happiness is self-motivated too

It felt powerful to speak, to agree with others that my life indeed had been a flaming horrible fucked up mess but I was better now, seemed stable and actually was. Enough to hold up a life, strong enough to carry a job; firm and rooted enough to want to. Still, wish I had said something louder and more often about my own dark times before I knew a person whose death was self motivated.

Kudos to whoever came up with that one, folks are like “We need a better name for suicide, how about self-motivated death?” What a good way to look committed in the end. To help us feel better perhaps, though as callous as it is to discuss a life lived and ended, suicide remains a self motivated act. It is a decision. Wrong or right, it's motivated by a self. Today, we had a good LA Bi Center event and took a moment to light some candles in front of a picture of T, a valued member who killed himself almost 2 weeks ago. Only a few weeks after we had planned today’s party with him taking the notes, even though he said he wouldn’t be making the event. T ‘s minutes usually got emailed after our meetings, and we forgot who was supposed to do what, or bring what and it was kind of funny because we'd been so focused on operating tactics and leadership, the seemingly "important" stuff. Then T was dead and there were no minutes, written or otherwise from him.

Today we planned a bit for the upcoming year, after taking a moment to pass around literature about mental health/suicide resources and share a bit. I felt a powerful grace being able to share the utter despair I had seen and blinked furious tears past. How come I forgot to talk more targeted and specific, how come I’ve not been writing the sad and only focusing on the funny, why did I not ever aim for both? Even the Wii agrees, my balance sucks. I wish I had said something more to the weird funny guy who always seemed out of place with the out of placers. The guy who brought me a bumper sticker, “Sorry I missed church I was practicing Witchcraft and becoming a Lesbian!” The guy whose stories I looked forward to, a person I hoped to get to know better. But not so much.

As we met and mixed this rainy afternoon, the candles burned the wax down. Then the candles lit afire and I smiled and giggled at the flames. Turns out you don’t toss water on a candle fire! After the smoke, coughing and giant ball of fire, we were exhilarated and so excited, TO BE ALIVE. And...I could swear I heard T’s lil belly laugh that was one part snarky and one part adorable. Candles out and his framed photo remained pristine, a snapshot in front of ancient ruins on a recent trip where he had told me...”I was so happy there, it changed my life and now I am so happy; I just want to be there all the time but I can't”. At the time I felt selfish for not wanting him to move, 'cause I thought he was really cool and quite frankly the most enjoyable member of the LA Bisexual community...so I just went, “Well, it's always nice to have a favorite place to visit right”? Unfortunately, you just can't visit suicide.

Packing?
National Hopeline Network (U.S.A.) - http://www.hopeline.com - 1-800-SUICIDE
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network – http://www.rainn.org - 1-800-656-HOPE
Source: To Write Love On Her Arms, http://www.twloha.com/

RIP J.G. Ballard

Empire of the Sun is my all-time favorite film. Saw it in the theaters when it came out and it kinda saved my life and led to my ambition as a writer. My childhood wasn't the best, but Ballard made me think I could process it and expand childhood tragedy beyond what happened to me. Anyways, RIP JG!

No Justice, No Peace: Jena, LA

To me No Justice, No Peace is pretty basic. Without justice, we live without peace. We want peace, we wish for true justice.

Recently a gross miscarriage of justice has come to light, Jana, LA.

The article below is pretty self-explanatory.

What you can do right now to express your support:
Join the Facebook
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/5977

Sign the petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/petition-sign.cgi?aZ51CqmR

Beating Charges Split La. Town Along Racial Lines

All Things Considered, July 30, 2007 · As at hundreds of other high schools across America, black and white students at Jena High School in Jena, La., rarely sit together. The white students gather under a big shade tree in the courtyard, while black students congregate near the auditorium.

But last year, a few days into the first semester, a new student, a freshman African American, asked the principal at an assembly, if he, too, could sit under the tree. He was told he could sit anywhere he liked.

Three white boys on the rodeo team apparently disagreed. The next morning, there were three nooses hanging from the shade tree in the courtyard.

Anthony Jackson is one of two black teachers at Jena High School. He laughs ruefully, as he recalls watching the nooses swaying in the tree.

