Joni Thursday
“Still I sent up my prayer / Wondering where it had to go / With heaven full of astronauts / And the Lord on Death Row / While the millions of his lost and lonely ones / Called out and clamored to be found / Caught in the struggle for higher position / And the search for love that sticks around….” — Joni Mitchell, “Same Situation”
If you had asked me at age 35 whether I would one day transform, chameleon-like, into a reclusive, bitter, unbelieving old cynic, I’d have laughed at you, snapped my fingers, and produced a bouquet of paper flowers from up my sleeve; but now I see myself degenerating further into the stereotype with each passing day. The magic was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Democracy? Discarded words on ancient parchment. Religion? A bald poseur masquerading behind a Wizard of Oz facade. Few things are worse than the malaise of failed romanticism, bankrupt patriotism or empty faith. I suffer from all three. Nothing is worse than passion turned into blind anger.
Now and then I feel a flicker of the old fire, but only when I see passion ignited in others’ eyes. (Usually hers — ranting about another social injustice, determined to fix things.) It happens less and less these days. Outside an occasional rabid diatribe from a fervent neocon, I mostly encounter the eyes of the living dead, reflections of my own dull orbs, hopeless and disillusioned at their cores, their owners stumbling from one disappointment to the next.
I wonder what it all means.
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