Mike's finishing up a weeklong thing of beauty, if beauty is that thing which stirs the heart and soul in some direction anticipated and unanticipated. Start with the first First Entry and read your way forward.
So much more to say; this has been a topic of conversation in our home all week, and in my mind each day as I go about my daily events.
While some of the viscerality in Mike's workcomes from knowing so many of the people inside the events Mike is reflecting on, for those (few) readers of this haphazard log of mine who don't know, you can sense this too - know at least the bonds that tie friends and communities together.
(ramble follows, proceed with caution)
Yesterday on the train I saw one of those things that gives me hope about people in our world. There in the seat in front of me, two strangers - people who (as the train lurched) bumped into each other started discussing closely our national events, disagreeing in their points of view and reasoning, but both decrying our current national lurch toward a chasm of potential disaster, decrying with some insight, decrying with passion and respect for the other's position.
This touched me, somehow. I live now in a large city, not a small subcommunity of a small midwestern town. The city encourages a degree of anonymity (even if it is anonymity in flamboyance), and these two people were able to reach out beyond that closed demeanor to discuss their sesations of a set of events that will affect not just themselves, but us all.
If we can nurture a society where people can debate these events of great import, perhaps we can actually fulfill some of the promise we ostensibly defend. That nurturing, it occurs to me, is in those small daily actions - saying hello, saying "not today, thank you" if you're blowing off the Streetwise salesman for the fourth time this week. Yes, it's in standing up when you let someone off the L beside you, not shifting 15 degrees on your seated pivot point. And its in listening to the questions people may ask you, and answering them as well as you can. Give Directions. Say "Hello" to your neighbors.
Right. More from this week's brooding anon.
