There's so many things I've wanted to talk about lately, but I just haven't had the energy. The weight of inevitability drags me down and my stomach is in knots. Though I'm not one for prayer, I find myself praying an awful lot.
As is the way of late, Senator Robert Byrd has put many of these thoughts together so well (here). It still amazes me that he, of all people, has so led the charge for an America so many of us want.
All of this brings Phil Ochs to my mind. Phil felt frustrated by America's failings to live up to its own ideals--ideals that Phil, I, and so many others of varied political persuasions can support: liberty, justice, truth, equality, democracy, and on. He railed against the many injustices in our land, but at the same time managed to evoke the wonder of our possibilies:
Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all (the Power and the Glory)
Still, the looming clouds hung heavy. And, still, the urgency of response (I'm going to Say It Now, What's That I Hear?, and perhaps with sad irony, When I'm Gone) called to push back the storm:
But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate
They twist away our freedom & they twist away our fate
Fear is their weapon and treason is their cry
We can stop them if we try (the Power and the Glory
I'm subject to an apparent lack of actions that can turn the tides currently. So, for now, I hope for the lives of so many.
Here's some more parting thoughts from Phil Ochs, taken from Broadside:
Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to help form a new America, which would be de-militarized, more humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the exploitation of the people. And, mostly because it's now a matter of life and death, reassert an ecological balance with the environment, which means the people in the oil companies and the car companies and the space industry and all the other industries will have to be brought into account, so that there will be a new definition of government which has to be closer to the people and less close to special interests which are far more harmful than any revolutionaries.
9:28:52 PM 
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