 Every day, we walk amongst the land of the dead. It goes beyond the cemeteries and graveyards in which we bury our deceased. All the land we travel on, the roads, the sidewalks, the bike trails, all are built upon those who perished clearing the land, whether they are the bodies of the builders or the bodies of the indigenous that stood in the way of white progress. These are not the ones for whom we mount iron plaques on buildings. The plaques are to commemorate those who were responsible for the killing and decimating of cultures. Murdering and destroying all in the name of progress; build the highways, the railroads, the cities, all on the bodies and souls of those who existed long before we, the white people, came along for the most part by accident and flawed navigation. Of course, it goes beyond skin color. The genocide was based on religion (usually non-Christian), political beliefs, and white nationalism, among other factors. It was called Manifest Destiny, which was the belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined--by the Christian God, its advocates believed--to expand westward across North America*. Manifest Destiny was the impetus, at least partly, for the genocide of the country’s indigenous peoples, the continuation of the enslavement of African people and their offspring. It was the same rationalization that Adolph Hitler used for the deportation and extermination of Jews, and other races he thought were "lesser." We are seeing this line of thinking in our current government. Every day we see the images of people being mobbed and detained by supposed ICE agents. Every day we hear about people being deported, sometimes to countries not of their origin. Every day, the government steals more power from its citizens. All three branches of government have been infiltrated by Christian nationalists. The current president ran on a not-so-subtle platform of eliminating “the other” i.e. non-White, non-Christians by deportation. So, when you walk the sidewalks of your town or walking trails in your local park, or when you drive anywhere, remember that there are the bones and ashes and blood of the long since dead. Be mindful of the dead that preceded you. It was they who made these things possible. It was not just the beliefs of the white settlers and expansionists. They had to force the indigenous or peoples abducted from their home country into doing the work. Also, bear in mind, this is the possible future for anyone living in this country now. Anyone who the Christian Nationalists believe are unworthy of living in this country. People of Color, non-Christians, LGBTQ, and others are in danger. *The Overland Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 2 (August 1869) 
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I am dreaming…
In the dream, I am floating on my back on the surface of a large, peaceful lake, like a feather that has fallen from the tail of a large raven. The sky above me is dark with only the stars visible. The water laps against my ears but I can still hear the sounds of the night. Bats flit around above me, hunting. There is a choir of crickets and frogs adding to the serenity. I am floating, relaxed, not afraid of sinking, not afraid of drowning, not worried about the deepness of the lake. I am there simply to float on the water with no other purpose. I am floating and that is why I know even in the dream that I am dreaming. In my waking hours, I cannot swim and never learned how to when I was younger. I have a deep-rooted fear of water. Sometimes, even the most irrational fears are passed down to us by our parents. My father was in the Navy, he told me, but he couldn’t swim. I wonder who passed this fear down to him. I wake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. Soon, I will, I hope, fall back asleep and hope that I will dream of floating again. Maybe the source of this dream, if there is a source I can trace, is my life in the waking hours; the job I have, the people, the need for more. I feel like, sometimes, I am drowning. I am drowning in a ocean of my own making. And all I want to do is float or swim… Thank you, Daniel. You just reinforced the idea of re-reading that I posted about earlier today...
 I’ve heard people say countless times that life is too short to reread a book. They might even say they have read so many thousands of books since adolescence. That is certainly admirable. But do you really remember a book’s contents after, say, twenty years after you read it? If so, well, that is admirable as well. I have to admit, if someone says that truthfully, it makes me envious. I have read, yes, thousands of books since my adolescence. I don’t remember all of them beyond a short synopsis.
This idea came up when I started reading Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes last weekend. I remember reading it when I was senior in high school. Maybe I was a freshman in college. Nevertheless, I knew I read it, but couldn’t remember anything about it other than a brief synopsis: “It’s about a dark carnival that comes to a small town.” I remembered the setting of the book, the two young boys at the center of the story, the carnival, of course. The Cliff Notes version would have more details than what I could recall. So, like I said, I started reading it again. The details are coming back to be as I progress. There are details that I either forgot or didn’t pick up the first time I read it. It’s almost like reading it for the first time. And it is truly a wonderful and magical story. I’m glad I made the decision to re-read it. So, my point of all this is that you shouldn’t be embarrassed or shamed about rereading a book. I am finding that there are indeed details, and the story is rich with detail, are ones I didn’t pick up on the first time. That being said, if you read a book ten, twenty years ago (or forty in my case) and want to reread it, do it. You might find it very satisfying coming across parts of the story that were no longer in your memory. On a personal note, there is only one or two books I have read multiple times. One is Dracula by Bram Stoker, the other, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I read both of them for the first time when I was eleven or twelve, much to the consternation of my 5th grade teacher. I have read both of them every 5 years or so, each time gaining a new perspective on the story. Life is too short to worry about what others think you should read, or reread. The important part is, if you are not in formal studies, to read as much as you want and what you want. Another example. Today I picked up a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea (Le Nausee’). I think I was in college when I read it. I was definitely in a Angsty Francophile phase. I also read Death on the Installment Plan by Celine as well. I wanted to be like Larry Darrell in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge and become an expatriate. I may have even started wearing a beret and smoking Gauloises. Anyway, I remember one or two elements of the story. One is the man whose goal is to read every book in the library from A to Z. But not much else. So, although I have a thousand books at least (no exaggeration) that I haven’t read yet, I am going to read Sartre’s Nausea instead. I am sure I will get more out of it this time. Every week I post Culture Cafe, a rundown of literary, film, and music history for the week. I have tried to do this weekly on Sundays and a regular podcast every other week. I haven't been able to keep up that schedule for some time. However, other than last week, when we were on vacation, I have been fairly diligent about posting these every Sunday.
Check them out when you get the chance! |
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