Well... I've finally arrived, Campers -- over the bleeding edge of the world's TV spectacles and problems and my own. I'm looking for cohorts, not sympathy. Empathy is a remedy. Sympathy is a mere placebo.
Never in my wildest 20-something imagination did I ever project that I would feel this way when I was 50-plus. Never. I can just barely imagine what someone younger than me is thinking about life on the Happy Planet these days... what a fourteen year-old problem child might be thinking... I know one of those. I'm worried about him. I'm worried about me. I know that some days for me it's a struggle just to feel fifteen. I realize we are a "political" blog of sorts here at the ASZ, but really (although it's been bent over time the phrase "the personal is political" applies here)-- Our day-to-day lives apply to our "political" attentions and intentions. That's what it means. It can't not be so. I'll try to get there while I'm musing. Bear with me if you can. I've been thinking about this post for at least a day, even while trying to sleep.
I'm listening to the Indigo Girls this afternoon. Their first big CD. I also had the news on earlier but I couldn't stomach it. Wake the dead president, fergawdsakes, and get it over with. But you know as well as I do that they won't until it's no longer politically expedient to do so. So I shut the damned thing off. Music is better. William Congreve said as much:
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."
No,, Campers, it was not Shakespeare, nor is it "sooth the savage beast". Congreve was close to being a contemporary of Shakespeare ... his forte was restoration comedy. Look it up, I think "She Stoops to Conquer".
Indigo Girls. "Closer to Fine". I've sung their songs accompanying myself on guitar, paraphrasing their Xian lyrics slightly to make them more universal. Just a little. "Closer to Fine" needs little if any paraphrasing.
"I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine."
Lyrics at: Indigo Girls site
I'm very weary of the public waking and burying of old Caligulas, mild or extreme. I'm tired of pandering newsreaders. I'm tired of them telling me how the economy is so much better lately. I'm weary of endless prognostications about who is going to "win". You can bet tomorrow's breakfast that nobody's winning but politicians and their corporate sponsors, in my rarely humble opinion.
I grew up in the optimistic 50s, and into the 60s. Born in the "Year of the Bad Water", 1952. Ask me about that, I'll tell you. I had my first child in 1972. I keep wondering about what my 76 year-old dad is thinking now. I can call him. I should tonight. Between the troubled fourteen year-old, me, and my dad, we have the U.S. demographic spanned. I know that my dad wants the bastards in DC out. I'm proud of him. He's grown.
I'm leaning on my sister and my dad for comfort in my time of 50-something discontent. Truth is that I've been discontent all my life about what is happening on our big blue marble.
Campers, I'm not going to provide you with any "news" (AKA "the Olds") in this thread. I know you know how to "google". So this is my over the edge rant for hopefully the next month. ;-) The Indigo Girls are playing the song, "History of Us". It's very nice. I learned the tabulature years ago and must brush it up.
The chorus from life's little soundtrack:
So we must love while these moments are still called today
Take part in the pain of this passion play
Stretching our youth as we must, until we are ashes to dust
Until time makes history of us
