Climaxed: celebrate

Friday, July 8, 2022

Molotovs > Fireworks

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 4 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

How do you celebrate the 4th of July?

It was submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

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I've answered this question before in a way, but that time I made it more or less about hating fireworks and having trauma related to my dad getting drunk and my parents fighting every holiday and especially the 4th because it's my mom's birthday. And that still remains true. Im not really big on the holiday at the best of times..

But I'll be honest here, what the fuck is there to celebrate anyway? Fascism? Loss of rights? Being terrified to be an out queer person for the first time in a fucking long time? No healthcare? Ignoring a pandemic? Essentially sending people to work in a pandemic to keep the capitalism train moving and then also removing access to free tests and vaccines? A president who won't even say the word abortion or at least didn't for his first 2 years in office much less have a real plan to address it? A president who, on the way roe was overturned and knowing it was coming like we all did, had plans to appoint a lifetime federal judge position to an extreme antiabortion Republican? A country that will make Juneteenth a federal holiday but won't let people talk about the implications of racism on this country's foundation and its presence in our system to children in history classes? A country who will give more rights to guns than people? A country that cares about the lives of babies unless they're shot to death in school classrooms? A country that will make every excuse possible for a police to kill an unarmed person especially ESPECIALLY if they're a person of color?

I guess it would be a lot easier to celebrate the birth of this nation if it wasnt so hard for those of us who live here and have been othered in it. If it didn't carry a risk of discrimination and death just for looking or being different. If it didn't mean old fucking losers with too much power didn't feel entitled to keep the poor begging for scraps and the othered to die with nothing. It would be so much easier to pop off some fireworks if Democrats didn't somehow hinge their 50 years of failures on Bernie once again or Susan Sarandon or those of us who ever vocally criticize one of their politicians....you know the same party that paid for ads for an NRA A-rated, pro life democrat in Texas in no danger of losing their seat the day after children were gunned down in a school while the police (which Democrats gladly keep over funding) stood by in the same fucking state.

Fuck this country. There's nothing here to celebrate.

Whenever this country slides further into fascism, so many people always share that quote that says "don't fall into despair. Let this radicalize you." But somehow that means vote for the same people who never gave a shit about you to begin with and share bullshit meaningless memes. I'm sorry but in an oligarchy, voting is never a radical act. It's the very least you could possibly do.

Celebrate what?

A country still deeply in the throws of Satanic Panic and antisemitism? That still falls for conspiracies build on the foundation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which we know was made up entirely to excuse antisemitism? A country so caught up in fear, exploitation, and the art of the grift that a man could spiral so far down the rabbit whole in a couple months that he became willing to kill his own children with a spearfishing gun? That could look his 10 month old in the face and think that was the best he could do for that child?

A leftist spectrum that thinks making a Facebook profile named Lenin Bussy Marx and sharing low quality memes is praxis? The ones who have 392 comment threads on Twitter arguing about what a 200 years dead white dude would think about a grifting YouTuber who made millions passing off propaganda about the Syrian civil war? The same leftists who think any country that isn't the U.S. is fine and good no matter what they're doing to their own people?

And the worst thing of all is that we aren't actively attempting to address ANY of it.

Will I celebrate? Do I?

No thanks. I'll be sleeping in and watching Scooby Doo and everything else can go fuck itself.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Sunday Confessions: Celebrate

This week's confessions topic with More than Cheese and Beer is "celebrate."

Everywhere I look in my life there are reasons to celebrate.

From the beauty of the scenery around me here in this small, quiet town

to my rockin' son to my pets and my record collection, I find fulfillment. There’s a reason why the people with the dirtiest, hardest jobs, the ones down on their luck, even the homeless can smile through it all or be thankful over the smallest gestures of kindness. We’ve learned the importance of celebrating the little things in life. Since I can’t afford to fill any voids in my life with material possessions that help me escape any emptiness I feel, sunsets take on new meaning. Each one may look the same to others, but when my everyday life is a struggle, those cloud shapes and splashes of color take on a beauty that leaves me breathless and fulfilled and at peace.

When I’ve had a long week, walking outside to quacking ducks that love the sound of my voice and respond to it by waddling up to my feet and loudly professing their adoration makes me celebrate the work I put into raising them from downy babies that loved to tread water in my sink to fully grown adults.

Celebration is listening to my sweet old dog and my adoring niece snore in sync during their daily nap hugged up together like "best friends" as I fall asleep beside them victorious in squeezing in an extra hour of sleep.

The first cherry tomatoes of the season growing rounder and fuller then finally turning a bright red is reason to celebrate especially after that first one is picked and popped in my mouth right in the garden rows, delicious juices threatening to spill from my lips because I can't contain my grin.

I can celebrate a hard life lived in spite of obstacles by delicately slipping one of my dad's old records or one I have added to the collection myself from its cover, place it slowly on the player, and carefully and lovingly lowering the needle in place. The cracks and pops feel the hollows of the room just before the songs kick on and it is everything.

When times are their hardest, the gorgeous views around me, the love of my many, many (17 in all) pets, the sound of crickets at night, the evenings spent playing air guitar and sharing tunes with my child can all be reasons to celebrate my life when the obvious reasons seem to elude me. I've learned to stop obsessing about where I should be and celebrate where I am right now in the moment. It truly is the little things in life that bring me peace...every day I find new reasons to keep living and to do it with a smile on my face and a fullness in my spirit. It's that tenacity that will keep me going and working and striving to better myself despite every time I have been knocked down. I may be financially poor and struggling, but I have a life that begs to be celebrated and I will gladly give in. I am rich despite my financial woes. I am strong in the face of the adversities that have threatened so often even from childhood to hold me back, and that will always be reason to celebrate.

celebrate these with me: