I've been following the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's Facebook page, feeling horribly helpless and angry and frustrated for them. If it's not clear, I stand with Standing Rock. They're in the right here, both legally (there is a fucking treaty which clearly states the land is theirs. DAPL is trespassing, not the other way around) and philosophically. I am so fucking tired of watching people do evil things to each other and to the world in which we live. We have the technology to abandon fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are no longer necessary. More to the point, we have a responsibility to ourselves, each other, and the future to ensure there is a world worth living in. The philosophy of these people, that the earth is not a bag of resources to be exploited, but a bountiful garden to be protected and tended, is something I much admire. It's something I try to live up to. I don't always succeed, but I try. Watching it all go down has left me so depressed and angry and so very sad.
Something that perked me up, though, I saw a photo of protesters at Standing Rock from Japan, carrying a Japanese flag and in traditional Japanese dress. That was a heartening sight.
My bank has money in DAPL. I'm now researching an alternative that doesn't completely suck. It's a small thing, and it doesn't feel like near enough, but it's something. And It's what I can do right now.
If only there was a bank actively investing in green technologies the way banks do with fossil fuels. That's the bank I want my account with.
Hey... let's start that bank...
Writing hasn't been happening for a while. Neither has art. The lack of these things in my life has taken its toll on me psychologically. This is a strange way to describe it, but it's like a poison, or an infection. If it keeps coming out, then I'm safe. But the minute the flow stops, all this stuff gets backed up into my brain, and there, with no escape, it becomes dangerous. I really need to get back to it, but in a self-perpetuating feedback loop, the more depressed I get, the harder it is to create. The less I create, the more depressed I get. On and on ad nauseam.
I feel like I need a change. A big change. I'm crawling out of my own skin; scratching out in the panic of a person mistakenly buried alive. The thing is, I know I need to change something, but I don't know what.
Writing is my thing. That's all I really want to do with my life. That can't change. I don't want it to.
A new house, maybe? But I have little to no funds, so even if that was the change I needed, I'm stuck.
So here I am, scratching at myself, with no idea of what I need to make it stop.
It doesn't help that loved ones are also going through rough times, and I'm equally as helpless to make it stop.
It hasn't been good, folks. But I'm battling through. Or trying. And so there's a lot of work that I let slide because I couldn't find the strength to get it done that I am now trying to catch up on. I still don't feel like I can get it done, but I'm going to try anyway.
On that note, I have language lessons to resume.
Ciao!