I am a human
By Billy | July 2, 2009
Because I am human
I seem to perceive
this life as just linear
and “me” as just me
because I am human
I try to believe
in words like, “I’m okay.”
and, “please let me be.”
because I am human
the distance seems far
between where we will be
and already are
because I am human
Hmh… privacy
a concept I cherish
and guard jealously
because I am human
I mourn at the sight:
the long road before me
and what was last night
because I am human
I stamp my feet down
and say, “watch out world,
I’m holding my ground.”
Because I am human
it hurts to go back
to retrace my steps
to get back on track
because I am human
the world won’t make sense
so now you’re my neighbor
and we need a fence
because I’m a human
I made those mistakes
so, “just keep on trying,
for that’s what it takes.”
Because I am human,
our family divides
and though barefoot and thumbs up,
we offer no rides
because I am human
I ran from my past
hoping my mistakes
won’t travel as fast
because I’m a human
I’m already there
“there’s a spot by the fire,
please pull up a chair.”
because I am human
I don’t feel relaxed
and so I keep walking
and holding my axe
Because I am human
I’m learning to sit
and quiet my mind
and come to peace with it.
Topics: poetry | No Comments »
Amazing Sand Art
By Billy | June 30, 2009
I don’t speak Russian very well. I can barely decipher the Cyrillic alphabet these days. Luckily, this art (like art usually does) completely transcends language. Not a word needs to be spoken or read to be touched by this.
I enjoyed the slow strings version of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica around 7:25, too.
Anyway. I thought someone might enjoy that.
Topics: Utterly Random | No Comments »
A Poem (meta)phor Me!
By Billy | June 29, 2009
The hunger pangs ache
Sustenance is plentiful
Why do I not eat?
Topics: poetry | No Comments »
Nothing To Do But Exist
By Billy | June 29, 2009
“I think if I had one second in your brain, I would completely implode,” she said.
“Yeah, man, can I make a documentary about… just you? That would be the sweetest thing ever. We can just drive wherever and I’ll give you complete freedom as long as when I say it’s time to move on, we do. I can totally get us a sponsor. Your brain is fuckin’ ridiculous.”
This is my life. Oh Me! I just realized… This IS my life. (I’ve realized that a million and a half times. Someday I’m going to realize it.) For now I’ll just have a momentary freak out, that tastes somewhat like rotten/fermented watermelon and carry on with my unrealized mediocre life. I’ll go to sleep and dream about zombies or something, wake up mad at myself for being useless while I sleep (and doing it for so damned long) laze about for most of the morning, check my e-mail more times than necessary, slip down most of the stairs, eat some free range eggs from a nearby farm, and wait until my next feeding time. When all is said and done, I’ll start the whole thing over again.
This is my life. I am constantly waiting, but completely into every step of the way. I’ve read Thich Nhat Hanh, I’ve read Lao-Tzu. I’ve read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Josiah, David, Solomon. I’ve read Mahavira, I’ve read Gandhi. I’ve hugged myself and wept, I’ve seen “someone” for ‘this.’ I’ve taken the steps, I’ve painted my feelings. I’ve breathed, I’ve flown, I’ve fallen, I’ve peaked, I’ve transcended, disappeared, become, existed, hugged, loved, lost, found, hurt, healed, learned, forgotten, played, worked, lead, followed, harmonized, clashed, spoken, listened, attempted, succeeded, failed. I’ve died. But no, I have never lived.
This is my life. I search for it in other things — in noble things, nonetheless. How pitiful. How tricksy of me. How vile. This is my life: you, your gorgeous eyes, your home, your family, the strangers you’ve never met, and everything they care about. This is my life: everything but me and what I need.
I understand in percentages and I think in a dimension I only understand 13% of. I. wont. shut. off. My most relaxing moments have occurred while I’ve laid in place and realized the complexity in things. My most relaxing thought has been that I will never understand anything, and the immensity and immediacy of the prospect of trying. I only get this one shot.
My quiet place makes me cry.
