The more I think about writing, the less I think my life worth writing about? True, it is my life, but it is not "high" life.
The long black vessels of the Greeks
The chains wrapped around a slaves' feet
The gunpowder crack of revolution
The long journey over the dangerous plains.
These are not my experiences. They are not the experiences of my peers. We know only scant labor, fears mostly imaginary, dangers mostly promoted by the news. We are a scattered, lesser people, driven away from the true language we may have once spoken: clear cries at the sight of another morning. How true it must have once been that the Lord's mercies are renewed every morning.
Today, we take our blessings, make our own miracles, thank you. We don't need help like we once did. We are the eye in the sky, the lighthouse at the top of the world. We see all, know all and can't find the country on the map.
What is worth the mention of us? Nothing great. Are we to memorialize the non-greatness of this day, the paltry portions of courage we have brought to our communal table? Are we to remember our own indifference to human suffering as close as the next room, as far as Africa is from our hearts?
Endless lines, buckets of ink, and the sweat of too many brows have poured forth on this great mystery: how a people with nearly everything can be satisfied with nothing, can only hope to engorge their greed souls with the ever-present hope of more. Such terrible food. And what small portions.
We want to read about struggle. We want to see adversity overcome against all odds. We even want to see a qualified success, some glimpse of the spirit that we sometimes need to know we might have once had ourselves if not for the deadening weight of the every day.
Strange days. Shaken and stirred but only in the teapots. We live a butterfly effect daily. We flap our lips, a storm surges, great typhoon over Japan. We eat our own coal and drink piss to stay alive. We can be that hungry, that thirsty. Somewhere. A snug misunderstatement of a life in this landlocked city. This country isolated by wide waters. We won't always be so safe and yet be afraid.
Maybe, maybe we will actually be in danger. May have our lives on the deadline of our times and have to brave face it. Today, that's a future memory. Tomorrow, it may be the present task. I wait. I order the flies about me about. Asking them to take a small cloak to cover the eye of night. Let my deeds be dark. Let all the sordid morsels make a meal of this resistance we feel.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment