I missed George Stephanopoulos’ ABC special report last Friday night over the perilous state of our country. All I saw was a brief advertisement explaining the division in our country is destroying our nation. Mhm. Now there’s a new thought – our country is divided.

Neither donkey or elephant identified. Neither pro or anti life or choice. I cannot swallow the pills we are fed to believe that to be active, intelligent, or productive means we must identify and label ourselves. What would happen if I didn’t? What would happen if I made a new language to desribe my own political evolution, my own human search for truth and its governance? I identify catholic and feminist; filipina and spanish; my name is hyphenated for God’s sake – I identify with duality. The existence of two or more elements does not necessarily neutralize beliefs. I believe duality strengthens the ability to articulate and make an argument. Give me an issue and I can argue either side. Ask me what I believe and I’ll say something ambiguous, I’m sure.

It’s not that I don’t have beliefs. Au contraire. The opposite, I believe. Perhaps too much. I believe that we are capable of healing, progression, and risk. I believe in technology, relationship, and human touch. I believe in seasonal admission and selective rejection (aka agree to novelties at the right times of your life and always reject what is not life-giving). Not all we read is true, most celebrities are ridiculous, and we exhonerate the easy, quick, and painless methods of living. Language and earth are grossly stained and misused. Eating at an ethnic restaurant does NOT constitute racial inclusion in our lives and those who don’t think the same are wrong, evil, or misinformed. I do have plenty of beliefs, they’re just unbound. And I don’t like the look of the conventional strings.

Think slowly. What wins the race? Or, rather, who’ll benefit if, and when, the race is ever over? I mean, have you ever really stopped and looked at both sides of the road? The protests, the screaming, the metal detectors. Aren’t you getting sick over our inability to sustain peace? And I don’t mean peace with the symbol of a dove. I mean peace with radical equality, where daily freedoms include hilarity, art, and pleasant news for everyone, para todos? I’m getting just as sick over the Bush jokes as I am over restricted civil liberties. It’s as if we’re running out of ways to express what we want and the only ways to move forward are the old ways – ridicule, alienate the other side, isolate ourselves, buy something expensive to make yourself feel better, drink alcohol, and attend a workshop that recycles the same message.

I identify turtle, a slow creature in our world who is both mobile by water and land. The turtle is anatomically described into two parts. Its upper body is home to vertebrae and ribs while the lower region has been formed from the clavicles and collar bones. Surprise, surprise, it needs both regions to survive and is connected by a bony structure called The Bridge. Its growth can be spurred or interrupted by its surrounding environmental conditions.

I grow. I hope.
I grow I hope.
I hope I grow.