We Are Stardust
I’m down in the South Puget Sound taking a little breather from the post-election introspection. Took a walk this morning in the fog-shrouded Mima Mounds. The Mounds are these strange mysterious giant gopher hills nobody really understands how they came into existence. Sure, you could see them as a metaphor about a bigot’s victory, strange upcroppings in the Body Politic, but … let’s not. Let’s just take a walk.
I’m in here by myself, just me and a couple of raptors hovering over their prey in the mist. Sure, another metaphor but for me it’s just a hawk and a some poor rodent who didn’t pay enough attention. When I finally finish off a few miles through the mounds, a sheriff’s cruiser sits parked near my rig, engine running, the deputy sitting with his window down. Just me and the Law now. Sure … but let’s don’t.
Like a lot of you, I may need a 12 step program, but first I’m going to try a 10,000 step one out here on the trails. When a hawk is just a hawk and a mouse is just an unlucky snack, I’ll know I’m on the road to political recovery. Okay … apolitical recovery. What do the AA folks recite? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I graduated college with a degree in sociology in 1972 so it’s hard for me to let it go. A friend sent me the lyrics to a John Prine song after the election. “Blow up your TV throw away your paper. Go to the country, build you a home.” He and I once left civilization behind and moved awhile to the country together. Didn’t build a house but we hobbled together an outhouse. I think back and realize we maybe were leaving Nixonian America behind then too. Neither of us really went back … but, we aren’t living in Timbuktu either. Still, there’s another song I remember from back then, Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’.
Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road
And I asked him tell me where are you going, this he told me:
Said, I’m going down to Yasgur’s farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, and set my soul free.
It’s a hard road to travel, I do believe, but a good destination. I’m going to try to get myself back on that road. This election, it’s just a bump in the path.
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