Still it’s only wishing

Still it’s only wishing

A man sits alone a month before midterms that there’s good reason to worry will be stolen by Russia or some other entity that wants to spread panicked-sick dysfunction and squelch competent shared joy.

A man sits alone in his spacious one bedroom apartment of a Sunday morning, gazing down at the sidewalk below where another man uses an orange-bristled push-broom to move some kind of sandy dirt (?or is it sawdust?) all over the wide sidewalk, near the corrugated bent broke and bending wall painted a rusty red, defaced by bubbly graffiti and topped with petering-out barbwire-loops.

A man gets older dreading another Monday that he’ll have to go to work since he’s not managed to find his way into:

Sunlit freetime reading writing creating moving playing living
while somehow magically also being well-enough-to-do and being adequately helpful
as also somehow magically Democracy, decency, wisdom, and real kindness prevail
and move everything gently away from scary boring precipices and towards a sustainable platform
where we can all find our way into and with the Light–both as individuals and together.

A man sits there with a crink in his shoulder, and some sleepiness around his eyes, having drank too much Friday and Saturday.
He sits there, hoping to somehow magically pull it together on this late-riser Sunday. Hopes to somehow pull it together and find the win-win that springs him from the workaday and the country and world from corruption.
Yes, corruption is the problem–both for individuals and collectives.

A man desires a woman
A man wants the means to live well
and to take his woman on nice trips
where they can just the two of them
sink into foreign places and faces
and into each other, two souls that have agreed to be happy together

A man desires every hot young curvature that crosses his bored-stiff field of vision.
A man wants the means to fuck around all day long day after sunny easy, wander-wide, dine/sleep-high-end day.
And to take some impossible explosion of bosom hip and joyous femininity on trips where they get along and go alone and together a little deeper into life and love.

A man desires a political reality that is stable and just; and an economic one that gives everyone wealth, health, and time to explore and grow; and a cultural one that supports open-hearted/-minded spirituality, thought, and art–that believes most fundamentally in awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competent effective kindness, mutual respect and consideration, and the shared joy of knowing we are all in this together and are equal in what is most important: our place in God’s heart.

A man can desire such collective goods while still longing for the privilege to sneak off with some compatible young lady, sneak off with her into the boundless youth of a quiet, healthy, ancient life along yon sparkling sea, with fresh vegetables, clean air, and varied hikes. The secret, private, out-of-the-way happiness of a lucky blue-zone villager or–and this is much more what we’re here confessing to–a rich self-indulger.

Wouldn’t it be nice
if we had a system
where everyone was held up high

Wouldn’t it be nice
if we could all chill
without letting it all fall down

Still it’s only wishing
for flowers without toil
Here I’m still wishing
as the cold vipers uncoil

for a life both pleasant and decent

Author: PD Leon, still sea-sick from the exuberances of my most embarrassing century

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