into a grey melancholia exacerbated by the digestion of manic destruction and attempted repair.  And then there’s that overcast statistic regarding effectual suicides: 40%.

Fear immediately hit the brakes and sent my entire life crashing headlong into the windshield. Fear sat immobilized by truths: I’ll only be free of madness if I’m one of four out of ten.  Fear’s rationale was logical and pragmatic; why endure decades of depression and delirium only to draw the same conclusion?  I’d decided to ignore Fear’s advice and try, one day at a time, to continue my membership in the sixty percent club.

But two months ago despite my determined effort to avoid that 40%, a wholly separate yet equally incurable physical condition reappeared. Its symptoms are aggravated and impairing; inexplicable weight gain (45 pounds in six weeks); undermining fatigue; breathlessness following exertion; intentional harboring of fluid forced from arteries and causes swelling and immobility.  But just like the Rambler my father owned in the early sixties, no one could determine the cause of the knocking.  That is, until the 1959 V-8 wagon blew a cylinder and sent my father’s first love to every car’s destiny: an auto scrap yard seen from the interstate.  Will my erosion be similar?  An unidentifiable murmur like a whispered yet repeated rumor one day erupts and immediately my initial litany of enigmatic symptoms is sensible, albeit much too late for prevention and most likely too late for intervention.

I’ve been blindsided by these illnesses and worse, hobbled by their improbable cures.  This simply was not my life’s expected outcome.  Or so I believed until very recently when I remembered what a mentor once suggested as a remedy to writer’s block:

“Writer’s block excuses lazy writers; Write about what’s preventing you from writing; Suddenly you’re mindlessly writing and only when you pause do you remember what was prohibiting your expression, but you can’t remember why.  When you can’t write, you must write.  The living face death every day — and then go about living!”