i suppose it was inevitable, working with small children, that i'd get sick...so i'm spending the day laying around reading, turing over on occasion so the river of mucus can flow through a different nostril. i've been up since about 7 this morning; i can't seem to sleep until my accustomed noonish hour anymore--i must really be turning into a grown-up now. even opened a bank account yesterday, with $300, and put snowtires on my car. look out world, the poetgrrl is getting responsible!

i've been reading some stephen king this morning; not the crazy horror stories, but his actual literary efforts. i think it's fair to make a distinction, since he does too. i remember reading somewhere that he says he writes salami. it's good salami, but it'll never be caviar. i think he at least made it up to a waldorf salad with Hearts in Atlantis, though, especially the title story in that collection. which is about the mythical land of college in the mid-60s. just when people started to realize what was going on, and realize that they had a say in it. and about the choices you make, every day. that you can choose to be the hero, or be part of the lynch mob. and it's true; it's hard to admit that eight times out of ten you end up as part of the mob, but that's true too.

and the line that keeps running through my head lately, that i can't get rid of and i don't know why, is "fprgive us." though i have no idea who i'm asking forgiveness for, or from whom. or, for that matter, what for. forgive us because we think fighting a war to end violence makes sense?forgive us because we're turning thousands of miles of virgin forest into paper towels? forgive us because we eat three meals and still our daughters suffer from anorexia, while you are starving? forgive us because you can no longer drink the water? forgive us because we judge you on your color? because we overlook your color? because we ignore your inability to marry your true love just because you're the same sex (and i won't even bring gender into this)?

and what part do i play in the "we"? because yeah, i'm white. and straight. and middle-class. and all the books i read, all the classes i take, all the meat i don't consume, all the activism i do isn't going to change the fact. that i'm priviledged. and selfish, a lot of the time. though i'll admit that the person who can strike the largest bolt of fear through my guts is a straight white middle class male police officer. because there's something wrong. with that much power. and that i wanted to free mumia, and damn near everyone else. and i get so disgusted because everyone around me here is so white. and sometimes i do forget that i'm white, and i'm sorry if it's wrong but sometimes i overlook the rest of the world's colors too. and it's blurry, sometimes, the line between "me" and "them," and i want to make it so that it's all "us" and i'm terribly utopian and idealistic and impractical. but at least, i suppose, i'm aware. yeah. socrates would be thrilled.

and yes stephen king it's true that a lot of the people who survived the sinking of atlantis didn't survive the world that came after. in a world where the only cohesive groups are dedicated to the advance of the right wing, which is the wrong wing. and there's more junk than we know what to do with, and it's made by people in sweatshops who could desperately use the money we're throwing away buying it. and i can understand. why richard brautigan committed suicide, and neal cassidy died so early. because it's hard to live in a world like this, when you can remember what it's like to breathe a different air.

so forgive me. forgive us. -beatpoetgrrl

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