4: February 2003 Archives

Politics are wearing me out. Is that an unreasonable thing for me to say? In fact, that's a gross oversimplification. At the moment, life is wearing me out, and life is masquerading as politics, and politics as life. It's really one big jumbled mess. The difference is, when work wears me out, as it's wont to do from time to time, I can take a day or two off to recharge. But when the world ties itself into a big jumbled mess, I'm along for the ride.

They've reimplemented security measures at work again. There's nothing like lockdown to make me feel like I have to be concerned for my personal safety -- that is, except for being told to have several days of food, water, and first aid supplies on hand in case of a national emergency. Have you stocked your pantry yet? Mine's disgracefully empty. I've never been an alarmist.

I've been doing my share of demonstrating, but I'm starting to get tired of watching other people protesting. I managed to get myself caught in the traffic snarl around the Erwin Center this evening, when former-President Clinton was scheduled to speak. Aside from the hideous traffic, I found myself a captive audience for the Young Conservatives of Texas. Young I may be (relatively, at least), but conservative I most certainly am not. It stands to reason that their arguments fell upon deaf ears in my car.

But I'm tired of it. I'm exhausted. It horrifies me that heads of government can't be bothered to reason with one another. It bothers me that we're all on this tiny planet together, but people still want to blast other people into oblivion. It bothers me that no one gives a flying fuck what impact their war is going to have on people who never wanted to involve themselves in it in the first place.

At Philosophers' Rock, there's a plaque that reads:

I wish you might be here and go with me on a sunny afternoon to Mt. Bonnell or up Barton Creek. Everywhere it is beautiful. I think we could settle most of the world's problems to our satisfaction. And a thousand years from now friends such as we will wander over these same hills inhaling the same scents and feasting their eyes upon the same beauty, and maybe the identical matter that composes our bodies now will nourish the worm that feeds the mockingbird whose songs will go thrill over the green fields.

Roy Bedichek, 1878-1959