flickr blogging at work

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I've decided that it's time to get off my happy ass and actually do something. My car *is* going in to get painted this week. I'm babysitting on Sunday, I've signed up for an online course, I've registered for a CPR certification class, and I'm working on finding some volunteer work doing something I'm really actually interested in.

And, I've set up a 6 month review appointment with my boss so I shall hopefully hvae fewer moments like this one.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I attended a fundraising event for an organization called Women for Women international about a week and a half ago. It was in Los Angeles, which meant that I got to take a short trip and spend some time in the sun. The event was amazing. The organization sponsors women who have survived war all over the world. The woman will receive some spending money, job training, and classes about their rights. On the other side of the relationship, a person can sponsor a woman for $27 a month. They write to the woman and if it is possible, the woman may write back. It was amazing to hear some of the letters that came out of the countries served by the organization, women from Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan.

I just finsihed reading the memoir written by the founder of Women for Women International. She grew up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and writes eloquently about the experience of having had Saddam Hussein chose her parents to be "friends" with, and the myriad ways that changed her life.

It was amazingly exciting to find myself surrounded by people for whom my life's goals are a reality. I want to work on so many of the issues that Women for Women International is involved with. Creating sustainability, empowering and educating women, taking responsibilty for the effects inherent in living in the first world.

Today I looked into a correspondance masters in Public Administration from the University of Colorado. Something to do with myself before I start graduate school for real.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me....

I just finished listening to the NPR piece on transorbital frontal lobotomies that originally ran on Wednesday during All Things Considered ("My Lobotomy" ).

It amazed and disturbed me. I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in an age in which a parent or guardian, a doctor or a spouse could decide that my unhappiness warranted an outpatient operation to keep me from feeling. Anything.

I was told an interesting statistic at a meeting on Wednesday night, that 1 in 5 Coloradoans is affected by issues of mental health. I have a difficult time believing that the statistic is so low. Considering my own life, I consider myself personally to have mental health issues which need work, I have had two friends commit suicide, and two attempt it. I have three friends diagnosed as being bipolar, I have a number of friends with anxiety disorders, and almost every one of my peers have dealt with issues of depression that went treated and untreated (far more have dealt with depression than have not). Even considering that I have always been happiest on the fringes of any large group, with the people who enjoy being on the fringes of large groups (the exception being Guilford, where there was no one main large group, only numerous fringe groups), thats a fairly considerable number of people in my life. And how many people do I know, and how many people do they know? I would be extremely hard put to find a single person in my life who has not been affected directly or indirectly by issues of mental health.

As much as I am wary of our pharmaceutical driven culture, if it were me (and I embrace a there but for the grace of god attitude when considering such things) I would much rather be on medication for whatever ailed me than have someone stick an icepick in my eyesocket and modify my brain function. The idea that any one person could wield such discretionary power over another, to change their brain, makes me feel on the verge of physical illness. I embrace my right to make my own decisions about my body. In this day and age that will 95% of the time translate into issues of abortion. But contemplate for a moment, the more far reaching effects of our cobbled together legal precedence regarding an individula's right to privacy, life, and what happens to their physical presence in the world. Images from 1984, Brave New World and other such fictional prophecises flit through my head. Then I stop to think about the issues of the Patriot Act that are up for review, the changing Supreme Court, erosion of Habeus Corpus. Do you think it has not occured to someone in our government that a simple, ten minute, outpatient procedure and we could rest safe at night in our homes, knowing that all of the potential terrorists are no longer a threat?

Think about it.

a very kind note to a thief

a very kind note to a thief
Originally uploaded by prettyjjbean.

This is not my picture, it's from one of my contacts on Flickr, but I love it, and I want to share it. I am constantly amazed by people's ability to steal things that will have no meaning to them.

I love the idea that the robber will wantto play the little girl's violin and not sell it. It reminds me of just how jaded I have become.

Negative Art

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Existential crises non-withstanding, it's been a pretty low key week. I saw Laurel's art opening at Pirate on Friday night, which was very nice. I never cease to be amazed at her ability. I have so much respect for artists of all kinds, those who really truly practice their art (unlike me, right now I feel like I'm mostly pretending). I think any type of art is so difficult to make a living doing, and to remain committed to it shows a strength of character that I sometimes find myself in awe of.

