riven

riven (adj) fml split violently apart:  The whole community was riven by the strike, which some men had joined and others had not. (Longman's Dictionary of English Language and Culture)

4 a.m.


He goes willingly, at his time. My once-companion steps forward from the group, resplendent in red and white, light prisming around him, clamoring for his edges, unnoticed. Somber, dedicated, he moves with purposes equally hidden and seen. As it is with all of his actions. He was chosen to be first, but did he also offer to go before the others? How many others are leaving, through la puerta into the impervious darkness of the beyond? Our time here is finished. All has been decided. There is no turning back. There is nothing to return to. Every step now, from this point, is enacted with greatest care, with the near-tenderness of the leave-taking ritual that allows us all a profound detachment and so, mercifully, presence.

We wait in formation, at the entrance. La puerta has the appearance of a squarish cave in the smooth, pale volcanic rock face. The opening, about seven feet in height, seems to have been plastered with clay round its edges. There is nothing foreboding about its form. But its nature there is no mistaking:  that darkness is as gone as forever. The men stand side by side, closest to the shadow. The women sit in a line just in front of them, also facing outward toward the setting sun. We are six or seven in number. I sit at the left side. We are all close enough almost to touch, just short of contact, but the currents between us are palpable, as they must be for fellow beings who have endured so much together. The wan sun is let down gently, as if held in the palm of a hand, on the other side of the wide basin into which we face. The clean expanse of stone and sand in pale pink-orange-golds smoothes across to low mesas of dark grey and chocolate, holding us all as if in an earthen bowl. There is not a sign of anything green and growing, or that anything has ever grown here. This place has no fecundity; it is in essence emptiness. It is here to hold the essence of emptiness.

He looks around, signalling he is ready to begin. There is no sound; all from now on happens by unspoken agreement. Inhaling a deep, appreciative breath of the copal smoke, he accepts the clay platter that holds the single heavy fruit. Its round melon-sphere and lumpy nopal-ridges have already been broken apart, leaving a jagged and dripping parabola of a verdant green only ever seen in spring's most extravagant blush. Gelatinous seeds and algae-like, ruby-iridescent pulp spill over the edges of the soft rind. He gazes at it, and scoops out a spilling-over handful that takes more than half the fruit, although it it is to be shared among all those who go. We understand. The plant represents the sorrow of all once lost, the total solitude of silent passing, and the mercy that yet remains for that road. His passage will be the hardest, for where he has been and where he is going, and he will need its potent, calming toxicity to aid him on the journey.

Next he negotiates our group, exactly as prescribed, taking quiet farewell of each in turn. First, the two longest his companions in the struggle. Of each he takes their hand, and looks long into their eyes without a word. Then the one I would forget, the one who did not replace him but only filled my emptiness with rage and noise. These two also know each other in terms of battle: side by side they have fought, in realms I cannot comprehend. Grasping this one's hand my first companion says, with an odd mix of affection and irony, "mi hermano en la muerte". This brother will be the next to leave. To the right of the group, la sahumadora waits, tending the fire and its guiding smoke, her face a mask of serenity, her presence full of kind concern.

He straightens, looks toward la puerta, as if to step on through. But he has more yet to perform.  He drops to his knees in front of me, lays his hands on the object symbolic of offering/sharing which rests on another earthen plate on my lap. Murmurs phrases that at first are nothing more than required by the ceremony. Will he go, with no more than this? But then, at last, he meets my eyes, and speaks to me a few words arrowing so direct from the heart that they alter the angle of the light around us. Reality's current shifts now.  He offers his hand, and I take it as expected, but then I squeeze it in a crushing grip that breaks the calm of the ceremony. No one expects this: my one wordless act of profound negation and protest.  If he must go, he will not go without my part in his battle being written in collective memory as it is written on my body and soul. I will write it in the memory of earth itself: as I tighten my grasp of his hand, an irrational strength awakes in me, and a shudder rises from deep underground, through the soles of my feet, up through my spine, shakes loose all my bones and convulses the land around us like a tremor, almost audible, and then the quake finds voice in me, emerges as a sky-splitting cry from my lips that rips the light and momentarily disjoins the continuum. Earth-time's recoil reiterates itself as I cry out again, while behind me the others remain fully silent, in respect for what unfolds and for my place in it. The sun lowers visibly, alights on the razor edge of the highest mesa. At our backs the puerta is darker than any night. By the time my cries have stilled, he is utterly gone.


