Practicum complete. It hit me harder than expected at the end of last week. Plenty of possible reasons. Biggest, I think, was "this was supposed to be a pathway to a Real Job and it was instead a dead end," and there's not anything I can do about that. So that set off ... not really a full-blown depressive episode, I don't think. A sort of low-key moodiness. Days later I'm still sad that it couldn't work out but not overwhelmingly so.
On Friday I returned to Whistler for the fifth(!) and final round on my tattoo. I'm quite happy with it. It's larger and brighter than I'd expected it to be, but I'm okay with that. And it does look good. Red maple on the outside of the calf, aspen on the inside, both in full fall foliage, with a kudzu vine twining around the leg. This last session finished up the maple and a couple of last kudzu leaves. It hurt like hell for a couple of days; now it's just itchy. And a bit startling, whenever I look down.
After some thought I'm anxious about going to Niagara, but I'm not, for the most part, scared. I'm angry, and it's easy for that to sink into, well, depressive fatalism, because there's not anything I can do about it. I try to talk to folks who can keep my perspective grounded in reality. That seems to help somewhat.
I feel like the horrific ICE news stories are radicalizing me in a similar fashion to Abu Ghraib twenty-one years ago. I'm mostly okay with that. Just need to figure out a useful way to point it this time.
There's a bit in The Good Place where Chidi tells Eleanor about the idea that toddler-mentality is (I'm paraphrasing, probably badly) "me not you" and a more mature line of thought is "us not them". I feel like the great lefty/progressive project is to move beyond even that, to break down the divide of 'them'.
Six years ago a fellow named Frank Wilhoit
coined a phrase that's been called Wilhoit's Law:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. This pithy expression wasn't the point of his comment; that was a later bit, that I've been thinking on a lot lately.
The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.Tomorrow I wrap up a homework assignment, do a bunch of dishes, pack, and then head out for nearly two weeks. I'm gonna miss Mr Tuppert. He's been mostly friendly and affectionate the past couple of days.
Perhaps I'll have some answers when I come back.
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jazzfish
