NO WORRIES

red ring



Mortality was with me much of the time today, my own, questioning a lot of things. I got with myself and asked why I would want to go on. The answer for that question was I've recently come into a new way of seeing and it's fun. I'd like to enjoy it awhile. Then I thought of Jean who came into a new place and she went on out. I'm not worried over dying because I have a belief that it's as quick as a scene change in a movie, one frame to the next. A few friends have mentioned legacy along the way. What legacy? I ask. Dead is dead. So what. It's a shame somebody has to find the corpse and deal with it. But what's that to me? I don't like leaving my friends.



I was thinking I have just a few years left, if that, so why not enjoy them, let them be fun, have an attitude of allowing, no need to be judging to the bad as well as to the good, but allowing events and others to be themselves without need to be controlled or judged by me. Don't worry, be happy. Let it be. Don't worry over the news, over politics, over other people's business, over our country's downhill run since the corporate take-over of our government, November 22, 1963. Let all of it rest. The way I see things is for myself, not necessarily for someone else. Someone else has their own way of seeing things. There are so many generation gaps between mine and the present that I don't even try to understand any more what the high school and college age youngsters are taking seriously, or anything. There is the golden thread that is humanity; it runs between all of us making it possible to span generation gaps, nationality and language gaps, political gaps, gender gaps, belief gaps.



WB Yeats' poem THE SECOND COMING stays with me, the opening words especially,

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
...

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


In the formation years of the growing USofA there was a center that held everyone together, the New World, the new democracy, independence from foreign rule. The sense was everywhere of building a nation. Now the nation is built. We've become collectively comfortable, even the working class and the black people. Television keeps everyone passive. We watch the channels of our choices. We listen to the music of our choices. We don't rally to the idea of the nation we're building. Now that it's built, it's turning out that the people don't want democracy any more. Requires paying attention. Americans don't pay attention any more. Half a century of television and it's television that holds everything together, that is American culture everywhere from rural to urban, every subculture. Television has wiped out subcultures like Walmart wiped out small towns.



The only center now is money and television. Mammon is the god of money and television is his instrument that is all about money, encouraging belief that money is the high and the mighty. The ceremony of innocence is drowned. We've been noticing for decades that kids don't have a childhood anymore. The period of innocence is much briefer than it used to be, drowned in a world of adult thinking, growth hormones in corporate burgers, television--even the kid shows are made by adults. I have actually sat in the home of friends around 20 years ago when the kids were around 5 and 7. Kids on the floor in front of the tv, parents sitting watching tv, me there too. A man and a woman get out of their clothes and proceed making babies on top of the covers in an episode the camera never left until it was over. The parents seriously opposed to the kids seeing sex on the tv. The kids weren't 2 feet from the tv. Parents watching it and not even noticing. It's what I call unconscious.



My resolution for the rest of my life is to have fun every day. I do what I do in the spirit of fun. I do what I want to do, not what I don't want to do. Other people's expectations will always be disappointed.