Later, others arrive to walk with me on my grieving circuit of the network of smaller caves that have been our home until now. I pace ceaseless, and do not stop the violent weeping that echoes echoes echoes between the pallid stone walls and their cool blue-gold shadows. The first to accompany me is a kindly teacher, arrived from some other place, well-intentioned but his words do not soothe me. Some time after that arrives the younger woman who was companion to that second one in my own history: her heart has quit the dimension with him, just as mine has flown with that one who left in today's dying light. Somehow in her own silent suffering, she has found a glimmer of compassion for me. She keeps step with me in the passageways, listens intently (do I speak, or does she hear past speech?), then stops suddenly and embraces me, sweeps me in a wave of sincere, almost childlike kindness. Startled, I return the gesture, wrapping around her slight shoulders these arms that have become filled with such unbearable strength I can scarcely control them. My embrace lifts her, unintentionally, off the floor, and my bone-racking sobs shatter the silence again, ricocheting off still walls of the near-empty rooms where our group has almost finished packing its posessions to leave. I would split these stones with my sorrow's unreasonable force, given a few more moments. Rend the peace of this place as I am riven and rip space-time's threads of continuity with the power unsought of my furious desolation. And yet, even through spasms of grief comes the awareness that the time of leaving nears.  And that this young woman's gesture of kindness allows just such a release, skims just such a surface off the sorrow that perhaps I can remember, and contain these forces enough to travel soon, without inadvertently destroying myself or my surroundings. The others who remain are waiting even now for me to rejoin them, with immeasurable patience in one of the adjacent spaces of stone. They wait for the time and the light to shift, for these seismic tremors once more to still, for our journey's next stage into all unknown to begin.

altared

We arrive, quiet, one by one, just after dark. We carry offerings: candles, food cooked at home, and photos of recently (and not so recently) departed loved ones. The gate stands open at the old house near the river, which means the dogs must be detained or distracted elsewhere. The immense grandmother cottonwood keeps her sheltering watch overhead. Chill blue sky, sighing of nearing frost, swirls clear and bright above the gardens in back of the house, over the ochre ache of marigolds in full bloom.

In the kitchen on the antique cookstove, beans, pumpkin soup, atole, and cafe de olla (like sweet, thick, dark edible earth) steam and mingle their scents. Our host mops the dusty wood floor in the living room, which is cleared of all furniture save a perimeter of folding chairs. He gives two of us scissors and asks us to go out to the garden and cut two oversized buckets of marigolds -- "the best ones" -- for the building of the altar.

This will be my first complete velación-- the all-night vigil of remembrance held, in this case, on Dia de los Muertos. Over the last nearly-three years as part of this community, I've made less-committed efforts to attend on this night. I've stuck my foot in the water a couple of times and then retreated. But this year I need to commit. No person has asked this of me. The circle itself has asked this of me, as I've finally learned a little trust of the unfamiliar, and I'm of a mind to say yes. Thanks to recent unexpected circumstances, I have no job to go to in the morning, as some do. I am blessed with the absence of any distracting obligation.

Except, perhaps, this one: to maintain equanimity in the presence of the two exes who will also be here tonight. And of the polar opposites of heartache they bring to my perception of any space we may share. To stand between these two, as in fact the actions of the circle often require of me, is to know how a magnet buzzes when set between two other powerful magnets. It is to know how sea breathes, between moon and earth. Poles of opposed desire and despair. Forces reaching to remake and unmake these alternate positive and negative ends of my story, though both, ultimately, are endings. Equally unjust openings and closings, limboed in unresolution. Existential invisible YES and NO, two wholehearted pleas that will remain without witness and without answer. The photos don't represent the only departed in this roomful of memories. I meet my own spirits, here at this momentary crossing of dimensions. And this inner vigil -- for my own attempt at wellness, for respect of my community, for my intention of outward peace -- I hold, perpetually, alone.

But for now the lights are bright, and the vibe is cheerful cooperation. The altar is begun as a low table draped with a simple wool blanket. Someone brings in a heavy tray of fruit, and arranges apples, oranges, bananas, pears, and tunas -- the oval green fruit of the nopal cactus -- around five loaves of pan de muerto (sweet heavy bread made just for this day). Others add bowls of soup, earthen mugs of atole and coffee, and small dishes of the food that each of us brought to share. The departed will get a taste of everything we're having, as well as the drinks or sweets that were their favorites in this life. Next, the photos are arranged with great care among the edible abundance. A varied collection of frames holds images of parents, grandparents, friends, cousins, and the yellow lab that just left this world a couple weeks ago. Each item is blessed with the smoke of copal incense before it is set in its precise balancing place. Several vases of the marigolds are brought in. The glow of their yellow, orange, and red-rust petals are like bursts of bright flame among the memories. Tall votive candles of all colors, and white candles of varying size and significance, are set at predetermined points above, on and in front of the table. The resulting arrangement is stunning: it would be a still-life masterpiece, only it's not still. Already it hums with life and energy, and the real ceremony hasn't even started yet.