"I jokingly said to another teacher, 'One's for you, one's for me. Who's the other one for?'"

Many in Jena's black community wanted the three white students expelled. But when the white superintendent and other school administrators investigated, they decided the nooses were a prank. Instead of expulsion or arrest, the three received in-school suspension.

Blacks called the punishment a double standard.

"White students can do things and receive a slap on the hand," Jackson says. But authorities "want to throw the book at blacks," he adds.

An Incident Escalates

A few of the black athletes, the stars of the football team, took the lead in resisting. The day after the nooses were hung, they reportedly organized a silent protest under the tree.

The school called an assembly and summoned the police and the district attorney. Black students sat on one side, whites on the other. District Attorney Reed Walters warned the students he could be their friend or their worst enemy. He lifted his fountain pen and said, "With one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear."

That evening, black students told their parents that the DA was looking right at them. Walters denies that. Billy Fowler, a member of the school board, doesn't believe it, either.

"He said some pretty strong things," says Fowler, "but I don't think he was directing it to anyone in particular. I think he just wanted people to calm it down."

But things didn't calm down. Some whites felt triumphant; some blacks were resentful. Fights began to break out at the high school. But that year, the football team was having an unusually good season and the black athletes were a major reason why. So while there were fights throughout the fall, nobody wanted to take any action that would hurt the team.

When the season was over, so was the truce. On Nov. 30, somebody burned down Jena High. Whites thought blacks were responsible, blacks thought the opposite.

Charges and Public Outrage

The next night, 16-year-old Robert Bailey and a few black friends tried to enter a party attended mostly by whites. When Bailey got inside, he was attacked and beaten. The next day, tensions escalated at a local convenience store. Bailey exchanged words with a white student who had been at the party. The white boy ran back to his truck and pulled out a pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran after him and wrestled him for the gun.

After some scuffling, Bailey and his friends took the gun away and brought it home. Bailey was eventually charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who pulled the weapon was not charged at all.

The following Monday, Dec.4, a white student named Justin Barker was loudly bragging to friends in the school hallway that Robert Bailey had been whipped by a white man on Friday night. When Barker walked into the courtyard, he was attacked by a group of black students. The first punch knocked Barker out and he was kicked several times in the head. But the injuries turned out to be superficial. Barker was examined by doctors and released; he went out to a social function later that evening.

Six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated assault. But District Attorney Reed Walters increased the charges to attempted second-degree murder. That provoked a storm of black outrage.

"Jena has always been a racist town," says Bailey's mother, Caseptla Bailey. "We've understood that….It has been that way since I've lived here."

But school board member Billy Fowler disagrees.

As far as racial problems, our community is no different than any other community," Fowler says.

Fowler is one of the few leaders with the school administration or local law enforcement willing to talk to the media. The principal, the school superintendent and the district attorney all declined repeated calls for comment.

Fowler says he is appalled at reports by outside media outlets that he claims portray Jena as a racist community. But he and many other white leaders agree that the charges are unfair.

"I think it's safe to say some punishment has not been passed out fairly and evenly," Fowler says. "I think probably blacks may have gotten a little tougher discipline through the years.

"Our town is not a bunch of bigots. They're Christian, law-abiding citizens that wouldn't mistreat anybody."

But the black students and their families feel mistreated. The first to go to court was Mychal Bell, the team's star running and defensive back. Bell's court-appointed lawyer refused to mount any defense at all, instead resting his case immediately after two days of government presentation. An all-white jury found Bell guilty.

A talented athlete, Bell had a real shot at a Division I football scholarship. He now faces up to 22 years in prison. The other five black students await trial on attempted murder charges.

Over the weekend, Jena High School had the big shade tree in the courtyard chopped into firewood.

Animator and Japanese internment vet passes

IWAO Takamoto, the animator who created the cartoon dogs Scooby-Doo and Muttley and directed the classic film Charlotte's Web has died. He was 81.

Mr Takamoto, who began learning his craft in an American internment camp during the Second World War, died of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angles on Monday, Gary Miereanu, a spokesman for Warner Bros Animation, said yesterday.

In a career spanning more than six decades, Mr Takamoto helped to design some of the biggest animated films and television shows, including Cinderella, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp and The Flintstones.