I wonder what it is about our society, in which we are taught not to trust others, to look out for ourselves. I remember so clearly realizing that I was the only person who could take care of me the way I needed to be taken care of, because everyone else was doing the same for themselves. And many of my friends have had similar realizations. I keep having to remind myself of that particular societal truth. And it is a societal truth, I think that we have only recently developed this tendency, and that it is perhaps the product of a first world lifestyle that embraces consumerism while people all over the world are suffering, dying, starving and wasting away to painful deaths from diseases we've had cures and vaccines for for the better part of a century.

I won't apologize for preaching from my soap box in this little corner of the world that I claim as mine, I've placed my flag, and here I stand. Come and get me.

Paradise Now

I saw a sneak preview of Paradise Now tonight. It is a movie by Palestinians about two men who are chosen (having previously volunteered) to be suicide bombers. The movie follows them through their lives and decisions over the next 36 odd hours.

This movie has gotten me thinking in a number of different ways. Firstly, it is a beautiful piece of propaganda. The majority of the characters are thoughtful, and in some manner sympathetic. This is of course, the point of the movie, to show the world that a suicide bomber comes from. To show that he or she is not an unthinking automaton, but that there are sympathetic reasons behind what he or she does. The poverty that I was able only to glimpse in the movie, if it is anything like what actually exists in Nablus, appears crippling. I would never want to live in such conditions. I am grateful that I don't have to.

People live in crippling poverty every day, and they go to extreme measures to feel that they are doing something to right the wrongs of their lives. I don't think it is any coincidence that terrorist organizations have the firmest hold on places of the world that are so often ignored because they are too difficult to look at, to think about. A treatise on global economic and social inequality is not the point today.

What I wonder most, having now seen the movie, is whether Israelis and Palestinians will ever be able to achieve peace. It is a very real, very sobering question in my mind.

I have friends who are Israelis, I seriously dated an Israeli man for over a year. I have good friends who have made, are in the process of, or are planning to make Aliyah (immigration to Israel). I would never dream of asking one of them to see this movie with me. I would tell most of them that they probably shouldn't, no matter how liberal they consider themselves. I would not ask my friends, these people that I love, to watch a movie that humanizes people whose very real mission is to murder them, my friends. This is not like watching a war movie. This is a movie about people who know, truly know, that they are committing murder, and they feel that they are justified in doing so.

Separate out the differences between the movie situation and the real world (I'll highlight a couple of them for you, there is an Israeli who helps the bombers, the bombers target soldiers and ignore a bus stop with civilians), and this is still a movie about people who are conflicted, who know that they are making a bad decision, but make it anyway.

I can't imagine a movie made by Israelis that would humanize the killing of innocent Palestinian people. As much as I would like to believe that everything negative that is said about Israel is lies and propaganda, I know that some of it is closer to truth than I am comfortable with. I live in the United States, I have had only the smallest taste of what it is like to live in Israel, and I will never fully understand it. I do know that like the US, Israel is far from being a perfect place. I hold Israel to a high standard, the same standard to which I hold the United States. I live here, and I vote, act and live those values. I do not live in Israel, and I will not vote in a country in which I do not have a daily responsibility for the consequences of that vote.

I wonder then, if it is impossible to expect Israelis to humanize Palestinians, and impossible to expect Palestinians to humanize Israelis, not just the best among our groups of people, but the worst, then how can we ever achieve peace? If a Palestinian person cannot look at an Israeli soldier and see past the uniform and gun, to them the symbols of their oppression, poverty, and the simple unpredictability of their every day, how can that Palestinian person truly make peace, and accept peace with the country that give the soldier a gun and puts him in a uniform? If an Israeli cannot look past a suicide bomber and see the poverty, the pain and injustice that the Palestinian person feels propels him (or her) to strap explosives to his or her body and detonate them, how can the Israeli person truly accept and make peace with Palestinians neighbors. Both will be expecting, and preparing, for their neighbor to do his worst.

There are a million more thoughts spinning through my head, and I wish I could make them all come out the way I intend them. For now though, I am left hoping only that the people of Israel and Palestine understand the grave complexities of their lives, and not just the black and white lines that are so easily drawn, I hope that because this is their lives, they will be able to one day see each other as I only dream of them doing.

Welcome to my world

This is my new blog/ website. For those of you joining me from livejournal, i've already explained why i've moved to blogger. In brief, blogger gives me more ability to express myself. If at some point I find that blogger is no longer cutting it either, I'll move on to something else. The other part of my move is that livejournal did a really beautiful job of helping me work my way through college, my late night rants and such. I'm moving onwards, and hopefully upwards, or at least away from my angst-ey ness. So, welcome, jump right in, the water's fine.