Taking a minute to write. Something I haven’t done in a while. I worked 25 hours in on Saturday/Sunday. Might pull the same thing again tomorrow. Work comes in waves it seems. Just the way I like it. I had been remembering fondly my days working on the fish processor boats in Alaska. We would work all day every day for months, and then be set free with a large check to explore the world, or support our families. Some people think I am crazy for liking that sort of work, but I do. For one it is work. Like real honest work, and something of value is actually being produced. I have always been confused by people’s fear of work. Maybe because “labor” is so poorly paid. I was just saying a month ago, that if I could take my kid onto a fish processor boat in Alaska, that is what I would do.
When I work 30, 40, or even 25 hours a week for someone else, then go home and love my child and my garden, there is little time for me to work on my own creativity - writing, video, music, etc. My mind is dominated by a job. If my mind is already going to be dominated by a job (i.e. be a slave to it), I would much rather just be a “worker” full tilt every day all day and then get paid and go on my way, have my days back to do the things I want to do. I find it sad that so many people go through their life never really sure what they want to do…since we spend it working at a job or looking for a job.
I got a job on a farm. My daughter hangs out on the farm with the kids of the farm owners and the ponies and goats, and dogs…you get the picture. I do that 40-50 hours a week over 4 days. I don’t have to use my creativity or brain-power to make someone rich. The farm-owners pay 160% of the going rate for the workers (cause they are self-proclaimed socialists who shy away from buying machines to replace humans and play great music). My mind is free to have its own thoughts as I work (and I have jotted some amazing stuff down during my long hours). I may have to sell my body to make a life for my daughter and I but at least I don’t have to sell my mind. And I have always found labor work environments so much more tolerable and lively than the average office.
I also am partnered with a couple non-profits, both for whom I work about 6.5 hours a week for- admin, desktop publishing and video. So I work about 13 hours a week outside of the farm job. These jobs feel good. The farm job will last a two or three more weeks. Then the harvesting will be mostly over. I will be able to buy a bass amp, some clothes, pay off the credit cards, rethink my blog, join (physically) the Occupy Movement with my daughter (there’s talk of renting an RV at the farm), take my disabled mom (who lives off $850 a month) on a wonderful trip somewhere beautiful, and Ramona will finally get to meet her dad in Costa Rica.
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Monday, October 17, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Handouts
I feel like I won the sweepstakes. But really I just signed on and waited. Tomorrow, I go in for my appointment with HUD to do paperwork that should lead to my being issued a voucher to help me pay for rent. Section 8, now called the Housing Choice Voucher Program. I spent over three and a half years on the list. I actually applied over 4 years ago, but didn’t get my update form in on time (5 minutes late) so was bumped of the list and had to reapply. Don’t most of our tax dollars going to terrorizing and bullying the world anyway?
I got the letter weeks ago, but my intake appointment was of course weeks later. That way us “clients” can collect all our paperwork (and there is a lot of documentation to collect). I am surprised at the feelings I have gone through over the weeks about this. I was surprised at how I felt like I should keep it a secret, like it was something to be ashamed of…you know with all this anger about fair shares of taxes. Am I paying my fair share? Is there such thing as a fair share? And if so, who decides? And why should taxes be fair when everything else isn’t? Aren’t taxes our remedy for our unjust system anyway?
What is fair? Does fair even exist? Is being born into poverty fair? I mean, I like who I am, and what would I be like were I not born poor? Would I like myself then? More or less? Poverty isn’t the thing I would change, would I? The unfairness in my childhood is mostly fine with me now, though it wasn’t then. What I did learn is that it was the interactions with people that affected me, that’s what I would have changed. I would have chosen a different dad, probably. I would have wanted my mother to spend more time with me. But if she had spent more time with me, would my relationship with my daughter as an adult have changed? Would I be so determined to give my daughter the love, compassion, consideration that I desperately wanted as a child? Or was it actually the poverty that robbed me of the love, compassion and consideration? Isn’t it poverty that forced my mother to destroy her body through hard work as a low-wage slave? Isn’t it poverty that forced her to choose between giving her children enough time, or giving up her passion (Art). Isn’t it poverty that drove her to the brink of insanity over and over again? So was it fair we were impoverished? Or was it just punishment for having a mother with the audacity to raise children absent of a breadwinning male head-of-household? And should I be punished as well? Hmmm, Some would say, “YES, I should be punished” but they’re generally the same people who would tell me I couldn’t have had an abortion if I wanted one.
Okay, stop thinking about those crazies. I am ecstatic…just when I thought single-motherhood in America was about the gut me. I will be able to rent a two-bedroom place for 1/3 of my income…in northern California none-the-less. The idea of not having that huge bill to contend with has opened up so many possibilities to me. One is entrepreneurship. I won’t work for the stockholders and the upper crust. So I have non-profits and myself left to work for. Having a small job that I do from home has taught me that this is what I want. I want to work from home. I don’t want to dress up to impress others. I need to be me. I want to throw out my work clothes. Since my teaching job is out for the summer in 4 weeks, and I should be moving around then…I have all summer to recreate myself. I get to take risks because I won’t be paralyzed by the fear of not being able to pay rent. Untrapped. I get to be an asset to society again.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
A New Narrative for a Single Mother
I wrote a blog post and published it for just 20 minutes before I deleted it. Too personal I said. I had written the disconnection of my life, all the way down to my daughter, and all about privilege (and when I write about that, I even irritate myself). Maybe it wasn’t that is was too personal, but really that I feel just slightly ashamed. Maybe a little afraid that some well-meaning person would give me a bit of superficial advice or worse they wouldn’t give me advice, just think they knew the answers to my problems.
