Category Archives: Rants & Other Musings: Unfiltered-Raw

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Ageing is Not an Act of Violence

12 Saturday Jan 2019

I really, really dislike the language in the so-called “how hard did aging hit you challenge,” currently making the rounds on FB. It asks us to post (y)our first ever profile picture and the most recent one. It’s actually an interesting little game, except for the abysmal language and all of the assumptions and implications inherent in it.
 
Unless, like some folks I have loved, we die (too) young, ageing is one of the most natural and normal, not to mention unavoidable processes, known to human kind, and using this kind of language to describe it, is just another sad, sad example of how we create false ideals, ridiculous, unrealistic expectations and concepts of youth and beauty, by virtue of the very words we use to talk about them, or the ‘loss’ of them, as if they are to be grieved, as opposed to accrued experience and wisdom celebrated.
 
Ageing does not hit people, and saying so implies (rather explicitly), that it is a violent act or event, which in turn implies (rather explicitly), that it ought to be avoided at all costs. And while violence is certainly at least partly responsible for some of the visible signs of ageing on my person, the markings on my face and body, the lines, the furrows, the lumps and bumps, are the stories of my life, and I am loathe to describe them as having been “hit” by ageing.
 
My other beef with this particular FB ‘game,’ is that it generates comments such as: ‘you haven’t changed a bit,’ you still look the same’ and similar bla blabbidy bla, and I call BULLSHIT!
 
I, and everyone I know and have seen engage with this, do not look the same as I/they did even a few years ago, and if we haven’t changed, inside or out, we’re doing it wrong, life that is, or getting botox-ed to death.
 
It’s thoughtless, mindless bullshit like this that makes me want to leave the e-world altogether, but since it is one of the only ways I ever engage with some folks I would truly miss, I chose to qualify my own participation with this lil’ bitty rant.
 
The picture with the spiky red hair was taken in approximately 2009, the other one two weeks-ish, ago. I have had a million and one good, bad, ugly and indifferent experiences since then. I have had at least 12 hair styles and as many hair colours, I have gained and lost and gained and lost at least 50 lbs altogether in that time, and I have enjoyed and suffered many happy and brutally painful times in the 10 years between these two photos, and it shows; as it should.
 
PLEASE: STOP treating getting older as if it were a disease. PLEASE: let’s try to understand that getting older, really does bring more than just ‘a loss of youth,’ and ‘diminishing’ beauty, it is the only way in which to truly know, appreciate, accept, and love yourself, and by direct extension, to know, appreciate, accept, and love, anyone else.
 
The devil-chick is my actual original FB profile photo. That, has also changed, in that I am just MORE her as I age, and there is little to nothing graceful about it. As it should be, for me.
Peace,
~Marcela.
January 12, 2019
Images and writing: All Rights Reserved.

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Marcela’s World is a No-prayer Zone

20 Saturday Oct 2018

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Marcela’s World is a No-prayer Zone

Someone posted a very disturbing (to me) thing again recently about how saying shit like drive safe ‘is really just a prayer.’ What this particular piece of bla bla had to say, is that whether you like it or not, you (in this case me) are praying. Prayer is a distinctly ‘god-tinged,’ religious, spiritual etc etc… thing. You can call it whatever the fuck you want, but don’t tell me how I am to (mis)interpret words to take on what you need them to mean, especially when I utter them. When I tell people to ‘drive safe,’ what I mean is: there are fucking morons on the road or ice, or fog, or Elk, or lions and tigers and bears, and it is a reminder to them to pay-the-fuck-attention! Not a prayer. Again, you call it whatever the fuck you want, when you utter it.

I cannot, simply cannot do another god-tinged thing. I cannot read it, I cannot co-sign it, I cannot. I will not. If you feel it’s ok to god all over me, overtly and/or covertly, why in the fuck is it not ok for me to Atheistically-realist all over you? It is not that I don’t have faith, it is not that I refuse to believe in something, or that I don’t believe in anything. I have faith in real science, I have faith in my ability to do everything from fuck up to succeed and all points in between, and generally I tend to do it in a manner of proportions most epic. As well, I most certainly have a strong, very strong, belief: I believe in reality. I refuse, to believe in something that is not there. I refuse to believe in nothing. I refuse to allow something outside of me to take credit for all the good/bad/hard/easy/beautiful/ugly things I’ve done/survived/been subjected to over the course of my life, and conversely, I am neither cursed/blessed nor unlucky/lucky. I wasn’t handed recovery, and no evil force made me use substances, no one ‘gave’ me an education, a great kid, years of success and/or crash and burns of previously noted epic proportions! Shit happened/I made shit happen, I broke, I fixed it, I worked my fucking ass off, I rinsed, lathered and repeated. At times, I have been supported (and not) by a handful of humans. Real, fleshy, humans.

