I could do more by being less serious about myself and the things around me so that I can relieve myself from the yoke of anxiety and anxiousness. The more I think, the more I worry like a spinning potter’s wheel until it breaks and splatters mud all around.
Some wise men say you should laugh about things that you made mistakes about or made you mad about because then you wouldn’t feel so miserable or bitter about yourself. As I am getting ripen with the the numbers of moons and suns I have seen, I have begun to realize it has truth.
Life is too short to torture myself for things I can’t change in watching the phantasmagorical display of my life in the end, thinking, “Oh my, wasn’t I so serious about nothing!”
So, I could also practice laughing more and thinking less.
Brandan Dassey – “The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse” – Samuel Beckett
Maybe I should not have watched it, but alas, I did, and with the afterimages of the faces and scenes still haunting the brain chambers, refusing to leave, I am writing about the Netflix documentary to cast them out to the wilderness of forgetfulness – but with a voice of the heart.
The documentary revolves around the death of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, who the county and the state justice believe was murdered by Steven Avery and Brandan Dassey. Since the stories about the accused are readily available online, I will not delve into whether they are innocent or guilty in this post. But I cannot help thinking this: Prejudice by social class prevails over the carriage of justice and the great cultural divide between rural and urban, working and middle classes, and state and federal governments in the States. America is arguably a country of no aristocrats, yet class distinctions are apparent, and stratification is broad.
In the case of Steven Avery and Brandan Dassey, although they were not poor, their parents were deemed fit to caricature characters of laborers equivalent to medieval serfs or pre-industrial European peasants speaking with the class jargon in heavy dialectical accents. Would the police and courts act differently toward the accused and their families were it not for their family backgrounds and social statuses? Hollywood celebrities and those with money and power can do anything and yet get away with their wrongdoings because they have the status and best lawyers who can make innocence of murderers, and vice versa.
That is why I’m not too fond of police profiling, which always seems to accuse those from unhappy childhoods tainted with physical and verbal abuse, especially and mostly from parents. It’s not only about sexual violence but, most of all, about parental verbal and physical abuses that bludgeon their children’s psychs. You can’t just typecast someone because they fit your profiling for a particular crime type. Where is the goddess of justice? Remember, even the goddess of fortune plays the Wheel of Fortune blindfolded to give everyone a fair chance of a lot because she can’t see who is rich, bright, or beautiful to look at.
I used it to watch “Knight Rider” and “MacGyver” as a kid in the 80s because they were adventurous and chivalrous, Indiana Jones-type protagonists with bona ride missions to accomplish assigned by their benign wise bosses, of mercenaries of good causes for the Pax Americana.
But regardless of the zeitgeist of the 80s, both shows were distinguished by their use of wits rather than guns. They were modern-day Western shows minus firearms and horses, in which good guys fought off bad guys and continued their journeys as romantic wanderers.
To calling back yesterday, there were remakes of my favorite TV shows, but alas, the spirit of yesterday was not summoned with a wishful bid time return. You can never go back to yesterday.
Don’t say good night, for you will not see it, you’d better not say it it’s better that way so your spirit won’t leave for a night’s work across the starry skies riding on the moonlit waves of silence to the ghosts, it knows from your pasts you know not to inform them of your secrets deepest, darkest. So, you see it better that way that you say not good night at least for a while and let not your spirit tell it all to the ghosts haunting you even if you do not want.
The bliss of peace is made of these: a baby’s laughter, the soft flurry touches of my cats on my face, and their purring and meowing, listening to my favorite tunes and singing along alone, getting my hair done nicely, saying I love you to my cats with their little hearts on my heart.
Peace may be transient, a precariously illusory daydreaming, or a timed reprieve from existential responsibilities. Still, peace is happiness when the breeze of peace envelopes me with a fragrance of acacia and takes me to the sea of skies.
I believe a family is the nursery of a society, a nation, and the world. Whether it is headed by a parent or parents or a de facto breadwinner in the form of a non-disabled child, one thing is certain that good parenting is absolutely required for nesting humanity. That said, I will propose a law enacted for a qualified parent or parents who are mentally and physically able to nurture and nourish their children regardless of class and ethnicity.
I believe there are no evil children, contrary to the popularity of demon children from Damien in Omen to Rosemary’s baby. Still, only bad parenting can produce the so-called demon children hell-bent on destroying humanity. For instance, so many convicted killers had disastrous childhoods destroyed by parental violence, from beating, swearing, and molestation to humiliation and degradation. How can you beat such a little child just because they are troublesome or bothersome? And it doesn’t matter the level of education or social status of a parent for the crime of child abuse. Not all of us are made for parents with maternal or paternal instincts, not because we are inherently evil, but simply because we are not for the roles.
Therefore, I believe there should be a legal touchstone for being a good parent before having a child. If a mother or father is not ready to bring a child into this world and show him or her the beauty of life through thunder and lightning, then don’t be. Not everyone should be a parent.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
You must be logged in to post a comment.