I’d never wish this on anyone, I think, when my friends and sometimes lovers look at me with non-comprehension. My mind doesn’t make sense to them, and I can’t describe the negative-space-yellow-triangle that seems to be my thought right now, so I will just hold hands for now to get the point out. If you only knew! If I only knew! Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of. If you knew, I’d have to know. If I knew, I’d have to accept a lot more than I’m ready to. (More than I want to)
I’d never watch a documentary about myself. I’d never recommend anyone else watch it, either. Perhaps it, too, needs a disclaimer. (I come with a disclaimer, nowadays, Me damn it.)
—
“Please note by watching this piece, you are becoming stupider. Any amount of information you believe you have earned, learned, or retained in the next X hours, is actually kernels of anti-knowledge, destroying your very comprehension of the universe. You. won’t. get. it. Neither do we.”
—
(You especially won’t get me)
I imagine it would be in black and white, and I imagine it would be pieced together more than any piece of film ever created. Years of filming to create a 1.3 hours documentary where the wisest thing I say is a vague metaphor and incomprehensible simile.
A lot of “what if’s” come into my mind. A lot of them get squashed before they leave the box. Dust flies when I do so. I don’t know what that means, but it exhausts me to think of it and completely removes my motivation to write further. Hey, it’s feeding time…
Topics: Nonfiction, Philosophy, This is my life, Utterly Random, Works of Fiction | No Comments »
A Stupid Timekiller After My Hiatus
By Billy | June 21, 2009
Okay. So my life has been moving at the speed of light. I’ve been too busy living (and often away from a computer) my life to sit down and write anything about life.
That said, I have decided to start doing stupid little posts about random interesting things I find. I have recently fallen in love with Boston.com’s “big picture” dealie. That’s where I found out about what I thought was always a mytical sport that didn’t actually exist (like quiddich, hurling, etc.) but it does. People in the UK legimately do run down steep hills for sport. The prize is the piece of cheese they chased down the hill, and usually a consolation prize is a concussion and/or broken bones.
It happened about a month ago in May 2009.
Enjoy the video, check out the photos.
And some fiiiine photos.
Topics: Utterly Random, humor | No Comments »
Dying to the Cause of Living
By Billy | April 19, 2009
This is a real quick update on a topic I posted about a while back. Here is the post!
Fate had this event in store for me — I got to see Birdlips at JMU on friday, and accomplished what I could not accomplish last time I saw them. This is entirely not related to Birdlips, the band, but the previous post and occasion happened to invovle them, so I think it’s neat that they were involved in my life again this time. (If you didn’t know, I freaking LOVE Birdlips)
Let’s just say that at Spaghettifest (see link for details) I had not the strength to live in the moment — I was attached to my preconcieved notions of normalcy as a result of socially imposed ideals. I have broken beyond that barrier and learned to live my life as if…. Well, just to live my life. To Die to a Cause implies (to me) an abandonment of the self. I died for the environmental movement and got arrested for it. (See this post) No longer are my actions for me with respect to the environment. I am a piece of this planet, so insignificant that the things I want don’t really matter. What’s important is that I fight for the causes I feel strongly about. These are the things that will prevail. Last night, at Festival Fest (put on by JMU’s EARTH Club), I died for the cause of LIFE. My puny concerns were no match for my passion for the cause — the cause of living. I lived last night, despite myself.
While at Spaghettifest I kicked myself for not doing so, last night I danced among my fellow humans in a more natural way than the majority of people in America will ever feel. Never have I felt such a feeling — the music pulsing through my naked body as I danced my life away.
Topics: Philosophy, This is my life | No Comments »
Gender Bender
By Billy | April 8, 2009
If you’re reading this, you’re a human. Cuttlefish are really smart, but their eyes don’t see like ours. Computers see the words and it means something to them, but they don’t really understand it the same way humans do. Computers suck. See that? They don’t care what we say to them.
As humans, we love putting things into compartments. We’re really good at it. I am a human, I am of European descent, my sex is male, my eyes are green (usually), my age is such and such, my education level is this or that…
This post is a brief rant, and a huge leap. We as humans are usually happy in our areas — we are comfortable with things the way they are, even if that means that we’re buying things at Walmart and Victoria’s Secret, or purchasing food from appalling farming situations, using dirty energy that destroys cultures, habitats, and planets, or oppressing people in the structural and personal level.
The first step that I can think of to end oppression is to spread knowledge. From there comes understanding, and finally acceptance.
