ThE MArCh oF TIMe
My last post was waaay back in October... gee, a whole world ago. Then it seemed like anything was possible, everyone caught up in an almost palpable excitement, the very air loaded with potential.
Then came Tuesday, November 2nd.
Pfft.
Like a bad dream, Bush and his posse are back. My cousin said that Bush must have the best obeahman (a kind of black magic practitioner common in British West Indies) ever. I agreed with her, for surely that was the only explanation for America, land of dreams, land of promise, a place where reason SURELY existed, suddenly becoming... a third world country in the hands of a dictator-for-life. I mean, and that's not even the worst part for me. The worst is the sweeping sea-change in the populace... the sea of red anchored by lonely outposts of blue. The only havens for the queer, the damned and the decidedly strange, or in a word, me. I came here to escape, or rather to finally become what I was fighting against- a chick who liked boys, but also liked chicks. This world up Nawth has suited me, nourished me in a way my own bigoted, mired-in-colonial bullshit birthland could not. Nutty, but it was here I learned to love the island again. Here, healing.
On the night of November 2nd only Brokaw's calmness could stay my anxiety at the thought that what I had fled had followed me. Thus the reason for my absence, beloved reader (and I mean that sincerely, since I know of only one person who regularly reads this).
Ever since, I've been turning this place end over end in my head, trying to find some clarity. Trying to justify remaining here when all signs point to the emergence of something awful, sinister. This group of Southo-MidWestern-LowEasterners, who have all but abandoned the pledge of inclusiveness that stands at the very gate of one of our greatest portals: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." Through the decades, people coming to find refuge from pogrom, pestilence, famine, war, have read those words and have been comforted. Now that this horrifying inward persecution of women and gays is happening, will people not recall that those beautiful, enveloping words singled no one out? Lazarus (our conscience from the land of the dead) said:
"The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
And so not only affirms the inclusive nature that IS America, but also defiantly proclaims the absolute right of each soul to live free.
I've spent the last weeks wondering when we wretched humans will learn that at this stage in our evolution, the challenge is to embrace each other, to love, to care for one another automatically, without thought, so that we don't judge people by any standard as tired as color, or who your bed-partner is. So genocides like Rwanda never happen again, or, OR, if they do, we leap to the defence of the defenceless party, without thought to whether this country has resources we ought to protect slash exploit. It should be enough that human beings are there, and human life is to be cherished at all costs. Instead it seems like the average America is drowning deeper in dogma. Gee, it's so much easier to sit your butt down on a Sunday and have a preacher feed you outrageous crap, huh? Look, in the time of Jesus, in the Middle Ages, hell, even at the turn of the last century, education was expensive and difficult to obtain. But here we are, in the vaunted 21st, with education a click away. There's no excuse anymore. No excuse to delay the awakening of self that we all seem so fearful of. But you know what? I don't think that we'll find that God is dead. I think that we'll find he's so alive, it IS frightening.
OK.
I've had two glasses of red wine.
I'll stop the vitriol here.
But RUN to see Hotel Rwanda as soon as you can.
And if Don Cheadle doesn't win Best Actor, there really is no justice.
Then came Tuesday, November 2nd.
Pfft.
Like a bad dream, Bush and his posse are back. My cousin said that Bush must have the best obeahman (a kind of black magic practitioner common in British West Indies) ever. I agreed with her, for surely that was the only explanation for America, land of dreams, land of promise, a place where reason SURELY existed, suddenly becoming... a third world country in the hands of a dictator-for-life. I mean, and that's not even the worst part for me. The worst is the sweeping sea-change in the populace... the sea of red anchored by lonely outposts of blue. The only havens for the queer, the damned and the decidedly strange, or in a word, me. I came here to escape, or rather to finally become what I was fighting against- a chick who liked boys, but also liked chicks. This world up Nawth has suited me, nourished me in a way my own bigoted, mired-in-colonial bullshit birthland could not. Nutty, but it was here I learned to love the island again. Here, healing.
On the night of November 2nd only Brokaw's calmness could stay my anxiety at the thought that what I had fled had followed me. Thus the reason for my absence, beloved reader (and I mean that sincerely, since I know of only one person who regularly reads this).
Ever since, I've been turning this place end over end in my head, trying to find some clarity. Trying to justify remaining here when all signs point to the emergence of something awful, sinister. This group of Southo-MidWestern-LowEasterners, who have all but abandoned the pledge of inclusiveness that stands at the very gate of one of our greatest portals: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." Through the decades, people coming to find refuge from pogrom, pestilence, famine, war, have read those words and have been comforted. Now that this horrifying inward persecution of women and gays is happening, will people not recall that those beautiful, enveloping words singled no one out? Lazarus (our conscience from the land of the dead) said:
"The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
And so not only affirms the inclusive nature that IS America, but also defiantly proclaims the absolute right of each soul to live free.
I've spent the last weeks wondering when we wretched humans will learn that at this stage in our evolution, the challenge is to embrace each other, to love, to care for one another automatically, without thought, so that we don't judge people by any standard as tired as color, or who your bed-partner is. So genocides like Rwanda never happen again, or, OR, if they do, we leap to the defence of the defenceless party, without thought to whether this country has resources we ought to protect slash exploit. It should be enough that human beings are there, and human life is to be cherished at all costs. Instead it seems like the average America is drowning deeper in dogma. Gee, it's so much easier to sit your butt down on a Sunday and have a preacher feed you outrageous crap, huh? Look, in the time of Jesus, in the Middle Ages, hell, even at the turn of the last century, education was expensive and difficult to obtain. But here we are, in the vaunted 21st, with education a click away. There's no excuse anymore. No excuse to delay the awakening of self that we all seem so fearful of. But you know what? I don't think that we'll find that God is dead. I think that we'll find he's so alive, it IS frightening.
OK.
I've had two glasses of red wine.
I'll stop the vitriol here.
But RUN to see Hotel Rwanda as soon as you can.
And if Don Cheadle doesn't win Best Actor, there really is no justice.
posted by euphoria at 11:47 PM
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