Forget that, now I am writing a new post. It’s true, the feeling disconnected. It’s this disconnect from my self which makes me feel disconnected from life. Just going through the motions, my Self sitting inside wondering when and if she will be able to come out. The constant whirl and worry about my new home. I can tell myself what to think and I can think it, but I have to relocate, I have less than three weeks, I am at a lack for money to give me many options, I have a child and possessions (something I never had to worry about until the child) and those thoughts, worries, never seem to give me rest. Though I can make myself think what I want, it doesn’t seem that I can NOT think things that I don’t want. Will I find a place? Should I have taken that place last month that wasn’t ideal? Did I miss my chance? Are we going to loose everything?…It is exhausting. Its survival.
Yesterday, feeling the thinning connection from my daughter and fearing loosing some of it permanently, I decided to take a little outing, so we heading to the Cheese Factory by the lake to feed the ducks and geese. I was half-way to Bodega before I realized that I have taken the wrong road, but of course wrong is relative and we were really on the right road as we continued our way to the beach just past Bodega. I couldn’t believe how nice it was, this January afternoon was more agreeable than some “summer” afternoons on the Northern California Coast. Ramona, who often balks at the idea of the beach (due to the freezing weather and long car rides) was having a hey day, running barefoot, exploring driftwood buildings, sea dragon nests, making grass tacos for the seagulls.
She came to life, I came to life, the constant nagging drown out by the sound of the layers of waves beating on the shore and on themselves. Drown out but still there. But I felt a sense of connection that I had been missing. For many I know, connection is found in the midst of old friends, there they are grounded. My old friend is the Earth. I grew up an oddity in a world of constantly changing faces and towns, unfamiliar and mostly unwelcoming. But everywhere I went I always could count on nature to ground me, be honest with me and receive me, to allow me to be breathe freely and express myself.
The Earth, my old friend, its landscapes welcome me. I feel comfortable, connected, revitalized. I remember it is the world of people that confuses me. It is the power of nature that awes me: the complexity and simplicity that exist at once, the permanency. This trip to the beach reconnects me with my Self and I begin to understand my anxiety. Sometimes I forget that even though the narrative is already written, I am a writer as well and I can write my own narrative. The narrative that I grew up with was my mother’s. Though I am in many ways like my mother in my inability to engage with society on its terms and need for introspection and creativity, I don’t have to struggle to the death. “Anything is possible” IS a load of crap, but if I believe another world is possible, so is another narrative. I am not doomed to be the impoverished struggling single mom…forever. Or the working single mom who lives on stress and doesn't get to see her baby like she longs too. Or the resentful single mom who feels her child took away her life. Victimized... When I entered single motherhood, I did it with a determination not to live by the rules of our society that are bestowed upon single mothers and find a way to make our lives wonderful. Single motherhood in itself is breaking the rules of the Status Quo and for this single mothers are punished (just look at the statistics).
I became a mother for love. We play the hand we are dealt, but love is a wild card. Love has inspired me to be more, not become a cog for the sake of stability, but play the game like a shark.
Disconnection with my daughter had stemmed from my lack of inspiration as I fumbled around in the land of worry. Letting the Capitalist Machine we call an economy run my life sucks the inspiration from me, including the inspiration to inspire, teach, create with and mentor my daughter. We have just been hanging in the same room. Once in a while a painful realization that we aren’t engaging like I am used to tumbles over me and I tenderly reach over for a hug and a kiss, reminding myself that it won’t remain this way.
But today I seem to have lost the drive to struggle and worry and take too much action. I can’t look for a home like I was. There are only so many places to look. The remedy for despair is action, but sometimes too much action can be overwhelming too. Sometimes we need to let go and let things happen, navigate what the universe hands us. To be vigilant while understanding that sometimes it isn’t going to be your action and worry that are going to get things done, and whatever happens to you could be the best thing that could happen. Just for today I am letting go…
Forget that, now I am writing a new post. It’s true, the feeling disconnected. It’s this disconnect from my self which makes me feel disconnected from life. Just going through the motions, my Self sitting inside wondering when and if she will be able to come out. The constant whirl and worry about my new home. I can tell myself what to think and I can think it, but I have to relocate, I have less than three weeks, I am at a lack for money to give me many options, I have a child and possessions (something I never had to worry about until the child) and those thoughts, worries, never seem to give me rest. Though I can make myself think what I want, it doesn’t seem that I can NOT think things that I don’t want. Will I find a place? Should I have taken that place last month that wasn’t ideal? Did I miss my chance? Are we going to loose everything?…It is exhausting. Its survival.
