Will Did You Evah?

You ever know someone and at one point think: this guy drives a car? Hard to imagine. Then one day you catch a ride with the person and it makes you really question the wisdom of his having a driver's license then you question the notion that in the US driving seems to be right rather than a privilege then you get to thinking that way too many people drive which is a major cause of global warming and traffic deaths and congestion and noise and that less people should be able to drive and more people should want to use public transportation which would increase the demand for busses and trains and subways and maybe create more routes and an increase in service so you're much less likely to stand around for 30 minutes waiting for a bus. And then do you think that if you brought this up in some sort of forum that conservatives would start hollering about another assault on individual freedoms and you're reminded how conservatives equate freedom with being able to do whatever the hell you want to and that there seems to be a growing chasm between liberals and conservatives that is getting to be tribal and intractable and making for more hostility and less of a likelihood that anything can get done in this country? That ever happen to you? Cause the thing is that it happened to me. Seems a lot of things get me thinking about the polarization of American politics and culture. In some ways I feel sort of not involved because I feel less and less vested in this country especially as a self identified socialist but at the same I live and work here so I should really be concerned but then I feel there's so little I can do aside from living my life as an example of my values. Values. My....

Belief system. Which is not necessarily connected to or for that matter separate from the man I was. Who was. Different. The theoretical. But I am trying and am conscious and I do think of the insanity of all these cars and people driving a few blocks when they could walk and is it any wonder obesity is such a big fat problem in this here country. I work in SF in an area lousy with tourists and one way you can tell the Americans from foreign is waistlines. Nine times out of ten an overweight person will not have a foreign accent unless you consider Alabama foreign which in many ways it is from the Bay Area. Dig it.

You ever know someone and at one point think. Yeah, me too.

But getting back to the rift in this country...I saw a comment on a non political online forum from a conservative who said republican women were prettier than democratic women who, he said, tend to be "butt ugly." You see that? Us/them. And THEY are not only wrong politically but bad all around, even their women are ugly. It's like when Ann Coutler said that "our blacks are better than their blacks." We don't have different political parties or philosophies, we have different breeds. It's like the Crusades, man. It's like football rivals. Beat em!

Where do we go from here?

"I go to bed with horror on my wings. In my pillow is sad comforts." - Jack Kerouac.

There are the unchained voices of yesterdays sorrows that visit from long lost travails. They whisper to us of how and why and we ignore them at our own loss. This is our sad burden as empty nights go by and we clamor for a dream that we never even had. America the confused. Desperate to climb some holy hill without taking so much as a single step. The easy path. The easy answer. The simple mind. The lost and the loss of those who venture to challenge. Stuck in the mire of dead end minds. Braying at us from TVs. Promise us everything. Every. Thing. You promise. With no plan on how to give it. We --

The sarcastic laughter and ineptitude of our scholarship are evidence of bereft intellects and a swollen pride all out of proportion to any accomplishments.

All that is asked is hope.

I get into cars and see so so many others and die a little bit each time. It's all very tired.