It is time, Twenty-Twenty To inaugurate new endings To empty overflowing buckets of outdated lists and to cease engaging in boxing matches between scientific upper-cuts and data-driven jabs. To halt our heavenly appeals and civil discourse with polluted leaders.
It is our time, in Twenty-Twenty To tackle modern fairytales Projected on big and small screens To choke on sweet habit-forming doses derived from earth’s bounty To speak about down-sizing our selfies and our first-world loves.
It is time, homonins of Twenty-Twenty To replace elegant gourmandise and delicious distractions with simple loaves and fewer fishes. To gather in home and hearth to hunt for sincere solutions ignited through collective caring.
It is time, believers in Twenty-Twenty To listen to Thunberg and Attenborough To become quiet, see, feel, and hear songbirds and re-read Carson’s Silent Spring To incinerate 20th century sins To compost productive soil and grow lighter footprints together.
At night, you plan. You count your money, select durable shoes, plot paths and snacks, and are seized with fear.
In bed, you cannot sleep. So, you quietly go outside and sit in silence. Under stars, you encode a lifetime of mental selfies and breathe in the unknown.
Before dawn, you wake. You prepare breakfast, wake your child, take their hand and begin your journey North. All so you can sweep floors or care for American kids or sell Big Macs or maybe become a business owner and help that little hand in yours to reach higher.
To stay or go? You commit your life and dreams to theirs, because without hope life shrinks down to a binary choice.
You are not naive. To enter America means waiting in cages, waiting on hard floors, waiting in close quarters, cruelty, disregard, torture, boredom and more despair.
Somehow, you arrive. At the border, you line up, claim your place, and try to smile. Inside a grim room, you keep your head down, comply, discover the patience of sorrow, the obsession of separation.
6 hours a day you dream of release and entry into a land of excess. Bewildering supermarkets, large cars and large people, late night TV, sugary drinks, backyards, playgrounds, and schools.
You only need a few drops of excess to spill into your life and run into your child’s life. The smallest chance is still a chance. Hope vs. despair. Binary.
Shattered. Shaken. Shifting.
Revealed divides
Divided realities
Blue
Red
Adjacent, divisible
Salaries. Smokes. Six-packs.
Ephemera of solace
Souls erased
Sustenance
Addiction
Daily breath and demons
Left. Left-out. No one’s Right.
Middle ground
Now ground zero
Freedom
To pursue
Happiness in waves
Standing. Stirring. Stepping.
Up together
Two if by land
One if I see
As under
The same flag
Like you, I am not sure where we are headed. Like you, I am struggling to find the bonds and the lifelines that we share as a nation. Our destiny is shared and our honor is at stake. It is no longer about Trump. Like all great entertainers he is continuing to provide weekly if not daily episodes that invoke our rage, our outrage, and our fear. We live in an era of “Edge of Our Seats TV” that has made reality TV a quaint concept. We always knew reality TV was not real. It may have had moments that touched on the real, or occasional real moments, but we always understood that if you put a camera in front of real people, they become a little fake.
So now, we cling to that hope, that our Commander-in-Chief is a little fake. Don’t laugh! We know he is made-up. He scowls to look mean, he lies to keep all eyes on him, he fabricates, prevaricates, and maybe negotiates. I am not sure any of us actually want to know who the real guy is anymore. It is quite possible that it could actually be more terrifying than the fake one.
To those who say “Give him a chance,” I say, “Let’s talk infrastructure, by damn it!”
Why, oh why, didn’t he just start there? It would have made so much sense. Building is his business, financing these buildings with other folks’ money — his comfort zone. At the end of the day, we have lived through enough Republican administrations to know that they like debt just as much as the Democrats. Reagan, Bush and deficits. Remember? Clinton was the last guy who ran a surplus. Democrat.
Have you found yourself drifting towards thoughts of your past lately? Perhaps, you are in the middle of your daily life, trying to work, to concentrate, to get something done, and instead you pause. In that pause, find yourself a bit terrified, a bit distracted, a bit discombobulated. Bobbing about on a little life-raft of hope and nostalgia, you may wonder if the ideals that mattered yesterday still matter today?
More than ever they do! This mixture of fear and nostalgia is your compass. What is your North Star today? Science? Social justice? Healthcare reform? Living wages for all? Better roads? Disruptive innovation? Artistic expression? Stronger abs? So much work to do and so little time! While you do it, do not forget that we are still in this together. We have to heal our nation and we must stare down the bully!
