"i can't believe you can be so against what you once stood for!"
that's what i almost said to him.
my brother, Micah.
we were having a rather casual argument, as we sometimes do. i was trying to tell him why movements are so great, why men and women like Yoko Ono and Dr. King and Bono (sorta) and Lennon all give themselves to causes for a reason.
i tried to tell him that all change is made by small groups of people that grow into something large and influential enough. i reminded him of Amnesty International, of which i am a member. started by a single British professor in 1961, and has grown to nearly 2 million members whose letters have freed thousands of prisoners and victims and alleviated tensions and injustice all around the world in only 40 years.
he looked back at me with a smug look on his face that i couldn't crack. i just don't get how my brother, the boy with the cross branded on his left arm, and the Che Guevera clock (which is now no longer a clock so much as a small, glass poster, and is now also mine)
, could suddenly become somebody who's clearly so hopeless, with no faith in humanity, or even in humans. he's got no faith in anything, save Zarathustra's bold story of "making it on his own". he claims Jesus did it too, in his coy attempt to throw my own words back on me. but with his foot sticking plainly out of his mouth, i reminded him that forty days of fasting alone in the desert hardly counts as being alone. oh, and then i told him about the 12 disciples who were with him nearly everywhere he went.
he tried to tell me that since Zarathustra made it, anyone who wasn't weak could do it. he apparently had forgotten for the moment that good ole' Z is a fictional character. actually, i think that's when he tried to segway to Jesus. to him, Jesus is just as fictional, sometimes.
sometimes.
...BUT this isn't what i meant to get side-tracked by.
instead, i meant to tell you about another boy who had an american flag hanging proudly in his room, draped across his mirror with a chalky cross drawn on it. this boy believed with all his heart that it was america's sacred duty to follow George W. into battle and storm into Iraq in 02. he would have actually voted for W. the second time around, had he been old enough. this boy sickens me far more than Micah ever will. this boy believed in intolerance as the only way to change things for the better. this boy was anti-gay marriage and pro-war. (i.e. anti-love, and pro-hate) he was a thoroughbred american who wished he could've said the pledge of allegiance twice daily at school, rather than only on mondays in 8th grade.
this boy was going to join the navy, or the marines or something and fight for his country. he had a buzz cut already and everything about him stank of proud-to-be-an-american in the most disgusting form. it wasn't even flattering to the remaining good elements of the U.S.
this boy was frankly a self-righteous prick just like the best of them. could never recognize flaws in himself. believed he was always right. believed that america was supposed to be an all-christian nation. and that everyone who didn't believe what he did had to be converted, and he thought them more like scalps dangling from his belt, than actual souls, actually aching people. there was no love in this boy.
he was a monster.
i don't have that mirror in my room anymore. the american flag lies half-burnt in a black garbage bag somewhere in a dump.
i protested the "Bush Regime" on October 5, 2007 and felt almost more at home there, than i do half the time in church. it's funny how preotestors seem to realize they can do nothing on their own, and we sort of band together, as we all did that night to share a bowl of free soup, brought to us by an organization supporting the march, called "Food Not Bombs", i think. as a sister of mine shared a cigarette with a brother of mine, and both braced their backs against the cold downtown wind, i waited my turn for a used spoon, in order to eat half a cup of warm veggie soup in chicken broth.
after the march and everything, we wrapped up with a "die-in", which was by far, one of the most dramatic and patriotic experiences i've ever witnessed. watching video footgae from it later, i was shocked to find an elderly man in a wheel-chair shifting his weight and lowering himself to the chilled black-top of E. 9th street in the heart of Cleveland. during rush-hour.
riding the bus home that night with Micah, as the dim lights kicked in overhead in the fading autumn sun, i read from a communist newspaper about the similarities between Bush's and Hitler's. it was kinda freaky. as a middle-aged man walked past me, on his way out the front door of the 9X four-wheeled community driving machine, he looked down and complimented me on the white bandana around my knee with the word 'COEXIST' scrawled in dark permanent marker. the Islam crescent was the 'C', the Jewish Star of David was the 'X', and the Christian cross was the 'T'.
that bandana is now sewn onto a small black jacket i bought for the purpose of shaking things up and lacing it with lyrics and sayings and emblems of what i stand for. i named her Ruth. i'm wearing her now, for the first time since probably March this year.
she's beautiful, and reminds me of the kind of communion that comes from a strong, united purpose. i miss that union.
i'm hoping i'll find that soon, sometime in the coming couple of years.
anyone wanna go see that movie, "Across The Universe" with me sometime?
Love and Peace or Else.
-Archer
