If all the world were paper...

There's so much change going on in the world. HCR has passed in the US, which means maybe one step closer to no more children dying because their parents couldn't afford the treatment. No more people refused help because they have a jumped up 'previous condition', like the crime of being a woman. The 'best healthcare system in the world' shouldn't involve people being turned away from hospitals because they can't pay for life-saving surgery.

We have more and more states understanding the concept of equality for LGBTQQI people - slowly, and some states are going backwards (Virginia, anybody?), but one day it will have to happen. The battle for civil rights never ends, it merely takes on a different face.

But there's a part of me that wonders if a big part of this change is pop culture. The whole point of punk and hardcore bands is to undermine authority and the status quo in the loudest way possible - a great big 'fuck you' to the establishment. And don't get me wrong, sometimes you need someone to shout, but sometimes...sometimes a whisper is more effective. A popular TV show which somehow manages to make things normal which had been hidden before.

My (only living) Grandmother is 88. She grew up in a working class family in the south of Scotland. She's not academically educated (although she's smarter than most people I know). She married a farm worker towards the end of the Second World War.

My Grandmother talks about how racists are abhorrent. About how discrimination is a terrible thing. And as we were watching one of her soap operas - a British soap called 'Emmerdale' (formerly 'Emmerdale Farm') - she was explaining who the people were. "He's quite a busybody. He's taking care of that laddie. The laddie thinks he might be gay, but he's not sure. That woman has just come back into it - she locked the vicar's wife in a church and set it on fire."

Right in the middle of that, as if it was nothing: "The laddie thinks he might be gay, but he's not sure." Not said with any kind of tone, not spat out as if it was disgusting. Just a matter of fact statement. He thinks he might be gay, but he's not sure.

Soap operas have a history of dealing with controversial issues and, often, normalising them. On 'Coronation Street' there is a woman (her name escapes me; I don't watch soaps) who was, at one point, outed as being transgender. There are no disgusting 'sh*m*le' jokes, and any time I've seen it I've never heard the T word. The fact that she is transgender is not something that is made into the butt of the joke. She is simply a woman, who is in a relationship with a man, and who co-owns a café.

Part of the reason people take discriminatory standpoints is fear of the unknown, passed down from their parents and passed on from their friends. But a child seeing this (who hasn't been indoctrinated) may not even twig that there is anything that their parents might not consider to be normal, because it's just...not a big deal. It's just a fact.

And it's things like this, that pass by almost without comment, that leave me with a little bit of hope. The more visible we make things like this, the less of a problem they'll be for the younger generations. Or at least, that's what I'd like to think, anyway. Maybe I'm just being naive.

"Know what's written above the fountain you're drinking out of."

There's a reason I avoided getting involved in politics or charities for so many years. There's a reason why I keep my ditzy demeanor, even though it means that I am being consistently underestimated and undervalued. There's a reason why I force myself to be shallow, when everyone else is striving to be deep. This reason has recently been brought into sharp relief.

When River Tam was at that government school, in Firefly, they stripped her amygdalae. I feel like mine aren't quite stripped, but they aren't quite not, either. Once I start thinking about something this emotionally taxing I can't stop; I think and I think and I think and I write it out but I can't always get rid of it and it hounds me for days. Everything in my life suffers for it and I can't quite get anything done because my brain is so full of deep thoughts. Theories and details and patterns that if only I was studying I could write thesis upon thesis based on them. As it is they're simply things inside my head that make no sense, or rather too much sense.

The problem with having a high level of intelligence is that you can never quite escape your intellect. It sounds like bragging, but it isn't. It's a cry for sympathy, because too often I would rather be one of those people who doesn't think about anything but their next pair of shoes and the most recent issue of OK Magazine than someone who has so much insight about poverty or gender/sexuality politics or politics in general. I'm the ideas girl, which means I can't not have ideas, which means I can't not overthink things in great detail, which means I can't not connect the dots between a-and-b-and-c-and-d-and-e and finally ending up with something that would work but who would listen to me? I'm in no position to propose these things.

I'm in no position to change the world. All I can do is try.

Love makes you do the wacky.

What is wrong with all of these people who make reality TV shows? And what is wrong with the people who watch them? There is something seriously the matter with our society.

I look at my inbox and I feel as though the world has righted on its axis again, after so long out of kilter. Everything is as it should be again, except for my own feelings, which are not now nor ever will be right, or good, or anything but wrongwrongwrong. If only we could police our feelings, make them as they should be.

November 4th is so close now, I feel like the world has started holding its breath. We're not all US citizens, but anyone who cares about the world cares about the outcome of this election. It doesn't quite keep me awake at night, but it's close. But if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I doubt I'll just stay in my own country; Canada is looking mighty sweet right now. Prince Edward Island was pretty, and Nova Scotia was awesome too, so it's not like it would be a hardship. 

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm doing pretty well for someone of my age, and the fact that I haven't done the things I wanted to do by this time isn't necessarily the worst thing ever. It's just that not everyone has their dreams come true. Which for some people isn't a problem, but for someone who never stops dreaming, it's somewhat heartbreaking.

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

One more time, you're listening to the flight recorder of....

No, wait.

That's already been done.

Sometimes, you have to reinvent the wheel to run yourself over.

Speak in pop culture references to find your own voice.

Hide yourself so that people will find you.

Sometimes, you have to do something for yourself. Something meaningfully meaningless, impulsively planned. Sometimes you have to just do instead of think; sometimes you have to sleep on your sittingroom floor for the hell of it, when your bedroom is the next room away. Sometimes it's the little things that remind you of who you are - lying on the floor in the dark, music in your ears, in your veins, mouth open in a silent scream as the rhythm pulses through you.

(Did you know that 'rhythm' is the longest word in the English language that does not orthographically contain a vowel?)

The things around us shape us, especially when we fight against them. Rebellion is in itself an act of conformity. Influences, outside and inside, mould us until the day we die. Constantly changing, forever and never. If we were to stop changing, stop evolving as individuals, we would stagnate.

The world itself is changing. And we need to change with it.

Roll on the changing times.