The sonorous note of a conch shell sounds, and we all gather in the small room. Our chief gives each person a role to serve in the hours that will follow. Each will take a turn to lead a song, and to come forward and enact a particular stage of the process that will transform the altar from inanimate object to espacio para las animas -- a space for the energy of souls to inhabit. Lest this sound spacy or seance-like, let me be clear: there is no magic or occultism here. This is of the heart, and this is real. If my limited understanding serves, the space we create (to put it in more psychological terms) is a temporal, non-rational, agreement. A space-between-spaces, an alternate awareness in which our living souls may seek, and in some way meet, that which continues of those who have passed from this life. Whatever mixture that may be of memory, energy, spirit, love...

This expressed intention, inviting our dear ones to "come in and sit a spell", is one I hadn't fully considered before. How nice, I had thought on first hearing years ago of the traditions of Dia de los Muertos: the departed get a token remembrance. A candle or a plate of cookies. Perhaps the lack of connection was in part that I went for years, somehow, without losing anyone close to me to death. This year I lost my dearest grandmother, the primary (and sometimes only) source of unconditional love in my younger life. I also lost a cousin, whose leaving, though we weren't close, shook me because he was only 28. Both left this lesson and inspiration: they embraced life unreservedly. My grandmother embodied welcome, with a keen enthusiasm for the diversity of people, their problems, and their life-stories that belied her small-town environment (and shook that small town's expectations, more than once). My cousin left on an exchange program for Argentina at age 17. After a year there, he committed himself to living and travelling in South America, which he did for the next 11 years. I have a renewed sense of the courage I draw from them both, as I sit now for a night in view of their smiling photographs. Particularly I hadn't realized how I'd missed my grandmother, and how I'd repressed that missing. Just a few more minutes of her vivacious, openhearted company -- before she got so tired, frustrated, forgetful; back when she sang constantly, savored food and experience, and flirted with every man she knew, young and old -- what a gift that would be. Glancing throughout the night at her photo, with her favorite hot-pink jacket and her radiant smile, I feel that something like an agreement has been made. I feel that I've invited her (whatever that means) into a good and welcoming place. I feel that (in whatever way) she was/would be/is happy to be there. I also become a little clearer on what an intimate relation there is, unresolvedly paradoxical, between holding someone tight in memory and letting them go.

Maybe I should thank the presence of my grandmother's healing energy -- and that of the other grandmothers and dear ones in the room -- for the elevation that comes to me, toward 3 a.m. or so. Around that time (a guess, since there are no clocks) all the familiar and protective and necessary defending walls...disappear. Between past and present. Between the so-called dead and living. Between me and the wish to belong. Between the US in the room, and all we still don't know of each other, or each other's families, or pasts, and the fact that here, now, we are totally present to each other. Present to an endeavor greater and more beautiful than the sum of its parts. Even the painful past-relationship-energy...well, that doesn't disappear. It is...softened, in a sense. Mercifully more distant. Like a photographic image in soft focus. Like an aged, weathered photo of a beloved one long gone. Blurred the clarity of detail, visible and still present the form, thanks to the light that illuminated it for one moment, at once preserved and lost.

Of respect for sacred things, I won't speak of all that fills the night. The building of the altar is pure act of devotion, luminous work of creation, collective birthing and then transforming of a kind of living light. It is the complete quickening of an inanimate physical environment, and the psychic emptying of self that seems only to be found in sacred ritual, fasting, or the extremes of traumatic or euphoric events. It actually takes several hours to accomplish. I can only say that, by the ceremony's completion an hour or so before dawn, I am undone. Completed and undone, in the most beautiful way possible. Constructed into the work that we have made. Devoted, anew, to the cause and the wellbeing of my community. Given up, as one lost, in grief, abandoned, hopeless, detached, untouchable, possibly, one of these days, free. Given up, as offering of praise, gratitude, service, reverence for all those ancestors, spirits, valiant ones, those lights that led us here. Changed, for now, into emptiness, into sacred space: I am altared.