My life, what was, what is, is the direct result of circumstances, some beyond my control, and the available to me choices I made/make in the midst of said circumstances, with whatever capacity I possess(ed) (or didn’t/don’t), at any given time. My best and worst are not always the same depending on everything else going on in my worlds. Whether said choices have led me to the next epic or mediocre, yeah fuck that, I don’t do mediocre, but I digress, whether those choices have led me to the next epic success or fuck-up, has everything to do with reality, there is nothing fucking mystical or mysterious about it. The bear didn’t bite my friend’s ass when she was out on a bike ride in the sticks because of some weird fucking cosmic correlation, and it didn’t have hidden meaning. The bear bit her ass because she was in the sticks, on a bike, and scared the fucking bear when she came around the corner, and because the bear was a fucking bear. Kinda like I am not the fucking elk-whisperer, I just keep moving into their home and native land. 1 + 1 = 2 whereas 1 and 1 together mean 11, but it’s still true. And that shit, comes from a girl who hates MATH, cause it’s the only really ugly four letter word.

The bear bit her fucking ass because it’s a fucking bear. I say drive safe because I want them to pay-the-fuck-attention. I do not fucking pray. You do whatever the fuck you want, believe whatever the fuck you want, and allow me to do the same without your overtly covert missionary drivel.

Clear? Great. Peace.
~Marcela.

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Happy Un-boxing Day

03 Friday Aug 2018

I have been doing battle for and against others for so long, that I have been too weary to dedicate time and energy to that which is the core of who I am: A storyteller. I have been so preoccupied with the survival of self and others, that I may have hovered around a particular opportunity for too long without attempting a landing. But if you know me, truly know me, at all, you will know that I would rather put forth the significant energy required to try, knowing it may well be for nought, than live with never trying at all because it ‘might’ be too late, because I have fear and still suffer from imposter syndrome and engage in ridiculous self-talk like ‘why-would-they-consider-someone-like-me,’ and other bullshit. And as the next piece of corrugated cardboard, stop: revise: and as the next piece of re-bar enforced ‘culturally-appropriate’ cardboard and its inhabitants, threaten to box me further into the harm-laden world and systems I abhor, the ones which are sucking the health from my body and the soul from my being, the ones driving me further into a pit of financial instability, I look at my well-tattooed left arm, and remember, I am the girl who makes pigs fly! Lift-off must occur soonest, for detonation of the box has proven futile and I am out of explosives and expletives alike. I will beseech them, the unboxed, to please give me a shot, for I can do this. I want it more than most things. It is what I have been looking for without knowing exactly how and where I would find it, and without knowing them, but knowing them, because I found me a long time ago, and I know me. The box never has. The box never will. The box is not programmed to know, love, learn, nurture. The box is programmed to destroy. I am programmed to thwart its efforts.
~Marcela.

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Farewell to you sir…

09 Saturday Jun 2018

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Farewell Mr. Bourdain, I will always be grateful to you for knowing more about me, because I watched you, saw you, and I will miss your (hu)manity, beyond mere words.

If you watched Anthony Bourdain, read any of his words, listened to the conversations he had with other Rock’n Roll high-powered folks and the everyday humans he engaged with in the course of his work, and you still failed to see, hear, the angst, the vulnerability, beneath the unfiltered, the Rock’n Roll, you were not paying attention.

Surface level thinking, instant fucking everything, generalizations, assumptions, falsely drawn conclusions, few critical brains, and much too much attention to all things fucking woo-woo, are the scourge of our culture.

I’m sorry for the profound loss everyone who loved you is feeling in this moment, I’m so very sorry.

~Marcela.

Image: Google search – Writing: All Rights Reserved.

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Shine on you crazy fucking diamonds!

