America

Photo by Yann Arthus-Bertrand from
New York from the Air

How long is the trail that lead you to this? No place to call home. No solid ground beneath your feet. The innards tremble noiselessly from the shock of the world you knew, now vanished. Adrift. The city points the way. Familiar habits reorient. You have the books to make all things possible. Now more than ever knowledge is important.

In the nation, controlling mechanisms of government slip round the country’s neck poised for an unpleasant end. You and your country are at one. Placeless, harborless, somewhat mute at the unreal occurrences over time. Unforeseen, unwanted, unexpected.

A gray mist floods the Hudson. You marvel at the luck of having a good friend to allow you respite. A helpful audience sending encouragement and money. As you teeter on the edge of a place you do not want to go, these sparks of kindness and hope push you forward. Nipping doldrums of freedom lost eat away at your heels. Shall you let circumstance gnaw at the effervescent day? You tell yourself the only answer is to dispel the sickening miasma of eternal enclosure. Disembark the ship of fools for matching like to like can only taint the soul, mar the patina of age. The American experiment, though faulty, developed from a taste for freedom. Righteous ideas of equanimity arose from a fetid past of gods and kings. The microcosm equates the macro.

During this time of times, when all seems grim, we must not forget who we are. What so many strived for. My people, oh my people, on the graves of the diminished immigrant and the bold reformer our country, ourselves is built. A place where anything is possible, even the improbable. Our Puritan forbearers, promising cleanliness and prosperity, remains evident in the infrastructure. We have comforts most of the third world does not know. Our diversity, constant and incurable, gave us abundant cuisine, culture and crossover. Light still shines in the land of all delights. Do not let fear, busted desire and the need to blame obstruct what ineffective, dangerous men do. They eat at our liberty in order to devour it whole.

We see the hogs at the trough. We allowed a monster to rise in the land, no sense in splitting hairs. Did the dead multitudes fight for our democracy only to have it snatched by the dogs of avarice, conceit and blindness? We must be stronger to maintain what took so long to arrive at. Our policies and laws are being dismantled link by link by the forgers of gold chains of bondage.

When all seems lost, we can begin by re-evaluating the meaning and history of our freedom. When the rudder is lost, the ship will head for the rocks. Move out from the comfort zone onto the thin ice of change that requires courage. What choice do we have when the forests of time, a people under siege, is under the gun of gilded foolishness? Stand up now or lose everything.