Thursday, July 2, 2009

Midsummer's Summer Garden Before the Color Fades


Random backyard snaps of wildflower seed results... Flanders Field poppies remind old folks of WWI Vets.
A Cactus blooms in an Ohio garden. The rest of the photos look like a moment from The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and friends fall fast asleep thanks to Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West distracting the Yellow Brick Road travelers with a field of poppies in bloom - distracted by their destination of illusions while in Ghettoville people chase weedy pipe dreams from parking
lots - car parks - not city parks... parks for cars - not parks for people:
But of super paver parking tarmac places to nowhere, of nowhere for nobody...
In a nation who does not know what "place" is or why it is important and why a monument - not a retail marquee are imporant things for the soul set in place in those very places to make space for place.

I can't put up flowers for all of the dead in all the cemeteries I know so this is my garden to those loved ones who have passed on.
When I see this riot of colors I have to remind
myself that November always brings the death of winter frost and freezing cold. The anniversary of tragedy and loss returns again and again - decade after decade.
It just doesn't seem possible right now from a balmy green world where I am barefoot and in jeans and a T-shirt...

Parkinglots are dead places, for the walking dead - never moreso aparant than in this economy of rubble.
Let the markets decide - they did and they packed up, boarded up and moved out and left us behind in Ohio.
Debt is the liquid in the broken up dreams of a failed nation's veins and the parkinglots stand cracked, weeded up, fenced up, forgotten in front of old strip malls of the cheapest buildings possible.... Mocking the reality that Western Societies only present the illusion of Democracy - and that Western Democracy's only present the illusion of freedom. Freedom is not just a free market for the wealth.
Cement block architecture and metal sheds with plate glass windowed fronts... Facades of plywood all boarded over... set back behind colossal monuments of flat tops to nowhere to the trickery of free market Capitalism and the power of the nightmare of the American dream. The fear of the dream being a nightmare is the fear that controls the masses...
There are no corner shops or corner cafes here. There is no here or place - no metropole. Nowhere to walk to. A drive through, yes, for too hot coffee or a drive through for liquor, beer, cigarettes and greasy junk food for
a nation with a huge hole in it to drive through...
A hole where there was once soul - even Route 66 is a phantom memory of stretched out tar in chunks for miles.
Not much need for a flag pole this fourth of July given the legacy of the Bush trauma years...
The ghosts of Reaganism has come home on the horses of the Apocalpse to roost. The Beast of the Apocalypse was Capitalism who seduced us with a shiney new car... As a nation we have lost our dignity and our wallet. As a nation founded on stolen land and stolen lives what did we really expect?
We sit in cars that aren't moving - and if they are moving
then those cars really aren't going anywhere, nor are they, like we, who are not really from somewhere, going anywhere - while the air conditioner is on and the electronic music plays.
Parks for cars, Parks for houses, Parks for golfers but very few parks for citizens... or people. The forgotten city park and it's importance cannot be revived when there is no
place here in Ohio.
No healthcare, no jobs, no unemployment office. No one to call for help with these basics on the hard facts of living. But the creditors will call you but they won't help you - even if you ask.
How many people sit with a hand gun in their lap and a creditor from health care bills on the telephone.
And there is no one to ask for help. It's the Fourth of July, I despise the sound of fireworks - especially this year. Illegal fireworks from a neighborhood brought up on contra-band fire works from the over sized sofa with an over sized pizza and cable TV... for over sized people. Cars that go boom to houses that go boom - for the red white and boom. The reverb is on and everyone has passed out intoxicated and oblivious.
A President of such proportion walking through history calls on us to have Hope - Hope in ourselves - but right now we need a hand up and not a hand out. We need to brush ourselves off and take a much needed vacation - a holiday. We need to sit in cafes and at talk - talk at the corner shop about what we are going to do but those places don't exist like much that we once took for granted. Working poor in debt to time working for corporations while indebt to other corporations.
Carcasses in the abandoned super paver parking lots to Nowhere - Lives played out at the bottom of the retail food chain from both sides of the check out counter - Lost souls on an existentialist ride around and around - year in and year out with no place for destination.
One more trip around the sun - on an axis of four seasons - sure why not - but why? How many more times around in this repetition of ignorance - this annual banging our collective head on the wall to learn what...? What exactly of why we are here and what we are to do with what we have - the stolen, polluted ground beneath our feet or the hijacked and polluted sky above our heads. What kind of sinister place is this that we have made with that mantra of let the markets decide? A grey November gardern not so far away awaits - What do we see in reality mocking us from the parking lots of a nation when the color fades.