Tom Waits Friday
An exhausting week running flat-out/head-down with no time read or write or anything behind me.
Another just like it ahead.
(And FYI, that previous post wasn't at all candidate- or position-driven, and no hard feeling here.
Instead it was this: In my wanderings I just happen to have met a strange cross-section of people -- from teachers to business people to wonks -- who care very much about the world we'll be leaving for our children, who work hard and very much out of the spotlight to make it better or at least stop to lunatics from plunging it further into darkness.
Sometimes they fail, but a lot of the time they succeed. In small ways to be sure, but in their tiny corners and along their thin margins they Do Good [There, I said it.] and make the world just a little better than it otherwise might have been.
And what sustains them is hope.
Not a blind or foolish or naive faith, but a possessed of a vision of a world that is better than this one, and the idea that they personally are responsible for making that happen.
Now these people are also often annoying. Often really, really annoying. But they are animated by a zeal not for Teh Rapture or for a globe when the last scary brown person has been liquidated by Righteous Christopath Warriors, but instead want to help feed hungry people or teach children to be amazing.
And occasionally and apropos of very little I just lose my temper on the blogs or in the world with a certain species of insufferably facile "We're all screwed so what does it matter?" posturing. Not only because it is lazy, but because its goal is to cut the fuel lines of people who are genuinely trying to make the world a little better.
Which means it is ultimately a veiled call for slow mass suicide.
Now skepticism is delightful. And a "Show Me" caution almost always useful. And for the sad and broken-hearted, I wish only that you find solace. For the depressed (a condition I fully understand) may you find relief and a way to ease the heart.
For the simply exhausted (a state with which I can also identify), may 2008 bring you long and lazy days on warm beaches with cool breezes.
But those who gleefully find nothing to council but despair, all I can say is the world is full of tall, tall buildings and gravity, and sweet release from this awful planet and the rest of us stupid monkeys is just one, short plummet away.
All I can say is "No, you first, my dear Gaston!")
Anyway, life will be running me hell for leather for the next little while.
But at least I'm innocent when I dream...
Tom Waits -- "Innocent When You Dream"
It's such a sad old feeling
The fields are soft and green
It's memories that i'm stealing
But you're innocent when you dream
5 comments:
You may be running flat-out/head-down, drifty, but I know you're keeping your chin up. Hang in there.
Wishing you good cheer and fine Single Malts from the Land of "It's All Good."
"Hear! Hear!" dear Driftglass. When one finds an observer of events as intelligent and fluent as you, and when one considers you his spokesperson, it can be difficult to accept that, although your words are cutting, scathing, acerbic, they are also true, and you are not an advocate of rabid reprisal. You are so clear about what is terribly wrong, and you are so clear about what must be done to change things and, at the same time, you are so clear about remaining sane in the face of global insanity. We do not need to kill, maim, destroy those evil doers who have brought our country/our world to this terrible condition. To espouse countering spite with spite and evil with evil is to show ourselves as unfit for office as those who are currently in office.
There is a story that tells of two merchants in the same kind of business who have shops across the street from one another. They are, of course, rivals, but one of them is more than a rival. He is filled with resentment at every sale his rival makes. His resentment, in fact, eats him up. "In due time", as stories say, a genie, or angel, or a wish-granter of your choice appears to the resentful merchant and tells him that he will be granted one wish, but must be advised that although whatever he wishes for he will receive, his rival will be granted twice that. Without a moments hesitation, he expresses his wish. . that he lose the sight in one eye.
Keep up your excellent work.
Mermaid
Now these people are also often annoying. Often really, really annoying. But they are animated by a zeal not for Teh Rapture or for a globe when the last scary brown person has been liquidated by Righteous Christopath Warriors, but instead want to help feed hungry people or teach children to be amazing.
Dude, that is so fucking funny, and so fucking right. You really gotta way with words.
Drifty, you tell that Gaston feller to take that plunge without ya.
Yer kinda needed here, ya know?
Thanks for understanding.
N fuck Gaston, n the Effing Yanks, too, for that matter.
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