I have a lot to say these days, and
most of it is bottled up. I have found myself trying to tap into the place
where it flows out of me like a summer cold front, but alas most of the time I
sit at the computer, and stare blankly as the blank page ponders my existence.
I am stuck in an endless empty stare down. However, today I think I might have
found the fuel to forge the tornado’s path across the trailer park.
While you have that visual in your
mind let’s not make a waist of the neuron’s firing. Imagine yourself in the rubble. Everything
destroyed beyond the point of no repair. The road on which you are standing is
littered with picture frames, house frames, window frames, and maybe that was a
pair of glasses that you saw a few steps back. Every step crunches the rubble
that is impossible to misstep. Yet, the sky is now clear, and overhead the
stars are outshining even themselves. You point out to me their beauty, and
with out hesitation I agree. It is here that I point out decisive contrast of
absolute beauty and wonder covering in its beauty horror, trash, and filth.
Again you say look up at the sky. I bend down pick up a broken frame that held
so many dreams, “That up there is metaphorical; you cannot grasp the stars.
Only in your mind can you understand beauty. Ugly can hit you.” At this point I
smack you with the trash, we giggle and move on.
This is what I see on most days.
The wonder and beauty of everything that is, but it is the ugly that hits me in
the face. It is of course where most of my anger is derived from, and I can say
without disinclination that it is this very thing I want to fix in the world.
Ghandi says be the change you see in the world, however, I can’t help but
believe in bad Karma. In many ways I can be that bad Karma.
A year ago I began my Journey in
India. I’ll just keep an over view of what I saw maybe later in life I’ll write
down the details once they have been come cloudy, and I can paint them however
I choose. For now though, I think I’m going to just skim over some of the ideas
that grew like weeds of the mind. I’m dearly hoping that these words are my
gloves as I begin to weed the garden that is my mind.
Almost nearly as I landed I lost
everything that I thought I knew I was. None of my goals seemed important
anymore. The Yogi who came to our house kept telling me I needed to know what I
wanted to do. All I could ever say is I don’t know anymore…. I don’t know.
I want to say that it was the
abject poverty I saw, or maybe how dirty it was there. However, I think that
something inside me stopped working. It was if the 8,000 mile plane trip rubbed
all of me away and I as left with nothing. In many ways I was gone. The people
whom I was to meet didn’t know me. For all intents and purposes I could have
been anything or anyone I wanted. Faced with this anomaly, my answer was I
don’t know what I am.
I did have a direct connection to
those of the lower casts. I’ve been known to do those jobs. Building things,
playing with sewer pipes in the streets, or simply in American standards just a
poor piece of shit. I felt for them and gravitated to their side of the coin.
On one occasion in the classroom a teacher told me that a Dalit couldn’t eat at
her dinner table. It bothered me for a long time, and for some reason in the
beginning I could never understand why, but it bothered me to the point I quit
going to her class (I was just auditing it). Maybe a month later as I watched a
group of workers toil away with what I saw as out dated equipment it hit me.
That bitch was talking about me. She said I couldn’t eat at her dinner table.
Well, that is not what she really meant, or said. That is how it hit me. It was a
slap in the face. For the life of me I couldn’t break away from seeing the
reality of he situation. Yes, at a devastating cost I have lived my life in
such a way the it has been more of an adventure than anything, but looking at these
people in the eyes I could not break away from the feeling that what I had, the
choices I could make, and the things I had were not equal. I am human they are
human, and I have so much more.
It isn’t to say that I have so much
more, but to say I have better opportunities, where I sit. The unfairness is
where I begin to question how people can go about their lives allowing the
deprivation of others. It all comes down to petty excuses that wipe away
un-cried tears. There is no compassion, or if there is compassion its somehow
forced compassion. It is as if people think they should feel a certain way
toward a fellow human being, but really don’t feel that way.
I see people not caring a great
deal, and moreover I do see a great number of people laying waste to other’s
feelings without much forethought. There is no malice behind it, yet with the
way laid push of destruction that emanates from their being it is hard to discern
stupidity with that of ignorance.
I feel a need to breakaway and
explain myself here. There is a difference between being stupid and being
ignorant. Stupidity is knowing better. It is the idea that one knows all the
information and just can’t put it together. Ignorance is never being told, and
not having all the information available. Stupidity is the choice to be
ignorant. Never is there anything more saddening to see people not caring, or
just letting them selves get into the way of another to advance them selves.
This is the way of nature. It is the very nature of nature I seek to destroy.
It’s the very nature that I hit my friend with, as we walked through the
trailer park.
I see humans just as I see the
wrecked trailer park: a steaming pile of shit, with the opportunity for beauty
and cooperation. It’s the ugly I see. It’s hard to look at the destruction the
deprivation, and forget to look up at the stars the few who tried so hard to
change the things they couldn’t, and lastly have failed. The largest failure of
all (if he even existed) would be Christ. His efforts were totally in vein, and
moreover he started the standard that when you talk about peace and love: those
bastards will kill you.
Why? Who knows, it could be simply
that everyone wants to feel loved, but no one takes the time to realize that
you first must love outwardly, before you can be loved. Or even feel it for
that matter. The ol’ cliché’ you must love yourself before anyone can love you
is absolute bullshit… try loving someone else for a change. Love someone and
blanket them with the stars.
One would think that this would not
be a hard thing to do. However, it is not an easy thing to give away something
you love. I.E. yourself. It is and endless fight to survive, to keep above the
mire. Ignore the ignorant, and love… love for as long as you can. Before you
become me: hateful, ungrateful, untrusting, loathing, misanthrope. I hope my
ways can change. I hope.
