A nagging feeling keeps pecking at my mind each day that passes and I do not write. It isn’t the same emotion as guilt or shame, rather, it is a consistent tugging, like the earnest request of a small child to play.
Writing is a form of play for me, especially this blog. The stakes are low. These words and thoughts fire off in the ragged way first drafts always do. I know my posts are far from polished pieces of writing, needing to pass through the waters of revision and the refined scrubbing of editors before coming to their full literary potential.
And, yet. I am ok with the rough edges. The point is not to be perfect. The point is to get lost in the play of words across a screen and to dream they will someday be born again as indentations of ink on paper.
Here I go, playing around again. It’s about to get a wee bit heavy.
I sit down today to write aware of the date. Eighteen years ago, shortly after my freshman writing class let out, I stood dumbstruck in our student union as dual televisions broadcast the end of the American century. I felt numb-shock watching the smoke pour from twin towers in lower Manhattan. Both planes had hit by the time I was watching and the news anchors were struggling for information as much as the viewers. At the dawn of a century about to be driven to selfish madness by social media, money, and dystopian expectations, I stood shakily wondering if everything would be alright.
In the toxic dust of post-9/11 America, we live lives full of fear and trembling. Our current President gleefully stokes those fears. Booksellers and news media outlets make billions off of our need to try and make sense of the horrors of the world, all the while making it worse. Mass shootings by white supremacists or the mentally wounded have increased yearly since the towers fell, creating a form of domestic terrorism Al Qaeda could only dream about. Social media, the once semi-private haven of inside jokes and baby pictures, reflects our cultural id of terror and fear. We have turned on ourselves. The knives are out, and they were made in America.
And, yet. I see my peers, the greatest American generation of the 21st century, working privately and publicly to change how this country and world will look. I see men in their thirties invested and involved in the raising of their young children. I see women and minorities raising their beautiful, powerful voices to declare an end to the evils of “business as usual” and “boys will be boys” excuses. I see us raising our children differently than generations before, building strong networks of friends and families (families that may have two dads, or two moms, or polycules) to help nurture and support one another in the face of an economic culture which would rather see each of us atomized, subservient, and consuming. We are building our own villages of light in the darkness of unchecked Capitalism’s cancerous shadow.
Today is a new day. Let’s sing new songs. Let’s take the ashes of the last century and mix them into the compost pile of our nation’s history to grow a better future, free from fear. America, we are putting our shoulders to the wheel, our bodies on the gears, and our hope in a more perfect union. E Pluribus Unum.
Whither Shall I Go? 