Friday, March 31, 2017                                            6:22 PM

Wish List

Feel the beauty

Don’t turn away

Don’t dismiss this moment

Taste the pleasure—drink it in

Dive deeply into the moment

Don’t ask questions, don’t hesitate

Just open your eyes—open your soul

Take in the totality of all the existence around you

You’re there, too—right in the center

You can center yourself in yourself

Feel the beauty

Be the universe

Pray for rain

And dream of tomorrow.

 

Rest your head on the pillow

Let your breath come easy

Empty your heart of burdens great or small

Fill your mind with possibilities

Past, present, and future have their way

Be the stone in the river

Be the eagle on high

Be the one who hears the music

Catch the melody in the air

And dance in its stillness.

Saturday, April 01, 2017                                          10:16 AM

There—I’ve tried to be positive. It only works while I’m reading the poem—it doesn’t ‘stick’, as it were—but at least I tried.

Life is good—too good. When I was born, we could only gaze up at the moon—we couldn’t go there. Nobody had a computer, the phone was stuck to the wall, and the TVs were in black and white. Women were infantilized, minorities were openly persecuted, gays were institutionalized, children were beaten—not incidentally, as today, but as a matter of course. When people today speak of a ‘return to traditional values’ I look at them as fools.

And I also shudder. If I consider that we could easily devolve back to that evil—or worse, devolve into the violent upheavals seen in other countries—I realize that the goodness of my life is a fragile thing—a moment in time that could blow away like a leaf in a breeze.

When I watch Trump and friends actively try to make that happen, I smolder with rage—only an entitled little prick could be so cavalier with our hard-won progress. Only a sociopath could think that undoing the prior president’s work was his job. And how ignorant does someone have to be, to be the worst, most unpopular president in history—and not know why?

So I view America’s upward-trending awareness and conscience since 1956 as a miracle—and Trump’s taking a sledge hammer to it all in 2017 as a crime against humanity. Only decades of the greatest security and comfort ever known could reduce our citizenry to the impotent bunch of I-phone-starers that let this happen—and, unfortunately, only a great suffering will again steel us to fight back against the darkness. I’m thinking a ruined planet might do the trick. Or a world war. But I try to stay positive.