Cowboys and Indians

He told the story of how his mind was changed. He and his wife Michelle were being chauffeured through a desolate stretch of rural American back-country highway. The low rolling hills barely had any definition against the chasmic moonless sky and they held hands. They both gazed comfortably out of their windows when they each happened noticed a faint light piercing the darkness in the distance. It seemed to blink, as a lighthouse does, yet yellowish-orange in the distance it fluttered like a trapped firefly in the web of empty night, of course, the flashing was an illusion. Well, it was Michelle that broke the silence. From what I recall she said something like, “I can imagine being alone there…”

“Hmmm,” he responded, prodding her on.

“Imagine it was me. Home alone. And up that long dirt road comes a stranger-really out of nowhere,” she exaggerated the empty panorama with her hands.

“Yeah,”
"There's a prison near here."
"Yes."

“Well, I guess I’d want a gun.”

They were silent for a few seconds and she added, “Even if there were no prison. And not that I would use it-“

“I understand,” he agreed, knowing her as he knew himself.

And also knowing there are always two sides, light and dark, rural and urban, and weighing them accurately is a skill. Perhaps the true measure of a leader, or President. This was the story told by the Frmr. President Barack Obama, I don’t remember when or where-I was half listening. Note: this retelling has been embellished by my memory. And he said this following the worst school shooting in US history during his two-term reign as Chief. Now again, we face another school or mass shooting in America. Seventeen dead. Revenge, anger, justice, righteousness is on everyone's lips.

There have been 'lockdowns', a drill we did not have when I was in school, at each of my children's schools growing up (elementary, middle and high school) and all were real threats, not merely drills. I used to be grateful that the images and stories of war-torn and violent, dilapidated and bombed out places where all 'other places'. I felt safe here in America. Now I know safety is my own luggage. Admittedly, I have recently become envious of peaceful and prosperous, kind and progressive places that exist on this red earth. I don’t own a passport and this often makes me feel chained here. Enslaved, under the thumb, perhaps by money-but that’s another type of loaded gun. 

The thing is-the aim is off in this country. America is angry, and very often the anger is pointed the wrong way, such as at guns-like today. 

Of course, the N.R.A., the Constitution and its protection of our right to ‘bear arms’ are as well sewn into to our flag as a cowboys hat stays on his head, but really, Rights and groups holding up Ideals are not tangible things to aim at.

A firearm is aptly named. Man/woman-kind treats this apparatus as if it were an add-on appendage, a firing-arm. And according to capital H-History, we created fire, hence these implements of Dr. Death, the ones that exterminate, are inherently ours to have and to hold-like Liberty.

I understand the anger. I learned how to shoot a gun just in case I found myself in a situation where I had to use a gun to save my own life (or my childrens). It made me feel powerful. Our household has an airsoft BB gun and a rifle BB gun in the camping equipment-other than that we have plenty of garden variety weapons, a machete, a hoe, an ax and all that, but no real gun. A friend who is single with no kids or girlfriend has one and goes to the shooting range often. The thought of spending money on ammunition is about as fun as buying toilet paper to me. To each their own. Hobbies that involve blowing things up were not created by guns. 

Do guns make people crazy or is it just crazy people that shouldn’t have guns?
Many people scream for all guns to be banned (maybe banned only for private citizens-but clearly the implementation of body cams on law enforcement is an indicator that authority often has their own ill-bred issues with guns and power). Banning guns won't keep us safe. It is not guns that kill people anyway, it is people that kill people.

In grade school, one single gum chewer can ruin a little freedom for the whole class. This is an early lesson in democracy. That kid, the one that took away privileges for all, he doesn’t care about the consequences for others, he/she may even relish sharing the pain (caused by them) with their peers. So you see, the problems are all caused by the people, the sheeple. Call it operator error, misuse or abuse, murder is murder. There can be no further growth in the canopy of humanity unless we examine the roots of the tree.

Let’s just take school shootings-how did the perpetrator(s) get the guns? Who taught them –and not just about guns and death, but about life and health? Is that a parent? Sorry-but often this is where the problems are created. This kid had problems. They tried to get him help, his mother knew he was a bad seed, even dangerous-but what can be done until he does something bad? She watched his wick burn down. She did not know what to do. It is sad, she tried, but not hard enough. Even law enforcement was handcuffed, and the FBI, well, I guess they have been suffering from a lack of updates in the decision theory software. 

