Ebon-Hewn Frames
I lack a vision.
I lack any concept or desire for a different way of life; I certainly lack any concrete steps for achieving it. I always have, but in the past it hasn't been as threatening a situation.
I've never been one for patriotics, blind or open-starry-eyed, but one thing which going abroad, even to as technocratically moderate a place as Mexico City, taught me is that the flags hung above our cribs we carry with us to the coffin, and the Stars and Stripes which the rest of the world knots tightly about our necks have just enough thread for us to hang ourselves by if we don't handle them the right way.
The post-War order was a good, solid pyramid for a while, those above comfortably crushing those below, all the masonry newly-laid and holding fast. But balancing at the top for so long has produced a curious effect, has given the First World a sort of economic and technological super-mass that is so strong that it is tearing apart the pyramid beneath, the developing bricks crumbling below and falling toward the sky under the pull of the wavering peak. But that can't be maintained. Enough stonework loosens itself to fly for the heavens of self-determinacy and pretty soon the seventh trumpet will sound and the walls of that Jerichite tomb will come tumbling down as too much is asked by too many of too few.
A better man would have something to say about all that, would have some equitable solution in a desk drawer, just waiting for an audience before the General Assembly at 1st and 43rd. Instead, I read the pages of the Post and the Times and wait to hear about the delegates from ExxonMobil and China National Petroleum at the new Berlin Conference of 2024. "Care for a small slice of Namibia?" "Throw a bit of Equatorial Guinea on top and you've got yourself a deal."
Because I lack a vision. I don't know what I would do to be fair to anyone else beyond the walls of my own home, and so I bar the insides of my windows and need a key to let myself out the front door.
I sometimes wonder, late at night, if I were to listen very, very hard to the light of the moon raining down, would Margaret Mead ever tell me what she really meant, or would she remain forever just a name on a wall and never lend a hand to a plan on paper?
I lack any concept or desire for a different way of life; I certainly lack any concrete steps for achieving it. I always have, but in the past it hasn't been as threatening a situation.
I've never been one for patriotics, blind or open-starry-eyed, but one thing which going abroad, even to as technocratically moderate a place as Mexico City, taught me is that the flags hung above our cribs we carry with us to the coffin, and the Stars and Stripes which the rest of the world knots tightly about our necks have just enough thread for us to hang ourselves by if we don't handle them the right way.
The post-War order was a good, solid pyramid for a while, those above comfortably crushing those below, all the masonry newly-laid and holding fast. But balancing at the top for so long has produced a curious effect, has given the First World a sort of economic and technological super-mass that is so strong that it is tearing apart the pyramid beneath, the developing bricks crumbling below and falling toward the sky under the pull of the wavering peak. But that can't be maintained. Enough stonework loosens itself to fly for the heavens of self-determinacy and pretty soon the seventh trumpet will sound and the walls of that Jerichite tomb will come tumbling down as too much is asked by too many of too few.
A better man would have something to say about all that, would have some equitable solution in a desk drawer, just waiting for an audience before the General Assembly at 1st and 43rd. Instead, I read the pages of the Post and the Times and wait to hear about the delegates from ExxonMobil and China National Petroleum at the new Berlin Conference of 2024. "Care for a small slice of Namibia?" "Throw a bit of Equatorial Guinea on top and you've got yourself a deal."
Because I lack a vision. I don't know what I would do to be fair to anyone else beyond the walls of my own home, and so I bar the insides of my windows and need a key to let myself out the front door.
I sometimes wonder, late at night, if I were to listen very, very hard to the light of the moon raining down, would Margaret Mead ever tell me what she really meant, or would she remain forever just a name on a wall and never lend a hand to a plan on paper?