It's All About The Feathers

Friends.  They're love, they're support, they're intertwined with happiness and hope and all things positive and trustworthy in life.  They may be family, or they may be those you've actively chosen as family, you may have contactly with them daily, or weekly, or sometimes only sporatically, but they're a needed, heartwarming, necessary part of life.  The ones that are true friends, you have for a lifetime.  No matter how far away you travel from each other, even if circumstances create long periods of time without contact, you're still close when you see each other or speak again.  Those are the best kind. 

Friendship is a relationship though, and like all relationships, it takes work.  It's easy to be there for the good times, the happy moments ... but what about the difficult times?  I'm not referring to listening to venting about a bad day or crazy boss.  I'm talking about major stressful unfortunate life-changing occurrences, that you may not understand or even agree with.  How do you stay friends, stay close, trusting, communicative friends, in those circumstances?  It may require opening one's mindset to alternate views of life and how it could or should be lived.  It may require doing a bit of homework on one's own to gain understanding of what the other person is physically and/or mentally going through.  It could even require a level of patience and listening, even forcing them to be aware that you're there through calls or texts or emails or stopping by .. to the point that you've never had to employ with any other person for any reason.  What if that level of patience and understanding and open-mindedness to things that you don't understand or agree with was needed for weeks, or possibly even months?  Could you keep it up?  Could you continue to be as close as possible to that person?  Is friendship, true friendship, worth that level of long-term effort?

Everyone's answer will probably lie in which side of that equation they're on.  In any situation, unless you're actually faced with it, there's no way to truly know how you'd act .. or react.  I myself wonder how easy it would be to stick with a sympathetic, open-minded mindset on all things, if faced with something I didn't agree with or understand happening to someone that, under all other circumstances, I hold dear.  On the other side of the equation, I can say that those who truly attempt to reach out and stick around without judgement and with an extra shoulder handy, despite my tendency to react to a stressful life situation by attempting to become a hermit, are loved, trusted and appreciated more than they'll ever realize or I'll ever be able to voice.  Friendship.  It appears in many forms and there are all levels of it.  I suppose both sides of it simply boil down to someone's purpose for having it, and if it means enough to you to fight for it .... whichever side of the equation you happen to be on.


~ The Girl In The Little Black Dress

The Eyewall ..........

 A couple months ago I published a blog entitled "The Storm" (http://whywhereforewhat.blogspot.com/2011/12/storm.html).  Current circumstances are requiring revisitation, or rather, elaboration on that particular train of thought ...

The eye of a hurricane can be quite lovely and both awe and fear inspiring.  To bask in wonderful sunshine with rippling water and a slight gentle wind, completely surrounded by a towering mass of seemingly impenetrable clouds .... the only problem is which area of the cloud bank to brave in an effort to get to the other side of the storm.  Any direction you choose will be a swift and terrifying change in atmosphere where maximum force winds that whip the sea and sky into a frenzy rein.  The harshest area of exit from that eye would definitely be the right front quadrant, where the fullest extent of fury in winds, rain, waves, and subsequent storm surge are an unavoidable reality.  The question then arises, how does one determine which direction is that harshest quadrant to be avoided, if one is existing inside the eye? 

Life and the universe in which it exists seem to have ways of making that choice for you.  Sometimes they send you through the lower intensity eyewalls, where the winds aren't as strong and the waves not as ferocious, even though it may not seem so at the time ... and sometimes they send you directly through the heart of the monster.  Testing every ability you have to endure, to exist, to survive.  Traveling through the worst case scenario doesn't necessarily end when you reach land on the other side of the storm if the surge was completely devestating .... so many layers and facets that one may feel completely submerged even after your feet hit terra firma.

The fact of the matter is, though, all storms are of finite proportions, no matter how large, ferocious, and havoc wreaking they may seem.  Keeping your head above water and actively reaching that land mass ... sorting through the debris and making sense of the destruction surrounding you ... it is possible to reach that calm ocean, sunny sky, starlit night & sense of clear air order on the other side of that storm....

Back to swimming .................


~ The Girl In The Little Black Dress

The Protections Of An Actual Democracy

There are some people who need to take a good, long, difficult look at themselves and their own lives, before they open their mouths to speak. 

The catalyst behind this particular post is a certain Republican spout-off, whom I shall not name (except for in the tags).  Let's start with a fact that I've stated before, we live in a country where everyone is absolutely entitled to their own opinion and may vocalize it without fear of repercussion.  That applies to you, to me, to this particular person of whom I speak.  However, to throw out opinions as facts, into the media, when no research into the issue other than one's own side has obviously been explored, is ... overstepping at best.  In this particular case, someone who has spent his career accusing and ostracizing others, while, in many cases, doing the exact same thing that he speaks out against himself .... Seriously, those who live in glass houses...

The following are my thoughts on the subject.  Again, they're My Thoughts, which I'm allowed to voice and am afforded that right under the same Constitution that allows the human I speak of to voice his!

If you're going to declare hard-line right wing family values and call someone a "slut" for using birth control, don't have 3 divorces, cheat on your wives, & live in seperate houses while you're married.

If you're going to talk about the "poverty line" as something you understand, you probably shouldn't have grown up in a well-off politically-endowed midwestern family, and make $45M per year.

If you're going to spout un-ending hardline support for the military through a voice that's emphatically against anything non-military, you shouldn't have used a loophole to stay out of the draft when your number came up during the Vietnam War.

If you're going to damn anyone who suffers with an addiction, you shouldn't have been addicted to prescription drugs and busted for illegally purchasing them yourself.

Basically it boils down to this, everyone is absolutely, unequivocably entitled to voice their own opinion, but if you're going to voice it, then it's better to be able to back it up with your own life, or at least be sensitive to the other side (that you may have been on). 
Actions  Speak  Louder  Than  Words.


~ The Girl In The Little Black Dress