“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.” Larry Feinstein, November 18, 2019
Well, this is a first for me. I had a story written, fleshed out and ready to go. I spent two days putting it together and this entire week gathering information. It was going to be a dramatic departure in my style, more fact based. I decided the piece would deal with the foursome of our ongoing climate debacle, the disastrous imbalance between the 1% and the rest of us, good ole Covid 19 and George Floyd.
Who cares what I think? I have no credentials. I don’t have a Ph.D. I am not part of an organization, whose acronym spells something like TRUTH. I am not a recognized name in the world of journalistic commentary. Here I am, about to share some incredibly weighty subjects and what right do I have to express my opinions and share them with others?
I nearly pressed the button on an 848 word piece, filled with statistics and quotes. It read more like a term paper, filling the mistaken need to justify my own private thoughts. I haven’t erased it yet. I am typing above it, forcing it further and further down the page, until it falls off.
I was troubled by it when I went to sleep last night, because it didn’t sound like me. It wasn’t my voice. When I glanced over at my iPhone to see the time, it was 4:45AM and pitch black around me. I am an awful sleeper, always have been. My brother could sleep through an earthquake. I could hear the sun thinking about crawling above the horizon, waking me up, engine running. I knew I wasn’t going to leave the house until at least 8:30 to ride with the Sons of Kauai, my forever Sunday ritual. So, here I am and it is still only 5:30 and look at how much I’ve gotten down already!
The only words that will survive my aborted attempt is a paragraph I lifted from a story I wrote, when I decided it was time to think about the coming year, 2020. I had this idea that whatever I ended up sharing this time around would find its way back to that earlier sentiment. We’ll see.
Without any further ado, here we go. My idea was to present those four seemingly disparate topics and brilliantly draw them together in the last couple of paragraphs. I was going to end with George Floyd, when, in fact, it is where I must begin.
Imagine you’re a 12 year old kid, living with your extended family in some place in Africa, with a name long ago erased. You’re not thinking about anything special, when a group of white guys grab you up, chain you and throw you in the dungeon of a ship. After weeks at sea, you are dragged up to an auction block, surrounded by strangers speaking a language you don’t understand. You miss your Mommy and Daddy. I can stop the story right here, without traveling to some plantation prison, where you spend the rest of your life, watching your own children ripped away from you, never to be seen again.
What the hell do I know? How could I possibly have any idea what it is like to never, ever forget you are black? No matter how much money you’ve got in your pocket or how many degrees you have earned or how big your house, it doesn’t mean shit.
To me, the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of a knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck is the exclamation point that now defines 2020 for me. When a human life can have so little value to so many of us, everything else I wanted to write about makes perfect sense. When we can care so goddamn little about another human being, why should we give a shit about the amount of carbon dioxide in the air? It is that same disregard for each other that enables a handful of those white men to have billions, while so many are having a slice of bread for dinner. Is it a surprise that a lethal, viral poison has been unleashed on us all?
Oh, by the way, I justed deleted those 848 words below this, because I don’t want to see them again. I don’t ever want to think that my voice, all by itself, has no value.
Change is a bitch and when I look out at the landscape of where we are right now, I just don’t see how you and I are going to fix this broken system. I think it may be the work of my young grandson and his generation, but if we don’t get started, we’re not going to leave them much to work with.
There is one word I have salvaged from the 848 and it is equality, which has nothing to do with prejudice. We are tribal creatures and we will always view the other as different and that is not the problem. Everyone needs to have an equal opportunity to be the person they are meant to be. Poverty is a lethal disease, an invisible slavery with silent chains. Healthcare cannot continue to be a luxury. Access to education needs to be a birthright. The law is meant to enforce the ideals of a humane society. We have to shove a stick into the wheels of the war machine, breaking a system that feeds on violence. Once we have figured out how to treat each other with kindness, only then can we protect our home and all its inhabitants.
Man, it’s not even 7AM and I have been on a roll. I made an extra half cup of coffee, because it’s way to early for wine. I am going to put this story up, not because it is a well thought out treatise, rather it is the imperfect language of heart speak. We have a long way to go, my friends and I am not sure what the beginning is supposed to look like. Maybe we have already begun and we don’t even know it yet.
My music has been on, carrying me through the morning darkness into the light of a beautiful, Kauai Sunday. Amy Winehouse is now singing, Cupid and I think it needs to be the last song accompanying this Redux.
Thanks for listening. I still like the opening paragraph.