In one of my favorite and cinematically breathtaking films, Out of Africa, Karen Blixen, AKA the author Isak Dinesen speaks to her lover Denys Finch-Hatten near the end of everything -- the love affair, the sojourn in Africa, the farm -- and tells him that when things are very bad she likes to play a little game with herself. She tries to make it all worse. Crank up the pain as we might say today. And then she asks him if he will dance with her, and they dance. And of course (spoiler coming) he dies in a plane crash. There is no gravity. The earth sucks, as my baby sister says.
So perhaps you'll dance with me now as I play the same game in my mind. We are baraged daily with the bad news that we are supposed to be numb to, but so many of us aren't... dance with me and read William Rivers Pitt's latest piece from Truthout.org: Your Children Are Burning
From the top: "The presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry are at each other's throats like dogs in a fighting pit over a war that ended 29 years ago. The mainstream news media, along with the alternative news media, have enjoyed watching the show, dutifully reporting every detail and nuance of the fiery exchanges between the camps. Somewhere in these last 24 days of August, however, while arguing over a three-decades-old war, we managed to forget that another war is happening. Here are some details that have been missed ..."I find it difficult to get into the whole heated thing when the major candidates cannot talk about Iraq, but they and their champions can focus on Vietnam instead. Thirty-five years, gentle people. But I suppose it's a change from previous presidential campaigns when the imperative was to bring the candidates' kids before the camera to prove that the candidates were real men with real dicks that worked.
As excruciating as it is, I'm going to continue to read ALL the bad stuff, and rage against the dying of my light. I'm tough. I can take it. And I have a Hulkette specially designed for backup when Kate needs to spend a weekend in bed with her head under the covers.
Perspective. Use it or lose it. I'm seeking perspective. Wisdom. Knowledge. Direction in a seemingly directionless world. And the mother ship has not come back for me yet. So there you have it. Another Monday on the Happy Planet. I'll leave you with a quote from Out of Africa about direction....
"I had a compass from Denys. To steer by, he said. But later it came to me that we navigated differently; maybe he knew as I did not, that the earth was made round, so that we would not see the way too far ahead of us."
