Incomplete Regeneration

yEah. i've not written for awhile. partially, because i wore through another keyboard and i was waiting for the new one to come. but also partially, because i just didn't feel like writing.

i recently read an article about how writing is healing according to some study. literally and for all kinds of wounds. mental as well as physical.

i can't attest to the physical, i've never tried to heal a bruise or a bump or cut through writing. but i can attest to the emotional wound repair.

the nice thing about writing is that it doesn't require company. in fact, i find it rather hard to write when there is company around. i can't be alone with my thoughts.

so i avoided going to a funeral the other day. one of my former students succombed to muscular dystrophy. at least he made it to 21 years of age. i guess there's that. but i still have a terrible time with the early deaths. it just seems so wrong.

then in my back-home community there was a horrible event. a druggie couple gave drugs to the woman's 3 year old. "we put drugs in their bottles to watch them have fun." the 3 year old was put to bed where he died. then they hid the body for a day in a drawer. then on sunday the boyfriend and some kid hitched a ride with some woman to a nearby city asking her to stop part way there on a country road. there they walked into a woods and lit the saran wrapped little body in a box on fire.

the community is outraged and horrified. as they should be. vigilante hillbillies are calling for the woman and her boyfriend to be burnt alive at the stake. stuff like that. there's been a candle light vigil. there's been lots of discussion about the charges- what they are, what they should have been. there's been lots of blame. on drugs. on a lack of christian values, on a lack of community, on this, that, and the other.

me? i blame the christian right. for making it so socially unacceptable to abort a fetus that people completely unqualified to be parents feel they must carry through on a conception.

as for punishment, i'm not in charge of that. i believe that if i were, i would only put them in jail for life. i'm not much for vigilantism. i only want such people to live locked up away from me. and mine. and the only other thing i want to see is their six year place with some human people. away from druggies. and hillbillies. and the christian right.

but i'm sure that's not a popular opinion. likely people would be horrified to hear my thoughts. i don't care. it's what i think.

i should be at a birthday party tonight. partly my own. a group of us that i used to work with all having january birthdays. but i didn't want to go. almost as much as i didn't want to go to the funeral that i didn't go to. i just don't feel like being out too much this week. and i've already celebrated my birthday.

plus i've got my keyboard now, and i feel the need for some writing. there's a lot of digest in this month of january and wounds still to repair.

"The damage done in one year can sometimes take 10 or 20 years to repair." Chinua Achebe
"Repair means incomplete regeneration." Some Wikipedia article I read once