the human mic

It was chilly last night, and I was tired. I had meant to shut the world out, read my book awhile, go to bed early. But just after dark I started to wonder what they were doing two blocks away, at UNM, at the site that was until 3 days ago the Occupy Albuquerque encampment. I was out of town when the big action went down, UNM President Schmidly refusing to meet with protestors or to renew their permit, the advance on his office building, and later the face-off with police that ended in 15 arrests. Earlier in the afternoon university police had formed a line across the now-forbidden greensward, and the people had gathered, bunched up, quiet, and pensive, on the sidewalks just out front of them and on the other side of Central. It had looked like nothing or anything could happen. Somebody had told me the coffee shop on the non-university side had offered their patio for the evening, but there hadn't been any sign of that happening earlier. I bundled up, decided just to walk to the light by the Frontier where I could get a second look at the place.

Yale Park looked wide and empty with the signs, the info table, and the kitchen tent taken down. The police were still there, standing silent and evenly spaced. But out on the sidewalk -- in the six feet or so of undisputed, concrete free zone -- about 50 people were, with enthusiasm and great efficiency, holding the nightly General Assembly. As I approached I could hear them using the 'human mic': the practice of repeating a speaker's words in unison, in small increments, so that everyone in the crowd could hear them. They had it down to an art form, on this night. It was an immediate call-and-response that bounced one phrase, and then the next, around the tight concentric huddle almost as fast as the mind could process it. It was almost like an echo of one voice: "Next agenda item/NEXT AGENDA ITEM! We have a proposal/WE HAVE A PROPOSAL!" Without missing a beat they covered the day's announcements, read a notice of support from several of the city's unions, and then a statement about standing with our communities' workers and their families as they struggle to create a better world. I was elated to learn that 'consensing' is now a verb, and to witness that action flowing round the circle like the firing of synapses. Fingers waved their assent like live neurons in the moment made visible. The tide of rising and falling voices was a joy to listen to, and to join my voice with the others was to dive into a warm, translucent sea of shared optimism and competence.

The evening's four facilitators moved expertly through the agenda, following the agreed procedures of speaking in turn, acknowledgement, deep listening. But they were interrupted at one point by another voice. A UNM professor stepped up, a man who made possible the recent teach-ins, and possibly some of the dialogue (as one-sided as much of it was) with university administration. Facing the circle he announced (apologizing for the break of respectful protocols) that the UNM police standing several yards away wanted to express their appreciation for our fine way of handling the awkward situation which their bosses had put them and all of us in. A great cheer went up from the group, and about a hundred waving consensing hands. Somebody yelled, "Cops are part of the 99% too!" Since we were maintaining the human mic, most people immediately repeated this exclamation, as we turned smiling to face the quiet line of men and women. They made no response, having apparently said their piece and, possibly, risked their job security enough for one evening.

The meeting returned to the agenda. They had agreed to pause at 8 p.m. and observe a moment of silence in honor of Occupy Oakland, and Scott Olsen in particular. "Does anyone NOT know who Scott Olsen is?" called out the chubby young man keeping the minutes on his laptop. One hand went up in the back. "Will someone please get with that man and inform him?" the minute-keeper cried. Without a pause, someone moved in the indicated direction, and the talk continued.

As 8:00 drew closer, one of the facilitators motioned to a man standing just behind her. The man - stocky, late-40's perhaps, thin mustache, long braid down his back - looked Native American and Mexican, with the added, unnaturally intense coloring of someone who's been living without shelter for a while. "We have a proposal," the facilitator called out (WE HAVE A PROPOSAL)to include this man's girlfriend in the moment of silence. She died this week. Her name was Stephanie." "Would the man like to say a few words about her?" a woman asked. The facilitator turned to him in silent question. The expression on his round face was the saddest I've seen in a very long time. He was silent a few seconds. Then he spoke, not very loudly. "She died four days ago." The human mic, primed by now to a heartbeat-length response, echoed his words: SHE DIED FOUR DAYS AGO. People glanced around as they said this to each other. He breathed, looked down, spoke again. "She died in my lap." There was a just-audible pause, then SHE DIED IN MY LAP, repeated the people. I could barely see the man at this point, ducking down as I was to fight off a wave of tears. I only hope he heard the repetition the way I did: an honoring of his story, a momentary re-telling of his sorrow into the collective memory.

