Bilirubin

Bilirubin (from the Latin for "red bile") is a red-orange compound that occurs in the normal catabolic pathway that breaks down heme in vertebrates. — source

and

Researchers have identified bilirubin in the popular Bird of Paradise plant. The breakthrough study provides new insights into color production in this iconic tropical plant. — source

Happy Thanksgiving week, everyone. I hope it's not a holiday you loathe. For the last eight years or so, my wife and I have spent Thanksgiving with our friends. We have food, wine, we do a sleepover so no one has to go anywhere, we laugh. It's nice.

Thanksgiving, in spite of its genocidal origins, is supposed to be a time where we count our blessings. It's never really been that—but the meaning behind Thanksgiving is aspirational—a time of year we consider others more than ourselves.

It's a holiday which makes me consider the holiness of people. The holiness of you and me and every soul fated to walk this goddamned planet.

With or without the concept of God, I believe we should lift each other up as sacred. In fact, I find holiness to mean even more outside the constraints of religion. Without religion as a mechanism to draw arbitrary boundaries around who is and who isn't holy, in-groups and out-groups, it would be easier to remind ourselves how everyone is holy and then act accordingly. Then again, there's racism and eugenics to deal with. Humans can be inventive when it comes to creating bullshit.

When I consider who Jesus meant when he said the words love your neighbor as yourself, I once again find the Christian faith of America swimming with pigs and shit in its execution. For a nation which verbally espouses to be "Christian", it's obvious our use of faith is only a means to power.

The true expression of Christianity means there is no American citizenry more holy than immigrants or native peoples. Slavery, in a "Christian Nation" should've been impossible. The words of Jesus should've ensured that no oppressor is more worthy than the oppressed, but America supports oppressors all the time. And Christianity in America, like all religion throughout the annals of time, fails once again—as it always has—to be divine in any sense of the word.

And now Thanksgiving is here once more, and I am wondering—yet again—how the fuck genocide is still possible when we all know better; and I'm flabbergasted the cognitive dissonance we need to live within empire isn't fatal. I'm pretty sure, if I ever have a heart condition, that it'll be linked to watching reels on Instagram.

Over the next four years, and maybe longer, empire is going to test your definition of holiness. It will ask you, over and over again, who is worthy of love and respect, who deserves healthcare or housing or education, and who is righteous enough to live.

Empire will ask you who has the right to defend themselves—and then try and tell you immigrants or women or trans people don't count. When they've convinced you, because so many people will be easily convinced, empire will move the goal posts again and again until everyone is unprotected and no one is considered holy outside service to the empire. There is no bottom. I know this because I've been to Budapest and seen what the people there have suffered under Russia and the Nazi regimes. History here, is merely repeating itself.

When empire starts asking you these questions, you need to know your answer and then be willing to stand by your answer when shit gets hard. Your answer will need to be unwavering.

This Thanksgiving, the fun and games are over. A would-be dictator will be President again. It's time to be serious now. Who do you think deserves their humanity? Is your answer everyone? Do you mean it? Or is your answer something else?

Today's Poem

I wish we walked the earth like angels. I wish we could see each other's holiness every single moment of every single day radiating from inside them like a blinding light. I wish we were consumed with it. In awe of it. Connected to it.

Instead, we make up reasons why someone is less deserving. We justify in our hearts and our heads why the world is the way it is. We convince ourselves that things are the way they are to make ourselves feel better. We tell bedtime stories that people dying in service to that system is legitimate.

Whenever someone tries to convince me that another human is less deserving of anything—I tune out. When it's reversed and someone tries to tell me that I am more deserving than someone else of anything, it's extremely difficult to stop myself from laughing at them. Humans are so taken with propaganda, so obsessed with the fantasy of capitalism.

I don't know why I was outside during the right time of morning to see the sun shining through the Bilirubin in my giant bird of paradise, but it got me thinking about some things. Enjoy the poem and the holiday.