Many Last Quarter folk either become preoccupied with the manner in which civilization is decaying or, perhaps, civilization does regularly go through cycles of decay. Sometimes, though, I feel that it is little else that a veiled sense that one's "game plan" or "dream" hasn't quite worked out.
M and I were driving about a few days ago looking for a snack at a local eatery. It had closed. I suspect both of us experienced disappointment and we talked a bit about all the places that had closed in the roughly 40 years we've lived in this township .... moving in when we still had two pre-teenage kids and an infant. We talked, need I add, of all the people who were no longer among us. All this while we had our snack.
Watching the House of Representatives attempt to bring the country to a partial standstill over its discomfort with Obama or his "Care" ... who can tell which these days? ... reminded me of all the ways I watch folk universalize their sense of disappointment in some result or life-reality into the uselessness or worthlessness of life, in general.
All the following are true to me ... that is are things that I believe:
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I am not capable of many things that I was capable of just several years ago ....
Half my cousins are dead
Essentially all of the folk in my life in my parents generation are dead, too.
The Cities of the World seem to be approaching a dangerous unlivable quality.
These cities are unsafe for visitors and dwellers, alike.
It's likely that within 60 years the great cities that were built to function as ports beyond their ability to contain huge numbers of people will be regularly under water.
There are many things I am supposed to understand that I do not ... included in this rather lengthy list are most commercials on television, the way people drive and, maybe, politically the hardest ... some sexual behaviors. Oh, I can identify with Gay lifestyles, even though I am, as far as I know, a "straight old man" ... but hard as I can try (and I have), I haven't been able to identify with those who have chosen sexual surgeries to align with their internal senses of themselves. I feel as if I should've been able to make this transcendent leap ... but I haven't.
I fret, just as my grandparents had before me, about the cost of goods. I paid $2050 for my first new car in 1965 and I cannot get used to the idea that some people are forced to pay that much for a prescription at their local pharmacy or that therapists are charging $250/hour and lawyers twice or three times that. I cannot get my arms around those things.
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"OK, OK," I say to myself. "So, you can't get your arms around those things, Western Civilization is in tough shape, and the Cities suck-big-time. So what."
The Stones said: you can't always get what you want.
I suppose what I'm saying is that people and groups and political parties can become kind of weird about not getting it all. They can dig their heels in and refuse life by taking to bed or to their homes as depressed shut-ins. They can bring the World to a relative standstill rather than accept that their country or public opinion has shifted in substantive ways.
The Small and Larger Worlds that we live in have their ways of getting on ... even if they seem to be getting awfully near to cliffs and their precipices.
I'll sit back, eat the popcorn and watch the show, even though, I -- like every other living thing -- don't really get to see the end of the movie.
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