Sochi & the Right To Be A Gay Human ... OR ... 'Gay Jock Usage In Russia'

Sometimes I wonder about the world. In this modern world, it almost seems as though - to quote songwriter Cole Porter - 'anything goes.' If we go too far, we say sorry, but in the biggest way possible, feigning sincerity, then have the gall to go on as if our extreme bad behavior did not occur in the first place. Whatever happened to just doing the right thing? What's wrong with just being honest and upfront? What happened to good ole integrity? 

Today I reflect on Russia and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. 

President Putin has an archaic take on 'non-traditional relations.' Russia's ambiguously-worded anti-gay-propaganda law, which implies gays are not to be around children, & are a danger to children, also bans talk of  gay relations in media while suggesting loosely that gays can be recruited & makes it illegal to equate gay relationships to heterosexual relationships! Well, this is a reminder to those who think the world has accepted gay people & is embracing them warmly, completely. We have not come THAT far.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you probably have a homophobe right next door, or a little further down the street. You might even work with one who smiles in your face and laughs at your jokes, all the while - behind your back - disgusted by you, 'your kind', and "what you represent" to them. There are haters. There will be haters, and all haters will not speak loudly. Some are very quiet, sneaky. All haters are DANGEROUS.

This takes us to ... of all places ... Sochi, Russia, and the Olympics. WTF are we doing there? Yes, I know. I am not ignorant to the fact that money has a hold on a great deal of what we see on the world stage. Money. The love of money. Greed. Big pay days ...

Concerning the Sochi games, do we ignore that HUGE, stinky elephant in the room called 'anti-gay', 'homophobia', 'anti-human-equality' just to play ['these all-important'] sporting games for a couple of weeks at the cost of  morality, human rights and human dignity?

To me, it seems a BIG DEAL, for countries to gather their Olympic best and fly them all the way to a foreign land whose leader has clearly stated his opposition to the human rights of homosexual people. If Mr. Putin does not believe in human equality rights for gay people, again I ask, WHY are Canada, & the United States, etc. even in Russia for these Olympic games? Sometimes you have to stand up for what is right. If (laugh!) there were no gay people in Sochi before, well there sure are NOW. Why put our athletes, reporters et al in harm's way?

Money. Money. MONEY ...?

Rare is the organization who will put the human before the dollar. Cowardice runs rampant, and many in positions of power believe it's simply easier to just grin and bear it than to take a stand against an unjust system.

Sometimes I wonder about the world.

By @SoulKirk 

Follow @SoulKirk on Twitter.

#humanrights #humanequality #NOH8

Holes ...

Went to the dentist 2 Fridays ago with serious pain. Dentist's office in this city had booked me for a March appointment that had to be re-scheduled, as I couldn't sleep at all the night before and they changed appointment from early afternoon to late morning, which I TRIED to be available for, as I really needed to see professional re: pain. Was finally exhausted as it got closer to appointment time. June was the next available slot! My pain "said" this wasn't acceptable, eventually. My dentist also has an office in the twin city, and the receptionist there was diligent about fitting me in the day after I called the second office, which was the Friday.

Thought maybe a filling had come out months ago, but the dentist and assistant didn't know for sure if that was the reason for the pain, though a deep cavity WAS found, and filled. Left side of face frozen, I was happy to have had X-ray and new filling done, but as I was leaving dental office, headache started, got worse as I got home though my face continued to be frozen for hours after! By the time the freezing wore off, pain at left side of my head was excruciating, acute. The next day, I called my dentist's 2nd emergency cell line (at his home) against my better judgement. Just felt weird. He was cool and prescribed course of antibiotics which I readily picked up at the local drugstore shortly thereafter. Every time I took a pill (3 daily), the worst pain shot through my head. The bottle finished this past Monday and it was the first time a Dr. gave me antibiotics in maybe 15-20 yrs. Guess what? The pain, though not as intense or as consistent, still remains! Not sure if it is, after all, a dental thing, or something having to do with a diagnosis from the Dr. who 'fired' me last year because ...well, for his own reasons, really. I'm on a year long (yes, 1 year!) waiting list here in HRM, Nova Scotia, for E/N/T specialist and having waited this long for attention for THAT problem, I'd not be surprised if it were what the pain's all about vs dental. Though, I'm not sure about much at this time. Feels like the infection, if there was an infection (that's why there was pain, ya?) has possibly spread. It's hard to function; most difficult to focus/concentrate. I put in a call with the dentist again this weekend, though I stupidly (?) didn't use 1 of his emergency numbers. I'll probably hear from them early tomorrow. Otherwise, I'll be calling soon as I awake Monday.

