one of the weird things about losing someone you love is the way time piles up, like some awful freeway accident, starting from the minute they die, and going on, i imagine, until you do.
it's my mother's birthday today. she would have been 63. and in the time since her death, the world has slid into a new post-9/11 state of perpetual war, paranoia, and profound distrust. i still imagine having conversations with her - we always were good at the chatter - but i can no longer imagine what her responses would be. the world, in some ways, seems so irrevocably changed. of course, i imagine people thought the same during and after the vietnam war, during and after every war, every major cultural shift probably, and maybe they were right. i mean, things always change... i guess the difference is that my mom is no longer changing along with it. and i am.
so mom, i don't know how to tell you this, but the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. there's a bunch of crazy right wing fucks in charge of everything, kids are shooting each other at school, there are bombs going off in iraq that are killing folk by the hundreds daily, and apparently we're frying ourselves to death by consumption (and not the kind they used to send you off to a sanitorium for). oh, and i'm kinda jobless at the moment. happy birthday. i miss you.
barry mcguire - eve of destruction
No comments:
Post a Comment