Tonight, at my bathroom sink, a mosquito attacked me. I tried to kill it, repeatedly, but it eluded my slaps. It will no doubt suck my blood as I sleep later tonight, and in the process it will inject whatever diseases it is carrying into my old body, so that my immune system will have to respond, best that it can.
Nothing about being alive is easy, actually. There are always forces trying to end our time here. Mosquitoes and other parasites tried their best to quiet me in 1971, when I lay dying in India with what doctors later decided was some toxic combination of typhoid fever and salmonella.
But in 1971 I was young and strong, and no disease was going to snuff out my voice, so in the end I won that battle and didn't die -- and that is why I am writing these words tonight. One of these days or nights, however, I will encounter a natural enemy that will get the best of me.
We all know this to be true. We cannot be here forever. But while we are here, we can speak, even if no one seems to be listening. I think this is why blogs have exploded in the past decade.
Have you explored the world of blogs? There are bloggers posting about every imaginable topic in the human experience, from every perspective imaginable. Collectively, we are like an army of circadias, chirping our songs into an endless night, who knows why?
Maybe just because we can (for now).
-30-
2 comments:
David,
I've enjoyed many of the short videos of Neil deGrasse Tyson available on You Tube. He is a gifted teacher-orator-writer whose life is enriched with a gifted mind and seemingly endless curiosity about that which we do not know.
Among my favorites is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ai-VvboPnA&NR=1.
Like you, I cannot profess a deep commitment to a particular religious sect. I am troubled by some of the destructive actions of those who use religion of any stripe to the detriment of others. I am in awe, though, of the tremendous good done every day by persons of good faith.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a mere mortal among us, could not have moved a generation as he did had he not been so deeply committed to his religious beliefs. It was the well from which sprang his commitment to non-violent protest. It is hard to understand how any man could have endured as he did outside of the religion which was his core strength.
I have a copy of his last speech in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968 and I have listened to it too many times to count. It still inspires me now. A short excerpt is found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIaQ5glP-38. You can also find the complete 20 minute speech and I would recommend it to anyone who looks for the best in human life, particularly one concerned with doing positive good.
Dan
I'm with you on Dr. MLK, Jr. I have a tape of all of his speeches and my favorite is also his last.
As it happens, I was in Memphis right before he gave it, one of a handful of northerners marching in solidarity with the sanitation workers, who were on strike, carrying signs "I AM a man" -- one of which I still have.
Back in Ann Arbor, I was delivering pizzas when I learned he'd been killed. I went back to the restaurant and told the cook, a wonderful black lady, and she screamed and ran away from work.
I was no more religious then than I am now but the next morning, I went into a church. I don't know what kind of church it was but all of us there, black and white, sang and cried and prayed.
He was our greatest leader, period. There would be no Obama if not for him.
Afterward he died, still as a civil rights activist in the south, I met with preachers in Memphis who had been colleagues of his. To tell you the gospel, I do not think there were ever more than six of us whites who participated in the Memphis protests -- that is how marginalized he had become by the time he was killed.
Later still I met Rev. Ralph Abernathy on a TV set.
They were all bright, committed people, but nobody could hold a candle to Dr. MLK, Jr.
Post a Comment