A love list (day 37)

I have a hate list.  Does everyone have a hate list?  Probably but I bet not everyone as a well developed formal hate list.  I'm somewhere in between now but in my early twenties I had this thing call the pit which had many levels.   Things and people (mostly people) would get thrown into the pit.  Some people would be given tools to dig themselves out.  Most times these were only small plastic spoons.   One person went so low into the pit that they became a mythical figure haunting the pit with the sound of their nails on the pit walls.  Some people were given bungee cords and although they were occasionally thrown into the pit, they had an automatic reprieve after a harrowing few moments.

My friend Zeenat asked me what is on my love list today.  I don't have a formal love list at all.  But I think, however sappy it may be, a love list might be a good thing to start.  First, what is the correct metaphor for a love list.   A bean stalk?  clouds?  Warm lofty winds?  Oh I know.  Food.  A layer cake.  It works because it's not just layers of cake but there's frosting and cherries and decorations and coulis.   Some people are good frosting, others are more robust cake layers.   Zeenat is definitely sparkles on the cake.  Steve is a mottled chocolate and white cake layer all his own.  My cat Tagi is little bits of almond that are sometimes welcomed and other times just incongruous.  My parents are the plate.  I know it sounds unglamourous but being a plate is the very base of the love cake.  Shannon is well-placed sour cherries.  Nathalie is refreshing slices of pear.  This cake deserves never to be eaten.

A song for this post.

Let them eat cake (day 19)

Apparently Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake" (actually "qu'ils mangent de la brioche").  Having heard this expression repeated throughout my life, and having no context to attribute to it, I made up several meanings and contexts over the years.   The one that stuck the most is the one where Marie Antoinette being a selfish narcissist decides that she will give everyone cake so that they will shut up, so busy will they be in their newly found comforts.    Of course I know now the actual context of the phrase and in that story she is still a selfish narcissist but was giving no one cake.

I wonder about massive protests in the past and in the present but in other places.  Why don't we massively protest in Canada and the US?   What would it take?  How uncomfortable would we need to be? We are eating cake so the idea of protesting and possibly losing the cake is not so appealing I suppose.  We could also just be asleep from too much cake.  So when something bad happens like, oh I don't know, the failing of a flawed financial system, we just sit there dumbfounded unable to grasp that things won't just go back to normal soon, and that taxpayer money is being used to bailout a system that made billions for some and nothing for most.  It's really unbelievable and, when you're full of cake, it's even harder to get up and do something about it.  I remember the moment when the bailout was rejected ('blamed' on a speech by Nancy Pelosi).  That was amazing.  A grandstand moment if I ever saw one.   But short-lived and at my most cynical, orchestrated to appease and scare at the same time.  That was the last of the influence of 'main street'.   Long live main street.   

The other-worldliness of large broken and oppressive systems is daunting.  I wonder what it might have felt like for Puerto Ricans to rise up for self-determination.  I wonder about the feminist movement and their struggle for the vote.  I wonder about African Americans rising up for equal rights and freedom.  I can watch countless YouTube videos and movies but I still don't know what it might feel like.  I've never been in it.   My peer group likes cake for now.

A song and performance for this post.