I have a neighbor whose young adult daughter recently overdosed and died. The girl was violent-toward herself. She had been in serious trouble before. It was sad, but I was not surprised. Opioids, heroin, and other lethal drugs offer the same illusion of power as a gun. It is life in our hands, to make or break, to shoot or shoot up-it is the same. It is the audacity of the human to dangle life-even our own from our fingertips.

Safety, security, trust, these things are like marriage, if you believe in them they are as real as Jesus. I don’t have a strong faith-especially, not in humanity. As a species, we have been focused on controlling the weather, each other, the future, the past, and have stagnated when it comes to self-control and furthering our potential. Murder prevails, disasters ensue, we pick up the pieces, draw the chalk outlines, put the evidence and offender in a box, wash our hands and move on to the next human tragedy touting strength and survival against the odds.

Seriously, deadly serious, gun control is in the hands of the human. A trigger has been designed for the human fingertip, the barrel for our handshake. It is an object arisen out of a deal with the devil, but one we made nonetheless and cannot ever undo. We must come to the fine print terms. 

If we want solutions, we cannot blame the objects of our desire, the drugs in our veins, the guns on the street, the knives in the chopping block, the poison in the drive thru's, the rope in the tree-which we seem to always have just enough of, just in case.



Painting By Glyn Warren Philpot RA (5 October 1884 – 16 December 1937) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Gravitas

Gravitas

The tower of Babel was a mere 300 feet,

the Liverpool Cathedral ascends to just over 330 feet

and remains the longest cathedral

ever constructed by man

by geographical area.

**Nimrod (curiously notes)**

What have we learned from imitating mountains

and pushing our rocks uphill

in order to better gain a view of heaven,

perhaps catch a glimpse of what lies further beyond

what can be seen from the lowly human range?

It goes without saying…

there are no words of ours

that work like keys unlocking the holy gates,

unlocking the treasure chest of the universe,

it is sealed in strata for all eternity

as the sword is swallowed by the stone.

In the 21^st century it is time we ask the question(s):

How far have we ascended up the Ivory tower of Babel with our 600 and more tongues being spoken all around the globe still today?

What have we learned about conveying meaning?

Has progress been made toward the land of understanding?

Excluding the household or familial dialect,

if these forged and folded words as concepts

stand alone, each forged an edge-ward step,

the myriad of these systems lead us

to very different plateaus

called under-standing.

Have letters dissipated into dreams,

the things we cannot grasp or approach

without the total evaporation of the original conception?

As if communication had fallen out of favor as a preferred method of thought to thing,

as if definition itself had plummeted out of a too large window and flown away with the lines of knowledge,

we treat these utterances as hollow sounds,

as if communication were an old custom that bored people entertained themselves with like humming and chit chat instead of rolling up ones sleeves,

taking a deep breath full of intention and exhaling the verse in converse, letting its high notes linger over the heads of scavengers rooting their noses in the mud for the dregs of evidence that something foul took place,

something sinister is underfoot.

The weight of the words were sinking,

holding us down,

adding volume to our being

and resisting movement or ascent through feeling

and not needing to say,

the same discreet way the angels do with waves, light, thought,

and as heat pass through these bodies by breath and through chemical realms unimpeded,

we watch and take notes, proclaiming a miracle has taken place,

what matters is not longer solid.

These matters make up ones soul,

filling in empty spaces where words have not recognized themselves in truth,

words have tried on concepts like robes and fail to cloak such protrusions as shape and presence.

And inside, the light was absent, the air damp, the space left vacant for a new dawn, a thin spectral line that never existed between this and that,

meaning you and your meaning.

I apologize for making such an exasperated and dejected claim,

as if my meek voice would be elevated off the page,

as if sand were more gold than coal,

I was initially thinking of the inadequacy in so many ways to say the same thing that never equals the same thing or the thing itself.

With such little effort put forth in understanding something so wholly different from our own conception of real, it seems not surprising that there is no bridge or codex for mutual understanding,

a natural willingness to stand on another’s side,

to peer out from their shoulders is non-existent, unrecognizable, unfathomable utopia...

Why bother?

The intent toward comprehension, like fishing, not catching, the line lays limp,

the line falls flat

and plummets in a spiral of disbelief,

not knowing how deep and dark one may go into the abyss,

this is when none care to know

about the existence of others,

all is echo, your own shadow.