This post is supposed to spread the knowledge of gender — whatever the hell that is. What makes you a male or a female? What makes something girly or boyish? The world is becoming more and more accepting of this point of view, so it would be for you to catch on sooner rather than later: The word sex in this context refers to a physical aspect of a human being. Sex is usually binary and assigned at birth; males have a penis, females have a vagina. There are instnaces where sex is not easy to determine, or aspects of both sexes are apparent in the being — this is called intersexed.
Gender on the other hand is much different. Gender is a personal, emotional, and variable thing. Gender is relative. Something is girly because it is not boyish. There are various theories and graphics out there to explain gender in an easy manner, but I encourage you to transcend most things that anyone who claims to have “authority” on the subject has to say. No psychologist has the authority over me or you to define how you feel inside. If you feel girly one day, you’re feminine that day. Period. In my experience, gender lives on a sliding scale, the opposite ends of the spectrum hold FEMALE and MALE — the middle is the androgynous. Any person’s gender can slide from place to place on this scale in an instance, for however long as it will remain there. The important thing to focus on this is that the entire concept is socially constructed — especially the implications of gender and gender roles.
I spent a year and a half of my life identifying myself as experiencing a “gender identity crisis.” I one day tried to explain the way I felt about sexuality, relationships, affection, and what “boys” “should” be doing with their time. I typed in exactly how I felt into google and ended up on a forum with someone who had typed almost exactly the same words to the forum. Many of the replies mentioned the word “transgender,” and included links and resources. After reading about the concept for a long, long time, I felt like my life made a lot more sense (it didn’t, it was just more comfortable). It made sense why I always thought my parents had a sex change operation on me when I was too young to remember. I found it easier to embrace the days when I would play with Barbies with my friend Nicole, and the way I loved My Little Pony. I felt rage at my brother for making fun of me that Christmas morning when I got that Kitten Surprise and loved it. I remembered crying and petting that pet kitten on the couch that morning, feeling ashamed for loving kitties (which were girly) and loving the idea of being a mommy.
A transgendered individual is one who identifies their gender as one different from their physical sex. If you meet someone who identifies themself as transgender. Hmmm. I don’t know what to say there. They’re a person. The end. Approach the “situation” as you would any other. If you want to learn more, be open minded and respectful; exactly the same way you should approach someone to understand their religion, diet, sexuality (which is independent of gender — and is MUCH more expansive than gay, bisexual, and straight), or any other personal quality.
Lately, I’ve really stopped caring. I have moved past the problems I’ve experienced in my life as a result of my unusual gender situation. I actually identify myself as someone without a set gender. Nongendered, androgynous, and transgendered: these “categories” are fitting of me. The label I prefer most is Human Being. Perhaps I would prefer Being is a little better than that. I have noticed that my gender seems to accomodate the situation — as does my energy level, volume, and attitude, each to some degree.
As categorizing humans, we should learn to be open to the fact that these categories we place things in probably don’t like where we’ve put them. I don’t like to be assumed to be manly all the time, nor should I assume that I’m going to be anything in particular. If you approach me with an open, optimistic mind, you will not offend me. I was recently walking across James Madison University’s campus in a dress. Why? Why not? I bought the dress because I wanted to feel “pretty” from time to time — now I just like to feel the freedom sometimes. It’s just a piece of cloth. Who cares how it’s sewn together and draped over the skin?
I came across a fellow this past weekend. We made eye contact, and exchanged words. “Good evening!” I said enthusiastically. “Hey man. How’s it going?” He replied. Then he noticed…
“What the hell?” He says, stopped dead in his tracks. “Are you a girl or something?” He continued, “you must be. You are a damn ugly girl. But I like the way you’re walkin’” A hung my head low — and I will not do so in the future — and continued walking. “Strut that shit, girl,” he yelled. I walked faster and tried to ignore the attack. I was afraid that he’d be following me at this point, but his voice began to change as voices do when further away. He continued calling out to me for as long as his voice could carry and he could still see me.
I don’t know if this is sexual harrassment or what, but it’s entirely messed up. I find humor in it, because I was on his cool-list until he saw what I was wearing.
I think I just needed to get that off my chest, since I can’t recall how I thought I’d fit it into the post, but there it is.
