Madison Used To Be A Rich Girl's Name

     I started to write a reaction to the events this past week that are taking place in Wisconsin's capital city.
For one thing, watching all those police, firefighters, teachers, nurses, and other workers (family/friends) gather in front of a seat of power on a bone cold wintery Wisconsin evening--whatever the rightness of the cause--arouses no small smattering of compassion in me.  For another, I am the son of a man who preached the gospel of the plight of the underdog/workingman to my single person choir my entire rational life.  Oh yeah, and then,  there's this:  I and my wife are retired teachers--so we have two dogs in this particular fight.
     Couple the above with how I ended my last blog--trying to explain and justify my remark about being somewhat 'ashamed' at watching the democracy newly birthed in Egypt's streets and not being able to fathom our own American complacency.  I knew as I wrote those words at the end of the last post that I would need to lay out a more comprehensive social philosophy.  I also knew that if I am to write a novel, the story would be secondary to the theme; it would be a story of people grown fat, lazy and ignorant.  It would be a story, chapters of which are even now unfolding with increasing speed, of a sociological, ecological, spiritual epiphany.  Madison, Tea Parties, Egypt-the Middle East.  What yet to come?  Indeed, Madison used to be a rich girl's name.  Now the name may belong to a movement as well.
     First, and this is really unavoidable:  We are all hypocrites and liars--all of us.  No exceptions.  I will testify in the church of public opinion that I am the chief sinner.  The invention of language, the grasping of the concept of 'more', the whole glorification of our earliest sense of separation; yes, maybe if you accept the metaphorical truth to the eating of the fruit of consciousness (wait, that was ' the tree of the knowledge of good and evil', right?) means that we humans, of necessity, must lie.  We have, in fact, separated ourselves from others, from God(s), from nature itself.   And nature is one of 'the others' even if you don't accept the God(s) comparison.  So verily I say unto you (all three of you), trust not in anything I have to say for I too am a human and I too will lie.  But please, I beg of you, trust the intention.  It's just, and this is the hard part,
I won't think that I am lying to you in these pages.  I'll swear up and down that it is the truth.  It may be your truth at the time; it may not.  How to resolve this obvious impasse (one of my own creation I might add)?
     Let me try to dig my way out of this.  If what I say resonates with you in any way, please respond to what I am writing.  That way we will both know that we are not alone.  We will also affirm whatever is consonant, and consentual between us.  And even though we time-binding, symbol users may never totally join in to a complete spiritual harmonic bliss this side of eternity, we will at least see our potential for brief flashes of instants.  Back to our own ignorance, complacency and sloth.
     I had just the other day, as I have on many other occasions, tried to figure out what the exact legacy of my parents had been.  What had they passed on to me, aside from certain genetic predispositions, good and bad?  My dad worked with his hands, but was highly intelligent; my mother had also worked with her hands, as a hairdresser, homemaker and interior decorator.  Dad left me with a sense of how to work along with his populist anger.  Mom left me with her ineluctable compassion--the need and, dare I say, compulsion 'for' and 'to' love.  From that human amalgam I guess I can say that my social philosophy, after many a flirt with various 'societies at the top of the hill' (Thomas Mann reference?), is that we are all in this together.  There is no, there can be no separation.  Anything else is a lie, and a damned dirty one at that!
     Ok, you say.  I read all this and "we're all in this together" is how you are ending this post?  Yup.  Let me defer to a short quote from a Tennesse William's play, The Glass Menagerie.  In Tom's soliloquy at the beginning of the play (Tom is Tennessee's alter ego) he speaks of the times in which he finds himself and his family.  Permit a paraphrase:  'we found our fingers pressed down upon the fiery braille alphabet'.  Change is definitely in the air, and it is not necessarily the 'Yes, we can!' kind. 
     I truly believe that it is the 'Yes, you must; yes, you are going to' variety.  You can smell it in the air on an Egyptian street and you can definitely feel it here in America from tea parties to the capital massings in Wisconsin.  But this proto-revolution when it fully arrives will be more than a social cleansing.  Mother nature has a bigger plan for us.  And our collective 'mother' may be the one doing the final 'pressing'.  Our fingers will certainly be burnt and blistered, but they will heal.  They will  if we have gotten the message.  Madison may just have lost her sense of privilege.  'Madison' may never be a rich girl's name again.  We'll see.