Yesterday, feeling the thinning connection from my daughter and fearing loosing some of it permanently, I decided to take a little outing, so we heading to the Cheese Factory by the lake to feed the ducks and geese. I was half-way to Bodega before I realized that I have taken the wrong road, but of course wrong is relative and we were really on the right road as we continued our way to the beach just past Bodega. I couldn’t believe how nice it was, this January afternoon was more agreeable than some “summer” afternoons on the Northern California Coast. Ramona, who often balks at the idea of the beach (due to the freezing weather and long car rides) was having a hey day, running barefoot, exploring driftwood buildings, sea dragon nests, making grass tacos for the seagulls.
She came to life, I came to life, the constant nagging drown out by the sound of the layers of waves beating on the shore and on themselves. Drown out but still there. But I felt a sense of connection that I had been missing. For many I know, connection is found in the midst of old friends, there they are grounded. My old friend is the Earth. I grew up an oddity in a world of constantly changing faces and towns, unfamiliar and mostly unwelcoming. But everywhere I went I always could count on nature to ground me, be honest with me and receive me, to allow me to be breathe freely and express myself.
The Earth, my old friend, its landscapes welcome me. I feel comfortable, connected, revitalized. I remember it is the world of people that confuses me. It is the power of nature that awes me: the complexity and simplicity that exist at once, the permanency. This trip to the beach reconnects me with my Self and I begin to understand my anxiety. Sometimes I forget that even though the narrative is already written, I am a writer as well and I can write my own narrative. The narrative that I grew up with was my mother’s. Though I am in many ways like my mother in my inability to engage with society on its terms and need for introspection and creativity, I don’t have to struggle to the death. “Anything is possible” IS a load of crap, but if I believe another world is possible, so is another narrative. I am not doomed to be the impoverished struggling single mom…forever. Or the working single mom who lives on stress and doesn't get to see her baby like she longs too. Or the resentful single mom who feels her child took away her life. Victimized... When I entered single motherhood, I did it with a determination not to live by the rules of our society that are bestowed upon single mothers and find a way to make our lives wonderful. Single motherhood in itself is breaking the rules of the Status Quo and for this single mothers are punished (just look at the statistics).
I became a mother for love. We play the hand we are dealt, but love is a wild card. Love has inspired me to be more, not become a cog for the sake of stability, but play the game like a shark.
Disconnection with my daughter had stemmed from my lack of inspiration as I fumbled around in the land of worry. Letting the Capitalist Machine we call an economy run my life sucks the inspiration from me, including the inspiration to inspire, teach, create with and mentor my daughter. We have just been hanging in the same room. Once in a while a painful realization that we aren’t engaging like I am used to tumbles over me and I tenderly reach over for a hug and a kiss, reminding myself that it won’t remain this way.
But today I seem to have lost the drive to struggle and worry and take too much action. I can’t look for a home like I was. There are only so many places to look. The remedy for despair is action, but sometimes too much action can be overwhelming too. Sometimes we need to let go and let things happen, navigate what the universe hands us. To be vigilant while understanding that sometimes it isn’t going to be your action and worry that are going to get things done, and whatever happens to you could be the best thing that could happen. Just for today I am letting go…
Monday, December 20, 2010
Big Change...Lost in (my crowed head) space
Things have changed so much since I last wrote. I remember starting writing a few blog posts, but can’t remember what they were about. The word of the month here is change.
A couple weeks ago the landlord told us he was gonna stop by to have a chat with us…my mother had been having a hard time paying the rent due to being disabled and her disability check being $189 dollars a week. So I ran outside and started straightening up our seriously getting out of hand lawn, frantically chopping down all the mini-trees that had begun to grow out of all the roots of all the blastedly shady trees in our yard. Finally I heard my mom pounding on the window to get me to come in. The landlord was already there and he had seen me trying to pretend we take good care of the yard. But really he didn’t care. The truth is that the landlord had a new family and wants to live in his house. So that is it. We move. I never thought it would feel humiliating, but it does somehow. He is the lord of the land, I am a lowly single mom who owns nothing…but I won’t get into that. We have to move.
The truth is that I have been dying to move. Somehow this house represents to me a string on failures. We had tried to create an artistic/political space here, with art and a fair trade shop. A way to circumvent the fragmentation of life that we practice in this culture by working, mothering and living all at the same time. Not many people were interested in coming…or maybe we are just too weird. Fail. I had tried to build family outside of the traditional male-lead nuclear family, but my mother just isn’t built for family/community. I should have known that. Of her three kids, I was the oldest when I moved out of the house at the age of16. Fail.
But as I set out to search for a new place, I realize how odd of a person I am and wonder if I can find a comfortable place for myself. I don’t’ want to live with 20 year olds, I don’t want to live with druggies or alcoholics, but it seems that the majority of the rest of folks around here, especially other folks with kids, live in these incredibly oppressive homes. Where everything sparkles and everything is new. I live with 20-year-old pans and tattered towels, and they in fact comfort me. I live with art and crafts projects spread across my living room floor for days. They keep me feeling human. But they also make me tend to want to not invite folks over. Because when I visit other people, it doesn't seem like anyone is lke that. Is Petaluma just one big suburban hell, rather than the village I suspected? I feel nervous inviting people into my house. They might think I am poor. I am poor, but they might think that poor is bad. They might feel sorry for me.