I really feel like I've fallen through the cracks in recent years and I do not get the kind of treatment I need. Not knocking my dentist AT ALL, as he's been consistently on it, but overall, I never could have imagine my life would be so much about being slighted and mistreated, having no friends, no social life, no doctor again. Wasn't able to do my taxes because of the dental pain. (Mind you, in my tax bracket, I definitely do not have to pay IN to the government but I like to have them done before the general deadline.) Also, I need to find a family Dr. again before my current medications run out, which will be in a week or less! Harsh medication withdrawals ... Do you see how 1 thing leads to the other? I'm tired of being treated so poorly by family, fake friends (the ones in Toronto who didn't have my back) and so-called "professional' Drs, calling themselves GPs or family docs.

Head pains aside, almost every damn day of the past 14 years back here in NS HURTS! My mother treats me like shit with her words and actions, thinking gifts and take-out etc. make up for it. My sister all but ignores my existence, ALL ABOUT her unit: she, her boyfriend, and her daughter. Everyone seems to be going on trips to the very places I'd planned to be going to when I was a kid who planned his life and career out (people whom in the past have not displayed any interest in travel even!). My mother even does things to block me getting help from any relative living in Ontario who might otherwise be able to help me get back to Toronto, and the land of the living, where I can breathe and be myself. Here, I'm labeled, stigmatized and yeah, ignored. "That Black guy Kirk," I overhead someone in my neighborhood saying on their phone once. Or: "He's Black ..."; "He's old ..." and other things I can't post here as they'd only make my life worse, cause familial trouble; make it more difficult for me to navigate my way around here.

Human kindness? It's hard to find. There's really no excuse though. I think of all the charitable works I do daily online; how I've become the reluctant activist for several different causes. It's just as easy to lift someone up as it is to put someone down. You know, it's f-ing horrible to have to spend most of your time with the emotionally 'questionable' mother who berates you, starts arguments (which you hate as a rule), then insists you're the one who STARTS THEM! She's even taken to telling my siblings I'm starting arguments, when what really is happening is me losing my temper after she goes on and on, making derogatory comments, verbally attacking me, 'til I have to lose it, and holler, or say something passionately, in my own defense.

I have to spend the time with my mother because, as the situation stands, being at home with no friends at all, no cable, or internet, just a TV and stack of DVDs and 4 walls ... it starts to get at you - sometimes a week in, or 2, 3 ... Abnormal living isn't LIVING at all. It's just existing. So sad I thought some people actually DID care for me, and would be there for me as I was for them. That, however, has not been the reality. So here I am again, at my mother's. She's on 'good behavior' today, but that could change quickly, and almost surely if not tonight, tomorrow she will be a very rude shrew, who shows a completely different 'face' to her relatives and church community. Feels like I'm being punished for something. What did I ever do to deserve THIS? It is so sad when happiness is something only referenced in one's memories of another city, another time - which seems like another life time now. WTF, I say, "WTF"?!

The Artists' Way

it took some time
though now I finally see
the very problem's at the heart of me

my sensitivity ...
i'm blessed & cursed

the "human sponge"
that's me, you see
sometimes I care so much, it hurts

i'm thankful for the Gift
of making art

yet those tools applied to my personal life
they can often break my heart ...

