This time of year in America has many of us falling into the rabbit hole of holiday hysteria, a preoccupation with self-absorbed bullshit in all shapes and sizes, a time of emotional myopics to the max. Thanksgiving is one of the fabulous fairy tale events, immediately followed by the shopping suicide of Black Friday, occurring before the turkey has even cooled off, only to be distributed in Tupperware portions to those seated around the cobbled together, outsized table, smiles too long frozen on faces.
Distraction reigns supreme for the entire month of December, when virtually nothing gets accomplished. I really don’t mean nothing, but it is hard to get anyone to focus on anything too much larger than their immediate personal planet, self-consciously orbiting around themselves.
We have a government unraveling right before our eyes, with a man, hell bent on incriminating himself, making the United States of America look like a clown faced, bad guy in the WWE. Countries from around the world are laughing and booing and throwing empty beer cans into the ring. He epitomizes the criminal selfishness of those, who believe they are entitled because of a few extra digits on their bank balance, definitely not their IQ’s.
I love symbols of all kinds. The year closes out with endless possibility for metaphor, the nature of endings and beginnings. I am one of those people, who believes in everything, because if you think you have the right to sit in judgement, you’re pretty much screwed. I believe there is life on other planets. I believe in astrology. I believe in palm reading. I believe in some kind of God. I am a Gemini, which makes complete sense to me. My number is 8 and I love its significance.
While the vast majority of us seem to be dug into a hole of holiday self-absorption, the coming year is 2020. Do I think it is a coincidence that a time of such incredible blindness to what is going on around us and what is being done to us, should accidentally lead us into a time of clearer vision? No. I figured I’d get a jump on the metaphor, before every other idiot with a keyboard gets a woody over the numerics.
I am not sure how many of you pay attention to what is going on in the world . No, that is not a dumb ass, pretentious dig by some pseudo-intellectual elitist, breathing different air than you. I happen to have both the time and the inclination to follow this kind of shit and that’s all. People are taking to the streets in Hong Kong, Chile, Bolivia, the Congo, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. They all have one thing in common, a revolt against the ruthless power of greed, serving only itself, deaf to the cries of those without.
Numbers are tremendously symbolic, often painfully restrictive. It just depends upon how you value them. I have a little grandson I love dearly and when he is truly ready to stand strong on his own, I will not be around to stand with him. I decided my epitaph would be my stories, forcing me to pierce the skin of deep privacy, words on a page for all to see.
It took months to gather the resolve to undertake what I knew would be a journey into the gut of my being, but love is what makes us mere mortals fly like angels, vanquishing our devils in the name of the heart.
Purely through the coincidence of chronology, I began my story on Halloween 2011, the month Occupy Wall Street began. I spent nearly two years of my life completely devoted to this effort. From the time it was finally bound in its purple cover, I have refused to ever open it again. I don’t know how to explain being able to write pages of incredibly personal stories and then feeling painfully self-conscious to revisit them.
Sitting here this afternoon, I remembered that the Occupy Wall Street movement had just begun the month I started writing. I knew I had written about it in the book, because it was a big deal when it was happening. You have to keep my age in mind. During the Summer of Love in 1967, I was already an ancient twenty-two years old. I was very excited about this new movement, nearly forty-five years later. I broke down and looked into the book and found a great deal about Occupy, trying to give some context for my grandson, who would likely be reading this entire chronicle at least fifteen years from its writing. Here is one of my entries:
“The Occupy business is about many of those people who have lived in the ether of x’s and o’s and have now come together the old fashioned way; gathering in public places and creating a theatre for the expression of many people’s paralyzing frustration with their mistreatment at the hands of the powerful public and private institutions of government and commerce.”
I think 2020 is going to witness the birth of the 99.9 movement, one that will bring together incredibly diverse points of view, presently manifesting as tragically, deep divisions. This schism is being fostered by the .1, who want us to hate each other, while they keep emptying our pockets. Nearly all the news and analysis we are spoon fed, is calculated to promote distrust amongst us and man, has it worked.
Medicare for All will not cost us more money, because it is mathematically impossible, as we already pay the highest price of any developed country. Huge corporations should not elect OUR representatives or write Our laws. These same behemoths don’t pay a damn dime in taxes. The student loan crisis is a criminal enterprise. Some kind of college education should be free for all of us. Global warming is science and not bullshit. We must support alternatives to the poison spewing oil and gas industry. A government that cares for its people is not the enemy. We have to begin starving prejudices based on skin color, sexual orientation and beliefs other than our own.
In the coming year, we all need to look at ourselves more clearly and see what kind of country we want to be and more importantly, who we are as human beings. We have so much more in common than we have been led to believe. Like many countries in the world at this moment, we need to look for answers within and not from our corrupted politicians, with money flowing through their veins.
I see you.