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

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I believe, fully, that no matter the outcome of the US election tonight, there will be dark dark times ahead, for all of us. When choice A and choice B both suck this badly, it does not feel as though anyone actually wins, least of all the citizenry of this planet. It matters not what bigger or smaller piece of it we call home, this impacts all of us, BIG. The only way I believe I can stay sane, not sink into a bottomless pit of despair, stay willing to live at all, in the midst of it, is to work harder than ever at being a light. As we roll full speed, and without having boarded this hell-train voluntarily, into the scariest of fucking scary tunnels eVer, I refuse, just fucking refuse, to capitulate to yet another despot, don’t care what genitalia they wear. Not even the invasion of the former Soviet Union into my homeland as I sat on my granny’s knee, felt this hideous, but I digress… I believe as fully, that it is incumbent upon all of us, more so than ever, to shake off the coal dust and become the fucking diamonds we are inside, shine with everything we all have, so that our children and grandchildren, actually have a future. The artists, the fighters, the poets, the writers, every day humans with humanity and humility, and above all, with spirits bigger than blather and all the money in the world, it’s time to take it back! One, single, bigger or smaller, thoughtful, good, kind, decision, choice, and deed, at a time. With all the Love I have,
~Marcela.

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Cancelled

13 Saturday Aug 2016

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Cancelled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He sat downstairs and played video games

I sat upstairs and cried

He sat downstairs and played video games

I went to work and cried

He sat downstairs and played video games

I went grocery shopping and cried

He sat downstairs and played video games

I hauled in the shopping and cried

He sat downstairs and played video games

I cooked dinner and cried

He came up to bed and read a book

I went downstairs and cried

He screamed that my crying was unattractive, and that is why he stopped touching me

I screamed back and then sat silently, gouging holes into my arms

I watched them bleed and cried

He sat downstairs and played video games

I went shopping for his needs and cried

He screamed that I had broken him, that is why he sat downstairs and played video games

I screamed back and went for counselling, for all my ills and cried

He came to counselling with me, screamed my counsellor was an idiot,  that is why he will counsel me himself

I drove away and cried

He sat downstairs and played video games

I went to the trail to cry

He sat downstairs and played video games

I hid out back to cry

He screamed he’s sick of my crying games, his truck is broken, that is why he can’t work

I screamed back, then I bought a truck and cried

He went to work and cried, about his sacrifices for me

I looked at my empty bank account and cried

I looked at my empty soul and cried

I looked at my empty life and cried

He screamed that he would like to finish me for good, though he would probably be sorry the next day

I could not scream, I looked desperately for Marcela to help me, I could not find her, I looked everywhere and cried

I cancelled self-esteem and cried

I cancelled physio and cried

I cancelled the dentist and cried

I cancelled the trail and cried

I cancelled school and cried

I cancelled writing and cried

I cancelled my life and cried

I CANCELLED HIM TO LIVE.

~Marcela: un-cancelled

August 13, 2016

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Why I won’t wave a patriot flag on Canada Day.

01 Friday Jul 2016

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I love Canada. Three years ago today, as a matter of fact, I was on many airplanes, traveling back to Canada from a going home(s) tour with the two humans I love most, my mother and my ManChild. We (my mom, dad and brother and I) came as refugee-immigrants when I was 7 and I have lived here on and off for 36 of my almost 56 years on this planet. I also love the Czech Republic. I was born there when it was still Czechoslovakia and we lived there until the former Soviet Union chose to liberate us, with their tanks and their army. (BOOM! Think about this, no, I mean just think about why they thought they could/should roll in, in the context of this missive). And, I love Switzerland. I lived there for 13 years while trying to escape me and the stuff I carried from the Czech Republic and Canada.

All of these places are home to me, the various towns and cities I have inhabited in these countries are all my ‘home-towns.’ I made connections, I loved, I lost, I laughed, I cried, I worked, I got married, I got divorced, I had a child, I raised step children, I fucked up, I cleaned up my messes, I did it all again. I LIVED, in all of these places.

From the time I was a small child I could not, for the life of me, understand the vigor with which the natural born-natives, and I use that term loosely, of these countries, posited their better-dom (yes, that is a word), over other folks, quasi-Canadians, wanna-be Swiss, or even smarter-than-the-Slovaks-Czechs, when we were still one country.

This is important: I am not ungrateful to have had a place like Canada to come to when those pushy Soviets rolled in so rudely, as I sat on my grandma Mrnka’s knee in Karlovy Vary, on that memorable August day in 1968 (revisit BOOM, here). I am not ungrateful to have had an opportunity to live and love in Switzerland (even if I had to marry an asshole to do it) when I found myself in dire-straights and in serious peril in the company of some unsavoury Vancouverites. I am not ungrateful that years later, I was able to return to the place my dad traded his life for, in order that my brother and mom and I, could have one.

