In Capitalist America, the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy come bearing Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas cheer

A few days ago, I learned that a social worker is planning to meet with my 13-year-old daughter at school. The ostensible reason for this meeting is legitimate -- my daughter's been cutting class, for reasons she's unwilling to explain clearly. She needs counseling, yes. But added on to the message from the school counselor about this public social worker's plans was a mention of concern about my daughter's typical attire. Not that it is inappropriate, exactly, but that it is, in some unexplained way, inadequate.

It's not slut-shaming I have to deal with, it's personal-choice-shaming. Poverty-shaming, too.

Over the years I've lived at poverty-level among some of the most privileged upper-middle-class people in the nation, as a poor relation sponging off my in-laws' savings, I have had to confront a seemingly endless stream of unspoken assumptions, prohibitions, and bigotries. With a smile on my face. Because in Capitalist America, the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy come bearing Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas cheer.

God bless us, every one.

Bitterness is ugly, and I don't especially like myself for feeling this way. But I am so very sick of people giving my children Barbie dolls and insipid, saccharine books. 'Beggars can't be choosers' is the line that sinks like lead in my stomach. They never come out and say it directly, of course. They know better than to give anyone a chance to point out the morally reprehensible implication that the poor have no right to live life as they like. That freedom isn't free -- it's exclusively for the rich.

Still, hey, Barbie dolls can go to Goodwill, books to the library donations bin. I don't mind passing stuff around. It is when government officials interfere in my family's life that I get seriously pissed.

My daughter is a brilliant person with a profound disinterest in the trivialities of teen fashion and drama. I've taught her to think critically, to view the mass media with skepticism, to resist the temptations of the Market Demon. She wears bland clothes that she finds comfortable. Idiots might call her a 'hipster' but she doesn't make her choices based on trying to fit in with any kind of counterculture. She is eccentric, creative, and compassionate. Yes, she's going through a rocky time in her life -- most 13-year-olds are. In her case it's exacerbated by having moved into a more affluent neighborhood just a year ago. None of us are entirely comfortable here yet.

Ugh. One day I'll figure out what to do.

Kitten Dreams

My husband is a wonder when it comes to dream interpretation. I have had a series of recurring dreams involving kittens. So many kittens. Kittens that spring up from the dew-drop-sprinkled grass of a marvelous morning world. Sometimes there are so many kittens that my neighbors become angry and want to kill them. And sometimes the older kittens eat the younger ones. In my dream, I rush about the house, the landscape, trying to save my kittens.

I had no clue as to what this could mean. But when I described it to Jonah, he looked at me and said, "What if the kittens were ideas?"

Skeptical as I am, I can't deny the visceral sense I felt when he said that. Maybe skepticism is something I have been hiding behind. Maybe it's been thwarting me. I don't know.

I am afraid of my own power. Sundering dogs, the lilting synthesis of echolocation. Something within me urges to communicate but it will not persevere. Fear is the center of me. Why am I so afraid?

Neuromagic

I'm fascinated by what scientists are learning about the mechanics of the brain. Sleights of Mind by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde is the latest of a series of books I've read on this topic. It describes magic tricks in terms of neuroscience. I highly recommend it.

So much of what we perceive, so much of what we think we know, is illusion.

Ego Intent

A psychiatrist once told me that I have a "fragile ego." I don't like the sound of that. I am myself. It's true that I tend to be avoidant of other people, elusive and evasive. This is something I struggle against. There are many things I want to say, but I still feel a need to be secretive, to hide, to never let anyone know me. The compulsion to communicate conflicts with the habit of concealment. That habit I learned as the child of abusive parents. It was a survival strategy, and it worked. I escaped that environment. But the lessons I learned from my parents do not serve me well among ordinary people.

So I communicate in spasms, awkward and unwieldy with words. I'm choosing to use this blog as a kind of therapy for that, a place where I can communicate regularly without anxiety or stress. Whether or not anyone reads this. There's so much I want to say, and I don't think I will be very good at saying it at first. This is an experiment and maybe it will work.

Stranger than True

I find it strange how people relate to strangers. For most of human history, encounters with strangers were rare and intense. Casual contact with people I don't know is harder for me than for most, but I imagine it's hard on everyone - a source of subliminal anxiety and fear. My husband, who has Asperger's syndrome, is largely unencumbered by social pressures. I find that fascinating, and I wish I could learn it.

People talk as if Asperger's people have no empathy, but that's not true. In many ways my husband is kinder than I am. He just doesn't like lies, or saving face, or covering his ass.

Which is why he is unemployed. He's a brilliant man, but - so far - too odd for people to hire. His father wants him to get SSI. Because telling the truth is a mental illness.

Fairfax dreams

Nobody seems to understand why I hate living in Fairfax. But the truth is simple - these people are snobs. There is a lot of positive emphasis on multiculturalism, but that's just a kind of liberal sparkle on the intrinsic capitalist attitude.

I don't like politics, I especially don't like being so close to the center of politics. There's a sense of shady ventures taken with callous cruelty - it disturbs my dreams. Some nights, in a hypnogogic state, I see faces and images of people shifting and striving for ascendancy, domination, clout, control. People I don't know, people I have never met.