Seeking knowledge about something is not a one-instance-event. It is a lifetime commitment to open the eyes. I am going to intentionally leave this post with little information about gender, the sexuality-implications behind gender, gender terms, physical causes of gender, social constructs, which cultures (like some Indonesian cultures) have always acknowledged three, four, or even five genders, etc. We as humans also love to have a one-hit solution for so many things. I encourage you to search through books, internet sources (books are on the internet now), blogs, or speak to people who might have some knowledge about things! Once you feel like you understand something, you KNOW you’re dead wrong. I am an open book, so I’m a pretty good place to go if you have questions about touchy subjects. Now I come to a close, encouraging you to dump out all the bins you’ve created to classify “this” and “that” and realize the interconnectedness of all things. Realize that all things are unique and special, while at the same time connected to you and necessary to you.
Thanks for getting this far.
Namaste!
Topics: This is my life, Utterly Random | No Comments »
The Walking Meditator (or How I Became, “That Guy.”) (Part 1)
By Billy | April 3, 2009
Reading this blog to get to know me is much like looking through a rain splattered stained glass window trying to make out a figure in the distance. You know the direction I’m heading, you comprehend that I am more or less of humanoid characteristics, and you would probably note that I’m either heading in the entirely wrong direction as all the other obscured and mysterious blobs, at a complete standstill amidst the storm, or that I appear to be skipping as I go.
Each of the people I brush up against as I make my way along the sidewalk has a perfect and beautiful story to tell — each and every one. I don’t know theirs, so I can’t tell you much about their lives, though. I will take the liberty to assume that if you’re reading this, you have some sort of interest in things either relating to me or the things important to me. Thus, I will tell you a fraction of a piece of a chunk of my life, with a cool little trick / challenge I recommend you (whomever you are) undertake.
Take a moment and look at your hands. Are they gnarly? Are they dry? Do they twist and turn from years of use? Are they covered with beautiful scars that tell an awesome story — that Christmas morning when you were cutting a blueberry bagle, of that time you forgot to love yourself and left a permanent trophy etched into your skin to remind you of your supposed failure, of that time you tried to ride your bike while wearing roller skates… Bend your fingers… What does that mean? Are you bending only at the knuckle closest to your palm? What does it feel like? Make a fist. Let it out. Raise your middle finger as if someone had just cut you off. Did you perse your lips as you did that? Did anger arise in you as you flicked that finger out? Spread each of your fingers out. Can you feel the air surrounding you? Can you feel your energy radiating out?
Have you ever really sat and thought about all the things there are to think about when it comes to your hands? It’s really ridiculous. Now realize that those are just your hands… You still haven’t explored your eyes or their brows, your lips, your stomach, your arms, your legs, your butt, your _____, your etc… Your FEET. The motions I just asked you to do with your hands ignored, for the most part, that we are graced with a sense of touch. Touching is amazing. You are feeling things right now that you’re not even aware of. Your fingers, your palms, your buttocks, your shoulders, your forehead, your tongue, your wrists, your toes, your chest… Each of these is experiencing the sensation of touch right now. We travel throughout our day completely unaware of the amazing myriad of things that we experience without ever soaking in. (We won’t even bother getting into the other senses we ignore!)
The meditation I am most versed in is very simple. The immediate purpose is to become aware of yourself, with a higher purpose of becoming aware of your surroundings, your connection to things “other than yourself” (I quote this because I question it’s validity as a phrase), and the things leading up to that which makes you you.
Meditation explores the pieces of existence most closely related to you, and how they interact with eachother and you. Meditation is not just a thing that helps you as you are doing it, but it has long lasting, life altering affects. I’m going to go over breathing meditation and the practicalites found within the practice. It won’t take long. (Thanks for sticking by me this long!)
This was going to be something different, but now it’s manifested in a silly narration with no special attention to stylization or anything… 
“Jane closed her eyes (or kept them relaxed and open, fixed on a single location on the ground in front of her). She was sitting comfortably on the floor, legs crossed “indian style,” half lotus, or full lotus. She might have sat on a chair if she wanted to. She breathed in slowly, then out. At the finish of the exhale, she made a note in her head. “One,” she thought. As she inhaled again, she’d pay special attention to the sensation of air rushing past her nostrils (she was breathing through her nose, of course!) and as the coolness rushed over her soft pallet. She would pay attention to the swelling of her diaphram, as the muscle did its work to expand her lungs, which forced that cool air even deeper into her body. The exhale was warmer against her nostrils, and a bit louder, she noticed. “Two,” she thought. She repeated this process of awareness of her breating until she reached 10. At 10 she’d start over for a second, and finally a third time. Any time she’d get distracted by an ithc or a discomfort, she’d fix the problem and return to focusing on the breath — finding it easy to return to the task at hand. If she lost count, she’d start back at 1.”
