I Can Work With That

"I must remain tough while surrounding myself with delicate things."

Joe Testa



Popped in here today to write up some stuff about a Chinese beauty, now living in Canada, who wanted to compete in the Miss World contest being held in China.

She was denied access into China because of her outspoken views on that governments approach to religion. She practices a religion called Falun Gong, founded in 1992, which is banned in China. Followers are persecuted by the government.

A couple of days ago I did some research on the religion, admittedly through Wikipedia. It sounded pretty cool until I got to the part that said the founder believed aliens have infiltrated society and are working to destroy the world.

I instantly made the connection to our country's republican party and had a whole dissertation planned in my mind.

I went back in to Wikipedia this morning and the alien reference was gone. I checked out some other references on Falun Gong and none of them referenced a belief in aliens.

Apparently somebody was having fun in the Wikipedia ranks. I am guessing that the blurb got deleted because of increased curiosity about the religion brought about by the recent banning of the Chinese beauty.

What the hell was I going to write about now? I have to write today. It is boiling in my blood.

Reached down to an old notebook I have lying around up here and that phrase was in it. The delicate things phrase.

I like it.

I don't think I worded it properly though. I am not tough. I try to be tough in order to slog my way through the slime that is daily life. I guess I possess some measure of toughness just to have survived 61 plus years.

Truthfully though, I am delicate. Delicate in the sense that I am all about emotion. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am proud of that because it makes me more human than those who don't.

I believe that if you have evolved (?) to a place where you mask your feelings convincingly and always, you have lost something.

The delicate things? Literature. Music. Paintings. Pictures. Poetry. Honest relationships.

These are the things that open up my soul.

My soul is like a creature who is imprisoned and only allowed to experience life in small doses.

Cautious. When the cell door opens the creature only peeks outside, blinking at the light. It does not rush headlong into what it does not trust. A lack of trust born of a lack of experience, a limited interaction with that which gives it life.

I take what I can get, and in the right moments it satiates my desperate need for sensitivity.

I live for those moments.

So, a few years down the road from when I wrote those words I need to revise them.

"I must continue to try to be tough  for the sake of survival; I must continue to indulge in and reward myself with the delicate beauty that keeps me alive."

By the way I love the the concept of republicans as aliens infiltrating society with the goal of destroying it. Makes perfect sense.

I think I can work with that.