Dear Friend and Reader,
MY MOTHER ALWAYS SAID to me the three most sensitive subjects to talk about are religion, politics and music. She instructed me to never talk about these things with people unless I was ready for a scream-out. Now, I am pretty deft at choosing friends that don’t get worked up about stuff like that: call it an affinity for intellectualizing, but as I get older and I begin to witness more conversations than I actually find tasteful to participate in, I’ve realized that my mother is right. Strange as it may seem, the three things she mentioned have something in common: mind control.
The last debate between McCain and Obama and the balooning economic bill have placed what we think of as power and who we would like as leaders into the forefront. It’s crucial as the final weeks before the election unfold, that each of us come to the personal realization that how we see the world around us is how we see ourselves.
What we find beautiful, ugly and dangerous is influenced by our minds. It is with our minds that we make our choices. It is with our capacity to reason and get carried away by emotion that enables us to interact and learn from this world we are in. I say this because the election is coming up and each and every one of us has our own personal vote that we can spend in any way we like — supposedly like our money. How we place our vote, like how we spend our money, is a reflection of what we value in the world.
About once a month my partner’s mother invites us to dinner and we are obliged to comply. We go to the house, get sniffed out by the two dogs and stand around in the kitchen for about 20 minutes before supper is ready. Then we go into the dining room and have a seat.
The wallpaper is a kind of floral striped affair in tones of pearl and bone. The crystal lamp lights are dust free as are the tops of the curtain rods. Witnessed by the collection of hand-painted ceramic song birds in the curio and the dogs who beg for what gets dropped “by accident” onto the floor, the conversation inevitably turns to one of two things: politics or the government.