I can't stop weeping. When I was a little boy I wasn't allow to play with black children or Indians either. The racial tensions dominated my childhood and youth and adulthood. The swearing in of Barack Obama is the end of that story. I even believe my father would have voted for him if he would have lived so long. He was a product of his Mississippi upbringing, but when the Civil Rights laws were passed in the early Sixties I was there when he found out about it, and watched the tears roll down his face, before he turned away where I couldn't see him. I'm not so sure this event isn't more liberating for me than for the blacks.
"Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we're free at last." ~ MLK
One of the things I liked about attending the Reunion of the Class of '57 of a school I left after the 5th grade was a class photograph a guy I knew from that period inadvertently provided. It was a class photo of the 4th grade class I was a part of. I wrote above that I wasn't allowed to play with blacks and Indians, but when I contemplated the children in that picture I realized that many of those kids looked Indian to me. "Indian", here on the coastal plains needs a lotta wiggle room to grok what it's all about. There don't seem to be no pure blood nothing around here. Most caucasians or white people ain't exactly white, anymore than any of the blacks are actually "black" or the Indians really Indian. The melting pot America is famous for is alive and well on the coastal plains.
There is this "look" that happens after different races of people mix blood in certain areas. I have noticed it in different parts of the country. They are called Redbones in the bayous of Louisiana and especially in old New Orleans. It won't be that way ever again because not only did the hurricane spoil the broth, but the world has moved on.
Cajuns are notoriously proud of being white up in northern Louisiana. If you move through Texas you can see a TexMex "look" that could have a goodly number of racial sources. What flabbergasts me is that I never noticed that amalgamated "look" here on the coastal plains until I looked at that class photograph again and again. It was there just as plain as day. I'm standing right in the center of the group and I looked like an alien. A lotta people around here don't know what the hell to call themselves. They get nervous if you inquire too persistently about their roots. Nobody knows.
More and more it seems like people care less and less about the racial differences. Especially on the internet. Okay, I can't actually claim that nobody knows who you are on the internet. Business types have to make themselves known. Politicians might have an alias they poke around the web under, but they got a legitimate reason for making their political persona openly known online.
All this new digital technology could drive people's real personalities even deeper into privacy and seclusion. There not going to be fewer video cameras and camera phones around, They're just gonna be even better. Smaller. With GPS data embedded on every digital image and cross-referenced with every other device in the area. Soon enow, they'll be shaking hands with the chips implanted in yo' body... as you whistle yo' way past the cemetery at midnight in the drop dead darkness of the New Moon.
The esoteric skills of the future will be associated with how to become mo' invisible. The difference between being an individual and being individuated will never be brought more sharply into focus. Some things can't be taught. They must be conjured. "... and who's gonna hold yo' lily-white hand
The South is way ahead of the rest of the United States in regard to how one conducts themselves in the aftermath of a failed revolution. The reconstruction era that followed is spelled with capital letters. Now, the rest of the United States and much of the rest of the world will learn what was forced upon us and others because to recuperate from this economic downfall their assumed values are gonna be called into question. A lotta people are gonna be wandering around looking shell-shocked because they money ain't no good no more.
Who's gonna hold her hand? Who's gonna
hold her hand? Who's gonna be her man tonight?
Who's gonna hold her hand?
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/k/kingston-trio/whos/
"The first ones now, will later be last, for the times, they are a'changing." ~ Dylan
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