At 8:00, at someone else's suggestion, we spread out along the sidewalk holding hands, and began 5 minutes of complete silence. There were enough of us that our human chain stretched the entire length of the park - maybe a little over a city block. The cars that passed continued to honk their approval, but for this moment we made no response. When the meeting reconvened, I was too far adrift in the sadness, gratitude, and deep deep peace to join them again. I said goodnight to a couple of friends, and started home.

At the crowd's edge, the man we had held part of our silence for was sitting on a low concrete wall. His expression was as vacant and without purpose as the park behind us. Three or four young people sat near him, not talking, just keeping a sort of quiet offer of company or vigil. I crouched in front of him, said "I'm sorry for your loss." Without entirely looking up, he reached out his right arm to hug me. "I hear you, sister," he said in his bone-weary voice. "I hear you."

compliment

Best compliment today that I've had in quite a while. Some of the most heartening words, too. After la danza, a compadre I don't know as well asks me, "How long have you been dancing?" He's lived in NM awhile, but originally comes from Mexico City and has danced with other groups in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Denver. So, he's seen the scene. I sigh and answer, full of the everpresent frustration at my slowness, "Two and a half years." "Really?" he exclaims. "You dance this well after such a short time?"

2Jungquotesforme

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."

"The unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole."

--C. Jung

better yet

what can I give you then
I can't take your pain
or even sit with it an hour
can't unmake years of unknown sorrow
or a lifetime of small disappointments
your accumulating years of not-enough
and quiet desperation
I can't make you better
you or the belabored world
but can I offer a few images to imagine
some small gifts of the road
should they lift your spirit
or raise your eyes to something more
and o there is something more
outside the plastic and the package they have sold you
outside the trauma and the thousand lies they told you
outside the media and all mediators unneeded
so many many paths to freedom
as many ways as there are humans
as many doors as there are moments
and here are just a few of mine
that opened the real
re-membered to belonging
broke me into beauty
and counted to One

sunbright clearing sung with dragonflies and hummingbirds
Colorado breathed from its blinding crystal summit
lightning crash and the bliss of safety stolen then returned
bear elk and owl shiver reason's edges as they pass

last weary roadbend opens onto to ocean
stranger's kind word at the farthest point from home
the dream is a map of the road is protection
those with the least give the wealth of their welcome to you

stories passed over pinon fire on a starry mesa
rain breaking midnight with tin roof song
the clarity of light seen through hunger
the vibrance of green after drought

baby smiles you message from the infinite: you are perfectly accepted
homeless man calls you angel and pulls back the veil
priest at the altar laughs spontaneous, good-humored, at his own mistake
silent room of silver-haireds in meditation bends and bursts on a wave of laughter irresistible

carrots that still taste of earth and peaches still of sunshine
dirt beneath your fingernails
endorphin ache of giving more than all to the dance
blessed imperfection of the thing you built by hand

one bird startling skyward out of cedar spiral
dreamtime welcome to your homeground and community's embrace
dawn over deep water as sky sings your secret name
recognition returning your tribe after so long apart
this is not all there is
this is suffering and this is love
it gets worse and it gets better yet
there is more
there is more
there is more...

better

It's the sitting area outside a clinic, inside UNM hospital. I'm waiting for a door to open and somebody to call my name. And trying to ignore the everpresent TV just overhead, in the meantime. Or, failing that, to be grateful for the reminder, for the moment of perspective: few things like a public waiting room -- at any institution, really -- explain as well why so much of humankind is operating at the level that it is. The observations of the level of physical and emotional survival of so many are an invaluable insight. As are the inventories of what 'the masses' are given -- their diet of food, medicine, and mainstream media, to name a few -- with which to nourish body and soul. What they're given, and what they continue to accept.

I'm trying not to judge here. Really. Trying not to think in terms of motives or other things that I can't actually know about people. Just to explain, or at best to empathize. To imagine how my mind would function, if consistently exposed to the tangible and intangible mind-altering drug that is commercial television. To say nothing of the commercials themselves. After so many years of having been with decreasing frequency in its company, I'm just nothing but startled at what comes out of that little box. I truly can't believe that anybody ever thought of this stuff. Much less that others would choose to watch it, for entertainment. For any purpose not forced on them.