This all brings to the forefront of my psyche my real fear of this world…the fear of domesticity and all of the consumerism that entails. The fear of the a-political, passionless, beingone of those people who just watch the word collapse and chastise you if you want to talk about it...after all how can you worry about politics and all the people dying over there so we can live over here when you have to not only work, but buy all this new crap from Target and scrub the house everyday? So I don’t know what to do or where to go. Sometimes I want to run away to the city, where more “freaks” reside, where there might be a little less domestification, more aggressiveness, political debates, rock and roll music, passion. But also less space, higher rent, more cars, less nature…sometimes I think I will just disappear into my art and writing.
Ramona loves Petaluma. I like it too, in some ways. We'll stay here for now. I have the childcare subsidy and the jobs, two things that are essential in an economy like this. And Ramona is sad enough as it is to move from her house and her Abuela…
I had been planning to move in the summer, away from my mom…who makes my life less happy. But not now! Not when I have slipped into debt. Not when my mother can’t take care of herself (I am not even sure she wants to take care of herself). But it is now. So the search has begun. And once I secure a place, I will start working on my plan to run away for the summer.
A couple weeks ago the landlord told us he was gonna stop by to have a chat with us…my mother had been having a hard time paying the rent due to being disabled and her disability check being $189 dollars a week. So I ran outside and started straightening up our seriously getting out of hand lawn, frantically chopping down all the mini-trees that had begun to grow out of all the roots of all the blastedly shady trees in our yard. Finally I heard my mom pounding on the window to get me to come in. The landlord was already there and he had seen me trying to pretend we take good care of the yard. But really he didn’t care. The truth is that the landlord had a new family and wants to live in his house. So that is it. We move. I never thought it would feel humiliating, but it does somehow. He is the lord of the land, I am a lowly single mom who owns nothing…but I won’t get into that. We have to move.
The truth is that I have been dying to move. Somehow this house represents to me a string on failures. We had tried to create an artistic/political space here, with art and a fair trade shop. A way to circumvent the fragmentation of life that we practice in this culture by working, mothering and living all at the same time. Not many people were interested in coming…or maybe we are just too weird. Fail. I had tried to build family outside of the traditional male-lead nuclear family, but my mother just isn’t built for family/community. I should have known that. Of her three kids, I was the oldest when I moved out of the house at the age of16. Fail.
But as I set out to search for a new place, I realize how odd of a person I am and wonder if I can find a comfortable place for myself. I don’t’ want to live with 20 year olds, I don’t want to live with druggies or alcoholics, but it seems that the majority of the rest of folks around here, especially other folks with kids, live in these incredibly oppressive homes. Where everything sparkles and everything is new. I live with 20-year-old pans and tattered towels, and they in fact comfort me. I live with art and crafts projects spread across my living room floor for days. They keep me feeling human. But they also make me tend to want to not invite folks over. Because when I visit other people, it doesn't seem like anyone is lke that. Is Petaluma just one big suburban hell, rather than the village I suspected? I feel nervous inviting people into my house. They might think I am poor. I am poor, but they might think that poor is bad. They might feel sorry for me.
This all brings to the forefront of my psyche my real fear of this world…the fear of domesticity and all of the consumerism that entails. The fear of the a-political, passionless, beingone of those people who just watch the word collapse and chastise you if you want to talk about it...after all how can you worry about politics and all the people dying over there so we can live over here when you have to not only work, but buy all this new crap from Target and scrub the house everyday? So I don’t know what to do or where to go. Sometimes I want to run away to the city, where more “freaks” reside, where there might be a little less domestification, more aggressiveness, political debates, rock and roll music, passion. But also less space, higher rent, more cars, less nature…sometimes I think I will just disappear into my art and writing.
Ramona loves Petaluma. I like it too, in some ways. We'll stay here for now. I have the childcare subsidy and the jobs, two things that are essential in an economy like this. And Ramona is sad enough as it is to move from her house and her Abuela…
I had been planning to move in the summer, away from my mom…who makes my life less happy. But not now! Not when I have slipped into debt. Not when my mother can’t take care of herself (I am not even sure she wants to take care of herself). But it is now. So the search has begun. And once I secure a place, I will start working on my plan to run away for the summer.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Life as Activism
A friend of mine asked on facebook what poverty had done to people. Her mother’s response was:
When we were broke, for many years, we grew our own vegetables, put up food, cooked from scratch, baked bread, went hiking, spent time outdoors, figured out ways to keep going without much money. It made us more resourceful and taught us to really appreciate being better off when that finally happened. But I look back on those days as probably being the happiest of our lives (of course that's partly because you came along then). What wasn't good was not being able to get the medical & dental care we needed and having to sell cherished books to keep the utilities from being turned off.
