I'd Rather Be Hungry Than Bored

Hats and head scarves seem to be very important to God. I don't know, but I think of the big ol' universe out there, the hundreds of millions of years that passed before the first potential worshiper walked the Earth--no matter how we first got here--and I picture an all-powerful creator of black holes and billions of stars and hurricanes and jungles and redheaded cheerleaders, and I can't quite see this Super Being getting upset over whether some tiny individual on a virtual speck of dust floating through the vastness of space, is or isn't wearing a head covering. Yet people kill and die over this. Ya gotta love it.

I was hoofing it back from the liquor store over the Shelby Street Bridge in downtown Nashville. Two well-dressed late-twenties black men were coming toward me on the walkway. As we grew near, just as one spit in my path, the other one said howdy to me. Then they both looked at each other, shocked by the others action, as they went on past. "How could you?" We're all individuals.

The Hell's Angels are going to be celebrating the founding San Berdoo chapter's sixtieth anniversary this weekend in Yucaipa, California. Some folks thought this was rather insensitive of them, it being Easter weekend. Reminds me of the time a woman on a bus told off a guy across the aisle from her for reading a girlie magazine, " . . . and on a Sunday, too!" Would be nice if nobody died or got cancer on Sundays or religious holidays, don't you think? But it seems to be only no pleasure allowed on holy days. Pain and suffering is cool all week.

Can anybody think of a hot topic that might one day be resolved to everyones satisfaction? Abortion, armed conflict, immigration, gun control, religion, pornography, the war on drugs, sex education, how we got here. The thing is, it's not hard to see the point and understand the thinking on both sides. So how then can these differences ever be resolved? I don't think they can be. So now, with that in mind, what might we do about them?

You can't buy happiness. (Though you can rent it.) Happiness isn't a destination, it's a mode of travel. I'm sixty-two-years-old right now. I lived through the scandalous dawning of rock and roll in the 1950s, from doo-wop and slow dancing through Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, and the Coasters. The Beatles and Dylan hit when I was in high school. Then the British Invasion and Vietnam started getting in the news. In 1966, I rode my Norton motorcycle (with those sassy ape-hanger handlebars) from New Jersey to Los Angeles, where I ran into that big party just starting up. Marijuana, LSD, psychedelic music, war protests, free speech, the sexual revolution, (I became an officer), hitchhiking the West Coast and Canada. Truly the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle during the prime of my life. (Now it hurts me to get out of bed.) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I ain't concerned so much on my own account, but I know how little it takes to get by and have a great life, yet just look around. The billionaires list and the homeless and starving of the world both grow. And now that the ice has melted above Canada, ships for the first time ever can pass that way between Europe and Asia, and it's now free for oil drilling. That's either making lemonade when life gives you lemons, or fiddling while Rome burns. We'll sure see. I think the unrestricted contact between people on the Internet is the last best shot we have at saving this here planet, but it's gonna have to pick up the pace a bit pretty darn soon. ("Cutting plastic grocery bag use by 30% by 2020," just ain't gonna make it.) "I just made my first million and paid off my school loans, I put money down on the house of my dreams, my parents are proud, I've got two lovers who get along really well together, and all life on the planet just ended. Not fair."

It's all "Us" riding on this ball. We can no longer afford the luxury of a "Them".