Mingus Believes in Love and Freedom

I feel like I'm trapped in a cage, even though I'm (finally!) Outside, tucked back behind the air conditioner where no one, especially not Luco - no will find me.

Well, I guess MR with her camera found me, but then she's always been somewhat of a pest, so I'm used to it.

I'm not sure. I don't really know how I feel, actually, after reading Luco's blog post.

What? Did he think I wouldn't see it? Does he think I don't read his blog? I've got to read his blog, even if just to know when he's going to be cranky (I kinda read more to see when he's not going to be cranky, as that state of affairs is far rarer).

And what do I find? This, like, love letter. To me.

He's not kidding - we've been living together for eight years. I mean, if anyone in my life has ever known me, it's him.

So I'm confused.

And then there's these court cases about Prop 8 and DOMA and I feel like my brain has become loose in my skull when I realize that you people, you humans, you're still not sure whether you want to grant all-every of you rights? What?

This is a topic of debate?

Granted I'm a cat. Okay? Fine. You can say what you will about the intellectual prowess of your feline brethren, but it doesn't take much (any?) reasoning power to see that denying anybody the rights to commit to the person they love is backwards, self-righteous, cruel, stupid, absurd.

I understand some people are locked behind their own assumptions of what other people's love lives should look like, but so what? Then don't look, silly, or ask yourself this: what gives me authority over other people?

This question feels like it wiggles out of my control when I think about it too deeply. What gives me authority? Nothing.

Again, yeah, I'm a cat, but still, I'm a thinking, reasoning, feeling creature, just like you, and who am I or who are you to believe we have some kind of insight into how other people should run their lives? It's ludicrous, especially when it comes from people who say otherwise they want the government out out out out out of their lives and god's love in in in in in in the heart of humanity.

But they'll take government control, please, when the government is on their side, taking freedom from people they believe ought to be shackled for not conforming to expectations.
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Literally, probably, shackled and led away by rolling red and blue lights. And what is this idiocy about gay parents being unfit? Parents who love and care for their children are good parents, regardless of their sexuality. If kids have anything to do with anyone's sex life (except conception, I guess), then something is seriously wrong - so if homophobic people are concerned about gay parents and kids, I find that rather alarming.

Also alarming to me is that some parents teach their kids to hate. Why in a world so fraught, so wracked by violence, would anyone ever want to teach a child to continue this tradition? It makes the world less safe for that child in a fundamental way.

Why destroy beauty? Why ever, ever do anything to diminish complexity?

All of this just makes me want to stay back here, back behind the air conditioner, until the whole world wakes up sane one day. Maybe. When we can regard each other as something closer to equals.

I'm not suggesting, really, not honestly, that you'll ever look a cat in the face and say "sister," but still. Sister or brother or family or whatever. I use sister because it was my default to say brother and I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying to fight against these kinds of assumptions we all have about who and what we value. And why.

Because assumptions and expectations take away from our lives. They diminish us by narrowing our worlds into easy-to-understand-cartoons. The thing is, life is nothing if not complicated, and so why should we ever strive to make it easy to understand? Depleting complexity depletes beauty. Makes life less lived, less real.

I am nothing if not confounded by Luco, that old bully. Loving me? And the ways I love him?

But anyway, it makes sense, you know, that children want to understand the world. That they want categories of people: the good guys, the bad guys (the good gals, the bad gals) - but we do us and them a disservice when we fall into this way of thinking (so comfortable) when we know better. I mean, honestly, I know kids who know better - who see that this binary kind of thinking can only be dishonest.

I am only me because you are you. This world is possible because you are. Because I am. Because together we reach and we strain and we work at understanding and compassion.

We have to start working harder.

Start working to convince those lost that ideology is not real. Your thoughts, beliefs, feelings - these things are as ephemeral as the dust on your book shelf. Roll it between two fingers, fine, but then blow it off. Look into the sky. Tell someone you love what you see in the clouds. What shapes dragon forth. What melodies you hear in the wind.

You and I and everyone, we are ephemeral as well, we are evanescent, but less so than our beliefs, thank gravity, because your hand on my paw sends neurons firing.

And Luco's eyes following me light my senses.

We mistake belief for fact and then kill for it. We maim and terrify, mutilate and murder. How can any idea pursued to this end be seen as logical? If you start at contempt and end at hate and aggression, how can you ever convince yourself you're spreading "god's love?" What kind of god would condone treating each other the way we do?

Oh, sad, slippery slope. I'm reminded of how we treat the poor and the needy, the homeless and downtrodden, the bereft and vulnerable - the people most deserving of our care seem never to receive it.

Why did I get up today? What is this butterflying in my stupid, sad heart? Oh, Luco, of course I love you.

Of course I do. And I've always believed in love and in freedom. In compassion and understanding as a means of bridging gaps. 

Jump from your heart to mine. Stay still and dream as I do. Know you are as much me as I am myself, as I know I am as you as you are. So, therefore, how could we ever separate? How not love? 

And, therefore, the homophobic poison themselves as much as they do anyone else when they march, strident, against the future. Against freedom and against love.

Because they suffer, confused about reality, they spread suffering. They confuse belief for Truth and so falter. It is our work to show them the truths - the pluralities. The many ways in which lives can be made full and rich. 

And so we must fight the impulse to poison them back. We must instead embrace them as we embrace each other. We are them are us are they are all.

  And so we must love.

(Click on the link above and watch the video from the Anti-Defamation League - it's really, really great.)