screams, whispers and songs from planet earth

Category: Musings Page 8 of 10

I Had To Wake You Up

This was inspired by recent events, written on the train on my way to work. I would like to thank musician Amanda Palmer for giving me the courage to post this. She wrote a chilling and beautiful poem about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombings. She was then forced to defend her actions on her blog. She wrote her piece in the second person. I take one step closer, in my attempt to understand what happened. The only way to have a peaceful planet is to walk for one day (or 20 minutes) in your enemy’s shoes. There is no “us and them”— it is an illusion that breeds fear, hate and then further violence.


You try to understand. How can you? Insulated and safe in your warm homes with your families, whlie the world’s children scream out in pain, from the hunger and the ravages of war. You watch it on the evening news, and it’s so far away. There’s little distinction in your mind between the newsreal and the movie you saw at the cineplex last night at the mall, surrounded by opulence. America’s wealth and arrogance screams out like a heedless vulture, spreading its massive, terrifying wings and overshadowing all below.

I was never your child, was never truly a citizen of your madness. My heart is forever of my homeland. Blood ties and heritage are stronger than your educational institutions and superficial trappings. I rode on your trains and watched everyone with their noses buried in their insignificant little lives, their insignificant little mobile devices. I pretended to be buried too, in an attempt to blend in. But I was always an outsider, always marginalized. You listened to me when I said what you wanted to hear; when I behaved as you expected a 19-year-old boy to behave. But I could see the masked intolerance, the charade of freedom.

And now you try to figure out why I did it. You debate and speculate and mispronounce my name (and not really care if you do). You sit around in New Age circles and talk about the power of love over hate, right over wrong. It is always a war for you and you are always a combatant, even when you wear your crystals and think you are so connected to the universe. I am connected to my god too. MY GOD. Allah. He told me that I must WAKE YOU UP. Make you see. Make you realize. You can’t hide inside your crystal castles and pretend that the world outside your walls doesn’t exist, doesn’t belong to you. It’s always a case of “I’ve got mine, and screw you,” isn’t it? And now you grieve for one child. One Child. What about all the other innocent little children who have lost their parents in regional conflicts? Who are dead and maimed by oppressive regimes, or by drones that miss their intended targets.

You’ll grant a people the right to freedom, but only if their world looks like yours. Only if they’ll convert to your way of thinking, to your idea of justice, your idea of faith. Your sense of truth isn’t big enough to hold the entire world with all its different views that are so alien to your own. But it isn’t “your truth.” It never belonged to you.

 

A charity to help those most affected by the tragic events in Boston on April 15, 2013.

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In your tide

Grant me not equilibrium
I would be lost in a forest of placid faces
for the grace of a moment lingered
I gladly accept the agitation.

Disturb the air with abrupt movement
turbulent like the sea
push pebbles violently, without a care
onto the sand, with stubborn rage.

Vulnerable then, as a newborn child
bereft of a comforting embrace
are anxiously drawn back in again
as the water pleads for their return.

I am bound by an invisible strand, defying time.
No manmade construct can dissolve
this duty pledged by stronger laws
and no violent twist can cast you off
so in your tide I ebb and flow.

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Different Geese

Alone I struggle with the snow
the anger with the sadness grows
can’t seem to rise up from below
I feel so blindly lost.

I’m out of step and out of time
how difficult to find that rhyme
where life flows, not in fits and starts
I curse the bitter cold.

Participants in the parade
march by me in the grand charade
they seem to speak in unknown tongues
outside I stand unknown.

I’m not part of this perfect game
internal rhythms not the same
I wander just outside the maze
locked in a different time.

The geese have said “it matters not,
for we’ve taken you into our flock”
I cease my work to gaze above
into the sullen sky.

I hear them first, then see their flight
the violent wind they’ve caught just right
though sideways turned, they’re in formation
passing overhead.

Above my roof they pause at once
and hover motionless like clouds
a bold display on my behalf
in wonder, I laugh out loud.

They stay suspended, for seconds hover
fly back across with sky as cover
away to distant shores.

The message I believe is this:
to those of you who feel adrift
a novel twist and you will lift
to sky with wind at back.

This flight may be to you at first
uncomfortable, not of this earth
but in the end you’ll see with mirth
you’ll land just where you’ve wished.

Take heart, my struggling little bird
and listen to our feathered words
for soon you’ll glide free of concern
at once I understand.

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Understanding a Tragedy

Now that all of the innocent victims have been sadly laid to rest, it’s time for me to weigh in on the Newtown shooting.

