You say goodbye, I say hello

Dec 31 2008

How long does a day last? Twenty four hours wherever it lays its head. And it crawls across the globe for a full twenty four, testing the pillows and mattresses of every new country it passes. It rests on straw, on hay, on water, on sealy and certa. That day, once it’s done, take most of 48 hours to finish its work. Take a year of such days? Could last for damn near like forever.

This is the day to say ‘goodbye’ to a year that has lasted far too long and what many folks blame for dragging them through the mud of economic chaos and the constant exposée of worsening revelations. Folks just couldn’t seem to dig low enough this year. Will someone please just get out a gun and shoot that damned bear? Will someone please just tell 2008 to go the fuck away?

Well, today is also my mom’s birthday. Slowly, sadly, I realize that I’m bidding adieu to the powerhouse, the fierce hen, the mother that I once knew. The mom I watched go to battle with school teachers, bus drivers and whole fleets of nurses fades into a woman who’s imagination and worry now operate on too feeble a set of inputs from eyes and ears. She hears people at the back door when no car is in the driveway. She can’t see a cell phone screen that goes into screensaver mode. She hears “green” when I say “Prius”. Less and less is she the steward of her own story and I worry that the details, the facts, will be stirred into a stew of confusion where hidden fears are treated as real events and the reality of her life slips into truncated anecdotes that really, really do not capture who she is and what she has meant to the people she’s touched. My mom is not some great woman. But, she’s my mom. My god but hasn’t she put up with whatever it takes to make sure her family came through. I worry that people like that just don’t get made no more – that the tough gets Nintendo-ed and Tivo-ed and made in China affordably priced out of us all way too young. Now, now especially we need those people like my mom who won’t throw away glass jars, deli containers, rubber bands, plastic bags or tinfoil because deep in the folds of their brain is an indelible memory of the Great Depression. My god, where has the tough side of America gone when we are so unconsciously preoccupied with measuring up to some social policy of “thou must have xyz stuff” that we fail to honestly stick our necks out for the truth? We’ve subconsciously cheated OURSELVES out of our first amendment rights.

Jan 1, 2009
The radio is filled with happy hellos for a new year. Things will get better. We will have our shiny new president. The economy will recover. A new day dawns.

Do we want the economy to recover? I don’t. I don’t wish to see us move back into that place where the livelihood of many floats on the surface of a balloon of speculative fantasy. That balloon always pops and the folks suffering the explosion are never those whose hot air blew it up in the first place. I would wish that a country of consumer culture addicted to cheap goods from China where there are no manufacturing jobs and where we spend and spend and spread and get fatter beyond belief would not return. We could stand to tighten our belts –WE’RE FAT. I think we should bid the whole lot a firm good-bye, slam the casket shut and say hello to a more rational and honest means of operating. That economy we had? I don’t wish to see it bounce back at all. I’d like to see us move on to something better – better for ALL of us.

The difference is in the story that we hold forth about ourselves. Are we crumbling with fear and panic and age? Or are we merely drawing in, reevaluating this new stage of life that greets us with a big bear hug, and deciding what the next chapter of our story is to be? It’s in our hands. It’s in our hands to punish politicians and ponzi schemers. It’s in our hands to be angry; to blame the players of financial instruments, the mortgage brokers or the people who shouldn’t have had drivers licenses much less have owned homes. It’s in our hands to admit our collective guilt – that we all enjoyed the fruits of dishonesty and bloat in our lifestyle no matter what our personal choices of consumerism. We are the stewards of this story.