guardian angels

I think I just got my first mosquito bite of 2012.

I'm sitting on the back patio on a fold-up chair from the dining room (since we don't have any outdoor furniture) and there is one lone 'skeeter lolling around my legs.  These DE mosquitoes BITE.  Like their probosces are made to be felt when they jab into your ankles.

Anyway, it is a beautiful day.  It's 6:30pm, mid-March, I'm in a T-shirt and shorts outside and I'm not even remotely cold.  We all know I've been needing it.  I don't think it's going to last very long, though; my vicious little friend has just been joined by a wingwoman... or two... or six...

So.  I just read the most beautiful letter from Mary in Kansas City, written in the most beautiful handwriting on the most beautiful paper--heavy, pulpy cardstock from India, classically printed.  She also slipped a little "pocket angel" into the envelope.  I love it for itself, and for the fact that it bears a kiss from Kansas City on its face, but what really struck me was that Ann sent me the same pocket angel, but gold-colored, a few months ago.

This cannot be a coincidence.  Someone is watching me.

I do believe in guardian angels, particularly since my Grammy died back in 2002.  I don't remember if she told me this, or if it materialized as part of my 12-year-old mourning process, but I firmly believed--and still kind of do--that she's got an eye out for me.  Although now I'm a bit more convinced that she is the center of the celestial social scene, frequenting all the same parties as Jesus and other prominent biblical figures.  Not that she can't still think about me and the rest of her family down here on Earth at the same time; she's always been good at not making anybody feel forgotten.

These days, though, I'm less convinced that she is my one and only Guardian Angel.

I think I just snatched the wings off one of the mosquitoes.

"Most people don't know that there are angels whose only job is to make sure
you don't get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life." - Brian Andreas

I have never been into current events.  Whenever we had to "do current events" for a social studies class in high school my tactic was usually to dig the past week's newspapers out of the recycling bin and skim headlines for buzzwords and topics I could stretch to fit the given parameters.  I completely missed the start of the Great Recession in 2008, and only found out about it because Tom Williamson brought it up in Anthro Theory one time.  Actually, most of the current events I knew about in college were news stories Tom Williamson shared in my various Anthropology courses.  I've spent years mumbling excuses for not watching or reading the news in any of the various available mediums: online, on TV, or in print media.  And yes, I'm a little defensive about it.

These days, though, I'm pretty up-to-speed.  I listen to NPR in the mornings because I miss having Granpa in the house and it makes it easier to pretend that he just left the radio running while he went to fix my car or something, filling the time before his porridge cools down enough to eat.  I am obsessed with blogs--even other people's blogs, believe it or not, and some of those people write about what's going on in the world.  Current events come up in the office, as everybody has their niche for hot topics: we've got our tech, sports, international atrocities, commercial development, and pop culture people.  Not to mention all the stories that show up in my social media news feeds or get featured on HuffPost's Twitter feed.  And yes, those trending stories and viral content.  If you read Mashable or anything like that you already know that traditional news outlets are allegedly being crowded out by social media, and I Am The Reason Why.

If you've visited Facebook at all in the past week, or listened to NPR this morning, you also know about Invisible Children and their Kony2012 campaign.  (Watch the focal video here.  It's about a half hour long.)  For me it was fascinating to watch the progression of this topic: In the morning, according to Facebook, "12 of my friends had posted this video" with captions like, "SHARE THIS WITH AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE!  THIS MAN MUST BE STOPPED!"

I watched it, finally, and from the point the filmographer mentioned his "African friend" I was on edge.  The way the story was presented raised all my little ethnographic red flags, the ones signaling "paternalism," "manipulated information," "colonial residue," so on and so forth.  But the story also hit me in the empathy, which simultaneously made me more skeptical and also got me thinking about alternative solutions.  Mostly I felt like the people telling me the story didn't really have a full grasp of it themselves.

At around 7 minutes, I saw a Facebook post alerting me to "another side of the story," and I'm suddenly riled up: "OK, you're seriously going to take Kony's side on this?!"  But it was actually just questioning the premise of the film.  And suddenly the whole issue gets veiled in greys.

And by the afternoon, people were revoking their posts, posting counterarguments, some very vehement.  By the next morning, the authors of those counterarguments were backing off in response to aggressive backlash against their articles.  And by the third day, the middle-of-the-road, pros-and-cons, positive/negative takes were spreading around the social networks.

My condensed reading list on Kony:

• This one really speaks to my concerns about paternalism, "progress," charity and advocacy:  "Bad development work is based on the idea that poor people have nothing.  Something is better than nothing, right?"  Uhh... well...
• A pretty well-balanced article from a blog I tend to ideologically align with, more or less: A Partial Defense of Invisible Children's Kony2012 Campaign

Invisible Children's Kony2012 video is still in the top 10 trending videos on YouTube, but the sensational reaction has toned down somewhat.  The initial explosion of gut reactions, the desired result of the video, has died down and dialogue is rising from the ashes.  Some of it still gets heated, but it's talk.  It's a little more level.  And while the conversation is far from over, other things leak in to shock us anew for another day or two.

And the thing that is intensely disturbing to me now is the gathering tide of what I'll call dishonorable incidents in Afghanistan.  My friend Alex put it very poignantly on Facebook today:

Can anyone doubt that the "good fight" has ended? That the lines of victim and perpetrator have blurred beyond recognition? That we have at stake something far more important than "justice" "democracy" or "strategic concerns"--that in this fight we are losing our very humanity? In short, can anyone now doubt that the war is lost?

Like I said, I don't normally get into politics, and those of you who know me know this.  We don't really talk about politics or macro-level news items.  But there are some things going on in the world lately that fall into the realm of "political discussion" that I can't, in good conscience, ignore.  I find myself saddened and discouraged by the political weight that falls haphazardly all over what seem to me, simply and irrevocably, human issues.

The angels who keep us from getting too comfortable seem to be doing their job all too well, but I don't believe that I am the only one with a guardian angel.  There is no way I'm the only one shadowed by someone, or something, who cares what happens to me.  Someone who wants my endings to be happy.  Someone who wants my middles and beginnings to be happy.  Someone who wants me to survive another day, another night, another adventure.

Isn't that what a guardian angel does?

But we live in the world, and the world is full of unhappy and unfortunate and painful things.  Guardian angels have a tough job.  Maybe some are more attentive than others; maybe some just had an easier setup from the get-go.

I think my guardian angel gives me, more than protection: encouragement.  My angel--angels--keep me from losing my momentum.  They keep me believing in myself, and believing in good things, and believing in happy endings.  They remind me to enjoy those happy moments instead of dwelling on the Unhappy-Moments-That-Could-Be.  They remind me that not all is lost just because everyone has known since Day 1 that Ben was going to choose Courtney.  They remind me to mourn loss of humanity over political loss.  I'm not at a point right now where I can take action, but I mourn still.

My angels love me in spite of my flaws.  In fact, they love that I am imperfect, and they love the imperfections in our relationships.  They love that I cry at dumb stuff, and at not-dumb stuff.  Angels mourn with us, and angels ache to help us and I don't think they always can.  But they are with us always and sometimes, that is enough.