I have been in Pittsburgh for the week. I was picked up from the airport by my cousins and taken to my grandmother's compound in Aspinwall. Nuna, as we call my grandmother is a trip. She is an eighty six year old sicilian Jungian phycologist. Her and my grandfather, Papap, owned three brick buildings in a nice neighborhood in Pittsburgh. First of all, Aspinwall, though considered a nice neighborhood always felt like a weird little twighlight light zone trap to me. It is boxed in by highways, and train tracks, and a river. And unless you have a car you literally cannot get out. And there are their three houses, which always remind me of pap, or Tony. Though dead seven years they still house his memory. And may be related to my aunts eagerness to sell them off. Or maybe we just live in a hard time. Tony would be in tears. We were gathered upstairs, in what I would think of as the second building. This is the apartment where Tony died, but when I visited them in my youth they lived next door. In an apartment he renovated to be larger, by building three rooms over a garage port. The room is laid out exactly like the one next to it was. Except here the walls have now been stripped of their photos. The nail holes stand out emphasizing the bareness. But none of this matters, because even though it has been seven years, since Tony's death that this many of the family has been together, it suddenly feels like yesterday. Pap was of Polish and Scottish decent, as I said Nuna was Sicilian. They had five children, four girls and a boy. My aunts and uncle and their spouses love to drink wine and get loud. Their children are not much different, and definitely share that trait. So we were having many conversations, eager to catch up on each other's lives in a manner that made it hard for any one to actually glean anything.
I need to sidestep this story for a moment. I have been thinking a great deal about our world, about how we exist in it simply to find a way to exist. There are less and less humans who subsist on the planet. And a constantly growing number who have to subsist on the system we have put into place. This, one, lends us to preform jobs that are often not integral to human survival, and allows people who are powerfully stationed in the system to use the way our society is constructed to their benefit. These are somewhat obvious facts, but they are important to keep in mind when we are considering our own place in society, and when we want to consider changing society in the future.
I don't usually hazard to think that I could impact the development and course of humanity, and yet in a non ego oriented way it is important to remember that if you ever did have something worth saying, something that does have weight and impact, it would be heard if you were able to say it. And there would be forces to shut you up. Just as those forces have worked to twist, alter, and co opt, many of the important dreamers of our history. It is also important to remember that we have constructed this society for ourselves. Or rather the ancestors of the fortune five hundred club have designed this for them. The point of remembering such a thing is not to hold on to a grudge at the bastards who made this mess. You can do that if you want, but rather to realize that this is our world, and that is does not have to be structured as it is. Yes that is easy to say if you have money and hard if you don't. Ie, dreams are fine for the winners. But in a more intimate way we make decisions all the time. We make judgements all the time, and how often are our thoughts biased by what our society, which is in many ways hostile and cut throat, programed us.
If there ever is going to be a non violent revolution it will come from inside of us. Our own minds and perspectives will change, as they do all the time. Most notably from generation to generation. But we have to do it consciously. We have to want a better world. And if we really want that. We have to willing to be better. And I am not saying be nicer, be a good samaritan. To be what the world needs. To take responsibility for our species and it's role on the planet.
Dammit, I hardly even started talking about my mother's wedding.
No comments:
Post a Comment