Farewell, Angelina

Posted this on FaceBook earlier:

It’s a dreary day here. Yesterday, there were storms…some really impressive thunder…lots of rain. Supposed to be more storms today. The weather seems to mirror what’s going on around us right now…kinda dreary, some impressive noise from above, lotta stuff falling from the sky. Supposed to be more storms coming. So, for me, it’s a day for thinking and ponderin’ and music.

I was listening to “Farewell Angelina” (the Joan Baez version, which I love) and if you are familiar with those lyrics, the puppets are heaving rocks and fiends are indeed nailing timebombs to the hands of the clocks. The sky is trembling. I must go where it’s quiet. Shut the eyes of the dead not to embarrass anyone….

Farewell, Angelina…farewell to expectation that if the suffering is revealed it will be eliminated. Buddha said there is suffering. I suppose our business here is not to eliminate it, but to take away its power. That seems woefully inadequate, to say the least. Perhaps it is the point at which I must say farewell to any attempt to make sense of that, to live with it, only to accept it. Accept it regardless of its inequity, regardless of its pain, despite its weaponization. It’s another philosophical quandry entirely to presume that suffering can be eliminated.

So, where does that leave the likes of me? What the eff do I do with that? I don’t know, and I don’t like not knowing. I was told that when you’re lost in the forest, the best thing to do is stay still so that you can be found. That works some of the time. It works when there is someone looking for you, someone who recognizes that you are missing. It doesn’t work if you were largely invisible and not perceived as being missing. A lot of us are missing, and there’s nobody looking for us.

Farewell, Angelina…the cross-eyed pirates aren’t shooting tin cans, they’re shooting real people, our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, our children. They have hijacked our ship of dreams and they hold us all hostage to their lack of imagination and their malicious intent. And yes, the people clap and cheer for their savagery, because this is what happens when the dreams die. When there is poverty of the spirit, there are no more fantasies, no more dreams, no vision of a better future. There is only grasping at the repair of broken mechanisms that promise freedom, but instead deliver only more bondage. Achieving power over others is the eternal joke on the hopelessly powerless.

So, seeing as how I’m in a Dylan groove today, here’s another Dylan line from another day in the 1960s. It says a bit of how I think some of us are feeling right now: don’t think twice, it’s alright…ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, babe…i can’t hear you any more. i once loved a country, a child i’m told…i gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul. But don’t think twice, it’s alright.

I don’t want to hear about reparations at this point, or analysis of the Founding Fathers’ intent on anything. I don’t want to hear about the rule of law, or who’s to blame for the latest crises within the country. Don’t want to hear any debates on score cards, or fact checking, or who said what to who and when. All I want to hear is…we ain’t gonna do this same crap any more. We’re gonna cut out the bull shit right here, right now. I’d love to abolish political parties entirely at this point, but that’s not realistic. Partisan politics is simply organizers working the way organizers have always worked, just with suits and ties and bigger salaries. so let’s use that to organize people for the good of…the people. ALL the people. Can we at least agree on THAT?