What Jane is doing is forcing her brain, very gently, to comprehend the eternal cause-effect relationship in the world. As she masters the art of becoming physically aware of something as mundane as breathing, she will become more keenly aware to other things about herself she never realized. No joke, this is what happens.
If you make it second nature to understand that by contracting your diaphram muscle, your lungs will expand, which will create a vacuum in your lungs, which will force air into your body, which will make a cold tickle in your nose, which will make a slight whistle……… Eventually your brain is keen on noticing the minute details in it’s processes. This awareness of chain-reactions will make it easier for you to see that the guy who cut you off on the road was late for work and was just acting out of human nature, and that the reason you got upset was because he made you feel like you were less important than he was, which resulted in you wishing you appreciated yourself enough to know that it doesn’t matter what he thinks, which makes you lash out at him, because it’s easier to blame him than to face the lifelong burden of self-loathing that you’ve been avoiding for decades.
That might not be the exact reason you’re hurt, and it might not prevent your hand from sticking out the window with a gesture or two for the guy, but over time and with practice, you will become more aware of these chain reactions that happen every second of your life. On top of that, meditation of the sort I described above will generally leave you with a nice centered feeling that will put you in a special, protected mental state for a while.
Now that you have that simple concept of meditation in your brain, I’m going to push “POST” without proof reading, and go to bed thinking about the chain reaction of events that led to me not doing my French homework, but writing a blog post that I didn’t know where it would take me when I started. As understanding of the chain of events and interconnectedness of life expands, it becomes more difficult to be angry. I believe that forgiveness comes from understanding — I understand that you’re human so I can love you, I understand that you and I are both divine and perfect beings so I need to love you, I understand that you have hard times every now and then so I forgive you. I may be mad at myself for not doing my homework, but honestly? It felt right to watch Garden State in my friends room. It felt right to abandon my homework for the sake of a blog post. When I understand that I was doing what felt right, the anger at my “misdeeds” disappears and is replaced with a content but nervous feeling. I don’t erase my troubles, just my anger at them. So anyway. POST time. Maybe I’ll edit tomorrow. Maybe I’ll forget to get on with the REAL point of this post. (Stay tuned for part 2!)
Topics: Philosophy, This is my life | No Comments »
Activism and Civil Conscience
By Billy | March 24, 2009
Three weeks ago (Early March, 2009) I began a new chapter in my life. I attended the Capitol Climate Action (after Powershift 2009 came to a close) and participated in a HUGE act of Civil Conscience, protesting a particular Coal Power Plant in DC, as well as the entire institution of coal in our country. The next week I attended Mountain Justice Spring Break, a ridiculously amazing program to help empower youth and help them empower their communities. After a week of powerful conversations, workshops, community service, and trainings, the event came to a head with a massive march in around the Tennessee Valley Authority headquarters. The TVA is responsible for a huge portion of the power in the US, granted, but they are THE BIGGEST buyer of coal, and the company most directly (in my definition of responsiblity) responsible for the decapitation of hundreds of mountains (Mountain Top Removal uses 3,000,000 pounds of explosives each day…), as well as the country’s LARGEST environmental disaster (not to mention the gross negligence of said disaster and the callous response they gave the people dying or physically sickened by the event) which was estimated to be 48 times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
After an inspiring march around the building, my affinity group and I enacted what a moment that many of us had been waiting for all week, if not their entire life. Some of us had put up with the dangerous, damning, and dirty practices surrounding coal for our entire lives.
