woosha

back from portland. waiting in the aiport for my return flight home, watching as the other travellers went by, like a scientific cross-section of american life in the 21st century. (the quarter of us who can't afford to fly are represented by the people selling magazines, pushing wheelchairs, and yes, shining shoes.) i couldn't cage the harsh thoughts, they insistently crept to the forefront of my conscious mind. middle-age yuppi wannabes. (sounds like an australian tribe.) sixty-year-old women with too much makeup and hair product. impractical shoes, inappropriately large carry-on, cell phone stream-of-consciousness, life has become a somnambulistic monotony.

my mind jumped to the thought of the coming election. all of the neo and not so neo-conservative pundits, yelling at me, pleading with me, urging me to go to church on sunday, brush my hair and vote for family values. then this pervasive idea, finally forming intelligibly in my head, they're not who i should be afraid of, they're not who's making a muck of it. it's all of us un-politically-educated, irrationally opinionated, starbucks drinking citizens with savings accounts (and money in them). it's we. at any one point in time we have the power to mobilize ourselves to meet any end; and end to hunger, political upheaval, health care for everyone. it is completely within our reach, we, the citizens of this country. if we wanted to, we could say "fuck you" to the government, empower our individual communities, make sure that no one we know is left behind. people, not governments, taking care of people. but it's so far from happening that i could laugh about it, if it didn't make me sad like white-hot lava.

because we're so complacent. 9/11 scared us, upset us, but not enough so that we're actually willing to sacrifice cable tv and chinese buffets. watching politicos scream at each other from the comfort of our cushy living rooms makes us feel sufficiently involved. like we're working to change the system. then we go out and "vote" between two candidates who do have different political agendas, but who also have the same corporate sponsors, interests and debts. what a cycle, what a cycle. we may go down with it, eventually. i mean, it is hard to pull ourselves up out of that strong of a current (habit-pattern).

so i boarded the plane with a vague feeling of agoraphobia, had ill thoughts of the woman next to me sucking down copies of people, business times and town and country, and tried to sleep. Tried to channel the spirit of Eugene Debs, Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Someday we'll all remember where we came from, someday we'll all return. Here we are, surviving in the space between, totally interconnected and yet light-years apart. How sad when a life becomes so small.

Bhavatu, sabba, mangellam.

but, it is about 60F out, and it feels like autumn. there is yet some meaningful joy left in the world.