Some Bruises Fade (Still Flowers Bloom)

SOMETIMES I SUFFER A SURREAL MOMENT of displacement or overlap and it’s as if the word TERRORISM which was used to bash our spiritual skulls in over almost the last decade has been replaced with OBAMA which is a shining, untouchable, golden grain of goodness that melts away all doubt or negativity! Oh, I’m not really complaining, dont throw things! Just marveling. I’ve been watching this thing unroll, glued to it, emotionally yanked ALL over about it, filmed it for MTV (ST08 represent, and such), written about it. So many times.

It’s really all just very amazing. In a few ways. As if Bush/Cheney didn’t just smack the hell out of us and eviscerate our sense of trust in government and like a suddenbadbeatdown without warning, reason or consequent justice, life goes on in a battered home and you just keep smiling. Man. My head is spinnin’. I laughed the other night with Sylvia as we talked on the fone and I hatched a skit that I’m going to shoot about the rollercoaster that has been this Obama experience for me (I didn’t know it was a skit until she told me, I was just adlibbing, being a nut). Whiplash to whiplash. That BushCheneyRummyCondi crew stacked up so many crimes, lies, and dirty moves that you didn’t even have time to finish being outraged before they were assaulting your sense of morality, decency, or humanity again it was all a blur of bile. I think somewhere after 9/11 and then getting jailed over FOR ONCE embodying and acting on my feelings about what the F was happening to my country and the world by the hands of my country, that protest march in 04 nYC RNC 1800 watching the cops stomp on the horns and instruments of the band i was marching behind, sick destructive joy and empty eyes behind the baton, shoving us into corners, that girl who was barely midteens freakin, jailed and screamin at three am into our cells, pure derision as they told us WE were the ones effing up society, that WE were the ones and this was my damn city but looked nothing like my country yeah i think it was shortly after that event that I sort of sailed far out into Bush Derangement Land, which of course, is a sacred and holy place. To be there means you have integrity in your heart and that you remain sane with some kind of compass that connects you to the magnetic clasp of humanity. But let me go on because then, as if it wasn’t enough to absolutely pillage and shred our sense of Right and trust and feelings of safety and awareness of truth these pendejo shmucks ^†» and their TV puppets and blogging bastard minions have the  nerve to insult us when we “froth at the mouth” over it. HOLEEE. Let me just tell you, classyboys. Keep your insane asses far out of my reach, out of my neighborhood, out of my yard. All of ya. Uppercrust thieves and killers like Bush and garden variety right wing self-loathers spewin fakery. Good lord after the last decade I’m ready to sink my hands into someone. They are, you realize, absolutely fucking mad and that’s why when they get control of the reins of power, they make the rest of the world just as crazy. 

But my point was Obama’s got his hands full with them right now. The GOP and the NeoConduits, Billo, Rush et al. It’s like on the eve of Obama’s election the positivity was undeniable to even them, and you heard all the flippyflopperfollowingfools on the RIght begin to get weepy on TV and radio about the moment and the man and our new direction. “He should succeed! Hell, he’s a Conservative, really, when you think about it.” (Conservative means nothing deeper than “Cool Guy” to them, in case you haven’t sussed it out yet.) Even Dennis Miller began talking snazzy junk about Obama. But of course all that didn’t last. Now with their comments about him failing and such they are self-defined terrorists or at least treasonous, unless we are completely discarding the last eight years of defined terms and allowable political statements and actions…which…they are, of course. Which is why I call them crazy. They are. And you have to leave it at that. Because once you know that, you know that reasoning with or about their behavior is tantamount to signing on to a Shared Delusion. 

Still, as I wrote numerous times. It’s got to be the real thing. I believe now in Obama in the sense that I always have. He has a combination of personal power, “the right place at the right time”, history, the world’s wanting to hope and escape trauma and feel GOOD about the USA again. He has the potential to change things amazingly so. It is also true that he got set up real nice. The bar is oddly high and yet low, too. It’s high because someone who reaches into your heart seemingly, and gets attached to precious parts of yourself must rise to the occasion in your eyes, and in a way that you approve of. It’s low because is easy to make someone happy when they are crawling out of a bloody, charred ruins. “WHAT? YOU aren’t going to TORTURE me???! You are so Good. So Amazing. So Right.” This dynamic, or seeing it, doesn’t negate the amazing quality of the moment, the way it feels to see my blissed out African American friends, the way I feel seeing them in the White House, nor does it diminish Obama’s intellect and heart.

