“…the really important stuff they never tell you about – you have to imagine it on your own.”
b. andreas 1997
cross posted at Daily Kos
The really important stuff. Like hearing the jewel-toned trilling of birds at dusk as I walk a narrow foot/bike path winding through the Black Forest.
There are waves of long grass bending in yoga positions on the forest floor. And soft ferns. All shades of green backlit by the last shards of sunlight.
I could imagine that trees stretch, yawn, and sigh in contentment, surrounded in evening sounds of unseen birds, whirring insects, and the dry sizzle of wind through weeds.
Indeed. A babbling rill slides by, rushing over some kind of algae, bending and disappearing. Well, truth is, in this light . . . at this time of day, I hesitate to follow it.
Instead, I stay on the path. Walking through the Black Forest at dusk. Thinking about important stuff. Like knowing that I must leave this place as I found it. Undisturbed. And if there are untold dramas and peace is an illusion, there is still harmony here. Justice. Survival is achieved without anger. Or false pride. But through strength.
There is something here. Important stuff here. To remember our strengths and work from whatever they are. Not our anger. Or our hysterical fears (some fears are necessary). It reminds me how silly and insignificant our issues seem when we make fun of Republicans to do what? Stir the wrong kind of frenzy in people? Our strength has very little to do with the weakness of Rush Limbaugh. It has even less to do with his hypocrisy.
Our strength has every thing to do with our desire to keep our promises. To believe in equity stakes in freedom and the law. And to push politicians to deliver justice: enforce Congressional subpoenas and investigate crimes: war crimes and those against our country and constitution. Push politicians to deliver health care rather than billions in bail outs.
But GOPasaurus? Or ranting about the ravings of lunatics and their upside down thinking? Where does it get us? We need to know how they work the levers, sure. But there’s very little new there from what I can tell: not in their talk or tactics.
I’m not seeing much new in us either. The same buttons are being pushed. Some of the left-wing rhetoric has that right-wing tinge of hatred in it. I think it makes us weak. It makes us sound like them.
And when we jump on our own, when progressives are pounded because they don’t follow a democratic mind set or script, it amazes me. Because I see brand politics, whether D or R, as the real problem. We are so easily sliced and diced and served up in compartmentalized audiences. My GOD! And we fall for it every time.
Barack Obama is a smart man. I’m glad he was elected. But now I’m worried. Because what I was looking for from him was pushing Congress to invoke our laws, get off its ass, and find a way to have its subpoenas enforced. I thought we would finally have some accountability.
We can get tangled in Rush or Glen or Sean and it’s all bullshit. How does this help us get health care that works or how does it help us craft simple and effective messages to counter the bullshit?
If we want health care that works, then the vampires need to know the law works. That high-placed people who break the law get that “examined” life. Politicians must believe that when they are elected to uphold our laws they will be held ACCOUNTABLE to those laws.
Functioning and fair health care will never be a reality as long as the vampires know they can break the law or disregard regulations. The food we eat, the products we buy, all of it, is under seige. Unless we re_establish the rule of law.
And that’s what was reinforced on that path in the Black Forest seven hours south and east of where I live in Nederland. In that forest, there is the rule of law. A balance of living and dying, succeeding and failing.
The really important stuff. It’s simple.
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lions, tigers, AND bears oh fucking my.
and walking through the woods on a dusky evening
Somebody cares about Rush? Dude…. I want him and Beck to keep talking. Let them be branded as the face of the GOP.
You really think the left wing rhetoric has the same tinge of hate as the right?
The only reason I ask, I don’t hear much left wing rhetoric at all. In America, you get called left wing if you think voting is a good idea…
to see you here.
and great of you to be so gracious to me at edger’s place.
if i didn’t thank you then (don’t think i did) i thank you now.
I was thinking about you just yesterday, and missing you.
Wow.
Cool to see you, and loved the essay.
been missing your presence and wondering when you might appear. beautiful essay that captured a lot of what i have been thinking. also just stood on the sidewalk listening to an albanian friend run through is culture’s history (recent and past) and he thinks mankind is unfixable and we are in for some very bad things – due to an extent to the mentality you describe in your essay.
Good to hear from you — have thought and wondered about you often — and was just on the verge of a communication, and, bingo, up you spring — how welcome! 🙂
I loved your “walk through the woods …. ” piece. And the use of it as analogy in our current circumstances.
