My long-term readers will
know I have 2 regular and non-negotiable items to write a year. Both
lunar-calendar based, Chinese New Year ... and this one – related to the
tradition of Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, Easter. It’s a bit later than
normal. Read on or listen here
My long-term readers will know I have 2 regular
and non-negotiable items to write a year. Both lunar-calendar based, Chinese
New Year ... and this one – related to the tradition of Hot Cross Buns on Good
Friday, Easter. It’s a bit later than normal.
This year I was in Turkey with my Father and his
wife Di. We were chasing World War One ghosts in Gallipoli and Homer’s myths
and legends in Troy across the Dardenelles. It’s always seemed a little strange
to me that Troy is a real place with actual things like the Scamander river in
which the Goddesses washed their hair and so on. At any rate this part of the
world has been so central and important that these incredible Greek tales were
set in them and the Romans claimed them too... Though perhaps it’s no different
from the fictitious hero’s we populate ‘Gotham’ with in our modern legends.
Anyway as I was on Muslim soil and in the
interests of inclusion and peace especially in religious ways I made a special
effort. Ladies and Gentlemen - I present to you the Hot Crescent Bun!
I did not bake these
myself... I modified these from their original form. Wanting something of the
cut-and-thrust of Homeric legend I’ve done a cut-and-paste job on them. But not
of the Photoshop kind, no, this was an old school trimming of the sacred bread
itself. Far preferable – after all who doesn’t like to get sticky fingers!
As you can see the results are like my beard -
patchy at best - but it’s an effort to illustrate the title of this piece.
Which in turn leads into the purpose of this missive. Tolerance.
While billions of people and countless
cultural organizations don’t practice tolerance, YOU can. And that will make a
difference. In your life and in the lives of everyone you encounter.
Religious intolerance is the most obvious global sticking point at the moment.
I’m aware that religion has been the root of many horrendous conflicts. Or
rather than root, its been used as the explanation for peoples being at war
with each other rather than it generally being about economics as usual. And
yet I am utterly baffled by the faith-based insistence on being right and to
hell with the rest of you. And how otherwise logical folks think that there is
any more reason to believe in one almighty god than there is to believe in the
whole Pantheon of gods that meddled from Mount Ida in the affairs of noble Troy
and are scoffed at now.
...But I’d like to address a different
intolerance a little closer to home and insidiously active all around us.
Back in bad old segregated Johannesburg, South Africa I was in high school in
the 80's. For an hour a week we were prescribed to do 'cadets’ training. This
amounted to learning to march like we would be expected to when we went to the
white apartheid conscript army after school. To some degree the students were
left to drill themselves. Basically some of the seniors ordering the juniors to
March around in class squads. Left right left wheel halt blah blah banal...
Except once a group of matrics (final year pupils) decided to have some fun.
They took our little squad of 30 or so 14 year olds. They picked one of them
and made this one kid point out who was a faggot in the group. I don't have a
lot of sympathy for this kid, made to choose, for he was a bit of a weasel and
was clearly happy that he got to choose and therefore wasn't going to be the
main target of this abuse. He chose a friend of mine, like me not very high on
the list of sporting achievers and thus just perfect to bully. And of course I
was also singled out as being ‘queer’. Next this matric (not the sharpest claw
on the cat but definitely the meanest of the litter) made my friend lie on the
ground with all the boys stand around and watching. And then I was made to do
press-ups on top of him. I remember being horrified and embarrassed and just
did what they asked and hoped it would end there. It pretty much did. What a
stupid crappy thing to have to endure.
Now I don't really care about any of that anymore but I do care how homophobia
is still used to bully, belittle and denigrate people around the world
regardless of whether or not they even are homosexual. So I want everyone who
knows me to know that it's not anymore ok to be even casually homophobic than
it is to be casually racist, sexist and so on. But what freaks me out even more
is that so many people aren't even casually so. They actually are so.
Everyone knows change is needed, everyone knows change is coming but people
forget that change is and always has been
happening... Each generation is more liberal than the last and more personal
freedom attained than before. Many think this is a bad thing. But let’s face
it... that decision is generally made by the people or groups in those
societies that enjoy the most personal freedom within them. It isn’t the
subjugated that choose slavery. At least its amusing to think how in a few
years people protesting against same-sex marriage will look as daft as those
protesting against equal civil rights.
But as per Gandhi’s words, being the change
one wants to see in the world is unlikely to be comfortable. Being on the edge
can be precarious... the precipice in front with a jostling eager herd behind
or worse an angry mob filled with ignorance & hatred...
Like those brave men that fought and died in Gallipoli there was a moment at
which they had to leap from their trenches and expose themselves to certain
death. So too on much smaller levels there come moments in our lives in which
we are willing to make a stand and expose ourselves to hostility. Not
necessarily at some dramatic moment but rather at a point when one’s own
confidence and indignation of the injustice has grown enough to do so. So over
the top I go...
I've had some same-sex interactions. Almost entirely this has just involved
kissing and most of those times have also involved a woman. I am far more drawn
to women and to the female form however if I meet someone I simply have to kiss
and they feel the same way then I have kissed them. Should I ever enjoy
it more; I hope I have the courage to go beyond any form of residual
societally placed homophobia and explore further. There is everything right
with this attitude. In just the same way there is nothing morally higher or
lower for any consensual act of love or sexuality between adults no matter the
shade of grey.
My first pass at writing this article deliberately left my experience-level
vague so people could think what they wanted to. I felt anything else might be
apologetic. At one point I’d even considered ‘coming out of the closet’ as
being bisexual or gay just in solidarity, regardless of the fact that I haven’t
actually had sex with another man nor wanted to. But those were not my truths. I remain scared and wary of this form of sexuality but I completely recognize how
wrong that is and how this fear has been placed within me by the actions of the
social multitude and also the horrible few.
Whereas I know Love is Love. And I ... love you.
Doctor Lobster
This image courtesy of Francesca McHugh
This year the thing you seek is not the thing you will find. What
you find instead will lead you back to where you were when you wanted to be
where you are now and that might be a place you’d prefer to be... either way like
the epic journeys of legend that end back in the hero’s village you will be
wiser. Most positive change felt painful in the beginning… and most courage is
found unexpectedly. So don’t shy from the challenge rather shy a coconut at the
baldhead of Seriousness and laugh while you scamper back to the jungle of Joy
your life can be. 
