Skip to main content

Untimely Thoughts....

One has to wonder whether collective guilt, self-loathing and unrelenting stridency will get us where we need to go as a nation...

We begin with the premise that people love each other - and get along just fine...And why is that again?

Another tension-filled, random contentious encounter in today's America...But this cannot be happening right? We "outlawed" all tension-filled random contentious encounters  last month!

If we began with the assumption that people are naturally wary, suspicious and untrusting of one another - we would not be so constantly "shocked" by what we see every day...namely, people suffering through the mutual "stress" of encountering a stranger in the public square...

Throw competition into the mix...What? People competing with one another - striving to gain partial advantage over their neighbors - enjoying the brief, fleeting illusion of "superiority" (in one regard only) and mulling over a thousand insecurities caused by their "inferior" status in a thousand other respects...I don't like what you're telling us here...That people can feel superior and inferior to others at the same time??? Yes - in fact, the facts are less demoralizing when you notice how complicated things are...



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Estabrook

  On a well-traveled corridor of the East coast - where tourists drive northward every summer on a sleepy (and sometimes dated) old thoroughfare that meanders (roughly speaking) with the shoreline - there lies a coastal village renowned for its posh homes and proud inhabitants - and at the center of this village which boasts of a main street, a historic library and a stately boat landing, a garden shop can be found nestled among costly domiciles - just a stone's throw from the private academy and the gourmet ice cream shop. Set upon five acres of serene commercial flatland - the property houses multiple plants and trees and flowers - providing an oasis of greenery for anyone conjuring up daydreams of bucolic bliss. Set apart from the store - a no-frills wooden edifice - were greenhouses,  rows of plants and flowers, larger trees in back and an old modest mansion of a house - still occupied by the family, Estabrook, which had owned the place going back three (3) generations. Th...

#1 - > Meet Our Protagonist

They found him curled up under his favorite hedge-row, clutching his frayed sweater - near steps to the library terrace - at the university - in that same idyllic - ivy-laden quad - where he was sure he had once worked - as professor? instructor? archivist? acrobat? - back in the days before his life unravelled - and brought him back to the Facility - an immense, sprawling, labyrinthine hospital compound and out-patient center - a mere 15 minute drive away - for closer monitoring. (They plopped him down in the coffee lounge with the dolphin paintings and the staring-cat portraits - his favorite spot  - a popular wing of the Place - where beverage and break snack were dispensed in exchange for tokens - and the chairs and couches were especially cozy. In such familiar-unfamiliar circumstances, his usual sense of radical mistrust kicked in and he began asking the typical questions: where am I? why have you taken me here? what do you plan to do with me? are you holding me capitve?? Oh-...

Edgewood, 1973

We had made our way down busy Palm Avenue towards the crosswalk. after zigzagging the usual route from busy Bandini Avenue to Tower Road to Rosewood Place. Bret was our wild-man companion - a fifth-grader with a take-no-prisoners approach to life. The local crosswalk, that most mundane of enterprises was soon to become the scene of spontaneous absurdist theater when suddenly out of nowhere came the random yelp: Hey...Hey...What do you want with us lady? -  What do I want with you? said the most predictably normal gray-haired woman by whose ever so brief guidance we measured our daily jaunt to school.  Yeah - where are you taking us? -  There's only one way kid - It's this way... -  You're not really a crossing guard are you? came the cheeky interrogative.  The slightly bemused, limping, beleaguered  woman was dwarfed by her bright yellow uniform as she held up her STOP sign - showing Brett. The other smaller kids walked by us single file in the middle of th...