Street Food

 

The Empire arrived bearing gifts. Conquerors bearing gifts — the alphabet, algebra, churches, smallpox, genocide; compounded by the loss of an unwritten oral history and undrawn map of Turtle Island, the loss of memory and loss of place. Twelve thousand years of human experience on this island, before the Empire arrived with its gifts. The people here knew how to live with the land. Broken apart and broken down by the machinery of Europe, by the machinery and firepower of the white man.

The white man’s god was dead but his army marched on.

If I can have your attention for a moment, I have a statement I want to make to the entire Planet Earth.

 

How will you know if you have succeeded in life?

How will you the listener, you the reader, you the human species, know you’ve made the grade?

It is possible to feel like a success but to be a failure because you failed humanity.

You failed humanity. You disappointed the Solar System.

You set evolution back a couple of millennia; you and your god.

It is also possible to feel like a failure but to have contributed to the collective human will to take a small step for homo sapiens, one giant leap for the life system.

I believe that, collectively, we are on the threshold, or on the front steps leading up to the threshold, or on the gravel path leading to the steps, of a universal awakening that will certainly take place in a million years or so, if the species can survive long enough.

What tweet or post or meme will trigger the Kairos moment, will let go of the bow string and loose the arrow.

The trigger has been pulled and the arrow has been loosed and we are waiting for impact.

What combination of off and on will deliver the electronic good news of the triumphal entry of the new order, perhaps in the person of a child, any child, or a generation, heir to the treasures of human history and biological adaptation and imagination beyond the cosmos and third heaven into the eternal radiant empty shining void within the burning bush and

 Take off your shoes and open your heart and open your eyes and ears to the cry of the oppressed, of all of those suffering wanderers?

What if, hypothetically, I imagine the goal of humanity to be to reach cosmic consciousness and be free from the suffering and violent struggling for survival, and the never ending evolving and creating and finally getting to the point?

What if, hypothetically, I shout from the middle of the bridge, 

How long, Omega point? How long?

I’ve already said too much.

I got an email about a convergence of organizations at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC at the end of August to engage in direct action. 

It’s all about voting rights, raising the minimum wage, climate change,reparations, mass incarceration, immigrant rights, gun violence, student debt, green economics, and so on. The name of the event is Make Good Trouble. I replied that I want to participate. I wondered what I was getting into, if we’re really taking steps toward where we need to be, forward together, not one step back. 

Then I went out to get some street food, which turned out to be jerk chicken tacos and sweet plantains from a truck parked on N. 4th. Walking back down Bedford I see some people gathered around a young man who is face down in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. His palms are flat against the concrete, elbows up, as if a push up were possible, but he wasn’t pushing up and he didn’t move his face from the pool of blood. He had brown skin, black hair, and he might have been South Asian, I don’t know. The multiracial bystanders had their phones out and had already called 911. Some of them had witnessed a shirtless man hit the victim and take off on a bicycle. I had walked past this spot maybe ten minutes ago and was waiting for my food when the attack happened. I don’t know what I could have done or would have done if the attack happened right in front of me and if I’d have the wits or courage to intervene and be a human being or if I’d fail humanity and fail myself. I heard the sirens of EMS and NYPD on the way and there wasn’t anything I could do of any use so I went home with my street food.