This morning, as I got ready for my Sunday motorcycle ride, I looked over at my Rocky and thought we should have a conversation. I originally found him nestled into a busted up concrete foundation that formerly held a statue of the “real” Rocky from volume II of his film saga. The year was 1984 and I was in Philly on business and as a passionately, dedicated runner, there was no way I was going to miss the run up the stairs of their Museum of Art, landing on the mezzanine, where Rocky celebrated his run. It is a truly sappy, cinematic moment.
Apparently, the statue of Rocky had been removed and what was left was this concrete platform, with protruding and twisted rebar, having given up the statue. Sitting perfectly at ease on this disheveled, concrete pillar was my marbled Rocky, waiting for me to run up those stairs and grab this prize, pointing to a more spiritual path for me as I nudged into my Forties. I never had anything I’d call a sign up to this point, but this episode validated my new thoughts about a different way to engage the world around me.
Several years later, when I left New York City for my cross country drive to Santa Fe, NM, the Rock sat in the passenger seat of my roller skate, Dodge Colt. Whenever I have moved, Rocky is the last to leave the space and the first thing I think about is where to place him in my new surroundings. He has to be in a place where he will be able to see me most often, quietly keeping an eye on me. We have been together for well over thirty years now and it has been quite a time.
I have never thought about talking to him until now. We share an incredible history and he feels like my quiet witness, always standing close by, very still and probably happy I dragged his ass to a warm climate. I have no way of knowing, because he never changes the expression on his face.
I know he is older than I am, but I have no idea when he came to life. He certainly knows our history together, but I wonder how much he has seen before me. My guess is he is Chinese and some kind of Holy person and that’s it. He owns the pose of a gentle soul, one of those special people who infrequently walk amongst us, but I have no idea of his birthday.
I am not sure what I’d want to talk about, but I am guessing it would be about this moment in time, not about the past or the possibilities, just this now. I would have to say that the level of discourse both here and around the world smells of puke and bile, a kind of corruption fit for the worst nightmares. Money and self-adulation are fertilizing the egos of White Men everywhere. Countries of color are not immune from the rampant self-flagellation of many of their geriatric leaders. Greed is the national anthem of all these righteous bastards.
I would tell Rocky there is such a brutal divide between the hugely wealthy and everyone else that it has created a multi-headed, tinder keg of discontent. We seem to be acting like string, supported puppets, perfectly manipulated to respond to the wishes of the folks sitting in the sky boxes, refrigerators stocked with champagne, watching all the action below.
I think this huge divide gave birth to reality television. Other people’s lives had to be way more interesting than our own, because ours sucked. Many of us began to hunger for celebrity as an antidote for the cancerous anonymity of everyday drudgery and people like the “K’s” started living our lives for us. I would have to confess to Rocky that this feels like a kind of diabeticd ecadence to me, the end of a cycle. Our President is a product of the cartoon life portrayed in this cheaply produced form of entertainment. Bruce Jenner is now a woman and I don’t give a shit.
Let me take a moment to be completely and totally, politically incorrect. As a Jewish kid growing up in Queens, NY, following the Second World War, Hitler was one scary mother fucker in my world. However, I never bought the bullshit that the Germans were born to be Nazis. It was easier to vilify them than see the cancer in us all. I look around now and I don’t like what I see. It doesn’t start with the current President, it ends with him, as he epitomizes all of the incredible hostility and small mindedness that is more out of control than I can ever remember, with corporate media in absentia. He is a monster, birthed by reality television and I think what bothers me most of all is that This Is Not My America. Hitler was allowed to be Hitler for quite a number of years, because some of it had a good sound in the beginning, offering hope and a way to get even with those to “blame” for everything. All of this feels wrong to me, not as a Jew, but as an American and it makes me nervous.
The idea of Fascism feels unbelievably dangerous. It is a kind of multi-orgasmic, domino-like concentration of power and pride in the hands of a precious few, a potent force. They pick at the carcass of the dashed dreams and complete hopelessness of the many, by offering some bullshit myth of greatness. They profit from their message of purity.
Rocky will be here after I am gone. He gets to see how all of this turns out, because I think it will take many more years for us to actually pay the price for our stupid behavior today. Speaking of short sighted behavior, our CO2 levels are the highest in three million years. I just saw this and made sure to write it down and include it. Now, that is not about a number that is the highest this week, can you feel me? Three million years! When does all of this get to be serious?
We’re fiddlin’ amongst the epidemic flames of catastrophe and I wish Rocky could talk. He is relying on us to do something about all this.