& so, I live my life the artists' way ...
Delicately balancing
In this world where I create

I learn to use my pain to make me strong
When the storm is through
I'll start anew
& write a hundred songs

(c) 2012 - {January 9, 2010/ January 17, 2012} by KIRK

The Blooming Flowers Of Springtime

The looming clouds of darkness re-appear
The count is on for happiness
In a time of doubt & fears ...

Who knows just what revelry lies ahead
The choice, stands bold & glaring ...

I think I'll live until I'm dead

The blooming flowers of springtime bring no joy
Though there is much to sing about
I'm "melancholy boy" ...

I crave to see the sunshine days of old
When love was all we cared about
& dreams were things of gold

(c) {May 8, 2009/ June 29, 2011/ January 17, 2012 -} by KIRK

VESTA ~ The Tragic Loss of One of The MOST Skilled Vocalists To Ever Sing Into A Mic

Vesta (Williams), R&B Singer and Actress, Dies at 53

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: September 24, 2011

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Vesta Williams, a rhythm and blues singer and later an actress who had hits in the 1980s with “Don’t Blow a Good Thing” and “Congratulations,” was found dead on Thursday in a hotel room here. She was 53.

Jason Merritt/Getty Images for N.A.A.C.P.

The rhythm and blues singer Vesta Williams last year.

The cause may have been a drug overdose, said Capt. John Kades of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

Ms. Williams had hits with “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” “Sweet, Sweet Love” and the torch song “Congratulations,” in which she emotionally bids goodbye to her former lover, who is about to marry someone else, on his wedding day. (“I thought it would have been me/Standin’ here with you.”)

She also appeared in movies and on television. She was a saloon singer in the Mario Van Peebles movie “Posse” in 1993, and she had a recurring role on the television situation comedy “Sister, Sister,” playing the actress Jackee Harry’s best friend, Monica.

Ms. Williams’s initial success in the music industry came as a background singer for Chaka Khan, Anita Baker and Sting, among others. She released her first album, “Vesta,” in 1986.

Standing 5-feet-3, she gained weight in the 1990s, ballooning to a size 26, then went on a dramatic weight loss program, losing 100 pounds and getting down to a size 6.

She told Ebony magazine in 1996 that she began gaining weight rapidly after her singing career started to falter. She blamed her size for the loss of her recording contract.

“When I lost my record deal, and my phone wasn’t ringing, I realized that I had to reassess who Vesta was and figure out what was going wrong,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t my singing ability. So it had to be that I was expendable because I didn’t have the right look.”

She went on to become an advocate for the prevention of childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes.

Mary Vesta Williams was born on Dec. 1, 1957, to a disc jockey in Coshocton, Ohio. She is survived by an adult daughter.

Ms. Williams had been scheduled to perform on Oct. 22 at the 21st annual “DIVAS Simply Singing!” concert in Los Angeles, held to promote AIDS and HIV awareness. The show will pay tribute to her and another soul singer, Teena Marie, who died last December.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 24, 2011, on page D8 of the New York edition with the headline: Vesta Williams, 53; R&B Singer-Actress.

The Bumpy Night ...

If you only knew how much I NEED 1 someone. How much I've seen, even before I probably should have seen it in my life. I say need not confusing it with WANT, as I do want 1 someone, but if you knew how many years have gone by since I've had anyone 'special' in my life, you would understand that I indeed KNOW the human part of me does indeed NEED someone.

We are not meant to be alone for long periods of time. Alone time is for breaks, for regrouping, recreating ourselves, times of reflection. I have had way more than my share of THAT.

The years have gone by. No longer a child, no more a youth - somehow though, I have kept alive, inside, that child of joy (on most days). I have a strong sense of self & a great belief in my abilities, gifts, talents. I know what I can do and pretty much who I am at this time in my life. I know the difference between EGO, heart/soul/spirit, & my understanding of being human doesn't allow for being afraid to ask for help. We all will need help from someone outside of ourselves in our earthy journey. There is nothing to be ashamed of in asking, or in the realization of that need. This having been said, I HAVE asked, & asked, and asked again ... to deaf ears, as the majority of people I have encountered in my years do not feel as I do about it being cool to ask people for help when you do not have all of what is needed to get by, or to get to the other side of the bridge.

