I wish you hard and twisty paths,

I wish you days of hard work in the sun,

I wish you struggles and hard times,

I wish for you at least one broken heart,

I wish for you difficult cold winters,

I wish for you hard springs,

where you have to form callouses,

to break the earth and plant your summer crops.

I wish you these things,

because living an easy life,

is not living.

There is no true joy without struggle.

There is nothing to win, when everything is given to you,

There is no greater joy then holding someone close to you,

unless they were not there for awhile.

In sum, I wish you a good life where,

in the autumn of your years,

you are surrounded with love and sunshine,

that you will savor and appreciate more,

for having lived through,

seasons of drought and seasons of rain.

 

© words by Dan DeMarle 2017

Picture outside of Central Park, NYC.

© Dan DeMarle 2017

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Frankly as a man and a person, I don’t know what to say, particularly on social media. If we sat down together you could tell me your unique story or stories and I could listen.  I don’t know what to say,  because saying or posting sorry likely isn’t enough.  And….after a while, sorry just becomes meaningless.  On FB, I could post a sad face, but who am I sad for: you, women in general, the man or men who did this for you, the entire suckiness of our culture that allows this to happen.  On FB, I could post a mad face, because hearing all these stories, really makes me mad and angry, and miserable.   Your pain becomes a small part of my pain.

What I can say, and have said, is that this is simply not acceptable.   Not just the sexual harassment or assault, but the entire way we allow for the commodification of your bodies so someone/s,  some business somewhere, can sell more product and make more money. The way antiquated sex roles are still taught and maintained in our culture.  The way young boys and girls are learning sex roles by watching hard core pornography on their phones, iPods, and tablets, and thinking that this is normal sex. That this is what they are supposed to do, the way they are supposed to act.  That male pleasure is the goal of all sex, and that painful sex is normal.

What we need is to work on  shouting as loud as we can that we are all human first, and that then we have gender, he, she, zhe.  We must treat each other as humans first.  We must teach our children what is normal sex, and what is not normal sex for most people.  We must talk specifically to them about what healthy sex is just as we teach them, hopefully, about what a healthy diet or lifestyle is.  When we are silent, others jump in to sell our children visions of what is normal, so that they can make money.

Lastly we need to stop using the passive voice where the women is the victim, the rape survivor, the victim of assault. We must instead focus on the the active voice, who was the aggressor, who was the assaulter, who was the rapist. Saying how many girls were the victim of rape, makes this a girl problem. Instead we need to talk about how many teens and men committed those acts.  This is not a women problem, this is a men problem.  And yes some women can commit rape as well.  So we must hold those men accountable.

Lastly if I could, I would take you all out for coffee so we could sit, and if you wanted to, you could tell me your own unique story or stories.  Then I could just sit and listen, and you could know that you had been heard.

© words by Dan DeMarle 2017

 

 

 

There were at least 10 really great things that happened yesterday,

not even that far from your front door.

They were truly wonderful,

and would have brought tears to your eyes,

but there was no blood or violence,

there was no one shouting racial slurs,

and there were no crazy politicians

trying to grab the news by its ……

So they never made the news.

If you had been outside walking,

you may have seen at least one of them.

If you were not looking at your screen while driving,

you may have seen another.

If you talked with your neighbor,

they may have told you of 2 more.

If you had walked to your local store,

stead of driving all the way across town,

you would have seen 2 more.

If you had walked into your local school,

you would have seen 2 more.

Then finally,

if you had listened to your child at diner,

stead of refreshing that dam app,

you would have seen at least 2 more.

And those last two,

those last two,

were the sweetest one’s all day.

 

© words and picture by Dan DeMarle 2017

Picture – students at the School of the Arts performing community service pause for a picture in front of the Arnett Library.

 

In one of my favorite 1990s movies, every night Aliens would reconfigure a human city. So one day you could be a beggar and the next a millionaire. One day a mother, the next a woman who never had had children. You would wake up and think this is who you always were.

Our society is socially constructed. Sex roles, racism, culture, are not actual physical things.  They exist because we all collectively believe in them.  There is no physical thing called America. We all just believe in it, and believing in it, we make it exist.  A dollar is just a piece of green paper, no different than Monopoly money.  It has meaning, because we all collectively agree it has worth and how much it is worth. Our culture, our beliefs, even the idea that a dollar bill has money, is passed on.  We pass it on. We pass it on, everyday because each day, we all collectively continue to agree to.  

So imagine if one day, we all collectively agreed that a dollar was only worth half of its worth.  This actually happens somewhat regularly. It’s called inflation, and in severe cases hyperinflation. 

Now Imagine, if tomorow we all just collectively said when we wake up, that this is how the world will be.  That there will be equal rights. That the color of your or my skin will not mean anything. That we will judge everyone by their character and not by their gender, race, or sexual orientation. If we all believed it. Itwould be so.  WE have the power to transform the world. So why don’t we?

copyright by Dan DeMarle 2017

If you want to bring back jobs and “make America Great again”. Here is the simple prescription – stop driving a car, and insist that everyone else do the same thing. Also stop ordering goods online.  It really is that simple.  Why? Because no one wants to walk two miles to get groceries, or baked goods, or shoes.  The above pictures represent some of the sponsors for a booklet published by a neighborhood church in 1935.  Within a 1 mile radius of my house, were multiple shops, stores, bakeries, and businesses.  All of those businesses needed employees. They were in business, because if you don’t have cars, you need nearby businesses.  Due to cars, we don’t need those businesses now, because we just get in our cars and drive.  The reason small businesses and retail outlets are going out of business, is that due to Amazon and other online businesses, we don’t need to drive to shop locally anymore either.  So ordering online is the exact opposite of “making American Great again”.  Shopping locally is a way to make “America Great again.”  It really could be that simple.

• Disclaimer 1: America is great, and always has been. Yes we have our troubles, but we do not need to make it great again.
• Disclaimer 2:  I have not even touched on climate change.

© words by Dan DeMarle 2017

 

As the summer took one last dance step,

And the cool nights of fall began to creep back,

he was lost.

That beautiful black haired, brown skinned boy,

who was almost my second son.

He and that gorgeous smile were no more.

Of course, he was no more that child,

who competed for a seat on my lap when it was time to read.

He was a man, and a good man.

One, I was happy and looking forward to seeing grow into middle age,

As I and his parents grew into, what?

Older adults.

After he passed,

I felt as if a thousand books had closed.

All those images I had locked away,

images of possible futures:

holding his child,

meeting his wife,

attending a wedding,

seeing his children and my grandchildren play together,

all those possible pages,

falling like this year’s leaves,

to the land of never will,

as the ashes and smoke from his cremation,

rose, up to meet them.

.

.

Matthew makes me wish,

From a deep part of what you may call my soul,

that there is a heaven.

So that, I can once again see and hug the strong, good man

he had become.

 

© words by Dan DeMarle 2017