October 2

This morning is gorgeous calm, with warm sun, blue sky and the night chill already memory. A brisk morning walk with the dogs brought back a previous time, and I am wondering how much the seeming difference of a new era is real or imaginary. The Muck Boot slip-ons are gone – Shoo-Goo can only do so much – as is Bush, but much of the rest remains, or has shifted only slightly to East or West. Worth reconsidering.

On Coming Back from a Sunday Morning Dog Walk (Early 2003)

There is a small hole starting to wear in the sole of my right Muck Boot slip-on, my favorite early morning take-the-dogs-for-a-walk shoes. Tchotto already tried to show his affection by eating a chunk out of the left one. But the jagged tear is high at the front cuff, ankle level, and strangely enough it has had no effect on their unparalleled comfort and ease. The hole, though, is a sign. I am not sure if Shoe-Goo will prevail.

It has been like that recently. Slowly, things wear. Come unglued. Seams let go and buttons disappear. Things fall apart. West Africa, yes, that too, but it seems a globalized phenomenon. There is no continent that is not affray: anxious and adrift. Even where tender shoots of hope push through darkness, roots are shallow, heavy treads abound, and the threat of frost makes it a particularly harsh time of man.

The economic tumble, the seemingly inexorable march towards an ill-conceived and hugely dangerous war, the downward spiral of occupation, Intifada, revenge and on and on without beginning and seemingly without end. In the face of diamonds and oil, or timber and coltan, revolutionary heroes slide from founding fathers to tyrannical despots; hurt people lash out in unconnected series of random madness. Ethnic groups take on the traits of wounded dogs; historical cleavages become rifts across which leaders hurl shallow barbs more aimed at domestic throngs than at the other side. Millions of soldiers wait on the ragged edges of the divide, atomic bayonets fixed.

No part of Africa is free from the disease. Algeria bleeds, its neighbors contain. In the Horn fragile not-war is stalked by two specters: drought and imposed peace, maybe more. Jealous, fearful men lead with increasing power and weakness. Bloody flames spring up daily throughout the West, sparked by the deep-rooted legacy of colonial arrogance, a wildfire doused on the surface, raging below.

Latin America suffers the chill from its northern neighbors, and the burden of its own legacy of democracy too quickly hailed. Argentina is worthy of tears. Brazil is vulnerable, Venezuela tottering, Colombia drug crazed.

Europe seems saved from arrogance only by its inability to get its act together or to produce leadership sure enough of its domestic agenda to lead beyond its borders,

In parts of Asia there are hopeful glimmers, mainly in the East: no bombs in Colombo and the barricades are down; Ang San Soo Chi can travel outside Rangoon; East Timor exists, barely. But from Katmandu west, passions seethe. All the way to any chosen line of East-West divide, poke a country and it will bleed. China?

And then there is America: “Who say they God & still be the Devil.” (Amiri Baraket)

Maybe I’ll go back to bed.

Or go on-line and send hard messages to people who should care, split some dry oak for winter’s end and then turn the garden so it will be ready for spring. And give the Shoe-Goo another try.