It gets LONELY - PROFOUNDLY LONELY. Most people will not be able to relate to this kind of deep loneliness which is born out of spending far too much time in a wrong situation, a place in life where you should not remain for too long a period of time. When you have fallen down the well and no one seems to want to trust you enough to help you up & along on your way, you know not only profound loneliness but great sorrow & sadness for fellow humans seemingly to wrapped up in thinking it is ALL ABOUT THEM and investing anything, time, money, belief, in YOU is not an intelligent, forward-thinking move. I am so glad I do not think that way and have known for a long time that life is about the sharing, the caring, the loving & the helping.

There is a 'smile' in my heart somewhere, where I am proud that I have been a man who has helped those struggling. When I discover the great progress in life made by someone I might have barely known but barely hesitated to help in the past, my heart smiles. I was the rung on the ladder that was shaky for them, the rung that got them to the next rung, & so forth - onward to that crucial climb toward their specific destiny. This, I believe, is a huge part of what life is REALLY about. Ha! Why should I, or anyone be ashamed to ask for help? It is part of the human experience. So many people have it wrong, but what is worse: they want us to feel like beggars & even use terms like 'handouts'. That term alone - I cannot believe the legs that awful term has had in the history of the world.

So here I sit in Nova Scotia, place of my birth; place I did not even like much as a child growing up. I'm the artistic/creative square peg in a family rooted in farming (no pun intended) who say I use 'big words' & have often said since my boyhood days that I 'think I know everything' because I have educated myself, & know a bit about varied subjects. That's just me. My actual belief is that a person can live to be over 100 yrs old, like my great grandmother did, but will never EVER know EVERYTHING. There is simply far too much to know, & the learning, at least for me is part of the fun in this journey.

It is twelve years after I returned to the Halifax area of Nova Scotia from Toronto for a break fro the bad times that the late 1990s brought to my life there, & for my maternal grandmother's funeral. Stuck down in the well, as I had not planned on staying here beyond a month or two. Had to pay my respects to one of the most wonderful human beings I had ever met, try and be there for my mother & attempt to regroup, myself. Returning to Toronto, where I left my heart, books & cds among some other things, was always The Plan. Only being turned away by people who had once been 'friends' in Toronto when asking for a place to stay temporarily, & being stabbed in the back by a particular (then) close relative/friend who seemed to misunderstand the term 'I got your back,' which he had said whilst secretly buying his first house on the Toronto outskirts. If you have seen the Bette Davis/Ann Baxter film classic All About Eve you will understand the number my cousin/ex-BFF did on me for 20+ yrs, studying me, emulating how I speak, my words, telling me he was my number 1 fan, as Baxter's character did to Davis' Margo Channing. I helped cousin to the city & gave him my key to it, introducing him to associates & hot spots, which he now claims as his own.

For the first several years here, cousin used to call me from Ontario every four to six months, asking me how I am, I'd sigh but engage in conversation with him, making him laugh with my comedic take on a bunch of different thing, including my long-term suffering, stuck in a place, only he knew as much as I, just how much I DETESTED. Finally, maybe seven or so years ago I decided to be firm & cut him out of my life. Obviously he did not think I was good enough to stay in a guest room at his house or even on the kitchen floor, or sofa. This was a friend? A protege? A 1st cousin?!! WTF? No - he made it clear by lack of action & avoiding the topic, that he was not part of the solution to my great problem. Sad, because he also knew how horrible my mother could be to me behind-closed-doors, yet he choose to watch me fall, to see if I could fly on my own. (This is a dangerous & judgmental thing to do to another human. Results could prove fatal in some cases. Help where you CAN. Always! You will need help from someone one day also.)