A change of view,

a decision to move

from one soft rock to a precipice

where life teeters with possibility and fear,

but steady,

a glance around gives direction

a point to focus on.

Below,

you know,

one is listening,

someone else hears your mutterings and is making out the words,

is carving the granite slab to find your mouth and has taken a chisel,

desperately trying to give death a shape,

to give crystals back their light

and to make shadows with movement

in opposition of time.

Etched, scrolled, craved,

these stories did not use you as a character,

the words do not ring true

and there is no recognition of relevance.

Why go on...

how often the endings change in the mouths of the mutes,

overtime these scratches on the skin and gashes,

called valleys,

carve the ways and means

the giants needed to pass through the slog

and trod over crumbled

mountains like ant hills.

Now,

only time is in our dark corner

where the light is too exhausted to reach our impenetrable body-

where has the mind ventured without tether,

taken by wind and covered in clouds,

the soft weight of water,

a blanket that stops the shivering,

disrobed, disarmed, distracted

left to wilt and curl in the careless air.

And nothing moves forward

but I can feel our relentless spin,

I can see the avocado tree that is in bloom

as it alternates its energies from yin to yang

and I sang this body electrically,

flowers stretching toward the dawning sun,

alternating currents and histories

such as plagiarism and innovation,

insanity and productivity,

everything has been said before…

now

if ones listens inside the white noise,

the hum of everything not saying anything,

thick as fog soaking the pores and short of conducting all things that may carry meaning or purpose or goodwill, a life, a rock, a word, gets buried under the alphabet called grain, silt, quarry, and mud,

seeks its own to level with.  

Image credits in order of appearance:

Photo By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Art By Reginald Gray (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo By Fryslan0109 at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Blinking

When I tell my daughter adventure stories from my youth, she usually reaches a point,
less than a minute in, when she rolls her eyes, and this is
when things get most precarious-
because she thinks I am lying.
Because she says that 'not having a cell phone is inexcusable, how did you do it? The waiting, eye contact and
uncomfortable stuff...'

And against all odds, survival still happened before the opening of hotlines like
nine-one-one or Poison Control, before Alex rang his Graham Bells in our pockets replacing the change with a pal that pays,
before push notifications, before the weather was watched only on doppler before Amber sent out mass Alerts,
milk cartons were sold in paper boxes with pictures of missing innocence in the morning
white as milk, meant to scare children just escaping from the grips of the Boogie or Sand man and plunging them into
cold hormone infected milk product laced with lines of white sugar which in some places is also called White Death.
These things happened before towers tried looking like trees, before there were clear signals none saw, before we had never enough bars to keep us sated nor contained.
She reminds me she only ate Cheerios.

We both know it will never be the same as it never was before us, the way things change, technology-wise or foolish investors.
She tries to act old fashioned at times. She likes to listen to Frank Sinatra on a record player and sometimes she leaves her phone at home. This can cause mild anxiety.
And again, it was different when I was her age, but the same games were played.
Messages were left, comments had been made,  he said, she said, she saw
that the blue lights were always on like on the webcams...
I told her of  The Dark Ages when we had real darkness. It was an age sans filters or emoji's, pre-selfies.
Her eyes squinted, to her, it all sounded like, bar-bar-bar-3 bars for Barbarians. Parents. Sand? She spake. "What? Sand? I'm not following...that sounds scary."
"It was," I say. Just like today. "Sans. Sans means without."
"Like 'unfortunate'?"

Now all the answers ever given asked or not, right and wrong, left and long, short and sour,
are recorded for all time-sans quality assurance, fact-checking, intent, or meaning
and made most misinformation is easily available for preferential retrieval and re-use in part or as a whole however best adaptable to survival of the self-protecting species, such as us.
"That is why I don't pay attention to the news."
Facts are facts. CD-ROMS only last ten years. Paper books may make it to fifty. Photographs,
Paintings, Papyrus and the Pyramids are more permanent than entire populations and pixels. Now people may live shorter or longer than a lifespan, depending on what they build or mark they make.

She asks, "how long do clouds last?"
I say, in my limited perspective, as far as one can see,
maybe as long as a day,
but the cloud could come back-but never exactly the same-
hoping she won't recognize this resemblance to all other things and ages.
"You didn't check the weather-"
"I was trying the old method called, 'Leaving it up in the Air'."
"So you don't know? I'll look it up," she sighed.
"You're Googling."
"I smell rain."




Photo of Consuelo Vanderbilt taken 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.