fatherhood

So. I have now entered the world of babydom bottle in hand and masculinity out the window. being a father for the last month has made me acutely aware of several very male misconceptions that I had believed before becoming what I have become.

First, a real man knows a good time in bed! True. One word, Sleeping! I dream about it some times between the feedings, changings, and screamings. More often I daydream about it during afore mentioned baby rites. For example, my wife and I talked my mother into watching the littleling for the night, and we painted the town red. That's right red lobster, and as we kept falling asleep mid meal wondering how to get how at the obscene hour of about 9:30, our minds kept wandering to all the possibilities for the rest of the night ahead. We giggled about wrapping ourselves up in separate blankets and sleeping without the soft pitter patter of baby's vocal exercises waltzing on our eardrums. When we got home it was pure bliss! the pillows were cool and the room extra dark. other than that, I don't remember ANYTHING!!! Like I said bliss.

Second, making farty sounds and speaking like an idiot to children makes one immature. Nope not at all! It can only make other people prudes and wet towels. Doing the same to your wife? Maybe not such a hot idea. Though it can produce giggles at times, generally unwise. Note: this really seems to apply during bouts of colic at 3 in the morning.

Third, there is nothing undignified about smelling ones baby's butt to verify your suspision that a changing is required when someone has dressed said baby in a "cute" outfit that a sleep deprived and possibly hallucinating father cannot seem to get a baby in or out of in less than forty minutes. Very wrong. It is totaly undignified, but who the hell cares at this point. If that butt don't need ah changin, I'sa ain't goin near it. gurreilla urine attacks from a innocent looking little boy can change a man.

'Nuff said.

Finnaly, smelling oneself once one has discovered the funky odor is not emanating from ones child is vulgar? Well, after weeks without sleep, un counted exploded diapers, and random bouts of projectile vomiting, the days seem to blur and memories of these mythic things known as showers become dim at best, and I hold that our nose is Gods way of trying to keep us from catching the plague. Ergo, perfectly acceptable.

people always want to have things both ways. this octuplets thing irritates me a lot. for years prochoice movement has been saying stay away from women's bodies, and it seems that most people said ok to abortion.but God forbid a woman have to many children.

what hypocrites!!!

you can't have things both ways. either the government has a legal say into the woman's womb or it does not.

I heard a doctor on the radio say that the woman should have had several of the babies terminated! Hippocratic oath be @#$%ed. could you imagine if a law forced her to do just that? bah, I'm mad enough that I'm no longer coherent.

does she have the skills to mother them? do we need to take tests to make sure we can be parents now a written exam before we can procreate! a lot of people have kids and no idea what to do with them even just one!

my and my sisters great grand mother had 14 kids and had them when times were a lot worse than they are now. hell, they didn't even have electricity or running water. my grandpa tells me stories about it all the time.

who knows maybe she'll hire a nanny to help instead of buying a brand new car. maybe she'll hire one of those scary illegal aliens and really be a threat to America. to bad gitmo's closed. (note: sarcasm)

this is ridiculous and I am going to bed

Heritage

What precisely is heritage? For many, their heritage, is a source of pride or sometimes shame, but mine is a source of complete consternation. I have no heritage and no people group who will take me into their fold as I am. I am isolated and I am not uncommon. If not for my past, I would surely have just claimed to be American and send myself into the cool media embrace of my somewhat native country. Three things hold me from this course. My America will not allow me to be that which my blood, conflicted as it is, calls at me to be. It wants me sterilized and with out opinion. Second, I am as much African as I am American (or was), but I cannot be of African in this country, Africa nurtured me, held me, I am not black. If you don’t believe me imagine a white looking kid telling people he is an African American artist. I did just that in a African American art history class as an undergrad. That was a fun day! Finally, I cannot be American because what it is to be American, in the sense of history, is gone in favor of clinging desperately to the pseudo cultured and refined Europe of today. This last part really makes me sad.
I loved john Wayne. Do the right thing to hell with the consequences! Reminds me of Christ in some weird way I have yet to figure out. But this desire for conformity, to a culture that seems devoid of moral “grit” is upsetting and traumatic to those of us who believe that right is not a point of view nor is it negotiable. We in America hold free and transparent elections. They are not perfect but we choose the direction of our country. This is a rare gift even in today’s world, and it breaks my heart that we would cling to others opinions and our privilege when others suffer and our oppressed. Thousands of people died in Liberia during years of civil war. They starved, they pleaded for help for our government. Meanwhile, pundits debated on air, for salary, whether the country was worth saving. Whether the people were worth saving. They said cost in money, troops, resources, how long would it take?
We landed a handful of marines, around 200 and ended a fourteen year civil war in a day. Now Liberia just has to disarm the thousands of kids running around with no education out side of war. We did not help with that part. But, to be fair, after months of debate we ended the war. We should have done it sooner.
People suffer and are scared all over the world. We can, and given our abilities, as a nation help, and must.
So again what precisely is heritage? Mine is confused and made up of a lot of not American, and our nation’s is in peril.