My friend responded that even though her mother is better off now, some of those things are things she still takes great joy in. Many of the things the she wrote about doing are things that I do now and are also things that are often found to contribute to ones inner sense of happiness. These are also things that decentralize power.
I am “broke.” I know ways to be less “broke”, but this involves seeing my daughter less, putting my creative passions aside and being less involved in my community. I LIKE my life. I grew up in a cage of desperate poverty, but I could also see the cages that money and materialism create for both individuals and society. Growing up in poverty taught me to be resourceful and learn a sense of security that did not come from having money, but in having community; my sense of connection from my creative life; my sense of happiness from within.
The word “poverty” has such negative connotations; it imbues a sense of powerlessness. Sometimes I replace the word with “economically poor.” For those with no resources in community or family, it very well could be powerlessness and poverty. There is dignity in being poor in a community or just to choose to live a simple life. I don’t feel like I live in poverty because my lifestyle has afforded me the privilege to step away from our hegemonic and unjust system, even if only a little bit; taking just a little power from said system and putting it in my hands. I will not accept that as a single mother either have to spend most of my day away from my daughter, leaving others to fill most of her emotional needs or live on welfare, in poverty and powerless.
Money is at the center of our culture; the word revolves around it, and that is what the dominant logic and the media tell us over and over. If you read the news, you would think that the only hope for our future is that “consumers” (what ever happened to citizens?) start spending more. When we didn’t buy enough last Christmas to make our economy grow as much as economists wanted, we were called stingy and scrooges in the media. When we were attacked by terrorists, the president told us we could support our country by shopping. “Shopping Therapy” is actually a real expression! Yes, consumerism is what keeps the system running smoothly, but our system is crumbling as it just isn’t a sustainable model (the rich have known this for decades folks).
Once, I spent a lot of time fighting the system, but I always wondered what would happen if the system I was fighting went away. Or if we were winning the fight. And what exactly were we fighting for? An authentic life? Real productive and fulfilling work? An end to our military terrorism on the world? A rich community life? Equality? Justice? Dignity? It didn’t feel okay to me, to my nature, to work for and perpetuate the capitalist machine by day and yell about it at night.
Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see.” The Zapatistas say, “We are not here to change the world, something that is very difficult, next to impossible. We are here to create a whole new world.” And now as the world economy crumbles, what we are doing (or should be doing) is building a new world in the shell of the old, right where we live. Things will not fundamentally change unless we, the people, change. My idea of revolution is not about changing faces in the great halls of power, but diverting that powering into the hands of regular folks; building from the bottom up, rather than the top down. I find small ways to live my utopia today, in the here and now. What better way to bring about change than to live it? What would the world look like if we took some of the power away from money and institutions and diverted it into creating a sense of community? What would it look like if most of our activities involved no money at all. Our lives and our communities are the most powerful sites of dissent.
A new world is possible, but it won’t happen we don’t live in it. So, I grow vegetables, bake bread, cook from scratch so as to rely less on the industrialized capitalist polluting food system. I buy organic and local to cut out the “coyote” middle men, eat fresh food and saving the pollution involved in shipping. I find creative ways to reuse my trash before I recycle it or throw it away. I share a home because living together is how we build community and…learn to live together. I skip the rat race and instead of sending my daughter to a million enrichment classes a week I enrich our lives by learning kids songs on the guitar or spending a day at the beach with a picnic lunch and my daughter, living and learning together. We wish we knew more kids to share this money free fun with! Maybe these are all small things, but I think it is the small things, those small acts of resistance…added together that can make big changes.
Community service has opened up many opportunities to Ramona and I, such as free tickets to events, free theater classes for Ramona, not to mention the feeling of connectedness. I work a lot, I just choose to try to live a more integrated life and take as much control as possible as to where that energy goes. I work with my daughter, in the garden, distributing posters, cooking, or she plays while I make lesson plans. Sometimes she helps me clean her school which gives me a discount on her tuition. I also do house and pet sitting, and always ask my clients if their pets would appreciate playing with a little girl, thus “work” and life can happen simultaneously even in this culture, like it still does in so many cultures.
I do wish for more money sometimes for things like fixing the growing cavity in my tooth or visiting Ramona's paternal family in Costa Rica. I can’t get Ramona all the cool toys made of “natural materials” that many of her friends and schoolmates get, we settle for the plastic barn at the thrift store. But these are the choices I live with and I do not regret them because I will watch my child grow up, I will not let the capitalist machine drive that wedge between my daughter and I. I can do this without a husband to bring home the bacon.
In closing, I know there are many ways to parent. I know that sometimes mothers are earners and fathers are the nurturers and this causes me to rejoice! I know that the rat race does not affect all families the same. I know that everyone’s contribution to positive change can come from different places. Many children do great in full-time childcare. I wanted to share my activism and what my life means to me, largely because I feel us single parents are pressured to live the victims life in powerlessness. There are other options for single parents. I want to support the idea that we can be a society where we really do help each other out.
