Can I Get a Witness

I feel like I am bearing witness to something important right now: culturally, socially, politically, and personally.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at, but I know what signs looks like.  They look like glaciers melting and reclaiming large pieces of the earth; the systematic reversal of women's rights at the same time ED medication is being advertised on the radio with no prescription needed; the amplified, partisan, hateful political climate; the parallel rise of radical ideologies, social revolutions, and the subsequent middle-class side-stepping; the unacceptable lagging behind of the education system in relation to reality; the predatory nature of banks and universities which will lead to an inevitable economic stagnation.

"What am I supposed to do?" they said.  "I'm only one person and the whole system is corrupt!"  (Doesn't matter which "side" they are on, in terms of who's speaking.)

Well, we could all take some advice some those who came before us, and stop proving the adage that history repeats itself:

• "I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues," said the Lorax.
• “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them,” said George Orwell.
• “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave,” said Frederick Douglass.
• “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother,” said Margaret Sanger
• "Do unto others as you would others do unto you," said Jesus.  

We seem to be going in the direction of Alice in Wonderland, though, because things are becoming curiouser and curiouser.  

People think I am a pessimist, but I am exactly the opposite.  I am an idealist; I want everyone to reach the potential they have as human beings, but I'm often disappointed when they don't care enough to try.

Every act of kindness changes a moment.  How hard is it to be a human being who respects the life and liberties of other people?  Obviously, pretty hard, because another fucked-up person took guns into work today and killed 11 people.  Like the absolutely worst possible episode of Parks and Rec - just astoundingly tragic.  

But just another day in America, 2019. 

Pieces

Life is in pieces.  Little segments which assemble, disassemble, reassemble. 

Sometimes the pieces are quite lovely - moments which make us pay attention to what's going on in the right now, rather than looking forward or back.  Sometimes the pieces are devastating - flying shards of metaphorical glass slashing in every direction.  Sometimes we forget to pay close attention to what's going on, and we get comfortably numb - walking around in a self-imposed trance of work or things labeled "have to".

I would rather burn with the fever of love or creativity than waste away in the void of crippling mediocrity. 

Like Ray Bradbury said, "stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in 10 seconds.  See the world.  It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."

I guess that means I need to get off this computer, stop shopping on amazon prime when I'm bored, and do something that doesn't rot my brain.  (And then later, I might do something that DOES rot my brain, just for fun.)

Peace & love.