Coal is dirty, we wanted to remind everyone, from cradle to grave. “Clean Coal” is a myth; a lie. The result of “Clean Coal” is cleaner smog, but the new addition of sludge ponds. Fly ash, slurry, and sludge are the leftover toxic waste from the various proces by which coal becomes “clean.” We “clean” all the deadliness out of coal, we [read: they] (but you’re contributing! So am I by using this computer right now) dump it into a pond high up in the mountains, and let it sit there. There are no plans for removing the mercury, arsenic, or other heavy metals and toxins in the pond, just to let it stay behind the earthen dam (which frequently leaks) and fester. The Appalachian Region, the region in which the most of this is happening, has the highest asthma rates in the country year after year. One common alternative to sludge ponds is to dump the sludge into the abandoned mines in the area, and let the toxins slowly seep into the earth.
I will try my best to recall exactly what I said before the Nonviolent Direct Action at the TVA march. I feel that explains why I did it.
“I have chosen today. I have the opportunity to die here today, in representation of the people who had no choice in the matter. TVA is killing people with it’s deadly practices and I’m doing what I feel is right to call attention to this. I am dying today because this is bigger than I am or ever could be. These mountains are my backbones, these rivers are my veins, and these people are my family members. Violence against them is suicide.”
I hope you’ll watch the video so you can see for yourself what we did afterwards, but it’s called a Die In. Myself and 13 comrades pretended to die and remained dead for a good while in front of the TVA Headquarters in order to call attention to the deadly practices of TVA. Here is footage of the march, speeches, and dying-in.
I’ll post Mountain Justice’s official press release here:
Local residents joined dozens of activists from across the country today in a demonstration at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s headquarters, which resulted in the arrest of 14 individuals, after participating in a “die in” in front of the building . This event was held to in solidarity with communities affected by the destructive impacts of Mountaintop Removal coal mining and the surivors of the recent coal ash disaster in Harriman.
“It is time for TVA to take full responsibility for its destructive behavior,” Eric Blevins said, an organizer with Mountain Justice. He continued, “They need to support the recovery of the community that is still being hurt by the ash disaster, and take an active role in the transition away from dirty and dangerous practices towards renewable energy and healthier jobs.”
Saturday’s demonstration began with a rally in Market Square, where organizers from United Mountain Defense, and Mountain Justice spoke about coal’s impact from cradle to grave on communities in Appalachia and the surrounding area. The crowd then marched through downtown Knoxville and ended at TVA’s headquarters. At the end of the march people interested in participating in Civil Disobedience gave a statement as to why they wanted to take this action. With the support of a singing crowd each participant fell to the ground representing the deaths caused by the coal industry. After a few minutes Knoxville law enforcement informed the participants that they were blocking the sidewalk, and that they needed to remove themselves from the area. All 14 people were arrested, and cited for loitering.
TVA owns and operates the Kingston coal plant, where last December an impoundment failed, spilling 1.6 billion gallons of heavy metal-laden coal ash waste over an area of 400 acres. The spill has been called the worst environmental disaster in US history, which disproves the energy industry’s recent “clean coal” smokescreen.
“The massive toxic fly ash disaster is just one more reason that coal is filthy. Coal fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion, is an end result of the dirty life-cycle of coal,” explains Bonnie Swinford, full time volunteer for United Mountain Defense, “which often begins with surface mining and mountaintop removal, followed by a washing process that produces coal toxin concentrate known as slurry. Mountaintop removal coal extraction has destroyed almost 500 mountains, and, in addition to coal slurry, continues to destroy water sources across Appalachia.”
Mountaintop removal is the most destructive method of coal extraction, in which mountains are blown up to expose coal seams. This process destroys fragile mountain ecosystems, fills valleys and streams with waste, and leaves behind billions of gallons of toxic coal sludge that contaminates essential drinking water supplies for many cities surrounding Appalachia.
Today’s demonstration was part of an escalating series of protests across the country calling for immediate action on the coal industry’s destructive practices, including recent arrests in the Coal River Valley, WV on March 5th and the Capital Climate Action, where on March 2, nearly three thousand protesters closed all entrances to the Capitol Coal Plant in Washington, D.C. We need your help and support to continue this call out for immediate action to end the unjust practice of Mountaintop Removal, and push for a just transition to renewable energy.
Now that you are in the know about THAT… This just in! Though this doesn’t make much difference, an inch is an inch, I’d say.
