Still can't sleep

Life is good in the crevasses.  Stayed away from the news most of Saturday, had long conversations about life with two of my housemates.  Walked the lake.  Worked the door at a show.  It was this performance art piece mostly performed with a slide show and voice over, called "Oil Pressure Vibrator," by a woman who had made a decision to become a hermaphrodite.  At some point in the journey, she decides to learn how to operate a piece of heavy machinery, the only woman in her classes.  She passes the "driving" test on the third try (everyone failed the second test.)  The last slide is a video clip of the machine in operation on the beach, and a woman made out of sand.  She handles it with such grace and tenderness, as if it is an extension of her own body, but in the end destroys the woman in the sand.  My takeaway from the performance was that I wanted to learn how to operate one of those machines, not for any sexual reasons, but because seeing it used in such a tactile way, rather than as a blunt object, was intriguing.  The artist is Geumhyung Jeong from Korea.  She's fascinating.

Breaking out in a teenage plague.  I think it's the prednisone, I'm trying to wean myself off, but it's makes me feel weird, puffy in the face, heaviness in my chest.  (It also helped with the pain, but I need to give my liver a break.)

Watched three hours of reality tv last night as distraction from the news.  (My usual distraction is falling asleep to youtube, I'm trying to stop, I'm sure that's not a good thing to be doing.)  I still wake up at three with my thoughts racing, unsure if I fall back asleep or not, if I do, it's not particularly restful.

Compassion isn't a weakness, and most religions call for it.  Cracking open, and learning to love your neighbor, or at least get to know them, isn't gonna make the world come crashing to an end.  If you always need someone for an enemy, once your defeat them, you will find another; you find what you are looking for.  If you look for the worst, you will find it, and if you look for the best, you will find it.  Fear can make you hate anyone, even those you once loved.  Fear tighten up your world, love opens it.  You always get to choose.  That's your power.  There is no "them" against any "us."  Those who wish to gain or keep power, will find ways to keep us occupied fighting against one another, to distract us from their bigger game.  They run off with the spoils, and we fight over crumbs, thinking we won.