The Last Quarter
A Spinning Compass
Pointing now to the Past full of Kindnesses
and
Now to Old Sins from and against those Near and Dear
--- Now and Then ---
Have I given up on figuring out the Sum of Kindness and Sin? Maybe that's part of being a Denizen of Quarter Four. The Kids say: It is what it is! I guess: It's gonna be what it's gonna be!
The new technology is pretty cool. My youngest Grandchild and her Parents gave me a wristband that calculates my steps and my sleep ... My sleep? It tells me how long I've slept and how long I've been restless and how long awake. Is it good to know these things? Maybe. I get to go to a website each morning ... I just did ... and find out the Sum of my steps and Sleep and more. Soon, I suspect, it will calculate details of our sex lives ... duration? thrusts? peak moments? Peek-a-boo!
The Pope is coming to Philadelphia ... Wish I was going to join the throngs of devotees who will follow his words. He does seem like the Good Shepherd. Instead, on Television, I get to watch those devoted, first, to this political whacko and, then, to another. Have I become jaded? Is the whatever off the rose? I dunno.
Here, in Amerika ...
Can there really be a Candidate for President
who thinks he has nothing to do
but claim magical powers to heal the scars of the 7 Billion?
Can there actually be multiple Candidates for President
who proudly pronounce their ability to smash unions?
How many Candidates for President are there
who think there can is reason not to elect a President
whose idea of The One God is a hair-different than the WASP ideal?
How many Candidates for President do, indeed, tell me what they really believe?
Hell! How many Talking Heads are willing to tell me what they believe?
I listen, each day, and have little to no idea what is articulated belief and what is Spin? Spin has become OK. Spin is Reality and Reality is Spin!
Amerika? The Land of the Free and the Brave. Anyone can become anything, here in Amerika. Just look at the composition of the recent debate: A child of Indian Immigrants ... a Black Man who grew up in poverty and became an acclaimed Pediatric Surgeon ... a couple of kids of Cuban Immigrants ... a Woman who rose from being an Administrative Assistant to great prominence in the World of Business ... a Billionaire who thinks the World of Himself, though maybe less of all the others for whom he, nonetheless, professes Great Love .... a number of Illuminaries -- Clerical and Lay -- who have such Faith in the Creator that they see no need for Birth Control or Science ....
Wow! (or Whoa!)
My wristband tells me that I was Restless for 32 minutes, last night. I don't expect the day, necessarily, to be much better.
Maybe I'll have time to ponder a question that Maimonides toyed with about 800 years ago: If Christians, Jews and Moslems (listed lexicographically) are all monotheists, believers in One God, that is, must they not -- of necessity -- all be singing the praises to and beseeching kindnesses from the same God?
It was quite narcissistic of me, I suppose, to have imagined -- as I suspect I did and maybe do -- that all the pettiness and hatred of the World would have come to an end during my tenure standing erect here on this planet. Children and old folk (like me, thee, the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis) are, I suppose, a bit naive.
Alas!