(Washington, D.C. - March 24, 2009) The United States Environmental Protection Agency has sent two letters to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expressing serious concerns about the need to reduce the potential harmful impacts on water quality caused by certain types of coal mining practices, such as mountaintop mining. The letters specifically addressed two new surface coal mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky. EPA also intends to review other requests for mining permits.
“The two letters reflect EPA’s considerable concern regarding the environmental impact these projects would have on fragile habitats and streams,” said Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “I have directed the agency to review other mining permit requests. EPA will use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment.”
EPA’s letters, sent to the Corps office in Huntington, W.Va., stated that the coal mines would likely cause water quality problems in streams below the mines, would cause significant degradation to streams buried by mining activities, and that proposed steps to offset these impacts are inadequate. EPA has recommended specific actions be taken to further avoid and reduce these harmful impacts and to improve mitigation.
The letters were sent to the Corps by EPA senior officials in the agency’s Atlanta and Philadelphia offices. Permit applications for such projects are required by the Clean Water Act.
EPA also requested the opportunity to meet with the Corps and the mining companies seeking the new permits to discuss alternatives that would better protect streams, wetlands and rivers.
The Corps is responsible for issuing Clean Water Act permits for proposed surface coal mining operations that impact streams, wetlands, and other waters. EPA is required by the act to review proposed permits and provides comments to the Corps where necessary to ensure that proposed permits fully protect water quality.
Because of active litigation in the 4th Circuit challenging the issuance of Corps permits for coal mining, the Corps has been issuing far fewer permits in West Virginia since the litigation began in 2007. As a result, there is a significant backlog of permits under review by the Corps. EPA expects to be actively involved in the review of these permits following issuance of the 4th Circuit decision last month.
EPA is coordinating its action with the White House Council on Environmental Quality and with other agencies including the Corps.
More information on wetlands and the letters: http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/
Topics: This is my life | 1 Comment »
Lessons in Suffocation: Part 3
By Billy | February 24, 2009
Today I am going to wrap up and reflect on the previous two posts (post one) (post two) in a different voice / tense than before. This post will make more sense if you’ve read the two posts linked above.
—
I neither regret things nor hate people. Doing so wouldn’t undo the events, unspend the time, unbruise the skin, or make me feel whole again. I am not “over” this. (Someday I will re-read this post and will be able to say otherwise. For now, I have to add this parenthetical comment for myself — to have some frame of reference. Today is February 24th, 2009.)
Were this situation never to have happened, I wouldn’t be exactly where I am today. I am 99% ecstatic with where I am, with the remaining 1% not ready to comprehend the importance of my past. Despite that, I am 100% IN LOVE WITH where I am. Idealistically, I know that I needed to walk the path I did in order to get where I’m going, but I’m still learning to internalize this. It still hurts. (I frequently whisper these three words to myself, to nobody, to the universe. I haven’t yet been able to express how much it still hurts.) And though it hurts, I am happy. (I say as tears stream down my face at this public computer) I will someday appreciate that my footprints lay exactly where they belong, though the complexity of events bringing about their final resting place will always be mysteriouly incomprehensible. I am exactly where I belong, and I always have been. There hasn’t been a second in my existence where I was not 100% on the exact path I belong on. I believe that all people are the same way.
Were I born in Seoul, Korea, in 1986 with the name Ah Ram Han, to a mother incapable of supporting me, were I adopted by that affluent American family, were I Alison O’Brien, I would have done the exact same things. We all do what we think we should and are capable of doing. It felt right for me to stay in that relationship, scream my lungs out, bang my head (literally) into those walls, and lie my parents about the reason I was in the ER. Similarly, it felt right for her to cling onto me, it felt logical to feel threatened by my speaking to other females, it felt appropriate to test my loyalty by asking me to hurt myself in front of her. If I were in her shoes, I’d be her! If you were in my shoes, you’d have kissed that asphault at 40 miles an hour.