When we were broke, for many years, we grew our own vegetables, put up food, cooked from scratch, baked bread, went hiking, spent time outdoors, figured out ways to keep going without much money. It made us more resourceful and taught us to really appreciate being better off when that finally happened. But I look back on those days as probably being the happiest of our lives (of course that's partly because you came along then). What wasn't good was not being able to get the medical & dental care we needed and having to sell cherished books to keep the utilities from being turned off.
My friend responded that even though her mother is better off now, some of those things are things she still takes great joy in. Many of the things the she wrote about doing are things that I do now and are also things that are often found to contribute to ones inner sense of happiness. These are also things that decentralize power.
I am “broke.” I know ways to be less “broke”, but this involves seeing my daughter less, putting my creative passions aside and being less involved in my community. I LIKE my life. I grew up in a cage of desperate poverty, but I could also see the cages that money and materialism create for both individuals and society. Growing up in poverty taught me to be resourceful and learn a sense of security that did not come from having money, but in having community; my sense of connection from my creative life; my sense of happiness from within.
The word “poverty” has such negative connotations; it imbues a sense of powerlessness. Sometimes I replace the word with “economically poor.” For those with no resources in community or family, it very well could be powerlessness and poverty. There is dignity in being poor in a community or just to choose to live a simple life. I don’t feel like I live in poverty because my lifestyle has afforded me the privilege to step away from our hegemonic and unjust system, even if only a little bit; taking just a little power from said system and putting it in my hands. I will not accept that as a single mother either have to spend most of my day away from my daughter, leaving others to fill most of her emotional needs or live on welfare, in poverty and powerless.
Money is at the center of our culture; the word revolves around it, and that is what the dominant logic and the media tell us over and over. If you read the news, you would think that the only hope for our future is that “consumers” (what ever happened to citizens?) start spending more. When we didn’t buy enough last Christmas to make our economy grow as much as economists wanted, we were called stingy and scrooges in the media. When we were attacked by terrorists, the president told us we could support our country by shopping. “Shopping Therapy” is actually a real expression! Yes, consumerism is what keeps the system running smoothly, but our system is crumbling as it just isn’t a sustainable model (the rich have known this for decades folks).
Once, I spent a lot of time fighting the system, but I always wondered what would happen if the system I was fighting went away. Or if we were winning the fight. And what exactly were we fighting for? An authentic life? Real productive and fulfilling work? An end to our military terrorism on the world? A rich community life? Equality? Justice? Dignity? It didn’t feel okay to me, to my nature, to work for and perpetuate the capitalist machine by day and yell about it at night.
Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see.” The Zapatistas say, “We are not here to change the world, something that is very difficult, next to impossible. We are here to create a whole new world.” And now as the world economy crumbles, what we are doing (or should be doing) is building a new world in the shell of the old, right where we live. Things will not fundamentally change unless we, the people, change. My idea of revolution is not about changing faces in the great halls of power, but diverting that powering into the hands of regular folks; building from the bottom up, rather than the top down. I find small ways to live my utopia today, in the here and now. What better way to bring about change than to live it? What would the world look like if we took some of the power away from money and institutions and diverted it into creating a sense of community? What would it look like if most of our activities involved no money at all. Our lives and our communities are the most powerful sites of dissent.
A new world is possible, but it won’t happen we don’t live in it. So, I grow vegetables, bake bread, cook from scratch so as to rely less on the industrialized capitalist polluting food system. I buy organic and local to cut out the “coyote” middle men, eat fresh food and saving the pollution involved in shipping. I find creative ways to reuse my trash before I recycle it or throw it away. I share a home because living together is how we build community and…learn to live together. I skip the rat race and instead of sending my daughter to a million enrichment classes a week I enrich our lives by learning kids songs on the guitar or spending a day at the beach with a picnic lunch and my daughter, living and learning together. We wish we knew more kids to share this money free fun with! Maybe these are all small things, but I think it is the small things, those small acts of resistance…added together that can make big changes.
Community service has opened up many opportunities to Ramona and I, such as free tickets to events, free theater classes for Ramona, not to mention the feeling of connectedness. I work a lot, I just choose to try to live a more integrated life and take as much control as possible as to where that energy goes. I work with my daughter, in the garden, distributing posters, cooking, or she plays while I make lesson plans. Sometimes she helps me clean her school which gives me a discount on her tuition. I also do house and pet sitting, and always ask my clients if their pets would appreciate playing with a little girl, thus “work” and life can happen simultaneously even in this culture, like it still does in so many cultures.
I do wish for more money sometimes for things like fixing the growing cavity in my tooth or visiting Ramona's paternal family in Costa Rica. I can’t get Ramona all the cool toys made of “natural materials” that many of her friends and schoolmates get, we settle for the plastic barn at the thrift store. But these are the choices I live with and I do not regret them because I will watch my child grow up, I will not let the capitalist machine drive that wedge between my daughter and I. I can do this without a husband to bring home the bacon.
