“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”/ “O brave new world that has such people in it.”-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”/ “All morons hate it when you call them a moron.” -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“Thus with continued concentration and the expenditure of enormous amounts of energy he tried to keep himself from slipping into the vast distances of his unhappiness. It was all around him. It was a darkness as impudently close as his brow. It choked him by its closeness. And what was most terrifying was its treachery. He would wake up in the morning and see the sun coming in the window and sit up in his bed and think it was gone, and then find it there after all, behind his ears or in his heart.”/ “I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.” E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime
“Home, don't it seem so far away
Oh, we're traveling light today
In the eye of the storm
In the eye of the storm
Home, to a new and a shiny place
Make our bed, and we'll say our grace
Freedom's light burning warm
Freedom's light burning warm.” (America/Neil Diamond)
In my 7 decades, born during the McCarthy Era! Raised in the “I Like Ike,” Dogma of black or white, draw only between the lines, my teenage years, waiting for the atomic bomb to drop as Walter Cronkite spoke to us about the Cuban Missel Crisis, witnessing JKF, and my dreams of Camelot die. Having RFK and Martin Luther King assassinated, and finally reding MKL Jr’s I Have a Dream, wishing I had taken the time earlier to grasp the concept of equality. Waiting in the closet as Anita Bryant, bullied the Homosexual, or Phyliss Schlafly conveniently blame the downfall of heterosexuality on Women’s Rights and Gay Rights. Waiting for the day the moment, the empathy of Reagan to say the words HIV/AIDS. Aghast and astounded that someone of my exact age was murdered on the campus of Kent State, by orders of Nixon, and to finally see him resign in disgrace for the criminal he always was. Treacherous times, then, moments in history, I was never certain could just be called history, but perhaps remain only as the PRESENT! Now at 71, seven decades and a year, feeling a déjà vu of 2016, I aimless meander and murmur words of hope, and praise, a prayer, perhaps, a desire that good CAN and WILL triumph over bad. Of all I have lived through and have recovered from, on this day November 3, 2020, I feel as if all of that was for not if in fact, we watch a madman, begin again to dismantle, (and this time forever,) DEMOCRACY.