Right now, we just want to feel the sun on our wrinkling, drowned fingertips. Don’t even talk to me about digging down in the Marianis Trench, kid! I’m there, too. I don’t even want to think about Cheney or draw anymore pictures of him. or of Bush and the Hell he hath unleashed in the Middle East. And I also agree with the thrust of one commenter I got yesterday: now is a fragile time, and as the sicko Rightwingers are so absolutely hypocritical and demented that they want to further the damage they’ve done (will it be foreign agents or the GOP who puts the final hole in the US’s hull? Either way, you know Mexicans will be blamed!)  they are all over the Democrats and Obama and I say, yes, let the man work. Let him put changes into motion. Let’s give things time to even out. 

But it’s a bad bad mistake to confuse our need to heal with a desire to overlook justice. The former will only be made possibly by the latter, that is to say there will be no healing without justice. There’s a reason I used the metaphor of a dysfunctional violent home for what just happened to us on a national level and the possibility of “letting bygones be bygones.” See, that’s sick. I know. This was a big part of my first leg of education, and job(s) for a time. Helping adolescents and families (usually mothers, the fathers never came) see when stuff was sick. It does nobody any good to “not talk about it.” It is part of the sickness to avoid accounting at all costs. It means only one thing. Someone wants to leave the door open for the scary face; a path is being left open to do it again. Just as was done for Bush Jr. by Clinton.

It’s got to be real bro. I can separate the amazing event and achievement and historical quality and beautiful experiences of my friends from my own investment in this administration. I can “compartmentalize” as some say. And yes, unlike Rush and the other crazed actors out there, I want the Democrats to succeed in what they are after. Of course I want Obama to succeed! I voted for him in the primaries as well as the national elections. And I also want him to be weathered and given even more wisdom soon, so that he stops consorting with sicko preachers like the homophobe who gave some kind of “prayer” at Obama’s inauguration. And Obama: You had KEN BURNS speak on race????????? WTF?

Dude, sometimes it’s like I don’t get you at all. Those utterly deadhanded spots freak me un poquito. This and the Rick Warren thing seem…actually hostile to certain groups in a sly way. Just this very weird perverse choice made me want to stop listening to your talks. Oh, but maybe I should believe in the power of asking people to represent causes that they have proven destructive toward or inexperienced and unqualified for. Yet…that sorta echoes a pattern I’ve seen too much of lately, if you know what I mean.

Eh. But yeah. Lt the man work. And let the Democrats get settled. But you don’t get my heart until I see how the first PIB (Men in Black aka Will Smith stylin in a suit joke, sorry bout that but once you’ve seen that pic of Obama in shades, it’s hard to shake…) is going to handle the rapidly caving action of the Mexican state. To see what he does with immigration reform, hate rising against gente. With ICE. To see Obama’s public stance on torture, etc. and bills passed on protecting our privacy. To see if we as US Citizens get our JUST DUE and accounting and prosecutions of the crimes committed in the White House and against the People’s trust. But you’re damn right I expect a lot from him! He IS the President. Not, as McCain tried to insist, a celebrity. Or rather, he is our first President Celebrity. But that’s not really his fault. However, he will have to own things pretty soon. Stuff like Pakistan and Palestinians and Afghanistan and our Imperial nature overall, as well as our very strange and unproductive, backward and basically neglected relationship with Mexico. It is, I’d agree, unfair to expect him to fix or handle everything immediately or without being made aware it is important to us. But it is not unfair to expect he should respond to the needs and wants of We the People over other alliances and allegiances if put on notice of what they are.

Remember: Obama is the one who wants us to believe in government again. I can understand why he’d want that. He’s the President. Without our millions of numbers, though, he’s but a man in a big stone house in a big yard. And many people may have been on the brink of completely giving up on even listening to our government anymore. And I’m certainly not against believing in the whole thing. Because at the core, we are trying to get at some righteous ideals. And if I get beat down, I will get up again. But as far as taking a hand from a corner previously hostile, I need to see what’s in that hand before I put my weight on it. Show us that you are the antithesis of Bush. Right now you are getting that benefit of the doubt. But we need to see you—a man who has studied law—combine your knowledge of that law, your sense of Right, our needs for justice and accounting and restored moral compass, PROSECUTE the Bush Administration for each and every crime. 

Else, the yard may look placid for a while. But ware the feverish bloom of Spring.