In closing, I know there are many ways to parent. I know that sometimes mothers are earners and fathers are the nurturers and this causes me to rejoice! I know that the rat race does not affect all families the same. I know that everyone’s contribution to positive change can come from different places. Many children do great in full-time childcare. I wanted to share my activism and what my life means to me, largely because I feel us single parents are pressured to live the victims life in powerlessness. There are other options for single parents. I want to support the idea that we can be a society where we really do help each other out.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Documentation Obsession
So, I have been applying for a subsidy to help pay for Ramona’s preschool and childcare. I just need to get the paperwork together and I have been accepted. I knew I was going to have to come up with a bunch of documents that would inevitably be MIA, and I did.
I couldn’t find the birth certificate, though I can find her certificate of birth from the hospital, her little footprints, pictures of me giving birth, her social security card and passport (all of which will probably go missing next time I try to find those for some bureaucratic reason). I couldn’t find the form the Dept. of Child Support sent me when they closed our case. The lease that I was holding in my hand a week ago has vanished and I have to get my doctor to fill out a well child form and give vaccination dates. If we don’t vaccinate, I have to have the doctor say that we don’t vaccinate on the form (they can’t just take my word for it even though I am the one who told my doctor when she had her vaccinations, as the doctor is somewhat new to us). AND, I have to take a form into my employer asking if they will fill out a form saying that I work for them and write in the hours that I work! What, a pay stub isn’t sufficient anymore? I feel like a teenager on probation! How incredibly patronizing! All for a little help with paying for childcare?
The common idea is that these programs are here to help those of us who are finding ourselves mired into financial poverty for whatever reason. From what I have noticed they are here to strip us of our dignity and to help us keep our heads just above the water while acclimating folks to a paternal relationship with the government. Welfare programs are used to keep the poor folks with just enough (or not quite enough if you live in California where everything costs more)… otherwise the rich would have a class war on their hands. We often forget how common working class rebellions have been in the past. The Elite (you know, that top 1% that controls over 70% of the wealth in the US), have learned that uprisings are a lot more expensive than welfare and taxes. The large middle-class acts as a buffer between the rich and the poor, and if you couple that with myths such as “the American Dream,” “It’s All the Immigrants Fault” and “Anyone Can Make it with Hard Work,” the poor seem to be confused just enough to not do too much of anything. The poor are either ashamed or angry…am I getting off track?
Anyhow, since I live in a society obsessed with documentation, my mind has flown off the handle. So I realized on Monday that I probably don’t have any of the things I need to get my subsidy and I will be spending some time searching and calling and ordering forms.
After searching the whole house over several times, I call the child support office to please send me a document saying my case is closed. They say I could probably come and pick it up on Friday (the day I was gonna meet with my government subsidy case-worker), IF they can generate it by then. I tell my caseworker that we should wait until I have all the documentation before we meet, so lets cancel our Friday appointment until I do. The Child Support “case-closed” letter comes in the mail on Thursday. Not what they said, but why complain when things work out for the better. So I call my worker and tell the answering machine that we should meet on Friday after-all. A few minutes later when I am looking for the lease that I know I just had the other day, I find the original child-custody form. Less than two hours after it comes in the mail, I find it on ACCIDENT! , After that I go to my employer for the employment verification, then my case-worker calls and says she’s too busy and our meeting ends up getting set back a full week because I wont be available next week when she is.
So I sit down to check out the paperwork packet she sent to get filled out. There is a doctor physical exam paper to fill out. I haven’t figured out why they need it. They only give subsidies to healthy children?…so now I have to ask the doctor to fill out two physical exam forms, one for preschool and one for subsidy. Then there is this paper to fill out that asks me when Ramona sleeps, how long she sleeps, what her personality is like, when and how often she poops, what my family calls urine and so forth. Am I the only one who finds it nerve-wracking that I am asked to write all this personal stuff down to give to someone I don’t know to do god-knows what with? Talk about paternal! Forget Big Brother, more like Big Daddy!
I guess the government is like our dad. Our tough love dad. Sometimes little revealing declarations by judges and the such make their way into the media which most people ignore because they want pretend we are independent and free. In the case of our children, one judge noted during a case with homeschoolers, that a main reason that children are required to go to school is so that somebody (a government worker) needs to keep an eye on the children to make sure that we aren’t harming them. Another judge admitted that it was to make sure children become patriotic, law-abiding citizens (meaning: not rock the boat). When I was in my credentialing program we learned that teachers (again government employees) are required to act “in loco parentis” or “instead of the parent.” “In loco parentis” refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on the functions and responsibilities of a parent as long as it is not considered a violation of their civil liberties. While you would want one caring for your child to care for them as their own (as long as they are good parents), we are talking about the government and its employees. The government has entered into every aspect of our lives only on it’s own terms and the saturation will reach a critical mass soon enough.
Once upon a time we counted on our communities. Those don’t really exist and as well hand over more and more responsibility to a centralized government, out communities become weaker and weaker. Now we pay the police and the pentagon (whether we want to or not) for some illusion of so-called security. Communities used to be the places we lived, worked, and educated ourselves and each other. We got to know each other and we kept our eyes out for each other. Now we work for “some other guy” and/or a bunch of shareholders in some other (post) community and send our kids to an institution for most of their waking lives to be educated and socialized.
