Tag Archives: memories

Conscience

Conscience: (n) an inner guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.

I am discovering that my mind has become a garage, where I store all the memories and stuff that can no longer be used–simply because most of them are more than twenty years old.

Therefore, they are viewed as useless.

If you don’t believe me, just bring up something from the 1980’s, and look at the confused, frustrated and sometimes angry faces of the young humans around funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
you, who don’t understand that you forgot that “they weren’t born yet.”

So I have to be careful as I mention Jimminy Cricket. I do so because when I think of the word “conscience,” he is the pesky insect that comes to mind. He insisted that we should let our “conscience be our guide.”

Well, it doesn’t take me long driving down the freeway to notice that if the conscience actually does exist, it has not been evenly distributed. There are people who are courteous, and there are folks who only got the first part of the word: curt.

So I have to ask the little cricket if he could help me understand whether this conscience thing was there at birth, or if somebody didn’t need to hover over all living souls to make sure that they grew up giving a shit about anything but themselves.

Having raised a number of children, I can tell you that they do not arrive on Earth as human beings. They are actually more of a confirmation of Darwin’s theory of evolution–they are little monkeys who scream, wiggle, piss, poop and grab for everything in sight, until they are trained to escape a life in the jungle, and can be welcomed to Suburbia.

A conscience is not something we’re born with. It’s something we are taught–and hopefully taught so well that we retain it once we are no longer able to be sent to our rooms.

 

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Archive

dictionary with letter A

Archive: (n) a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.

Making memories.

Just yesterday someone was extolling the beauty of such an endeavor.

It seems noble–to “archive away” the blessings of our lives, to be retrieved at various intervals to enrich our thinking and stimulate our warmth.

During the holiday season, I find myself in the presence of family. Even though I realize the word “family” is a noun by the laws of grammar, in many ways it is a verb–either past or present-tense.

For the danger, as we well know, in getting together with those who were raised in the same house, and who even share genetic material, is that the conversations will drift back to former times instead of truly enjoying the moment or even dreaming of great ideals.

It’s just not for me.

So to balance this out:

  • I must be willing to cease to be someone’s dad in order to press forward and become their friend.
  • They must be willing to abandon obligatory reverence or even some fearful flashbacks, to acquire the tenderness of a “new-wine relationship.”

It takes great maturity to be childlike in our faith. Without that maturity we all have a tendency to remain childish.

I don’t think I would make a very good archivist. I would understand the concept, but I think my mind would push towards making new inroads instead of visiting the museum of my past.

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Alma Mater

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alma Mater: (n) the school, college or university that one once attended.

Through the years of deep devotion

We will ever loyal be

Love and cherish all our memories

Of our high school days with thee

And the portals we’ll remember

Friends who made our lives sublime

Alma Mater, Alma Mater

Praises be forever thine.

I have no idea why I remember the words to that song from my high school, but I had absolutely no problem conjuring them.

It is a testament to the power of the educational system–its ability to infuse lasting knowledge, and I suppose, insecurities, into its students and victims, respectively.

By the way, we thought it was extraordinarily hilarious to taunt our aging high school English teacher, who penned the words, by telling her that the tune for her verse was borrowed from Hitler’s Nazi Germany list of favs.

Such scamps we were.

Abzug

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abzug: Bella (1920-98) U.S. politician, lawyer and women’s rights activist. She helped to found Women Strike for Peace in 1961. Serving in Congress as a Democrat from New York, she fought for the rights of women and the poor.

Sometimes progress is so slow that we actually fail to notice that it’s going on. It is the short-sighted part of the human race that often makes us unsuitable for either the jungle or the boardroom.

But when I thought about Bella Abzug, fond memories returned. She was not exactly what you would call an attractive woman. Generous folks would have referred to her as “handsome,” and less gratuitous comments could have included “homely.”

I am certainly glad she was not around for this 24-hour news cycle, where her appearance would have been ridiculed in an attempt to render her words ineffective. That’s what we do nowadays, you know. When we are unable to contradict the objections of an intelligent spirit which has stormed into our presence, we make the attacks personal so as to dismiss their effectiveness by pointing out their physical oddities.

No, I am sure Bella Abzug would have been joked about as the classic lesbian, or mocked as someone’s “ugly grandmother.”

Often it takes people like Bella to come along to plant the seeds of discontent in order for some weeds of frustration to grow up in the midst of our neat little “social garden,” and bring attention to the fact that not everybody is going to be a “cute tomato.”

We need her. We actually need MORE like her.

I, for one, am sick and tired of only listening to people I’m supposed to agree with, who make sure that their language is so sterile that it can neither offend nor instruct.

Bella said some tough things. Bella was brash. Bella was angry. Bella believed that anger was a good thing when it was vented against stupidity.

I don’t know if a Bella Abzug could exist in our present society. We would probably put her in a back office somewhere and make her the speechwriter for some blond bimbo who could more easily acquire the vote. I don’t know if we would ever allow her a microphone, a platform or an opportunity to spit fire in our faces.

But it’s because Bella Abzug lived that women today have the opportunity to argue about their positions and be heard–because so many years ago, she pointed out the fallacy in a system that was convinced of its infallibility.

Sometimes we need to stop and be grateful for the people who live, breathe, fight and die, never seeing their dreams come to fruition. Because of their plantings and hard work, the garden still has a chance to grow.

Because of their lives, we still have a chance to overcome our ignorance.