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Woke five a.m. Best sleep in ages. Went to doctor yesterday, treated for the daycare bug I caught from my grandson – bad it was, I am better now. Needed steroid treatments against inflammation with antibiotics.
Woke with words streaming in my head
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yesterday afternoon before the sun dropped
behind the long mountain lines in the distance
two neighbor preteen girls
sitting on the hood of a dead car in the parking lot
next door
in this trailer park
that runs exactly along the Mexican-American borderline
borderwall
behind us
fixing one another’s hair
so pretty
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preteen girls I’ve known now over 6 years since I’ve lived here
ninety five percent of this town of 700
legal immigrants from Mexico
most now American
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Small slim three to four year old boy sticking close to the carhood salon
Quiet
Shy
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I must have felt better already
from the antibiotics
I had the thought and followed through
two paper bags with handles, not the BIG ones
i bought a week ago at Safeway, our only grocery store in town 4 miles away (we have none in this town)
apples a week ago – ten pounds for ten dollars
best price, shiny apples, hard and crisp
BUT ABSOLUTELY TASTELESS RED DELICIOUS
(i don’t think so! not delicious. spooky what ‘they’ve’ done to most of our food – oh, will we pay a price for our greed, our stupidity. ever hear of epigenetics? look it up)
too sick since back from my travels to decide about the fate of the apples. was going to dehydrate them, but no taste
stepped to my garden gate. i called out: do you kids like apples?
“Of course we do.”
i fetched them from my kitchen. delivered.
Yet, from the white anglo culture within which I mostly have to
(I feel rocks in my belly as I write this)
because if I say what comes to me now, a sort of truth
because I am anglo white
i mostly have to transact icky sticky nonsense with my own ‘crew’ – and with others – I am always guilty by association – except
when carrying apples to children 100 yards from the Mexican line where we live
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I wanted to offer an apple to the small slim quiet shy boy
I did not dare
I had to ask the girls, “Can I give him an apple?”
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The girls’ tone of voice as they instantly snapped, “Of COURSE you can give him an apple!!!” triggered shame in my gut
but not shame for myself
shame for my piece of the human race, my pinkish-white section of the race
That I would no more walk up to a child in our mainstream culture and offer a child who is young and in the care of someone else (ESPECIALLY if that ‘else’ were an adult)
and offer that child
FOOD!!
no food without permission in ‘our’ culture
so different
who owns the children?
who owns the apples?
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given that 27% of american kids are now known to go to bed hungry at night
probably more now with our trickle down rich person’s economy that does not work
with any kind of compassion
multi-national untaxed corporations owning 51% of our globe’s wealth
getting richer
and given that Republican Congress – beginning next month – without any warning to foodstamp recipients
has found an evil sly underhanded terrible way to further steal the food away from our american poor (I am too ashamed and disgusted to even grace a capitol letter to our nations’ land borders!)
Even with the very known (unless Congress contains idiots – wait – they do?)
rapid increase of the price of staying alive
on all fronts
including cost of utilities
with winter coming on
many – most – families needing to pay high heat costs
no matter
no warning
congress just came up with a lump sum amount to be used to calculate income – to dole out the foodstamps to families – next month – with no warning – significant drop in benefit amounts. Congress just changed their own law
fixed utility costs amount
do NOT begin to match the reality
of what anyone is actually paying
“Not enough hardship? Not enough suffering for our children? Hell no! Let’s make more. Let’s grind the poor down into oblivion. Let’s start with the children. We like things this way.”
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what do I care? My little benefit amount just dropped from $59 to $38 per month – but I am an old lady – I am not a preteen on a car hood or a slim shy little boy standing in the dust
wrapping his small hand around the wide girth of a darkly red apple
OF COURSE HE COULD HAVE if I chose to share
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I have no answers. Humanity is going to find its own way into the future – into such a perfect future few can even begin to imagine it from this darkest point in the history of our species. We think we are so smart. We are indeed so spiritually sick
so sick
so immature
stubbornly immature
this won’t last, this darkness in our species
We live at the darkest point in time our species has ever known
or will ever know again
(this makes us special)
(we are evidently choosing to pound ourselves so hard that eventually we will all shine)
God says to the rich, the poor are My trust among you – take care of them
God did not make us to be like this – we’ll make it all much worse
before we – together – in loving unity – around the globe – make things better
we are alive in the darkest time of our evolution
and we don’t even know it
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back
to the damn
apple
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the next time around?
we WILL get it right
God is not going to allow us to make the kinds of choices that we make now
for much longer
(Was I born too soon?)
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Again, a note to blog followers-subscribers: I am a process writer which means I very much enjoy the interactive potential of editing posts – changing them – after they are first published. Please click on a post TITLE when it appears in your email box and read the post directly on the blog where the edits are continually ‘live’. Thanks!
Speaking of thanks – my neighbors showed their appreciation – a group of children showed up shortly after with the gift of a most tasty bowl of Mexican Chicken Soup on a red plate with a lime halved beside: “Our mom says thank you for the apples.”
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A note on my messy punctuation – oh, writers are supposed to ‘follow all the rules’ – like it MATTERS if I ‘write right’ or not — when we are perfectly content to commit global rape of resources, destroy the planet, allow billions of people to suffer, while the politicians and super-giant greed infected multi-national corporations bleed the human race and our precious planet dry! What rules govern these??
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Beautifully put, Linda…
I wonder if you’ve ever read “Ishmael,” by Daniel Quinn? Or his one non-fiction book, “Beyond Civilization?” He points out that ‘locking up the food’ that should be freely available is the first step in controlling human beings…
http://ishmael.com/welcome.cfm
Oh – too much. Too too much! I cannot contain any more information of import than what I already do. This often dismays me. I do not have a big enough capacity to deal with more than what’s on my plate. I hope if I live long enough to publish what I need to that there will be time left over for me to branch out into other intriguing and important areas of study.
I can read NOTHING. Trying to do so is almost like placing my hand in a flame.
Love this post! A piece of humanity…sharing food, connecting
Too bad, I often think of myself, that I write in my interactive process – editing many times until I eventually say nearly what I wish to!
There must be power in hope for a better future – otherwise it’s so tempting to feel so power-less, so depleted of ability to create positive changes as one member of a species of over 7 billion. (There were 2 1/2 billion in 1951 when I was born.)
We are all in the current of change – hard to get perspective during one so-short lifespan. I have learned so much by living where I do, on the border, on the verge of a culture across the line that is so different from what I have always known.
Mexico has unbelievable troubles. There are a LOT of problems. But what I see of the love and of the fostering by their nature of the children in Mexican culture somehow heals and sustains my soul. These children have no toys. They have nothing of material wealth. But they are raised in community, attached with one another, loved — and yes, from the beginning of our life as people and as a species – it is the provision of FOOD that builds and sustains us.
Thank you for visiting today, Helen. So good to hear your voice as the sun rises and the sky turns from pink to blue. I hope your day is packed with blessings and good health!!