{"id":2128,"date":"2025-01-12T12:08:01","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T17:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/?p=2128"},"modified":"2026-10-07T19:09:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T23:09:41","slug":"sanction-your-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/12\/sanction-your-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanction Your Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">What, sanctions our thoughts? \u202fRather, who sanctions our thoughts, right? \u202fI mean no harm. I\u2019m not at all articulate, so my mother always said. \u202fShe doesn\u2019t say much now, thank goodness. \u202f \u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Where was I? \u202fSanctions? \u202fSanctions. \u202fA political term now because most minds reflect our bodies; wide eyed, no blinking, and only vaguely noting\u202fdisasters, years in the making, and newsworthy for about thirty minutes. \u202fThere\u2019s sanction for you; more like mind control, but what do I know?\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Could we just get to work, please? \u202fI don\u2019t mean sitting down at a desk and dying. I mean getting out there and cutting down trees and underbrush so I can plan a garden. \u202fMy grandparents, that\u2019s what they used to do. \u202fPlan gardens. \u202fFlowers, vegetables, fruit trees. \u202fIt was beautiful. \u202fMother would leave me there while she was \u2018busy.\u2019 I begged her not to sell it after Grandpa died, but you couldn\u2019t tell Mother much nor ask for a thing as far as that goes. \u202fMother sold it, and now there is a trailer park there. \u202fGrandma died in a nursing home. \u202f\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Mother made good though, and she died in her bedroom. \u202fIt was messy. Mother\u2019s death, even so, beats dying in a room with three other comatose old people staring up at the ceiling. \u202fI stayed with Grandma all the way. \u202fGrandma would wake up and pat my hand once in a while. \u202fThen she was gone. \u202fThen so was Mother. \u202f\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">My lawyer said I should sanction my thoughts. \u202fI suppose the poor kid is right. \u202fI do feel sorry for my lawyer. \u202fA young girl. \u202fHer hands shake when she is with me. \u202fI know she is frightened, not sure why. \u202fI mean, there are scarier people in here than me; all tattooed with demons and inverted crosses. \u202fNot right at all. \u202fMy grandparents would be so sad to see them. \u202f\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">She won\u2019t last long, my lawyer. \u202fI think she has lasted as long as she has due to pride. \u202fA long line of thin and shivering public defenders spending their time paying off law-school debt and defending society\u2019s perpetrators. \u202f\u202fI picture her graduating from law school, all doe eyed and energetic and then discovering none of us want to be saved. Very disappointing to all concerned. \u202fI don\u2019t know, I\u2019m told to sanction my thoughts. \u202f\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">I\u2019ll tell you a secret though, I don\u2019t: I refuse to sanction my thoughts. \u202fThis sick little society deserves my thoughts. \u202fI think about firing squads lately. \u202fI\u2019m as sane as the next man. It\u2019s just the next man didn\u2019t have a mother like mine. \u202fI know that is no excuse. I\u2019m sure my grandparents would rather I find another garden to tend. \u202fI should have, I regret that, the garden, I mean, not my mother. \u202f\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u202f<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What, sanctions our thoughts? \u202fRather, who sanctions our thoughts, right? \u202fI mean no harm. I\u2019m not at all articulate, so my mother always said. \u202fShe doesn\u2019t say much now, thank goodness. \u202f \u202f\u00a0 \u00a0Where was I? \u202fSanctions? \u202fSanctions. \u202fA political term now because most minds reflect our bodies; wide eyed, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[11,36,13,34],"class_list":["post-2128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-story","category-flash-fiction","category-short-fiction","tag-amwriting","tag-amwritingfiction","tag-flashfic","tag-sundayread"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lydiaink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Sanction-Your-Thoughts.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2138,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions\/2138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}