Seizing random moments

Outside my front door tonight, this is what I saw: the moon, round and bright far beyond a streetlight shaped like an eye. I have no idea what this juxtaposition was trying to tell me. The night has eyes? If so, as a veteran investigative reporter, I already knew that. Someone is always watching. Nothing goes unrecorded. There can be no secrets.

Today, I heard a report of how Oakland police had infiltrated an anti-war group a couple years ago. Deja vu all over again. Welcome to the Sixties. Back to the future.

Political change when it comes from below always is threatening to the elites. But if it is social upheaval they are worried about, my advice to the entrenched interests is to ignore the anti-war protesters, who are simply exercising their Constitutional rights. Rather than infiltrating them, study the Bill of Rights.

Your time would be much better spent this way, and you may feel a new comfort as well. Anyway, it is not the anti-war movement that will challenge the existing political economy in this country; it is the emerging immigrant's rights movement. I remember an image one day last spring in Manhattan, as J and I walked under the Brooklyn Bridge. Thousands of people, mainly Latino, marching for freedom.

They, too, will overcome. It is only a matter of time.

***

So much for the political. And tonight I have nothing to say about the professional other than if you ever find yourself less than completely engaged intellectually in what you are doing, you are seriously under-utilizing your brain. Don't do that, gentle reader. Whatever other career errors I may make, I only stay in jobs that allow me to pursue my interests, that stimulate my curiosities. Life is way too short for anything else.

***

Almost every woman I have ever fallen in love with is either a writer or an artist. The few who weren't should have been, but for various reasons buried their lights under the bush. I urged each of them to write or paint or create through whatever mode attracted them, but some retreated to safer zones, more practical places.

I could not sustain my love for those who did not remain committed to developing their intrinsic capacity to be creative. I am as practical as the next person; we all need to generate enough resources to keep our families safe and warm. But to retreat from the scary prospect of pushing ourselves to the ultimate limits of what we might be?

To me, this is a fate worse than death.