I freely admit that the headline quote was ripped out of Blood Diamond, the last good thing Leonardo DiCaprio did on film, but the sentiment holds, even if the phrasing isn’t original.  I’m not so sure I believe in God but I can’t escape the feeling that Our Creator, whateverthat might be, would be awfully disappointed if they sat in for a while.  

I’ve avoided posting on the blog for a while because I have too much to say.  I can’t condense and refine my thoughts for my own understanding quite yet and I certainly can’t articulate for anyone else why random scenes on the media move me to tears, not for myself but for most everyone else.  It makes me feel a little batty, if I can be honest.  Tonight, I had the Bourne Identity playing in the background as I sketched, and I happened to zone in on a scene where Bourne all of a sudden remembers what happened on the yacht inMarseilles, involving some educated, scandalous black man and his young daughter.  Seeing Bourne hold his gun to that man’s head as he held his daughter…it did something to me.  All of a sudden, I wasn’t thinking about the movie anymore.  That shit happens in real life all the time.  And the guy with the gun doesn’t always do the right thing.  

North Korea doesn’t do the right thing.  

The Israelis and the Palestinians don’t do the right thing.  

All those regimes in African countries I don’t hear about on the news are neglecting to do the right thing.  

The cartels in Central and South America, they’re not doing the right thing.  

The United States wants to believe we’re doing the right thing, but I’m starting to think we’re a pretty misguided bunch, so I’m gonna have to say we’re not doing the right thing, either.  

Why we wanna hate so much?  What are any of us fighting about, at this point?  We’re a global community that’s glutted the world with junk and poison.  We’ve managed to create and bring to life some pretty magnificent ideas, accomplishments, objects, and humans along the way, but where’s the argument?Really?  Is it oil (money) to drive our tiny, aerodynamic cars all across the paved land, and power our planes and our boats in the pursuit of global commerce?  Is it religion, the truly hypothetical conflict ,with faith only as the proof of right or wrong?  Is it our cultural differences, mixing it up and stepping on toes the wide world over?  I mean, we’re all cramped up on this little ball, floating around in the middle of the Great Big What? and all we can manage to do is kill one another while we slowly kill ourselves?  I’m not worried about the planet; Earth will pull through.  She might decide to take a nap after all the effort of that (coming) great big Ice Age, her plate tectonics subsiding once again, as all the land sinks back to the center and towards a fresh start, at an undisclosed later date…a natural reaction to our poor behavior of the last 50 or so years.  

I have to believe that we’ve got a fighting chance, that all the conscientious and loving people can grow a pair and come together and try and put things on the right track, so that at least all the babies in the world right now might get a shot at enjoyment and fulfillment.  It can’t all be gloom and doom, and I know that.  I know also that I’m a hypocrite, because I still drive, and I’m eating a peanut M&M and smoking a cigarette right now, and I’m not currently out volunteering my time to worthy causes, but I’m doing my part, piece by piece.  Or at least I’m trying to be more thoughtful in everything I do, and I’ll call that A Start.  

But I think the thing that made me cry tonight was the notion that we’ve probably already gone too far, with our religions and our crazy-multiplying population and our weapons and our  70 billion tons of melting methyl hydrates that will own us with it’s global warming in a pretty short amount of time (google that shit if you don’t want to sleep tonight–it’s played down on the wikipedia and such, to avoid panic maybe, but it’s real and it’s happening and all the textbooks will tell you so).   Not to mention the dirty bombs and the biohazards and the toxic waste, the business and the politics of our ‘free’ education and the processed food from 2,000 miles away and all the prescription drugs to fix any ailments or worries that might pop up due to any of the aforementioned.  Why?  Seriously, I don’t get it.

The sun shines and the rain falls, as babies smile at the people in love that created them, and all the while, a still-warm vine ripened tomato makes a mouth sing with it’s bounty of undiluted vitamins and minerals.  Wind blows, weather happens, songs are written, kites are flown, and people die.  A constantly shifting, never-ceasing river of simple joys and natural miracles takes place every day, all the time, as a relatively small group of greedy moral degenerates continue to call the shots for us all.  They certainly screwed it up good for the whole lot of us.  

You know what I have to say about all that?  Fuck them.  [I'm about to curse a lot, so scroll down if you don't want to read it] Fuck the machine I didn’t help create and certainly don’t want to support; I’m tired of them making decisions about their own best interests at the expense of mine and ours.  How much money does any one person need?  Fuck big oil and military contractors and all the blood on their hands.  Fuck stretch Hummer limos and the assholes that rent them for their kids to have a ’safe’ ride to the prom.  Fuck malaria, malnutrition, dyssentary and AIDS–preventable, every last one.  Fuck illiteracy and No Child Left Behind and 25% budget reductions in state supported education, and fuck Nascar’s tax shelter, while I’m at it.  Fuck John and Kate, and OctoMom, and everyone from the Hills, and–I’m gonna say it–fuck Michael Jackson; he made some good songs, had some killer dance moves, spent some money on charity in the 80s, and then he went crazy,  whereupon he probably molested some kids, bleached himself white, and overdosed on pain killers and anesthesia.  How is it that he’s been so glorified, managing to totally overshadow the on-going atrocities in the Middle East, and North Korea’s little test drives over Japan?  Because our priorities are totally fucked, that’s how.  All the apathy and complacency and sensationalism in the world is just…fucked.  It’s fucked that I’m still a little paranoid being at home alone, even though I have a big ole dog to protect and cuddle me, and it’s fucked that the heat-seeking helicopters wake me up at night due to their flight path out here in the sticks, this crusade for home grown pot, our tax dollars hard at work.  Fuck the piece of paper I got in the mail telling me right there in black ink that my social security will only be available until the age of 54, at which point the well runs dry, and fuck the juked stats on current unemployed.  The health care system in this country can just go fuck itself, and that’s all I can really say about that.  Fuck Sarah Palin, just ‘cuz.  

You know the really amazing part about this whole equation?  I’m happier than I’ve ever been.  There’s something totally liberating about believing, in some deep-down place, that we’re all engaged in taking a short jump off a long cliff…recognizing the signs of our ultimate demise has stripped me clean of most of my materialistic preoccupations and my teenage rockstar fantasies, and has allowed me to fully recognize the beauty and the gift of this life: the necessary and the beautiful.  Family, friends, lovers, sunshine, water, nature, laughter, art, education, curiosity.  

I hope one day down the road I can taste the irony in the fact that this little realization will likely lead me down the path of helping to Make The Change.  ’Cuz it’s coming, and the choice we get to make is the trajectory of that change: for better or for worse.