Inspection- Reflections
“Stars” is such a big: all encompassing, word. Politicos like Barack, McCain and Jessie Helms qualify as “stars,” as do the usual suspects: Bono, all kinds of rappers who mostly sound the same to me… probably like most old Folkies, like myself, sound the same to those into Rap… religious icons like the Pope, Pat Robertson, Reverend Wright…
Perhaps we can take comfort in the fact that they are but slightly brighter reflections of even brighter reflections out of the past: parents, mentors, teachers, professors; and so many historical figures that have helped bring the human race into today. I often wonder if such reflections are like clones: inferior copies of those past tense. Barack O’Bama may be a good speaker but even compared with many I remember: King, Kennedy… he is an imitation; a reflection of brighter stars.
So are such reflections like clones? Or are they just as bright; special in their own right?
To quote that ancient; occasionally wise old sage: Grandpa Simpson, maybe…
“…a little from column ‘A,’ and a little from column ‘B?’”
Somehow; despite our best efforts to collectively hang ourselves, reflections have gone on many millennium. Maybe we just haven’t learned to tie the knot properly? Well, tis the computer age, I suppose: let’s get those Apples and Microshafts working on that right away! I suppose as I see the “greatest generation” dwindle down to nothingness; and what my generation has achieved, it’s no great leap in logic to wonder if my generation will be the one to perfect the noose?
All one has to do is compare President to father…
Or the radicalized Right that replaced the Eisenhowers, the Fords and, gasp… even Richard Nixon: a bloody, flaming liberal in comparison.
And, of course, so much: like the deconstruction: dismantling of the women’s movement; or the lack of an MLK or Malcolm X… and the shooting star-like rise of the pol who lectures Black American fathers on responsibility, but somehow manages to skip lecturing the just as guilty White ones. I know he’s trying to win an election; which also explains his “yes” vote, vs. Hillary’s “no,” on telecoms. But this is exactly what I mean: we are but poor reflections of what went before. If Hillary had grabbed the slippery brass ring I suspect their votes would have been just the opposite. Despite the myth of a resolute and firm president, the actual population of Pols who who really could their ground and still win elections have long gone extinct: slithered into the political La Brea Tar Pits; probably still pontificating as the boiling Drudge-like sludge extinguished their careers.
Of course that could be mostly me, seeing past reflections… poorly.
Where we are in the current “now” also helps us decide how bright, how clear, our reflection should be: this also explains much of the maneuvering by our candidate that the Left is complaining about. That is as it should be: otherwise both the starkness, and the fanatical nature, of our leaders would lead us back to an age when; for example, you had to join the Protestant cause, or the Catholic, or be burned at the stake… like my great, great, great, great… Grandmother was, and two uncles: explaining why we; as a family, headed to America in the 1600s.
As we stare into the night sky, our vision is naturally blurred; clouded: imperfect. That thin; apple peel-thick layer, called “atmosphere,” keeps us from seeing more clearly; and even adds that extra special “twinkle” to the song called Twinkle, Twinkle.
Why they called the song that, I guess I’ll never know.
If we could go into space: nothing blocking our view, we would see with perfect clarity, for a mere moment as life was sucked out of us. For in space there is no life, no achievements: just the cold, mechanistic clockwork of an ever expanding universe.
Just like the cold, inhuman, views of the fanatics who flew into the towers, or dragged America kicking and screaming into Iraq. Like the vacuum of space, a vacuum of both morality and a rational thought process is what drives the bin Ladens and George Bushs, Dick Cheneys and Dylan Klebolds, Charlie Mansons and the Pat Robertsons. That last one is important, because like a star struck teen; John McCain has given his soul to the man who once smeared political excrement all over him. He is not unlike one of Charlie Manson’s girls.
I wrote this after yet another star gazing moment and fell asleep thinking about those who went before us…
I dreamed. I was at my grandparents. Grandma was still alive; Grandpa was dead but his body was there. Grandma; a woman I mostly remember as rather dour, with her almost constant gaze of disapproval, took me out to all the places I had forgotten the grandkids went with her when we were very young. We went to a park: the Enchanted Forest, the Pied Piper for ice cream, Jake’s Dinner for a late lunch. Grandpa went with us. Everywhere we went we brought him out and propped Grandpa up: leaving him in odd poses. Then we laughed as people attempted to have conversations with him.
At the end of the day I told her, “This was a most perfect day.” Waking, I realized my memory of her as mostly dour was but a poor reflection.
That imperfect lens: the human mind, lets us re imagine what the past was. History is like a soft shale stone skipping across time: going where it had never been before; sheering off little pieces… reshaping history into what it was not. Doesn’t matter if it’s history in the more personal sense: Grandma and the grandkids, or Lincoln, Jesus, Moses, Genghis Khan: or even the more immediate. What we now know as the Iraq War will be seen as but a poor reflection in the future of what it really was. It’s changing right now, as I type these words; as the stone skips and another piece breaks off.
It’s all so glorious.
And, at the same time, evil.
Yet quite complex.
It is…
…who humanity is, and will be if we haven’t perfected that noose yet.
Like Barack, I too have my hopes and dreams. Dare we think we can dream, we can hope, together? Once November arrives and then passes, maybe after that, we find out how short our rope is, how powerful and uniting our hopes are: and if there’s still enough time that we may dream the same dream: together.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over thirty years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