My point, quick and dirty: I am not a patriot. The word itself, its origins and various incarnations is problematic to me, but you can do your own research. There is little tying it to the commonalities we share with every, single, culture and ethnicity on this planet, patience, I am getting there. I am not ethnocentric. Again, do your own research, please. From patriotism to ethnocentricity to, I try not to be racist. Admittedly though, I have had it much easier as an outsider sporting my lily white skin, fitting into ‘foreign’ cultures like Canada and Switzerland, than those of a different epidermal hue, and I recognize this as an unearned privilege. Three words, all connected, all lead to every single one of the world issues we have going on. War is not about peace and freedom is not about taking away that of others. Wealth is not about raping and pillaging this planet’s resources so the superior folks have enough by creating poverty and suffering, and then blaming those whose suffering they have created, for their inadequacy.

From where I sit, we are one type of two-legged, upright humanoid with a number of sub-types based on geography and culture, one home world as we know it. The research is not united, and frankly I don’t actually give a flying fuck about whether we all stem from one woman somewhere in the African desert, if we are all mongrels, or if any or all of us are aliens who came in the Tardis with Dr. Who, for that matter. Genetic research ought to be used well for all our benefit, not abused to create more reasons for fear and hate of ‘other.’ Everything else is socially constructed and geographically determined, and more importantly, it is driven by the almighty dollar, dinar, koruna, frank, euro, gold, silver, shit, call it what you will. It is about fucking money, power and fear mongering, fundamentalism, fanaticism and greed, plain old, greed, and better-than-ism. Yes, that is a word, also.

So no, I will not fly my patriot flag today, or any other day, at least not any higher than I would for anywhere I have enjoyed (and not) living, for anyone else I have enjoyed (and not) sharing that place with.

~Marcela: Unapologetically yours, and with the utmost gratitude for all my home(s), past, present and future, cause I’m not done here yet.

July 01, 2016

(Post image courtesy of Google search ‘earth heart.’)

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Intense…

22 Friday Aug 2014

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Help People!

Help
PEOPLE!

Intense…

…is not a pathology, a DSM Mental Health diagnosis, a deficit,
or disordered, or wrong.
Intense is bold, strong, courageous to the nth degree, in your face, truthful.
Intense is neither flexible nor choice.
Intense is not willing, wishful, wanting, hope, or even drive, ambition.
Intense is a primal need;
to push, limits; mine, yours, theirs, ours, always.
And exactly when you think;
Intense has pushed enough, pushed too far,
Intense pushes again;
further, than ever here-to-fore.
Intense is pure, unadulterated.
Intense is the epitome of unfiltered.
Intense is emotional excess:
the good the bad, the beautiful the ugly, the high, the low;
not despite having known pain, but because it knows pain.
Intense and pain, are intimately acquainted;
they are, in fact, in love, inseparable,
pain is fuel on the fire that is,
Intense.
Intense is often confused and contradictory, no, not contradictory,
Intense is highly conflictual.
Intense is deeply connected, insightful, wise, awesome-crazy, vulnerable and even, volatile.
Intense is wild.
Intense is unfettered.
Intense is not funny or amusing;
Intense is hilarious.
Intense cannot be contained, will not be boxed.
Intense puts the shattered pieces back together;
in a way that creates a picture more beautiful,
than the one which was seemingly in-tact,
prior to its shattering.
Intense has wings.
Intense makes pigs fly.
Intense knows not, of impossibility.
Intense is the home of creativity, its very core, its essence.
Intense is never indifferent, and never, ever, mediocre or neutral.
Intense knows no middle ground.
Intense is love and hate, war and peace, black and white;
but it resides, in living colour.
Intense is primary, neon, even.
Intense registers no nuanced hues or shades of gray.
Intense has no space for washed out and faded.
Intense is not boastful, but it is proudly aware of its inherent
Intensity and character.
Intense is a student and humble teacher.
Intense appears bossy, but is in actuality, a leader.
Intense is loud, especially when silent.
Intense will not walk the talk of shameful suffering and pastel-coloured pity.
Intense occupies souls and fuels the infernos of spirit-blazes too hot to extinguish.
Intense will be doused only, with (premium)fuel.
Feed the flame;
watch,
Intense incinerate,
evil; with Love.

Intensely yours: MyLa, Unfettered.
August 21, 2014

Postscript, Nov. 22, 2015:

Intense will no longer apologize for its intensity.

 

 

 

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The Experiment

03 Sunday Aug 2014

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Truth.PillImage from: http://funnyand.com/truth/

The Experiment

I am overwhelmed.