Before I launch into what may be an unpopular perspective on this tragedy, I say a quiet prayer for those whose lives were cut short, especially all the young children who weren’t even old enough to experience hostility, or to hold a grudge, or to feel the need to seek revenge for some perceived wrong. And I say a quiet prayer for all their innocent counterparts in other parts of the world, far removed from the suburbs of Connecticut. The children of Syria, caught up in a civil war; the Palestinian and Israeli children, the children of Mali, of Kenya and Darfur, of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq, caught in the crossfire of conflicts not of their making. The children in the inner cities of Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles… caught in the crossfire of gang violence, living in the parallel life of the ghetto in America’s third world. For in my heart, there is no distinction between American children and Muslim children and Israeli children and Palestinian children and African children. They are all children. Our children. The future of our species. All of them.

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How will you spend your Last Day On Earth?

It seems like only yesterday I was wandering around Copley Square wearing my 2012 glasses, taking in a spontaneous Hare Krishna First Night celebration and eating strange little packaged treats handed out by devotees. At that time, the long-anticipated, mysterious Mayan Prophesy was this curious notion still comfortably off in the distance. I decided on that heady evening that I would spend 2012 as if the prophesy were in fact true—that everything would end on December 21. We’re often told that we should always live our lives as if each day were to be our last. So, facing what may have been the final year of my life, or at least the last stretch before some sort of cataclysmic event, did I spend each waking moment in the most meaningful way possible? Did I push myself to the outer limits? Did I reach for the stars in terms of productivity and my search for enlightenment? No, not exactly.

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Introducing Boris

It had become a nightly ritual. As I brought clothes into the bathroom for a shower before I went to bed, I saw you in a twisted ball, quickly maneuvering back into your web. So quickly did you take up your spot, then perfectly immobile and poised like a portrait, that it seemed you had heard me coming. It was as if you were trying to make it appear that you hadn’t relinquished your post, and were hastening to be back by the time I returned. My attention was immediately drawn once again to the window, and there you were.

With such ease, such stealth, and then still as a statue, like one of those ornate pins I purchased in Europe in the 1980s, the round abdomen made of colored glass, or fashioned of silver with tiny rhinestones embedded in the metal. I was so fascinated with those glamorous insects, I started a small collection.

It’s eerie how you come and go with my own movements. You stand watch while I shower, and as I’m getting out and preparing for bed, you scurry off for a while, having fulfilled your service, temporarily off duty.

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Those Pesky Mayans…

In these fledgling days of the newly spawned year, I can’t help but be philosophical (in my typically snarky way), and wonder what 2012 will bring. My god… 2012. New age refugees have been talking about the significance of this particular year, with its mysterious Mayan back story, since the 1980s. Now that we’re actually here, I have to admit, it’s a weird feeling. Will the end of the Mayan calendar cycle bring unspeakable catastrophe, as some have predicted, will we enter into an Aquarian Age with complete connection and world peace (yeah, right), or will it all be ‘business as usual’?

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The Airborne Toxic Event and The Drowning Men: A Road Story

The Drowning Men at Terminal 5, NYC

The Drowning Men at Terminal 5, NYC

This isn’t a show review. Not exactly. It’s a story of heartfelt commitment to one’s craft, to strength and perseverance, and to the bonds of friendship. And by “friendship,” I don’t mean posting something witty on someone’s facebook page, but coming to their rescue in the middle of the night on some desolate highway after a hellish traffic accident, packing their gear into your trailer and managing to cram 19 people onto a tour bus.

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The Storm

The aftermath, West Hartford, Ct

The aftermath, West Hartford, Ct

How can I explain this paradigm shift? I was going along, living my life, within a certain comforting flow of events and circumstances. Ups and downs, to be sure, but overall a sense that everything would be ok. Then suddenly – and it came at me with no warning – this major change. I was no longer sure… of anything. Maybe it was the economic downturn and general malaise and dissatisfaction; the overseas violence and uprisings. Or perhaps it was the odd and increasingly frequent natural disasters. A seemingly endless maudlin parade of surprises. A new reality operating at a completely different frequency that I didn’t understand. At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, I got out of sync. And here we are. Welcome to the new normal.

So it was really nothing out of the ordinary when, on this seemingly benign autumn weekend, a significant portion of the Northeastern U.S. would get a small taste of what everyday life is like for a quarter of the world’s population.

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Musings about the Occupy Movement

Occupy Boston march on Global Demonstration Day, October 15, 2011

Occupy Boston march on Global Demonstration Day, October 15, 2011

It’s a sad fact that a bad situation usually has to get much, much worse before it can start to get better. Ninety-nine percent of this planet should be really pissed off right now, if only there wasn’t so much other stuff that gets in the way. If religion is the opiate of the masses, then so are radio talk shows and opinion columns, political pundits and proselytizers. All that noise, all those petty disagreements over social issues and divisive politics. What commentators call the “wedge issues” that cause people who have more in common with each other than they realize to bicker endlessly, while they lose sight of the main plot.

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