A DIFFERENT DIRECTION. It’s where we find the path headed home when we are far away from anything safe. It is where we turn when we want to find new ground, higher ground, better ground. It is the very choice that is often obscured from our vision until all the others vanish.
THIS STORM is unfolding as it will, and we are yet to see how it will end. The electricity feels threatening at times. But here is a chance, now, finally to talk about the things we need to talk about. Which means the chance to make real change.
I NURTURE A SUDDEN AND UNREASONABLE HOPE that we can institute behavior incompatible with the larger and more destructive behaviors of our culture as well as cast off the illusion that makes so many give up before they might have a chance to start.
IT IS AS LARGE A FEAT for Liberals to be liberal in their thinking as it is for Conservatives. However, it is not a failing of Conservatism to refuse this challenge. On the other hand, it is a failing of Liberalism if a Liberal becomes too wed to their thoughts, the arrangement of same, and their approach to changing that arrangement.
WE KNEW THAT THERE WOULD BE a faction of people so wed to their own racist thought patterns they would be incapable of dealing with the fact that a non-white person was president of the US. I guess I thought they’d be a bit more honest about it.
THE NEW YEAR RUSHES UPON US with momentum born of crisis and necessity. In every direction one looks, change is needed—and not cosmetic alteration, but deep, structural repair. The issue of immigration is no exception.
EPISODE DOS of this new vloglicious conversation wherein Nezua finishes talking about the changes which see us into 2009 here at The Unapologetic Mexican blog. Much delicious coffee went into the making of this video, and probably should be sipped while watching. It wouldn’t hurt.
THE UMX BLOG will see changes in 2009, and though you don’t know it, we have begun already! I’d talk allll about it, but in an effort to reduce the amount of words I type each day to around 500,000 or less, I will not introduce or explain this video except to say it is one of many that will be featured here in the coming year and that it will be followed up in a couple days with Episode 2.
KEVIN: The Cross Road has been on my mind lately. Not because I feel that our President-Elect, Barack Obama, is at The Cross Road in the sense of selling his soul to become President, or that he is “out alone after dark” in his new role as leader of the United States. Both possibilities are there, to be sure, but that is not what concerns me now…
ELLE, PHD: I expected to cry if Barack Obama won the election—everyone who knows me expected me to cry. I even had friends who called and said, “Are you crying yet?” Admittedly, I dashed away a few tears, but I didn’t really cry. The joy I felt was overshadowed by worry. And why am I letting it get to me?
MATTTBASTARD: Does it make me feel proud to see someone who reflects my biracial identity at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation? Sure—but what Barack Obama’s victory most represents to me is “an opportunity.” The margins of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ have been redefined. This ain’t about the man—never was.
BLACKAMAZON: Not another going back till that ship on that sea woman rocking now fatherless children. Not another beautiful “strong black woman” punished by loneliness for loving a man trying to be good. Not another group of brothers in tears kicking themselves because they FELL FOR IT THIS TIME AGAIN. That they believed that this time work would pay off. We prayed for it, chanted lit candles, and it seems like it snuck up on us…
IT’S BEEN A LONG, INTENSE ELECTION YEAR. And just as after the primaries ended, at this point I feel the need to center myself. To calm, to restore, to reorient and mostly to withdraw a bit from the online activity and conversation, at least for a brief moment. Enough to mark a pause or a divide.
WE HAVE AMAZING STORES OF POWER within us. Stores of energy; of psychic, spiritual, and mental energy. That’s why we can heal ourselves and sicken ourselves and others around us. Obama is not perfect, but from what I see, he believes in orienting upon the restorative, constructive, and healing properties of that energy. And anyone who does this has my attention.
A LINE OF THOUGHT going around today is the idea that while we all want change badly and see this election as heralding or potentiating important change, we are the ones who have to bring this about. And not just by participating in politics, but every day, in many ways.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