I am overwhelmed because I have some insight into my overwhelmed-ness.
I am overwhelmed because I have some insight into your overwhelmed-ness.
I am overwhelmed because I have some insight into others’ worlds, their overwhelmed-ness.
I am overwhelmed because I have some insight into the big picture of events in our world, the planet earth, and those engaged in destroying it, each other, and all of us, as well as those engaged in not.

I am overwhelmed with information and stories I want to tell.
I am overwhelmed with information and stories you want me to tell.
I am overwhelmed with stories I need to tell, stories which I believe the telling of, has value for me, and value for you.
I am overwhelmed with information and stories you tell me I ought to tell, because you believe they have value for you and others.
I am overwhelmed with my seeming inability to tell these stories without offending you.
I am overwhelmed and broken, when you tell me that my life experience offends you. Even the life experience we share. I am overwhelmed, especially, then.

 We live in a world in which the truth, being yourself, being real, are encouraged… and judged, in one and the same breath. ~MyLa

I am overwhelmed with living up to the cheerleader’s rah rah of just be yourself Marcela, we wouldn’t have you any other way. And I am beyond overwhelmed with finding the ballz to be myself, 100% Marcela unfiltered, to receive the big stop-hand in my face: This admonition: Be yourself Marcela, just not that much.
I overwhelm you with being myself. I am too myself, for you to love and accept me as myself, the way I am. Myself.
I am overwhelmed with continuing to listen to the refrains that have overwhelmed me for too many years.
I am overwhelmed with feeling understood and valued for being myself for approximately 3 minutes out of each 24 hours.
I am overwhelmed with feeling misunderstood and confused about being too much myself for 23 hours and 57 minutes of each 24 hour period. Yes, I am overwhelmed even in my sleep.
I am overwhelmed with looking for my part in being overwhelmed, what I have said and done to make us so overwhelmed.
I am overwhelmed with thinking about what I need to change to make you stop being so overwhelmed with my life experience, with trying to to make you understand me and where I come from, when I endeavor to tell you about it, without making you overwhelmed.

The experiment:

I am going to be myself. Courageously, and with ballz. 100% Marcela, the overwhelming one. I have some insight into what will occur, what the outcome of my experiment will be. Do you?

Overwhelmingly yours, MyLa: Unfettered.

August 02, 2014

 

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Epic…

03 Sunday Aug 2014

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do epic shit

Someone asked me recently, on my day off, what exciting things I had been up to all day. I answered truthfully, as I always do when I am asked these questions. When they asked me why I bother to do all these things, I answered truthfully, as I always do when I am asked these questions.

I made a stock pot full, and bottled, the ginger tea I make because it saves my mind and health, every day. I ran 7 K on the trail I love because it saves my mind and health every day. I made homemade deodorant, because I walk my talk of living clean. I went to several farm stands in my area and to the farmer’s market because I walk my talk of living clean, of knowing my food producers and how they raise and treat their fields, plants and animals, and I want to put my well-earned cash in their pocket. I returned glass milk bottles because I walk my talk of trying to leave as minimal a footprint on this earth as is possible. I made citrus peel and vinegar cleaner and bottled it in glass spray bottles because I walk my talk of living clean, and as chemical free as possible. I sunbathed, I read a book, I did laundry, and I cried a lot. It has been the norm when I am alone in recent weeks, more often than I would like to admit. Why? Read on, and check out Best Regards and The Experiment for more on that. I may be unfiltered, but I am acutely human. That means I cry when in pain.

It appears that the individual who asked me what exciting things I had been up to, got more of a response than they bargained for. It occurred to me in this moment, that while I get a lot of rah rah cheerleaders and fleeting admirers in my life, of all genders and varieties, in all areas of my life and work(s), quite often, they run, or worse begin to criticize, because all of those things they rah rah on about, so greatly admire about me, generally end up being more than they bargained for. Way more. I have always known that this is their issue, not mine, now I just wear it on the outside instead of carrying it on the inside and hurting me. I am complex, not to mention way mufti-faceted, and a really cool chick. I ought to be raising the bar, in so many areas… .

Peek-a-boo-I-see-through-you

Peek-a-boo-I-see-through-you

Peek-a-boo! I see (through) you! Furthermore, I have survived, overcome, triumphed over, thrive not despite but because of, do, EPIC shit. Therefore, nothing about me is simple(ton), it is EPIC! Clear? Great. Peace.

Epically yours, MyLa: Unfettered.

July 29, 2014

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