Exposure

And then it was summer. The Norway maples are putting out a second generation of leaves despite the absence of real rain for weeks now. Even the Catalpa has completed building its massive heart shaped leaves and finished with its lantern-like flowers. The season of copulation has passed and now the slow work of energy gathering begins. In the Pacific Northwest the oceans are too warm this summer. Here in the second week of hurricane season, a second major hurricane has begun winding up its power and strength. Instead of doing the moral and ethical thing two weeks ago, the leaders of the eight major global nations let terrorism blight a promising dialogue. Four suicide bombs in London. No one saw it coming. So much for heightened security. The word of the day for days thereafter was "resolve." Resolve to do what? Hold up a corrupt corporate economy? Continue to institutionalize poverty and criminalize race? The argument the Senators used to make against social welfare programs was that you cannot just give money to people and expect them to be active parts of today's economy. Today I wonder how those aristocrats, all of whom inherited vast fortunes from their forefathers, managed to get off their own asses…and, really, when you get right down to it, did they? It seems their logic doesn't really hold and is really just a thin disguise to justify hierarchy and punish the down trodden. Conservatism in America has lost all of its moral fiber.

But moral fiber is in short supply these days. Even in the remote corners where one would expect to find it, instead there is only fakery and chicanery and insults to the best of our literature. Power, it seems, and narcissism are the only rules. But power and narcissism without the courage to be true to its own impulse. The worst of the worst then, cowardly narcissism, self-interest that pretends benevolence. Cynicism at its worst. Give me a Rick Santorum any day over the kind of posers I've had to deal with for the past two years. Without integrity, without intelligence, without reason or knowledge, tadpoles suckling the last waters of a drying vernal pool. If they don't believe in karma - which they surely do not - they haven't done much self-reflection about a dozen years of failures. And so they lie and pat each other on the back about all the false things they need to hear. It's tragic really, but unsustainable and spiritually depraved. No light there.

And so the energy gathering months are upon us. As Thoreau said, “Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” Not false pretense or loyalty or tempered manners, no, goodness. And for some, I can only think: good luck.