In the
city, everyone ignores: that's
the state of ignorance,
ignoring
mind. In the city, everyone ignores
everyone, or acts as if they do
You
might look at a building
but
not at a stranger
or
reserve your looking
for
museums
otherwise you breathe
"on-line"
diaries of thought
daily wiped out
like a
breeze blowing dust off the street
collect
the video
of the people's hanging festival:
COPS
tv show car chase
they pin the driver down
grind
his face on the asphalt
his
ordeal as entertainment
like
the Middle Ages
everyone jovial at the festival of
death
far
away,
separate, "unreal" they say
"like
a movie"
when
they chased O.J.
they
"reenact" if there's no video
but
the real blood is no different
blood
as fake blood,
stage blood
courtroom
drama
airplane crash footage
the
fall of the icon
cynicism as a defense
as humor
A man
named Mike watches it all on tv
he
lives in a house in the suburbs
with a
wife and two children
they all watch
excitedly
especially the children
they
laugh at Mike's jokes, he clowns around
they
have a house full of tasteful furniture
picked
out by Mike's wife, Susan,
they own three cars,
a
boat, motorcycles, snowmobiles, mountain bikes,
racing
bikes, jet skis, ATVs
Mike
would like to buy a vacation home
but
the house has two mortgages
the youngest
child
needs
braces
and
unless things keep going well
"the
debts could go
through
the roof" as Mike says
as
Mike's father used to say
and
"the depression is coming any day"
Mike
used to be a happy tyke
in his father's house
Mike's wife,
Susan
used
to be a happy kid
in her
father's house
but
now, like Mike,
she
works, like Mike,
more
hours a week than
her
father used to
like
Mike, she wants a vacation home
for
the vacations they never take
though
if it was close enough
perhaps
they could get there
one
weekend a month
or
half a weekend
if the
kids didn't have hockey,
soccer,
basketball, junior achievement
.
Pain
always returns. See it as the ground
you always
stand
upon. At times you may look at the sky
but your
feet
remain on the ground of pain. If you
walk for a
while
looking up eventually you will stumble.
Perhaps
you
quickly rise, embarrassed that you fell.
Finally you
will
fall and not rise again. You will
die. You see
others
fall but then look away, trying to forget about
them. Everything passes. You say you believe in
reincarnation,
but in every life there will be pain.
Despair
is useless. It will do no good to cry out in
anger,
rail against the tragedy, get drunk and lash out
in
violence. One morning, you will be back
in the same
place
and once again try to deny it.
.
Sue
& Mike have the proper credentials
that's
how the modern world
keeps
people in order
jobs ranked by how much they pay
though
lawyers are the butt of jokes
nevertheless
Susan or Mike would have married one
$350
an hour legal fees
would
override the deriders
who
mostly make minimum wage
Mike
& Sue have got
in the
track
and
stayed there
Susan's brother didn't
he
works as a janitor
or a
truckdriver
or a
laborer
no one asks him
about
it at Christmas time
though
they talk about
when
he's out of the room
if
only he'd go back to school
and
let the Mexicans, Chinese, Haitians, Puerto Ricans,
Phillipinos,
Dominicans, Vietnamese do the work
"he
should get an MBA"
like
Mike
who
attended Tufts
took a good job
met
Susan who though only a nurse
also
later got a Master's then Doctor's
and
supervises an entire department
besides
teaching on the side
But
Sue does what she does
because
she worried about what
she
would do with her life
it had
to be something meaningful
and
there's so much misery and injustice
in the
world
that's why she went into nursing
and as
a single mother
who needed a decent job
while
struggling with her first child
before
she met Mike
who was just out of school he
overwhelmed
her
with
flowers
and adopted her son
though
since the courtship
his
work has piled up
so that he
is
seldom there
but neither is she
the
kids feed themselves
except
when she brings pizza
.
Sometimes, clouds appear
from
the blue sky.
Did you ever notice?
And
sometimes,
they melt again
into
the blue.
.
Susan
loves Mike though the constant turmoil
of his material ambition
has
begun to
lessen her love
not that they don't need more money
but if
they stopped taking on
more debts
she
thinks things would stabilize
but Mike knows money
he
handles the finances
he knows the plan
he
knows where the assets should be
he has
the bank statements, tax returns, IRAs,
K401's,
stock dividends,
in his
computer
and can print a balance sheet
for
their future
at the
press of a key
showing
Sue what
they
should do
"after
all you want
that
new car
don't
you?"
But
she doesn't really
A
vacation home maybe
because
it has
romantic
appeal
and
could be peace, love,
spirit,
an abode in dreamland,
an
ideal,
an answer
to
suffering.
Mike
says
"it's
a good investment
the
way land prices
in
that area
are
rising."
(to be continued)