Wow, it’s getting late. I could go on and on about the woes of dealing with government bureaucracy, but it really did feel alienating and I really did feel a little ashamed explaining the “work verification” to my employer. The organization treats me like an ungrateful wench for questioning all their excessive demands and I still can’t find my lease.
I couldn’t find the birth certificate, though I can find her certificate of birth from the hospital, her little footprints, pictures of me giving birth, her social security card and passport (all of which will probably go missing next time I try to find those for some bureaucratic reason). I couldn’t find the form the Dept. of Child Support sent me when they closed our case. The lease that I was holding in my hand a week ago has vanished and I have to get my doctor to fill out a well child form and give vaccination dates. If we don’t vaccinate, I have to have the doctor say that we don’t vaccinate on the form (they can’t just take my word for it even though I am the one who told my doctor when she had her vaccinations, as the doctor is somewhat new to us). AND, I have to take a form into my employer asking if they will fill out a form saying that I work for them and write in the hours that I work! What, a pay stub isn’t sufficient anymore? I feel like a teenager on probation! How incredibly patronizing! All for a little help with paying for childcare?
The common idea is that these programs are here to help those of us who are finding ourselves mired into financial poverty for whatever reason. From what I have noticed they are here to strip us of our dignity and to help us keep our heads just above the water while acclimating folks to a paternal relationship with the government. Welfare programs are used to keep the poor folks with just enough (or not quite enough if you live in California where everything costs more)… otherwise the rich would have a class war on their hands. We often forget how common working class rebellions have been in the past. The Elite (you know, that top 1% that controls over 70% of the wealth in the US), have learned that uprisings are a lot more expensive than welfare and taxes. The large middle-class acts as a buffer between the rich and the poor, and if you couple that with myths such as “the American Dream,” “It’s All the Immigrants Fault” and “Anyone Can Make it with Hard Work,” the poor seem to be confused just enough to not do too much of anything. The poor are either ashamed or angry…am I getting off track?
Anyhow, since I live in a society obsessed with documentation, my mind has flown off the handle. So I realized on Monday that I probably don’t have any of the things I need to get my subsidy and I will be spending some time searching and calling and ordering forms.
After searching the whole house over several times, I call the child support office to please send me a document saying my case is closed. They say I could probably come and pick it up on Friday (the day I was gonna meet with my government subsidy case-worker), IF they can generate it by then. I tell my caseworker that we should wait until I have all the documentation before we meet, so lets cancel our Friday appointment until I do. The Child Support “case-closed” letter comes in the mail on Thursday. Not what they said, but why complain when things work out for the better. So I call my worker and tell the answering machine that we should meet on Friday after-all. A few minutes later when I am looking for the lease that I know I just had the other day, I find the original child-custody form. Less than two hours after it comes in the mail, I find it on ACCIDENT! , After that I go to my employer for the employment verification, then my case-worker calls and says she’s too busy and our meeting ends up getting set back a full week because I wont be available next week when she is.
So I sit down to check out the paperwork packet she sent to get filled out. There is a doctor physical exam paper to fill out. I haven’t figured out why they need it. They only give subsidies to healthy children?…so now I have to ask the doctor to fill out two physical exam forms, one for preschool and one for subsidy. Then there is this paper to fill out that asks me when Ramona sleeps, how long she sleeps, what her personality is like, when and how often she poops, what my family calls urine and so forth. Am I the only one who finds it nerve-wracking that I am asked to write all this personal stuff down to give to someone I don’t know to do god-knows what with? Talk about paternal! Forget Big Brother, more like Big Daddy!
I guess the government is like our dad. Our tough love dad. Sometimes little revealing declarations by judges and the such make their way into the media which most people ignore because they want pretend we are independent and free. In the case of our children, one judge noted during a case with homeschoolers, that a main reason that children are required to go to school is so that somebody (a government worker) needs to keep an eye on the children to make sure that we aren’t harming them. Another judge admitted that it was to make sure children become patriotic, law-abiding citizens (meaning: not rock the boat). When I was in my credentialing program we learned that teachers (again government employees) are required to act “in loco parentis” or “instead of the parent.” “In loco parentis” refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on the functions and responsibilities of a parent as long as it is not considered a violation of their civil liberties. While you would want one caring for your child to care for them as their own (as long as they are good parents), we are talking about the government and its employees. The government has entered into every aspect of our lives only on it’s own terms and the saturation will reach a critical mass soon enough.
Once upon a time we counted on our communities. Those don’t really exist and as well hand over more and more responsibility to a centralized government, out communities become weaker and weaker. Now we pay the police and the pentagon (whether we want to or not) for some illusion of so-called security. Communities used to be the places we lived, worked, and educated ourselves and each other. We got to know each other and we kept our eyes out for each other. Now we work for “some other guy” and/or a bunch of shareholders in some other (post) community and send our kids to an institution for most of their waking lives to be educated and socialized.
Wow, it’s getting late. I could go on and on about the woes of dealing with government bureaucracy, but it really did feel alienating and I really did feel a little ashamed explaining the “work verification” to my employer. The organization treats me like an ungrateful wench for questioning all their excessive demands and I still can’t find my lease.
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