Staying Human

I was still in a daze after my mother’s death in October. For some reason I expected my life to go back to normal after her passing — but there is no normal. The election results were a sucker-punch I was mildly/numbly expecting. I had hope! I had hope!

The first time around — I created a challenge for myself called American Sentence. I wrote 108 17-syllable sentences (haiku) over a period of 108 days just to remind myself that beauty in humanity persists. It helped.

I’m doing it again. I’m not stopping at 108 posts – and – I may use different poetic forms as well.

Painting, writing, singing, playing, teaching — the things that inspire love, kindness, and connectedness are imperative to survival. Creativity and love are the things that make me want to live! And I am here to thrive.

The original American Sentence began in February 2017 – I wrote this:

sen·tence
ˈsen(t)əns/
noun
1.
a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.

2.
the punishment assigned to a defendant found guilty by a court, or fixed by law for a particular offense.
“her husband is serving a three-year sentence for fraud”
synonyms:
judgment, ruling, decision, verdict, punishment

verb
1.
declare the punishment decided for (an offender).
“ten army officers were sentenced to death”
synonyms:
pass judgment on, punish, convict; condemn, doom
“they were sentenced to death”

What is an American Sentence? Haiku, reinvented by beat poet Allen Ginsberg, it’s a seventeen-syllable sentence.

For example, I wrote this 17-syllable sentence when I was trying to comprehend the fact that Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America :

When I think about America today – man, like I have no words.

I never imagined in my worst nightmares Donald Trump would become President of the United States. I’m amazed that a three-time-divorced-six-time-bankrupt-possible-pedophile-rapist-racist-con-man who can barely string a comprehensible sentence together is President of the United States. It’s devastating to me as a woman that half of America thinks that’s ok. Just saying his name is a trigger for me.

As time goes on with America in the time of Trump, I see that the gift of his presidency is the exposure of wrongness within our political system. Exposure needed to happen. (On both sides, too. The DNC and the electoral college both proved to be corrupt as well – it should have been Sanders – not Clinton – vs. Trump).

What does it mean to be American? I’ve wondered that my whole life. As a kid, I didn’t fit in, and realized pretty early on, I didn’t want to fit in. I wasn’t into conforming, and my interpretation of the Constitution was that it was my right not to conform.

When I was 11 years-old, the principal of my school told me I would have an easier life if I “stopped striving for excellence and just looked pretty, sat down, and stayed quiet – after all – the world caters to the lowest common denominator. It’s too bad that smart kids get left out.” His advice to me has been cowardly, lazy, systematic advice to my generation – and it’s only gotten worse! (Look what we have ended up with)!

A cult of ignorance is the sentence to America for 30+ years of catering to the lowest common denominator.

The American Sentence Project is proving to be a small step in honoring my own humanity as I navigate my own life and the implications of so much corruption in American politics. (updated February 5th, 2019)