Open window peers into a blue evening through tiny louvre slits,
removed, it seems, from floods around the Nile and the Hudson,
Mississippi, Missouri and Victoria and other throbbing tributaries.
Open veins of revolt, serrated slivers of soul across the landscape
as far as eyes could see: a finger in the pupil of the surly present.
“Occupy this,” morning calls, blue with equal promises of dawn.
Hanging out with writers and poets at a cafe downtown last night…
The open-mic poetry reading was sponsored by the English Language and Literature Association. Poets and readers include Jason Braun, David Rawson, Geoff Schmidt and others. Earlier in the day was a similar event at the school library featuring Eugene B. Redmond, the Poet Laureate of East St. Louis.
I read four unpublished poems.
Waking up to the soft silence of fall, there is a magic unspoken. Trees bob light heads in the kindness of the wind. Yellow leaves blow around a once lonely place. The ground lay spread on a terrace of rust. Through the solid glass where the traveller looks out into the backyard, the season floats in the air like a dream of a faraway land. The snap, crackle of dry broken stems could only break the silences. They rarely shake the shape of the morning out of the serene lure of its affection. Morning breaks into the rote of rust. It brings with it silence, crackles of dry slivers of life across the dawning day.
The latest GOP debate has just ended, with its illuminating moments. It’s one of those times when I had much to do but preferred to spend the time unwinding in front of my computer and television, with another finger on twitter. The United States foreign policy matters to everyone in the world since whoever gets to become president has to sit behind a desk with access to codes that can send nuclear bombs halfway across the world.
In spite of the aggravation I found myself experiencing at different times in the debate when candidates spouted sound bites to rounds of applause, I realize now that it was an important debate. For one, it showed the marked differences between all the men that want to sit in the position of the current president. Governor Romney wants to have a trade war with China. Governor Perry wants to scale back all foreign donations to zero, and Mr. Cain doesn’t have an idea about whether Pakistan is a friend or a foe, and Rep Bachman thinks that everyone wants to blow Israel up with nuclear weapons. I also realize how easy it is from this removed position of mine to scoff their foibles many of which stem from their inability to recognize the complexity of world politics.
In any case, this other news caught my attention and should probably keep me interested in US foreign policy interest for the next couple of weeks.
When, two to three decades from now, I am sitting in my office, study or at a family dinner table looking back to my days in the United States, one of the things I will cherish the most is the opportunity to have been here to witness pivotal moments of notable changes, when a new fresh nation was born out of a tired vestige of the old.
From what I read, the last time something as significant as a popular uprising by citizens to demand change came about was in the 60s during the civil rights movement. From what we see around every day these days, those days – or at least something close to it and equally significant – are back. It showed itself first through the Tea Party movements in 2009, and now through the message of the Occupy ____ protesters that have taken their message to major cities around America.
I was privileged to sit through one of the first sessions of the Occupy Edwardsville meetings today on campus. The movement which started as a reaction to the Oligarchy of Wall Street and unfair income disparity in the country has spread all around the country and is beginning to embody the disenchantment that most people feel about the direction of the country. Today’s event, being campus based, was more educational and brain-storming than anything else, but it was not any less significant.
I do not know a full list of their demands, but one of the major recent successes of the movement so far has been to force the Bank of America to reverse its decision to charge card users $5 monthly for debit card use. Another one is to change the national conversation from shrinking the government size to equitable living opportunities. Today’s meeting was open and democratic, allowing members and spectators ask questions and participate in brainstorming sessions to fashion reasonable and workable manifesto. I saw some professors in the crowd as well as students. At the back of the gathering were two cops standing and paying attention.
American politics, I have found, is one of the most fascinating in the world. This citizen opportunity for social and political change through a democratic means is not only stimulating, it is one of the country’s most admirable characteristics. All of this play out even in spite of obvious regrettable consequences of all mass action: infiltration by anarchists who want everything to fall apart as soon as possible, to no known end.
I see a new country emerging – as it always does season after season, and I again find myself tied to it. The news of my coming here got to me on the same day that the country elected its first black president. Being here at the crossroads of its changing environment provides for me a boon: a vantage point from which to contemplate the past and the present, while interacting with a new dynamic future of which I now find myself an integral part.