I have forgiven my cousin but I cannot, will not forget. Forgetting would allow me to let him back into my life to use me again. Now, as he & his 2 sisters, & the 'money gang' are off on a cruise this week, I suffer at the cruel hands (mouth, more accurately) of my mother who, well, honestly, has not ever been all that well in the head, not since I can remember. Not for lack of trying, I have not been afforded any friends who stay while here in Nova Scotia as an adult. The friends I finally did make, all moved out West eventually. I did not have much time being happy in friendship here with them. People seem more cold to me now. How can a personable man, who was a hit in the Toronto arts-funding community with hundreds of people, once called 'one of the most flexible, adaptable' people ever by an ex-boss NOT have friends, twelve years back in his hometown? Well, this is where the shake-up of my core-belief-system comes into play ...with this & 9/11.

I BELIEVE in many things but when it comes to the WHY of these two subjects especially, I don't know WHAT I believe anymore. What has happened or, in my case, what has NOT happened (making friends, having a social life) is out of step with all I had grown to believe ...until.

It is almost the ten year anniversary of the tragic 9/11. We all know what went down, so to speak. I do not have to expand much more on that aspect here. I will, however, share a bit of what I have earlier referred to as the profound loneliness that I experience most intensely when I return to my basement apartment in the city, where I have lived for maybe ten years. Most people just do not seem to GET IT, but try to imagine how it feels to live somewhere, unable to afford more than the three Canadian TV networks that come without cable, but with a fuzzy picture most of the time; a telephone service, with an old-fashioned answering machine, which rarely rings unless it's the hateful mother, or wrong number! Try to imagine having to spend time at the corner store in the nearby gas-station, talking to the cash attendants, as the closest thing to friends, just to stay sane. Then there's the constant moving in/out of the upstairs neighbors the paper-thin ceiling & walls that bring way too much noise, pounding from walking overhead, taking away from my wishes to write there! & imagine a TV remote that once worked off & on, belong to a TV that does not have an actual function button on the set itself to switch from TV to game/DVD & CD playing mode. Ha! Every universal remote bought has not seemed to work, after programming & so the savior, the escape that kept me going when at home with the four walls, watching mega DVDs has not been available to me for the past several months. This is how a verbally abusive, messed up mother's BAD COMPANY can turn out to be better than the silence & accompanying over-analytical thoughts that come with living as I do, where I do. You see, it is not really living at all. I have been merely EXISTING & have not, in fact, lived since I lived in Toronto, where there were at least many like-minded people, not labeling or judging me. Again & again I tell people online I do not have the money required to go back to Toronto & secure even shared accommodation digs 'til I land on my feet. I do not have the money it would take to finally move my creative self down to Los Angeles or thereabouts. (What WOULD it take? $4-5000 CAN? $6000?) So here I remain.

The 'angels' who seemed to appear in many incarnations in Toronto just when I needed them to cross a bumpy spot, they seem to have misplaced me when I moved back to Nova Scotia, where most of my blessings seem to be BLOCKED. (Perhaps it's my mother's great level of negativity.)

If you only knew how much it hurts to have gifts, skills, talents, to want to share them, to want to GO SOMEWHERE, be somewhere else, but you can't ... Immensely grateful for the gifts but sometimes they feel like a CURSE.

TO LOVE AND BE LOVED (On The Outside Looking In)

I just want to love one somebody & be loved back. Obviously this is asking to much from life. I sit & watch all the others talk about their partners & trips, tech toys & charmed lives while I sit trapped with a family that drew me back here from the big city, only to abandon me when not verbally abusing me & making me feel like less than zero or wrong for being naturally gifted/creative and NOT LIKE THEM.

This is not living this is EXISTING. Be happy for YOUR life if you have someone & an actual life. I only have memories & hope. : ) & as the years go by the hope remains, but fades. One must be realistic. Another Saturday night ... stuck.

Money seems the root. The root of all evil? The root to the route to get me out of here or keep me trapped in Nova Scotia, for I have no money & if I did I would have left several years ago.