Understanding Bigotry

          Just yesterday I was able to attend, for the first time in my life, the Gay Pride Parade here in my native city. To say that it was heartwarming would be a terrible understatement. It brought me a profound amount of joy to see so many people lined up on both sides of the road cheering on a notion that in so many places in the world is still considered to be evil. There were men, women, children and all people in-between that flocked out by the hundreds (dare I say, thousands) to celebrate the freedom to express your love for anyone. It was a good reminder that it isn't just rebellious or alternative youth that support other sexualities, but people from all walks of life. People from every pay grade and age. As I walked up and down each of the sidewalks, did cartwheels and round-offs in the street, and climbed atop most anything it was legal to climb on (and a few things that I was informed were not) I had a huge smile on my face that I couldn't have shaken if I had wanted.

           One particular moment did not fill me with so much joy and contentment, however. At one point while I stood at the corner of the street that was more or less acting as the starting line for the parade, a man biked up beside me and asked: “Hey, what's all this about?” I responded, somewhat distractedly, that it was the Gay Pride Parade. He immediately grumbled a string of what sounded like curses and then biked down the only way that would take him away from the parade. Now, I don't mean to sound harsh, but fuck that guy. Fuck him in his smug face.

          Some of the more perceptive in the audience might have noticed that the title for this post is “Understanding Bigotry”. I'd like to state from the outset that I don't. That's the point. And I don't mean that in a condescending, “I am better than you” or “I am so much more open minded and learned than you” sort of way. I mean it in the very basic and simple way of I don't understand the function of it. I cannot grasp the notion of hating someone based on the fact that they are attracted to the same gender. It does not fit into my paradigm. It quite literally makes no sense to me. Ignorance of that manner baffles me. I can understand being influenced by the notions of your parents. I can understand being pushed in certain directions of thought based on the ideas that you are surrounded by in your youth. I can understand going with the flow. This all makes sense to me. This is all fairly natural behaviour. What doesn't make sense to me is when an individual is confronted with compelling evidence to disprove those notions, and they still do not. When I have been shown something that makes a notion of mine appear false, I am forced to question it. When I have been shown something that disproves something I thought true, I have no choice but to accept that. Because that is how my brain functions. I cannot understand how people can believe that they should dislike a homosexual based on the words of the bible when there is so much evidence mounted against the credibility of the book. Not even the credibility of the book, but just the hypocrisy of following that phrase and not countless others. But this is unimportant. It is not useful or interesting to repeat once more the most common (although common for good reason) defences against the biblical hate of homosexuals; with the exception of perhaps one person, I am not at all concerned with the thoughts of people who need those to be rehashed or clarified. My point is that I cannot grasp the notion that one can continue to believe something that is obviously nonsensical, and inherently cruel.

          This extends to a great many other things in my life. I don't understand how it is possible for people to hold on to easily dis-proven notions. I don't get how people can manage to put so little thought into something that they are able to labour under such delusions. I cannot rap my head around how people can let false or flimsy ideas change their perception of another human being's worth. I wish that I had something more constructive to say, but really that's all. I simply can't see where they are coming from, and it makes me angry.

~Patches

"The Ragdoll"

This poem is sort of the reason behind the name of this blog, so I figured I would share. I think it's cute. The original can be found here.

"The Ragdoll"

I am not a normal person,
as one is wont to see
but just a little ragdoll;
The ragdoll, he is me.

I'm not like other people,
of bone and blood and flesh.
I'm made of others' patches,
of kindness love and mesh.

No piece that makes my body,
belongs to me alone.
Indeed, every single fibre
is on a sort of loan.

People take and give them
each day or month or year.
Some pieces more than others
I do hold very dear.

When one of these must leave me
it fills me with such strife,
and their absence from my being,
shakes my whole ragdoll life.

So when you took your pieces back,
We both knew it would sting.
But the pieces you think I gave you,
were a very different thing.

You think you took my ragdoll heart,
but most, still there, you'll find.
The biggest piece you took from me
was from my ragdoll mind.

My button eyes don't see so well
here in my ragdoll home.
These missing pieces make it seem
a hostile place to roam.

I am not a normal person,
as one is wont to see
but just a lonely ragdoll;
The ragdoll, he is me.

~Patches

Nostalgia

          I was walking down the street very recently when something profound occurred. I say profound not because the sensation is rare; quite the opposite. It is something that many people feel every once in a while. Something that I have felt a great many times. It's just that this time it hit me in a slightly different matter. I was more fascinated with it. While I trekked down the way towards the bus terminal, the wind picked up and sent the leafs of the trees close to me into a rustling fit. The scent of summer hit my nose, the sound of the rustling filtered into my ears, and for a single instant I was somewhere else. Just in that one moment of time I was walking down a dirt path out in Berwick, Nova Scotia.

          It's an interesting thing, Nostalgia. It can be a wonderful sensation, or a painful one. It can be a moment of liberation that brings back pleasant memories, or a malignant jab to remind you of something lost. Either way it is one that sort of blows my mind. I wasn't being poetic when I said that I was somewhere else in that moment. That is honestly the only way that I can describe the sensation that I felt. Your brain receives signals from your various sensory organs and every once in a while those signals coincide almost perfectly with a previous experience. Just for a second you are smashed in the face with the notion that it is all too familiar. Déjà vu. Nostalgia. Whatever you want to call it, all of us have experienced it at least once in our lifetime.

           I'm not interested, really, in the kind of nostalgia that a great many people talk about or seek out. Like watching a movie you haven't seen in a long time, or playing a game you haven't touched since your youth. These are connected, no doubt, but they are not quite as enthralling to me. It is easy to see how you might be fooled for an instant into thinking you are living a memory when you are getting the same combination of visual and auditory stimuli that you would have in the past. It's still rather interesting, but it is not quite as profound. The ones that blindside you. The ones where you smell a meal you haven't eaten in years and can clearly recall what it was like to wait in the kitchen impatiently for it to be finished. When you are staring out the window of a bus and you recall a trip you took in the eleventh grade. Those are the ones that I find are worth thinking about. The brain is a complex thing, one that I don't pretend to have a full understanding of, but all the time I find myself really quite intrigued by what it does when it's not quite working the way that it is intended. I mean, nostalgia is, in it's base, a sort of misfiring of the brain. It's an ever so brief mistake that the brain makes, when it mixes up memories with current sensations and has a sort of hiccup. But enough repeating of the same notions, the effect that it has is where there are some things worth pondering.

           I can remember where I used to hunt nostalgia rather mercilessly. I was so bemused by the present that I wanted nothing more than to live in my past, and remember times that I enjoyed. I would lay in my bed and just try to recall what it was like to lay on a different mattress, at a different time. I would wander through the woods breathing deeply and hoping that I might catch a whiff of the previous summer. This was not a healthy thing. A friend of mine once told me a quote that I have always liked, but only recently have truly begun to appreciate: “If you think that your past is haunting you, you're wrong. It's you that's haunting it.” I wish I knew the origin of it, because it's kind of profound. Profound and entirely correct. It's really easy to get addicted to that feeling of being somewhere else for a moment, but it is just as easy to start missing new moments because you are so damn focused on the old ones. And that's just not very productive at all. There is nothing to be gained from that but an unhealthy dose of longing. There is nowhere to go but forward. No direction to travel but onward. That's a notion that I feel most people should hold on to. I am certainly trying to.

~Patches