I happen to think you’re correct, everytime one of the “creeps” shows up to deliver a (we get media for free) message and attempt to shove it down our throats — we react and, probably, that’s exactly what they seek and, don’t forget, too, it serves as a diversion/distraction to whatever is the greatest topic. I agree, we need to stay on topic/target — right now, I think that is investigations and prosecutions, no more funding of the war in Afghanistan, demanding healthcare for Americans and, firmly, closing Guantanamo/ending the wars and, oh, the economy — which all are intermingled, in so many ways, certainly monetarily, for one thing and all the legal/moral issues for another.
We went horse camping and my 13 year old “plug” surprised me upon being exposed to excellent trails. Four days gave me much improved riding skill and he showed me how he remembered the trail. The horse does know the way home, or in this case the trail leading to frolics in the lake.
It is the forest that is full of life, not the city. I have had my life, the good times behind me. Hope is only the prospect of another summer retreat full of family love in the woods of Maine. It is annual and runs on the same dates as Bohemian Grove. On the west coast elite scumbags are burning people in mock sacrifices and on the east coast I will be teaching my grandson about nature and the beauty of the woods.
this piece is gorgeous. did i mention that? i don’t think i did. gorgeous.
It’s time to stop all the in-fighting. Who cares what Rush says this week or next? Who cares who Glenn Beck is using to scare the old folks? I sure don’t.
But I do care what our leaders are doing with OUR country. I wished we followed our Congress like we do with our celebrities. Maybe if they know they are being watched more closely, they will start working for the people again?
I dunno. But I’m not about to waste my time being angry at the Right. I’d rather spend my time better. Like letting my reps know that the public is paying attention and they are not happy with their performance.
Anyone who lives in a Red State like me should be fighting their own reps, not fighting their own.
once said “It’s a distraction”. It keeps the populace at each others throats and provides cover for the real villains of the piece. The new face of the cooked up culture war, the one we supposedly won in the last election. It’s a dance they prefer us to watch rather then the images of torture, the laws being shredded and where’s the money.
Hi pf8 good to see at the top of the list here. Your writing is getting ever more beautiful thanks. Nature is a good antidote to the folly of human society. I’ve been gardening a lot lately and when I come back inside, online, am just blown away by how insane we humans are. I’m an organic gardener and no longer think of mass destruction of pests as a solution. Years ago a friend who helped me with my first garden had good advise ‘Plant more of each crop for the bugs’. Still consider vicious warfare on slugs but don’t act. I relocate them. Anger and fear are so tied together.
For the most part, the woods and it’s denizens live under the rule of law, albeit mystical and misunderstood. The Balance experienced as one walks through the forest listening to our winged kin, soaking in the slow lives of centuries old stately fir, cedar and the shorter lives of birch, aspen and others, is Law made manifest. A Law, primarily of harmony, encompassing even the seemingly savage, which has no arbiter, just participants.
Would that all could spend an afternoon in a sun dappled crook in the stream appearing from under the moss shrouded canopy streching to the horizon. Listening to the buzz of tiny lives in the air, cut short as a cut throat trout breeches, swallowing a song, a buzz which some would call irritating and unneeded.
That tiny irritant is needed, else that flickering flash of a fish would not be there. Small truths such as fish food follow the same neccesary paths to the truth of the larger Law as do pundits on a Sunday morning talking head show — the small and irritating are seemingly neccesary for the growth and sustinance of the larger and seemingly more noble.
Once the small mindedness of said talking heads has been consumed and defecated, the growth of the larger and, one would hope, more noble observer is assisted in it’s journey to the larger truths inherent in the Law. Even as the irritating mosquito feeds the growth of the trout, so too does the irrational rambling babble of the talking heads, right and left, serve to assist the growth of the human race.
Gaia, Mother to the flashing trout, the towering redwoods, the irritating no-see-ums and mosquitoes, and humans, makes mistakes, all beings do. But I have no sense of failure in this most recent experment in Her growth and maturing. A nasty smell perhaps, such as might be experienced at Yellowstone, of rotten eggs, or other putrid processes, may be experienced, but the growth of consciousness and love and beauty and law and truth,
can not be deterred.
Thanks pf8, be well.