My insignificance is apparent to me. The humble tasks of tending to a dog and a cat and playing a little rock'n'roll leaves plenty of time to ponder the state of the planet. I have a full heart and I've known love beyond my wildest expectations. It's too late to die young and I'm too far along to ever be considered unlucky. I love you.
Sometimes I feel guilty about my life. This rock'n'roll brings me more joy than any one person deserves. Tomorrow I get to play with a bunch of the nicest folks in the world. "Play." That's the key. One of them was onstage with me the very first time I ever performed. That was more than fifty years ago.
Chaos and disorder are in the ether. Everywhere I look there seems to be some blinding reminder that it's all temporary, that nothing is permanent. Okay. As I look on, friends seem to be crumbling before my eyes. So does society, culture.
I once spent eleven years working for the government helping protect the environment. Maybe I should say that I once wasted eleven years. When I left, broken, dispirited and depressed, I worried that maybe I would no longer identify as an environmentalist. Maybe my idealism would be diminished. Nope. The experience made me cynical about government, bureaucracy maybe, but not tilting at windmills.
The bullies who took your lunch money from your pocket while you were dressed out for phys ed now control your government. As I watched the alpha male lawyer on 60 Minutes boast that the government didn't bother attorneys because the attorneys write the laws, I realized just how simple and straightforward this system really is. This guy was straight from central casting right down to his suspenders.
Oh, I don't need to be reminded that there are wonderful folks toiling in the legal profession and would-be heroes swimming against the tide in our government. As you start to take inventory, though, you quickly realize that there are far more Snidely Whiplashes than Atticus Finches out there.
Unfortunately, we're dealing with evolution here. In the real game love "trumps" power.
Change hats, change character. Roy Rogers first played a villain in a bit part in a Gene Autry movie. When Gene marched off to war, ol' Roy donned the fringe and glitter and the white hat and climbed up on Trigger as the King of the Cowboys.
Eddie Graham tired of making a fortune as a bad guy in the ring. He came home to Tampa and reinvented himself as the ultimate rasslin' hero. When the vile nazis and commies and assorted wrongdoers slashed his forehead beneath those golden locks we all bled.
Somehow the United Stated has worn the crown of the good guy with most of the rest of the world from the get go. That is in spite of slavery and genocide. We got off to a good start as the underdog and, let's face it, the world loves an underdog. To help in the contest we kept winning wars. Let's face it again, the only thing we love more than an underdog is a winner. That means that we wrote the history books, therefor, God was on our side.
Along the way we gave the world jazz, Levis, rock'n'roll, the i phone.
In the meantime we stopped winning wars. You might suppose that losing for a couple of generations might cause us to reconsider that game. Nope. The military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of makes a fortune from the arms industry, win or lose.
Finally we arrive at a point where the rest of the world doesn't even laugh at us. It shudders. We elect a black president and for a brief, beautiful moment it appears that we have begun a new march forward. This after killing the Kennedys, Dr. King and Malcolm X. Almost immediately the ignorant push forward an evil cartoon character turtle who announces proudly that a minority representing the wealthiest few in this country will prevent the new hero from governing.
In the meantime, science is denied. Infant mortality goes up. The economy collapses. We continue to lose wars but we somehow find new ones to fight in the name of God and democracy. Our infrastructure decays and our education system declines. Health care becomes affordable to the rulers and the few that they truly represent. The environment goes into a tailspin that scientists fret may be irreversible.
Rock'n'roll is usurped by the television networks and presented as melodramatic contests. Sex becomes nothing more than an advertising tool. It's not dirty anymore. Dang!
Without mentioning any names, I don't have to, this political season has clinched the deal. The rest of the world is nostalgic for the day when they could laugh at us. Now, with their heads in their hands they listen to the news every evening of border walls promised and new cold wars. They watch as mobs pummel protesters while orange faced lunatics and pasty faced demigods threaten to carpet bomb the middle east.
In the meantime we wait for the next television evangelist to be brought down by scandal, the next legislator to be undone by a sexual embarrassment. It seems hypocritical that sex is still dirty for them, doesn't it?
Maybe all of the joy is in the mystery. If I knew, there wouldn't be any mystery. Holding hands. Rock'n'roll. The smell of the ocean. A puppy's breath. A mother's love.
She walked right into the Kind Heart Trap behind the Race Trac gas station on Gandy and right into my heart where she's purred for the last seventeen years. She was the best mom a kitten could have. She has saved me over and over with her sweet company. Now we're nearing a parting. She lost her eyesight two days ago. Worse, that's a sign that her kidneys are failing. Meantime, she's as loving as ever and her appetite, as usual, is just fine.
Goodbye is not my strong suit. You'd think by now I would be the king of the stuff.
The best lessons in real love come in tiny, furry containers.