The program on right now involves a short thin woman asking a tall, slightly overweight woman how to shop for healthy groceries, while "staying on budget". They walk around a florescent-lit supermarket, pushing a loaded shopping cart down aisles as they talk. "What should we look for, if we want to be sure we're eating healthy?" asks the short woman. The taller expert advises scanning the labels of these many plastic-wrapped objects for the words 'organic', 'all-natural' or 'whole-grain'. Although, she points out, "'natural' means something different to every company, and is not regulated by the government like 'organic' is..." That's for sure -- "natural" is one of those words that should only appear in the public sphere surrounded by bold-face quotation marks. But, what's this? We need written directions, key-word-recognition, to inform us what foods nurture us? I know not everyone got the benefit of the high-intensity whole-foods experiment that my family subjected itself to when I was a kid (produce we planted, weeded, picked, washed ourselves; super-density bread that began with grinding wheat kernels in a food processor), but...really? Do we not come with any more help from our own operating systems? Is this what a lifetime of choosing one plastic bag over another does to the powers of discernment?

The expert is pointing out another budget strategy: using coupons that are good for all the items of a certain brand to get a more expensive jar of 'organic' tomato sauce, for example, for the price of the conventional. "It is NOT unethical", she assures her companion, "to use these coupons for the organic product." What a relief, that we're allowed to raise our sights just a little without compromising our consumer values. Just don't mention going for any ideals here: this is daytime TV...

We break for commercials. I almost laugh out loud when I see that even the name of the show is a relative term: "Better". We can't possibly see our benumbed collective way to "Ideal" or "Real" or "Best". Only to some middle-ground plateau between our physical and intellectual poverty, and what (some of us believe) we were created to be.

Can't bear to see the commercials. Nothing in the reality I understand moves that fast, or is that garish. I glance around the room. Of the 13 people waiting, 7 have heads bowed, communing with a faraway someone through texting. A young couple is arguing, in painfully honest terms, over all the ways each has wounded the other and whether or not they can forgive. They sit barely making eye contact, separated by two empty chairs, but the tension that pulls them toward each other is palpable. Two women in the room have young daughters with them; one mother gazes into the crystal display of her phone while her girl plays with an electronic talking toy. The other is wonderfully engaged with her one-or-two-year-old, talking, gesturing, responding to the little one's happy incoherent sounds. Against the far wall, a man and woman in army drab and boots sit side by side, wearing the same name on their uniform shirts. They talk very little, mostly gaze straight ahead, but both are smiling as if they know a happy secret.

Perhaps I could feel some relief that all 13 people aren't turning identical glazed stares toward the TV set. Maybe our mediaddictions don't pervade the way I thought they did. I look around again. A sign at the reception desk reads, "please do not use cell phone during your exam". Nope. I think it's a collective habit we've got, if there's a need for a sign such as that.

The woman at the desk gives me a paper affirming that UNMCare is committed to a program of "quality, excellence and compassion". I'd believe it. Almost everyone I've dealt with - doctors, assistants, receptionists - has been courteous, willing to listen and to answer questions. It occurs to me that their vision statement would be useful to offer to oneself, on the journey of getting well and staying well. Do I maintain a standing offer of quality, excellence and compassion in my dealings with myself? In the health that I create for me, as far as it's up to me? In the terms and conditions of the everyday I inhabit? Maybe...maybe not. I do gift myself with a healthier-than-average diet (as plastic-free as possible, and natural without the quote marks), but when it comes to the kind of inner compassion and forgiveness proposed, for example, by the book I'm carrying (from which I read a few more pages, here in the waiting room, before the TV's electronic hum distracted me), I've got room for improvement in my own vision, as well.

Again, I don't want to criticize the fellow humans that I see in public spaces. We all sit in some limbo of our own here. We're all waiting, looking sometimes for a way from here to there. Reaching for some level of healthy, alive, free. The sincerity of our effort is sometimes as painful to consider as are our failures to try. But why don't we want to try more? How can we, so many of us, be fine with remaining in our seats, letting the TV tell us what things like health and quality of life are? Why don't more people trapped under the glare of televisions rise up in indignation at its suggestions -- or at least laugh out loud once in a while? How can they be content with its shrink-wrapped propositions? Don't we originate with, or at least find along the way, many more stimulating possibilities? Don't we have that in ourselves, whether or not we were educated to seek it? When I described this scene, a friend commented, "For some, dreaming is all they want from life." Wow. If this is dreaming, I could dream of a life a whole lot healthier, juicier, more free than what that little screen boxes in. Even when I don't have any idea how to get there. Doesn't anybody else dream of 'better', without quotation marks? Or even, dare I say it, of their own unlimited vision of 'best'?