When do I get to quit this fucking job?

July 2, 2006
I want a life where I don't need to complain.
I can decide to not complain about the life I do have.
Or I can get myself a different life.
I don't want to not complain on top of the wanting to complain, covering up the wanting to complain.
So how do I discharge complaining without complaining?

So good. In my sessions (and my own fucking blog thank you very much) I can complain as much as I fucking want to complain.

Alto a la impunidad!

Righteous indignation! I'm going for righteous indignation, not complaining.

It's not right. Not just. Why do I have to accommodate to injustice? That's the lesson I've had rammed down my throat ever since I can remember..Accommodate to my Mother's rages, to sitting still in school, to Josefita being very poor and living in a warehouse with no funiture and giving me lice...

And then, to Josefita humiliating me when I took her to Rut and Epigmenio's and I lay down on the big bed and she, standing by the door, said

Little girls don't lie down in front of men...

She was poorer than I was and she knew things I didn't know and then I knew about class. That she and I lived in different worlds.

Josefita knew about not lying down in front of men.

Rebequita owned the blocks. She was richer than I was and she had things I did't have, beautiful wooden blocks sitting in a corner of her yard. She said we had to run for the blocks. She owned them and she got to make the rules. I knew it was her patio, her blocks and her rules and she would get them all. And then I knew about class.

Class: Josefita had less than I did; Rebequita had more. Those were the roles. Some you oppress, some oppress you.

I saw the blocks and knew exactly the house that I would build with them. The blocks represented power, emancipation, a house of my own. I hate class. Colluding with classism is the lesson every abuse that's come my way was meant to teach me.

So when do I get to say no more? I won't play. (Is there any other strategy, any other power, something beyond saying I won't play?

Why couldn't I figure out a life where I got to write for a living?

That's how I got into politics, giving up writing as art to write for the PSP paper...ran away from my inability to sustain an identity as an artist and toward something much more important or so it seemed at the time

And I ran away from art to go teach reading through writing.

And all those were paths and slippery slopes...And now I'm a welfare reform burocrat, in a rogue burocrazy, pirate burocrazy..mad because of what? I hate being a povery manager and I'm outraged because I'm being told to manage poverty less.

I want to arrive at the place where I quit this job from a place of power. Or I stay in it from a place of power.