I don’t believe in badness and I don’t believe in mistakes. I believe that badness is goodness that hasn’t played itself out enough for us to comprehend its wonderfulness. I am a pantheist (another post, another day) and I don’t believe god could be bad, and I don’t believe anything, including genocide, domestic abuse, etc., can exist outside of the realm of god. Mistakes are lessons necessary for growth. It is impossible to live without mistakes. How can something inevitable be accidental? “Mistake” implies a step in the wrong direction — “you did it wrong, take two!” No, no, no, no, no, NO. We grow like the process of micro-evolution (since some people don’t believe in evolution…? but most people accept microevolution, or else they wouldn’t be alright with getting vaccinated, for example) When little organisms are evolving, some of them are successful and others “fail.” Is that a genetic mistake or is it an important lesson? The organism as a whole is growing and adapting, though there are some natural setbacks. Similarly, we have evolved into the people we are. Our “mistakes” remove non-beneficial beliefs the same way getting eaten (or whatever) removes non-beneficial genes from the pool.
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The remainder of the night itself is not terribly exciting. I get in an ambulance, get a CT scan at the ER, get some staples in my skull. I took a cab back to MU, and spent about an hour walking around in a blanket trying to figure out how to get into my dorm building (I had never entered at night, and there were signs mentioning an alarm if the door opened after a certain time. I didn’t know how to get in at all!) Eventually a security guard let me in, I slept on a chair for a few hours since I didn’t have my keys, then an RA let me in to my room when a janitor found me sleeping near a vending machine. I scared the hell out of my roommate Caleb (this was my first night in the room!), and took the bus the next morning, then walked back to Alison’s apartment…
Like I said before, I felt I had an obligation to fulfill. This was my chance to change someone’s life more than any else possibly could. She tells me she was worried, stayed up all night looking out the window, etc., but even then I didn’t believe it. She may have been telling the truth, I don’t know. I do know that she wouldn’t touch or look at me for the next 3 days, as I slept in the bathroom. I felt like a leper. (This is a bit of steam-of-consciousness. I’m opening doors I haven’t looked through for years.)
I guess that’s all I really have to talk about the night, in particular. I wish I could explain the inner workings of the mind of the Domestically Abused, but I don’t really know how to. Perhaps I was insane. Perhaps I was just dumb. It’s an amazing phenomenon. Physical and emotionally abusive relationships are SHOCKINGLY common among high school and college aged people. Do not be hesitant to speak out against these relationships and call them out for what they are in front of the abused. Let them know there are ways out and that they don’t deserve the conditions they are living with. My macroeconomics teacher had a really good piece of advice that I’d like to pass on to you. She identified this as a Sunken Cost
“It’s better to have wasted three years of your life, than to waste three years and one day of your life.”
I don’t care HOW MUCH you have invested in your current relationship — I don’t care if you have a picket fence, a dog and two cats, a boat, or just that you’re high school sweet hearts and this person deserves someone good. If you are being abused, you need to get out of there. Furthermore, you have the right to go to the police in many cases.
One of the things most disturbing to me when I look back is my escape plan options. I frequently left her house, speeding off with the intent to drive my car into one particularly large tree at the bottom of a huge hill. I had selected this tree in a time of relative calm, because I knew I would be looking for a location to self terminate someday, and wouldn’t want to half-assed suicide attempt (again). Sometimes I think I just wanted to scare myself, and other times I don’t know why I turned away, but (clearly) I never followed through with this. Usually, I’d instead keep speeding past the tree with the new intent on never returning. I spent hours of my life looking for places to run away to; to resettle, and hours on top of that actually running (not to mention hours spent shamefully driving home after changing my mind). Why I mention these things is to offer insight into what was going on in my mind — and perhaps is happening in abused people across the world. I felt like I had NO viable options where I was. I had failed my friends and assumed they didn’t want me back. I had abandoned my family and felt that I could never repair that void. I had thrown my academics (for my standards) down the drain, quit my afterschool activities, applied and attended a college completely opposed to my real intentions. I felt like my ONLY lifeline was this one person, the thing keeping me alive was the thing killing me.
I don’t know the best way to do it, since I know I filtered countless counterexamples to my beliefs out, but never ever stop reminding people in these situations that they have you as a place to fall back on. “There is a place to go beyond this terrible relationship, you can live without them and thrive. It’s never too late to resume the life you had before — a more knowledgable, stronger, and capable person than before.”
Hmm. I hope this serves as a bit of helpful insight for someone, at least it serves as a bit of catharsis for me. Thanks for reading. I love you all!
Namaste!
Topics: Nonfiction, Philosophy, This is my life | 3 Comments »
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