The Audacity of Cope
TIred
Yesterday I went to a meeting on the campus of UCSB -- girls with suntanned thighs pedaled past on pink bicycles and the light was a certain way it might have been in 1969 and I had that familiar 'old-and-almost-over' feeling. In the night I awoke from a too-bright moon and lay awake with thoughts of catastrophe and when I went back to sleep I dreamt that I was walking in boots so heavy I could barely lift my feet and I was paralyzed until I pulled them off, but then I didn’t know what to do with them and it seemed an insurmountable problem. Nevertheless I slept soundly until the dog entered the room with her demand to be taken outside.
So I stepped into the morning: It was warm already, and wild pigs had gathered at the creek perhaps feeling safe and shielded among the cattle and there was a sense of bustle and industry and thrashing about even as the heat crawled toward us proclaiming the day and I went back in and had my coffee and wondered what to do. I know my life is relatively easy, but I am thinking about the suffering caused by natural disasters and the suffering caused by human stupidity and how both are horrific, and such thoughts weigh me down and yield nothing constructive. In my own extended family someone made a foolish decision the other day with tragic implications, and it saddens me greatly.
On a far bigger scale, I am weary of the relentless downward spiral we've been caught in, and the consequences of a war we knew was wrong from the start, and the shame of a president who condones torture and tramples on human rights and then thinks he can lecture to the world. I'm tired of the arrogance and tired of the greed and tired of divisiveness and lies. Meanwhile McCain is already mongering in that old standby fear and Hilary has overstayed her welcome and I’m feeling ever more certain about Obama and it isn't that simple and there's a hard road ahead but for those of us whose lives are based on premises we hold sacred and promise we still believe in, maybe there’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Plenty of decent people have been doing the best they can, but sometimes it takes a lot of audacity just to cope.