A FAINT WAILING IN THE WILDERNESS

My mind in a turmoil…  A tumult of shifting impulses

Cannot find my direction

No compass for my moods and feelings

Exhausted by the world

Uninspired by pointless meandering

Facebook, email, news media, social media, daily events

No one to share the concerns in serious private face to face

Friends unavailable, too busy with their own

Lives going by, days wasted on wandering the wasteland

Of a world gone insane

I need to talk about it, but fear getting into arguments

Fear that those I call friends are on the ‘wrong side’

Hate feeling judgmental

But some things need to be judged, must be found wrong, must be stopped

Before it’s too late, before all are lost

In a never-ending desert of hate and war and racism and misogyny and greed

I wander room to room, seeing all the projects waiting, half done

Plans not coming to fruition, energy flagging, inspiration flattened

Hope held at bay, not allowed entry by me wavering between one and another

Write or sew, read or weed, get out and go somewhere or stay home and hide

I sit down to read

It rains.

The political Armageddon weighs on me

I want to talk, to share my feelings and the things I am reading, thinking, hearing

But almost no one I know seems to care, or dares say they do

I become paranoid, imagining who, of the people I see daily, might be ‘one of them’

The Enemy…  I never thought in terms of enemies, try not to take things personally

But it is time to get personal about the pending possible end of life as we know it

The fact that so many are willing to mindlessly back a certified narcissistic maniac

For president of The United States

The fact that so many simply hate a woman leader

Because she is smarter and more truly experienced at the political game

But then some encouraging articles came under my eye in the midst of these blahs

First, an interview (*1) with a man who spends much of his life wandering in the desert

Gaining wisdom, writing about it later.

Craig Childs learns from nature,

From the rocks and animals and plants and sky and sand dunes

He says that there is never an end, because the end is always happening…

No Apocalypse.

Because things never terminate in an instant, but in many, many moments over time

And while some things are ending, new things are beginning

Civilizations fall, but they don’t stop

They continue on in new forms rising atop the old, or in new places

Something always carries on.   Earth survives.   I find that hopeful.

In the same issue, I find some mesmerizing pictures of ancient desert and night skies

Taken in remote Southwest USA by Photographer Marc Toso.  (*2) www.ancientskys.com.

These take me away from the confusion of my inner wilderness

Into an awareness of the magnificence of our planet… especially those parts less inhabited

The natural wilderness…a place of endless miracles

Still yet another article, by Coleen Carlstedt-Johnson (*3)

brings me back to the core of my own wandering

She writes in defense of Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary:

“Can we please just stop playing the ‘man card’?”

Taking aim at Trump’s ‘warning’ to Hillary not to play the “woman card”,

Carlstedt-Johnson presents strong counter-arguments to

Inanely ignorant ‘objections’ and misogynistic criticisms aimed at the woman candidate,

A brilliant, knowledgeable, experienced person, not without flaws and mistakes

But nothing different than every male person who has run for or won the presidency

Yet dirty politics prevail, allowing the ignorant masses to believe blatant lies

Forever playing the Man Card in every sphere of life.  The sheer stupidity of it!

The amazing dirty farce that our politic has evolved into

My frustration at the craziness… the blindness… the pathetic waste

While Hillary tries to reach out and unite the party

Bernie misleads his inexperienced young followers into an idealized utopian wilderness

From which they may never find their way back home to reality

Splitting a relatively united Democratic front into mindless warring factions,

He is bringing us closer to the nightmare wasteland of a Trump presidency

Letting the unthinkable happen, all for the sake of his own little Man Card ego.

Doom and gloom.  It makes me furious.

I must find my way out of this jungle of despair

Get back to my own daily wander-land where I quietly contemplate,

Read, create, imagine, dream, play…  in hope, good humor, with patience.

Just being me, trying to make a small difference

A tiny faint voice in the backwoods.

~ Later then.    Writing helps.

(*1) SUN magazine, June 2016, issue #486

(*2) www.ancientskys.com.

(*3) Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial. May 26, 2016,)