Jade Keller

“But his kind will always lose in the end. I know this, and now I know why. Whether it’s wife or nation they occupy, their mistake is the same: they stand still, and their stake moves underneath them….Even a language won’t stand still. A territory is only possessed for a moment in time. They stake everything on that moment, posing for photographs while planting the flag, casting themselves in bronze. Washington crossing the Delaware. The capture of Okinawa. They’re desperate to hang on.

But they can’t. Even before the flagpole begins to peel and splinter, the ground underneath arches and slides forward into its own new destiny. It may bear the marks of boots on its back, but those marks become the possessions of the land. What does Okinawa remember of its fall? Forbidden to make engines of war, Japan made automobiles instead, and won the world. It all moves on.”
– The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver, p. 384.

Our politics today make me tired. I’m so bloody tired of hearing the same old diatribes repeated ad nauseam, over and over like wheels on a tired, creaky, aged wagon. They talk and talk and it’s like buzzing in my ears. For they say nothing new and none of it even applies anymore. It feels like they’re talking about Spaceman Spiff, when the rest of us are staring at moldy cheese in an empty refrigerator. They talk in the language of the Cold War, and the rest of us are sharing DVDs with the Japanese and watching You Tube videos coming out of Iran.

We have real problems and real concerns. And they’re still talking ideology. The world doesn’t operate on ideology. It operates in the handshake between neighbors, the crops grown by farmers, and the earthquakes and hurricanes that steal our homes away. Who cares about ideology when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun?

I hear the noise and it makes me tired. I hear the lies and it makes my bones melt. I hear the anger and I feel sorrow.

But when I turn off the noise and look at people, I see a different story. I see people buying produce from local farmers. I see people biking to work. I see people wringing their empty pockets to give to others in need. I see people ignoring corporations, eschewing industry and taking the path less walked. Home schooling. Midwives. Etsy. Blogs. Project 3/50. Interracial marriage. News, products, food, and information home grown and shared neighbor to neighbor.

We throw the pills that cause atrocious side-effects down the drain and we eat better food. This is not a revolution. This is not the masses rising up in revolt. This is the world moving on, like ants marching steadily out from under the boot through the gaps in the platform of the sole.

So you can have your soapbox. Let the potentates feed the lie. Let the corporations write our politicians’ speeches. We’re not listening anymore. Because while you sit there spouting and playing your chess games and lining your pockets while everyone else suffers, one by one, we take the road less traveled by.