Monday, November 17, 2008

Hope

Well, I have been behind in posting, due to the election.......but hey, what can I say.....I have lots of excuses! First, the election of Mr. Obama is absolutely (truly) the first thing that has made me proud to be an American in the past eight bloody (literally as well as figuratively) years! I helped do what I could for the campaign--wish it could have been more. I did work at the polls though, for very little pay, but I consider it a civic duty.

So, hope! I am very tempted to just go on and on about a political rant, like mentioning that while I am elated about the national election results (except Kentucky re-electing the fascist Mitch McConnell and going for McCain---with exceptions to the progressive areas like Louisville and Lexington)....but I am not going to do that. Suffice it just to complain most vociferously about the passage of the clearly unconstitutional Proposition 8 (to forbid those evile gays and lesbians from entering the misery of marriage!) And I won't drone on and on about the Repugnicunt Diane Feinstein campaigning against her own party that sponsored the progressive Proposition 5 that would have helped unclog our draconian jails and prisons in California by giving second chances and treatment to (nonviolent) so-called "drug offenders"---actually political prisoners of conscience who have just decided that THEY own their own bodies and minds, not the state, nor the Nazi-in-Democrats'-clothes-ex-mayor of San Francisco.

Asi que, I am not going to write about that at all, see? See, see, ya dirty rats?!
You're covered!
Someone always says that, and it sounds to me like some line from an Edward G. Robinson movie. Battle stations! Red alert! So, returning to my topic, what gives us hope? Indeed, what is hope? Hope for a glorious future? A future of starships and an Earth free from war, disease, need for money etc.? I waver back and forth between hope and desperation. Yet I will not go
quietly into that good night. As the great Henry David Thoreau said, "most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Let's rededicate ourselves as a nation that truly acts as it says it does. Screw quiet desperation! It's horrible! Let's find our own song and sing it proudly, even if it may be slightly out of tune. We must live while we are alive! Yet, I know from my own experience that it is so very hard to find a personal way to feel like one can make a difference. But thanks to the Internet and the First Amendment, and the defeat of unconstitutional pandering attempts that politicians like Orrin Hatch and Diane Feinstein have made to abolish free speech on the Internet (see original text of the so-called "Anti-Methamphetamine Proliferation Act of 1999, Section 205), you can find a plethora of ways to help change the U.S.A. back towards the free nation that it was meant to be and that most of us demand it to be. Just Google "volunteer" and whatever your cause is that moves you. Be it helping make things "green," helping further multidisciplinary psychedelic studies or changing the closing hours (to 4 am at least!) in the bars in Mountain View, dive in! Also, meeting new friends, acquaintances, and lovers can sure bring hope when one is feeling ready to dive in (front of a speeding train.)

Andre S. Lange

Today I finish with a quote from a pretty decent poetess:

"It's the unknown child, so sweet and wild, it's too good to waste"
Joni Mitchell


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Preach it, brutha!

"He, who has health, has hope; and he who has hope has everything."

"Life is not merely being alive, but being well."

"The brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

-Teavana

Andre S. Lange said...

Thanks joyinfrailty!
Yes, the brain truly is our, to quote the great philosopher Alice Cooper,
"the muscle of love!"
And I would add, there are other muscle that can cause that "understanding of ecstasy"....
Kudos for your feedback. Blessings.