A couple of days ago, I was whirling on my stationary bike, headphones snugly in place and Bruce Hornsby amplified That’s Just The Way It Is throughout my entire body. When I sit on the bike, with my eyes closed, completely internalized, I somehow become the music I listen to and each song seamlessly fits into my thirty minute album of the day.
I have a special history with his music. I left NYC in 1987 for a completely uncharted life in Santa Fe, NM. We don’t have the time or space for me to tell you about the why of leaving. However, when I took off in my roller skate, sized Dodge Colt, I was gifted a collection of eight tracks for my cross country odyssey. I had a NY Yankee baseball cap, ceremoniously sitting on my head. It was held down by headphones connected to a ghetto blaster, the only occupant of the passenger seat. Amongst all the music, I smothered myself in, Paul Simon’s Graceland, Bob Marley’s Legend and Bruce Hornsby’s debut album, which serenaded me across this beautiful country.
Recently, I have been thinking about whether I should write about the world outside myself, which I have pretty much avoided. I guess to most of you, my writing seems deeply personal, risking my secrets with strangers. Frankly, I love doing it and don’t see it as being naked on the stage of the written word. When I first began this exposition of self, I used “we” far too many times, as if I had some right to speak on behalf of anyone other than myself, simply because I had a keyboard.
It seems that polarity is the norm between us now. Being on the Left or the Right is where we are living and I don’t want to have a side. I want to find a way to speak from the Center, because that is where the heart lives in us all. Bruce’s words stuck in my throat. Sitting on a stationary bike and peddling my ass off is an interesting meditation, at least for me. The music fills my insides and there is no room for thoughts.
When I look around, it is effortless to feel the hopelessness of it all, because that’s just the way it is. The lyrics are terribly sad, tinged with just a speck of hope.
In the midst of my creative confusion, I was re-introduced to Rachel Carlson, the author of Silent Spring. I think trying to deal with the mess in the middle is a muddle, is like a creative quicksand that will lock me into all the goddamn stereotypes we choke on everyday. I figure I am on relatively safe ground if I shoot for the extremes of the sky and the dirt we stand on.
Please read what she wrote in September 1962:
“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
There is a reason why we refer to Mother Nature. From my heart. I implore all of us to treat our home with the love and respect she deserves. If we (couldn’t help it) continue to view our planet as a bank we can continually make withdrawals from, she will go bankrupt. Her doors will close and we will become a busted species. It seems like nearly everyday, I read about some new species that roamed the earth millions of years ago. This delicious orb has quite a history and it has survived extraordinary cataclysms, one devastating disaster after another and here she stands, more powerful than any species that temporarily ruled. At least the dinosaurs had an excuse, because they were clumsy and stupid, no offense to the big guys.
In 1962, John F. Kennedy was president and some of us believed in Camelot. Today, Camelot Towers is for sale and there is nothing make believe about it. The earth is being treated with the same disregard in which we treat each other. In 1962, Blacks couldn’t vote and they were relegated to something less than second class. Poverty was a death sentence for those without. We were still hanging these Human Beings from fucken trees. My heart says we have not come very far and our behavior is all the proof needed.
Pete Seeger would have been one hundred on May 3rd. Along with his buddy, Woody Guthrie, he fought for the working man. He was a goddamn American in the best sense of the word. Remember, I am talking from the heart, without a side to hide behind. He was afraid that the few people with money were going to take advantage of the hard working men and women of America. He was in favor of unions, not because he was a Communist, because he was an American. He believed in the beautiful myth of our country.
“It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.”
That’s just the way it is, isn’t good enough. Frankly, I think we have been manipulated, all of us, into seeing each other as enemies. My dear, sweet friends, money has taken over our lives and it is fracturing us, solely for its own benefit. From the heart, please tell me why we shouldn’t have the medical attention that all the citizens of this wealthy country deserve. Tell my why Rachel Carlson was wrong in her assessment of what we are doing to this magnificent home of ours. Tell me why Pete Seeger was wrong in saying that we need to talk with each other and not fight amongst ourselves.
This country is a marvelous experiment in possibilities. Perhaps, if we stopped punishing others for their differences and decided to help them and their homelands, we might have millions and millions of people who want to build their own countries with the same myth that created ours.
My heart breaks when I see what we are doing to each other, what we are doing to Mother Nature and it is not good enough and that is just not the way it is.