The lustre of mid-day

Winter                                             Full Cold Moon

The full cold moon now has -5 temps under its light.  When there’s snow on the ground and a full moon in the sky, I always think of Twas’ The Night Before Christmas:  And the moon on the new fallen snow gave a lustre of midday to objects below.  Writing that reminded me of a performance I gave of that poem with our high school concert band in the background.  Scared me to death and I didn’t like it.  Acting I loved, but performing to music–not at all.

I surprised my 3 year old granddaughter last week with the news that Grandpa did modern dance in college, performing in front of an audience several times.  My mind says yes I did, my body insists it could never have done that.  It was fun.

Obama.  Our government.  I have known for decades now, as have many of my contemporaries that our system of government broke down long ago.  There are many reasons:  money, lobbyists, an archaic method of representing voters wishes, an apathetic citizenry, the practice of the big lie.  In the past I subscribed to the idea of radical change, a dramatic overhaul of our system, one that would replace it with, say, democratic socialism or a scheme in which the whole of Amerika broke down into smaller regional states.

With the passing years I have lost my faith in radical change in two ways.  One, I doubt the chance of creating it.  Two, and more fundamentally, I’m not convinced that my radical change would not morph into something terrible, perhaps in a different way, but still terrible.  I suppose this could lead to despair or reasoned apathy, but I’m not cut from that cloth.  In a bad situation you use the tools you have and  work for the best change you can expect.

It may be that within the remaining years of my lifetime that  the stars will align  and dramatic change will be possible.  I doubt it, but it could happen.  If it does, I’m there.  Even so, I’m not sanguine about a better world.

This world, this one world, the only world we have must always be enough and not even close to enough.  We must live in it as if it is enough; we must work for it as if it’s not even close.