the art of disappearing...

This was sent to me by a dear friend just a moment ago, and I think it's worth sharing:

The Art of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

i'll write about something new next time, promise...

As a further (and final!) posting about the New Jersey court ruling made earlier this week, I offer the NY Times editorial from the Saturday edition, that comments on the Republican response to the court's decision.

The final paragraph is worth quoting here:

Mr. Bush and his faithful acolytes seem perfectly willing to stoke fears that create division and sorrow in a country that doesn’t need any more of either. The president has just a little more than two years left in office. You’d think that for once he’d want to consider devoting his time to making things better instead of worse.

Amen to that.

i hate to say "i told you so"...

If you read my entry from yesterday I invite you to peruse this article from today's NY Times. A preview: the headline reads "G.O.P. Moves Fast to Reignite Issue of Gay Marriage".

Here we go again...

pink states?

Yesterday New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled that gay civil unions (the actual term 'marriage' has not been ruled on) will grant all the rights and benefits of heterosexual civil unions to "committed same-sex couples". See the New York Times for the complete story.

What is particularly amazing about this ruling is that both Democrat and Republican justices voted in favour of granting equal rights to gay couples, and in a nuanced decision demonstrated that sober and just lawmaking has not totally vanished from the legalistic wasteland of the US court system.

Our own legislators on Parliament Hill would do well to study this ruling if only to see what is possible when an honest appraisal is made on a "rights question" and conclusions are drawn in the best possible spirit of the law.

The sad truth, as I think most of us have come to realize, is that detractors of same-sex unions (or "marriage" if the more loaded term is to be dropped into the mix), aren't really exclusively concerned with saving marriage. In fact, between 2002 and 2003 there was a marked reduction in the total number of marriages in Canada and this was before any same-sex couples had rights to the altar ceremony. Only after same-sex marriages started to become legalized in certain provinces did the total number of marriages start to climb again, seeing a 6000 marriage increase between 2003 and 2005. Of course about half of those were same-sex couples, but as in so many other areas (think interior decorating, personal grooming, and luxury coffee sipping), the gays led the way back to the good life and did their part to ensure marriage didn't die off in Canada. We just don't get the credit we deserve sometimes...

No, it's become pretty clear that the ultimate goal of the more radical members of the anti-gay-marriage camp is to eliminate all elements of homosexuality in their narrowly conceived 'ideal' society. The recently leaked "Defense of Religions Act," albeit in partial draft form, attests to this in its alleged defense of individuals who advocate the death of homosexuals on religious grounds. And honestly...that's just not nice.

It's a truism that gay marriage has become the most potent 'wedge issue' to be deployed by what is typically referred to as the 'far right' since abortion became a high-profile question of social morality. I'm not so naive as to believe that all the courts in the world could end the brimstone and hellfire braying of the ideologically blinded elements in our increasingly impoverished political discourse. No, with the old script in hand I can already turn the page and read the next few lines: "the activist judges are at it again, sticking their nose in something that doesn't concern them one bit; the liberal media conspires once again with the fringe left; a perverse and corrupting force will poison the minds of our children; the end of society is upon us; etc."

I wonder who these people, those who fight tooth-and-nail to keep homosexuals and many other minorities outside of their cherished institutions, hope to save and to what end? If children are better raised by parents who participate in the major institutions of society, and individuals only find greater meaning for their lives through a genuine civic franchise as full and unqualified members of society, and if violent acts are most often committed by groups that have been systematically disenfranchised, then why in whatever God's name you believe in would you actively seek to segregate social institutions, create different and unequal categories of citizenship, and violently disenfranchise whole segments of society in the supposed service of the greater good? Whose greater good, if not society's?

We've become very complacent about our own political and social state of affairs after years of mindlessly bashing the big bad Americans and clucking our tongues in the self-congratulatory chorus of "I am Canadian". Well, guess what, next to New Jersey we're starting to look pretty backwater.

currently reading...

Deborah Campbell's This Heated Place is a superb snapshot of the state of affairs in the most hotly contested state on Earth, Israel. A fine and sensitive look at a perplexing and hyper-consequential set of realities through the eyes of an outsider trying to make sense of a place not known for rational exchanges. If not a "must read" then at least a "should read".

and the inevitable editorial cartoon...(thx jk!)

he was such a nice boy, i don't know where we went wrong...

You would think a Foreign Affairs Minister, accustomed to delicate international situations and subtle yet loaded communication, would bring home a little of that travel-won experience and comport himself with a bit of tact and, dare we ask, class. You would think, but apparently...

hope springs eternal...

It's happening.

can you clarify that statement?

Iggy set off a firestorm in recent days over his controversial comments on war crimes on both sides of the recent Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon. If he has a proven habit of putting his foot in it at just the wrong time, well, there was another politician with a similar need to show off his supreme sense of bad taste and poor timing, yes our great leader, Stephen Harper, also got into the action. Oy vey.

When the Conservatives aren't defending Canadians against the corrupting force of minority rights they take a bit of time out to make unfounded and inflammatory remarks about an entire party, who just happen to be the Official Opposition, by wading into one of the most difficult issues in international politics, namely the relationship between Israel and the rest of the Middle East.

Both sides have engaged in spin and re-spin, a few of the other Liberal leadership hopefuls have weighed in (Bob Rae's wife and family are Jewish -- I guess nobody briefed the PM on that one), and the whole issue has, in a further twist, become a chance for Ignatieff to clarify his position on the war in Iraq. Umm...

We now have a hubris-filled minority government, strutting about the halls of power as though granted a clear mandate, which by its very definition a "minority government" does not have. And in the other corner are the Liberals, a party in transition to something more coherent (we hope), but still plagued by many of the old gaffes that led to their fall in the first place.

While this whole affair begins to spend itself, and the initial shock cools, the Harper Conservatives continue to press their irresponsible and insulting domestic agenda designed to sell out Canada's environment, natural resources, minority rights and equality-based social safety net.

I remember a little over a year ago when politics in Ottawa was more soap opera than substance, a drama full of betrayals, courtships and nail-biting votes won or lost on the strength of one little "yea" or "nay". Those days are passed. The stakes are VERY high now, and sadly I'm not sure there are many players left who understand the meaning of "peace, order and good government" or the real responsibility to LEAD, something utterly needed if Canada is to keep from slipping into the oblivion of the ranks of unimpressive middle-powers by becoming a handmaid to reactionary foreign policy while ignoring the mess in our own back yard.

I'm waiting for the miracle to come...