rites of passage

Are there any grown people anymore? Our modern cultures have rid themselves of most all rites of passage. This is not a good thing. Such rites give individuals a sense of who they are and who they are in relation to others. Think about wolves. Pups are, for rather obvious reasons, are not allowed to go on hunts with the rest of the pack until they are the proper age. At that time, the pup goes to the hunt and becomes a fully fledged member of the pack. Now look at the American culture. When is a boy supposed to be a man or a girl a woman? Most people never have the experience of becoming an adult, and therefore we suffer for it. Many meander in an endless uncertainty and self doubt. (There are some exceptions.) Even the military has rites of passage. After a grueling boot camp recruits become army soldiers or marines in a ceremony in their honor. Look at the Native American vision quests. A person went off into the wilds with nothing to find the purpose for their lives and the answers to their questions. Not to mention a guiding force. Thing is, one was not supposed to return until you had your vision. It could be a couple days. It could be months. The Massai people of Africa send their young people, desiring to be warriors, out and away form the village for an entire year to survive on their own. These rites test ones will, internal strength, character, psychical endurance, and intelligence, and they are necessary for a person. Even Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days fasting and praying. He confronted the devil with his temptations and won before he began his three year ministry. The Buddha had his time as well when he was sheltered from the storm by the cobra. In short, we should not hope to make a difference if we dare not test ourselves because we cannot succeed if we are never tested, and if we know we are safe and secure from failure, we are not truly tested.

in response to a question

Meditation relates to art the same way that violence, depression, joy, sex, fear, and love relate to art. People’s art is always a reflection of something in them. Early people were awed by the power of great beasts and so depicted them. They also portrayed pregnant women a thing which ensured the continuance of their species and represented the wonder of the creation of life, something people have always been fascinated by. (It was not early pornography as one of my old roommates believed. At least I hope it was not just about large breasts or my opinion of our species may drop a bit) They portrayed creatures that died so that they could live, and kept charms and relics to try to obtain the power of the animal. They were enraptured by the things that allowed survival in a very brutal and difficult world. Calm meditations have also been an important part in the life of all peoples, and it will be reflected in their art or in the process of making the art. No where is this more evident than in the older East Asian ink paintings. Many of their works were meditations both in the creation process and in the subject matter. Plum and cherry blossoms, sedate old grove forests, mountains with waterfalls. tigers and cranes. Grace and power. Beauty and death. Rebirth and violence. Stillness at the edge of movement. And, the kami, the soul and God. If not these things, what do we ponder? With the exception of some commissioned works (perhaps not even there) artists find a way to represent what is important in their lives one way of another. Some have shown the horrors of war while others created images that lend to a calm meditative state to be observed at anytime, and still others create images out of their unconscious brought to light by dreams or deep meditative states, and to many other things to list.

pseudo spirit

Art and the realm of the spirit have always been connected. Many art objects have operated as spiritual focus points and were made too be such. Such art objects would be used in religious rites and ceremonies, or for the purposes of healing, communing with other spirits, foretelling the future, acting as wards to keep evil spirits at bay, and to attain the power of other spirits among other uses. Several of the tribes and cultures of the American southwest made incredibly elaborate sand paintings to heal the ill. These works took tremendous amounts of time and energy only to be wiped away for the sake of said ailed person. The gothic gargoyles and many totems (not really meaning pacific northwest) were meant to drive off demonic beings and warn spiritually dangerous places.
People all around the world made necklaces of things like bear or lion claws not only to show off their individual courage in taking the animals but also to gain some of their power as well. The best example for this I can think of is the Norse berserker warriors. (where we get the term going berserk) These men would put on the skin of a wolf or bear and become possessed by the animal’s spirit for fighting in war. One can observe the same phenomenon in several Native American cultures, especially among some of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. For certain rites and rituals the craftsmen would construct very creative masks, very stylized and formalized, of the heads of different animals of importance like the bear. Impressively some of these masks could be opened up by the dancer wearing the mask in order to show another elaborately carved, often human, face. Once the dancer or shaman was fully adorned the person would either symbolically play the part of the animal or spirit and the performance is like a prayer, or the dancer actually (tribe dependant) become said creature or become an avatar for the spirit of the animal.
In rites such as these, we see some of the earliest and most earnest forms of performance art. Even the simple dream-catcher is a charm meant to have an impact on our spiritual affairs. By catching some dreams and letting others go by into our minds they affect us. Drums used for ceremony would be decorated and demon masks carved out of wood served ritual roles in West Africa (where I grew up) a place where little if any piece of art was made without some blessing or curse bestowed upon it. This is the reason why I become discouraged with many people crafting things to look like objects made by shamans because they look cool while disregarding or not believing in the spiritual consequences of such pieces. Artworks such as those mentioned should not be approached frivolously their spiritual power is inseparable from their beauty. At the end of the day it reminds me of the way people treat bible stories.