Getting Lost

Calmer today..though the weather isn't. Tree surgeons over time bonanza week...
Read yesterday's rant. Anger does not give me clarity. I need to step back...feel where this anger is really coming from, try and hold on to myself before the red mist descends. Why do I get so worked up about injustice...unfairness, suffering...? Because I take it all personally. I am a disappointed and jaded idealist...which I think is where all cynics begin...
Understood a bit more today - now the shell is cracked open after all these years, of course I feel exposed and raw.... Still clinging onto the anger a bit , but I see it more clearly. My therapist had me drawing today which helped me to visualise the anger cycle...and where it needs to be broken, and she wants me to do some drawings as part of my therapy for next week...which have in turn inspired me to design a new tattoo...it would be the right time and thing to do when I'm ready as it would be a ritual and permanent mark of this painful process and a reminder for ever. Being a good mother to myself...so something based on the images of motherhood most redolent to me ...Our Lady of Guadalupe and the voudon deity Oshun,...as she is often depicted as a water snake ...which I have always wanted to get done anyway....and her stories are so appropriate for me...the voudon dancing queen weeping because no one can ever love her enough and the world is never as beautiful as she knows it could be. Mother to all the weak and suffering..will stick a picture of her up here to inspire.....
The dark arrows of comparison and self hatred still pierce and must be pulled out....the wounds allowed to heal...
I have decided to go to New York for my birthday, look up some projects and people I used to be in touch with..still need to sort Brazil out first...
I have been invited out ...the utopian peanut brain from last night will be there though...and they will all have been drinking since 6pm...should I, can I be feckin arsed ?

I got into an argument in the pub tonight, something I have been careful to avoid for several years. But this woman was the most annoying kind of aggressive, ill informed, snotty, liberal-we- can- all -join- hands- and- save- the- world- with- our- lovely- tie-dyed- head-dresses- idiot who took offence to my brief analysis of this country being in many ways worse off than it was 20 years ago. She defended her hopelessly naive rainbow tinted views,in her braying home counties accent, despite the fact that she has obviously never had to have these idealistic illusions challenged by having to work at the sharp end of an inner city education system for the past two decades.
Irritatingly nor was she even feckin old enough to remember the eighties and the fighting for rights and survival that went on...for what ?
So that everyone had the right to accrue huge personal debt, end up with bad teeth, be forced to give up more and more freedoms...and be watched 24/7 on CCTV ?
She has been safely tucked up here in the leafy green, not even remotely diverse, backwaters where the sharp end of poverty and multi-culturalism with all its worse excesses and manipulations has never had to be faced close up and personal...
I thought I had left a lot of the anger and frustration at some of the things I have witnessed and tried to challenge behind :-enforced female genital circumcision still commonplace in British backstreets, pieceworkers kept at their sewing machines by being forcibly controlled by heroin addiction, disabled children locked in cellars, bride burnings, honour killings, child trafficking....kids who have been carrying AK47s in forced militias thrown into failing inner city schools alongside kids from other warring factions......endless stories of mismanagement and worse. Though to me it was a learning curve and not all bad, often the humour and humanity shone through, but she didn't even want to acknowledge the shit that goes on !
It is the denial of problems for fear of offending...this is the real racism to me and failure to protect and serve everyone equally for fear of offending - in any given area - the minority majority, the vociferous and powerful within a politically useful community.
It is obvious that if you place individuals from exiled communities into areas with economic deprivation and scant resources there will be cultural and social ramifications and jockeying for status...
Divide and rule, it was always the number one strategy at maintaining the stranglehold of the top 12 percenters. To ignore the problems truly creates ghettoes, where services can be limited to create the right conditions for hopeless crime, then we can justify more cameras and more and more repressive and racist laws.
I became a teacher because I believe in education, in broadening minds, in empowerment and in real equality,not patronising tokenism and double standards.
It is a complex issue and not at all easy to address and I don't pretend to know the solutions. I have merely witnessed and reported what I have seen...and been threatened many times as a result.
I have often been accused of racism...by the same men who tried to burn the english books I was using to teach their wives.
You name it I have been called it, but my conscience is clear.
I have tried to help anyone who came to me as a student or relative of a student and wanted to escape an abusive situation, because basically I hate any sort of bigotted bullying, and will defend anyone's fundamental human rights regardless of what their culture or religion may dictate.
I have my own opinions based on personal experience. I believe I am entitled to them.
But No! - again I was told I was negative... How could I face life, believing that things aren't changing for the better ? That the people will not overcome and fly rainbow flags across the global village ?
How could I hold such a harsh view of the world ?
I apparently made this person get "quite cross". I wonder how cross she would be giving evidence in court about child rape by a religious and community leader ?
I do not regard facing reality as being negative. I accept that we all are capable of everything...I won't judge, but I will challenge.
I accept there is part of me on a personal crusade to save the hurt child in me (I see that for what it is, and never promise more than I can give within the parameters of my role or assume any of it is about ME ) but that is probably what motivates a lot of people, who have compassion for the underdog...whoever they may be in any given situation....
I understand there is always a big picture, and sometimes steaming in with uninformed best intentions can be a disaster. We need to be working with each other honestly without things which at the moment we can not say, books we can not read, cartoons we can not look at..., communities must evolve from within..but that means everyone in a community..not seperate communities within communities........asking ourselves hard questions...challenging apathy and not accepting too much that is wrong and unhealthy.
I am sad I let someone wind me up so much...and it proves that I am still a wee bit emotionally fragile !!!! and possibly spending too much time alone out the in the woods......I am losing my ...never particularly developed...social skills....and feeling isolated from all I used to be and know...
Thank goodness it is therapy day tomorrow.......