[This post is in response--in part--to this. It took the form of an email message to a friend, who sends me stuff I try not to get too excited about.]
You have delivered a deep well of questions these past messages, and I don't know which ones to pull out and address, if any. Because it is all so messed up these days. The news, for example, is horrible. The only way to cope with it is to ignore, or watch, read, and listen as theatergoer. What with personal, that is emotional, ups and downs also, now my son as well as yours: How is one to feel all is well at home, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." It is all so fragile and so evanescent, because the only thing that matters is the people we love and expect will be there--happy, healthy, fulfilled. To threaten to lose or to lose them, this is the stuff of the meaning of a life. Mine, anyway. Do we really have time to even dignify the crazies by talking about them and trying to convert? To educate and civilize, I will leave room for these, but they too have their limitations.
So when it comes to immigration and racist or non-racist, let 'em in or throw 'em out, I guess I want to say "grow up." I also want to say grow up to Israel and Palestine. Set the swords aside in some museum and let's get on with living and enjoying and leaving other people alone. In Iraq, the newly taken lands by fundamentalists who say live this way or die: Unfucking Unbelievable in this era. We know better. We can behave better. We can let the other guy have his guns and ways if only he keeps those shitty ideas and values to himself and leaves his own and other people alone.
So flap on about "Creative change is easier here because we pick and choose from among all the world's cultures. That inherent advantage in the American system will continue. . . ." Oh really? Is there evidence that anyone in the US chooses something better from the world's cultures? Health care system? This comes to mind, just to pick one off the top of my head.
Which brings up this. It is great to discuss ideas. But ideas and discussions do not effect change by themselves. It takes something else. Something more personal and visceral. When cancer threatens the life of your son, or a blood clot on the brain in the case of my son, what are the ideas and values most motivating, most moving, most effective? It is not some conjecture as to who shot down that plane in Ukraine, but the love and affection we have for a precious life not our own, those senselessly shot down included. Get that in the meme that travels throughout our country and throughout the world and we will be getting somewhere. The rest is just blah, blah, blah.
Have I gone off the deep end? Probably. So I will return to the fantasy world of my novel, where there is no in-your-face sex, no violence, no bad guys, and kindness redeems all. Will anyone read my book when it is finished? No. "Not life as it is." But I say, why can't it be? As bad as it is and as bad as it can get, if idealists give in, where will we be then? I hate to think.
Thanks for sharing the readings with me. You see, I can blah, blah, blah just like the rest of them.
