I have taught middle school where 60% of the students did not share a common language - 30% of the remaining student body were in constant strife with the same percentage of the other percentage of students · it was more funny than sad, only because the warring factions were so close in so many ways, that they could not see. Today i am considering the entirely implausible however useful consecration of thanks in the most unlikely location amongst the most unlikely participants, and i feel better about that than most of what i’ve done in the past 12 months of my life, such as is left to me. It will entail initializing participation and contribution from vastly different cohorts that are still reeling from a plague lockdown, economic downturn, cultural blowback - a generally shitty number of events leaving a wannabe loving, and industrious population isolated and separated and weaker at a time when solidarity and cohesiveness is the only viable option, not just to the normally separate selfish interests of a wary demographic, but to a planet itself on the brink of destruction.
The trick will be to remain unidentifiable when like my visual appearance since birth is a virtual impossibility - another reason why virtual is such a bullshit expression. The only thing to be lost is the potential of creating an event of thanksgiving that wears well in the heart of every person able to see deeper into their own power to know how much their kindness benefits all whom they touch with love. It is scary to me, for i am a normally very shy and retiring individual and this action requires me to stretch beyond a pernicious and unkind self image that i accept is inaccurate, but also not my responsibility to alter. I am responsible only for how i respond to other’s suffering, not to the steps they take to ameliorate such misconceptions.
I know this event is marginally possible from previous experience - a thanksgiving when the elder brother disappeared throwing all logistical reality into the 4 winds. Drinking played a roll, as it does for all interesting mutation. As it happened for the event i'm trying to describe, all concerned learned early enough in the day to make what turned out to be a miraculous experience. What began as a desolate feeling of a cancelled holiday mutated into the magical acquisition of two frozen ducks, instead of Turkey - though still fowl · after the dilemma of thawing 2 x 4 lb birds, the next logistical hurdle was a guest list; holidays (especially in 'merica) always contain enough refugees so before dinner was served, we had a table full of professors, scientists, artists, authors, machinists and homemakers - more than interesting conversation ensued, however temporal and short lived as all miracles aught be ·
Whether, as most scientific experiments demand that it can be repeated under vastly different circumstances and radically different constituents remains to be seen - but worthy of a look if only because the stakes are vastly more relevant than that of a the sociologically predictable decay of family constellations in pre-9/11 'merica. I share this not with hardness of heart for with a heart full of love experienced a prior thanksgiving comprised of an actual family constellation which occurred at the almost exact moment an electrical blackout which shut down the electric oven roasting an overlarge turkey - it was ultimately served with a collection of candles and warm entreaties to each of each present from an almost equally divergent body of humanity as what i am implausibly considering late on this Monday afternoon very far from anything that might resemble support unless you consider the relentless appetite of mosquitoes born of a historic deluge from 13 typhoons of cataclysmic proportion.
Healthy little bloodsuckers they are, and i can only cringe considering the septic contamination mixed with the rice stalks the real estate predators pay massive money to witness growing. But i am weaning myself from gossip, as i curtail my love of tobacco and alcohol reasoning that this modified behavior might somehow transform my withered frame back into the virile thug i was conquering hearts i didn't quite grasp might also be the source of salvation in this vale of tears - better late than never · even if i do not find care i now understand exists in the company of others, i can still attempt to point the way for young bucks too stuck in their pain to provide kindness to those angels nearby in their lives who clearly require such nurturing love to guide our world to a better place.
jts 23/11/2020 ,
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment