We ain’t gonna show you the goddamn videos from the goddamn prayer breakfast. We ain’t gonna show you Orrin Hatch’s cell phone alerting him to pray – as in pray NOW, motherfucker. And we’re not going to show you O-what’s-his-name with his nose stuck up in the air like he always does when he feels like the man be doing him wrong – even if he is “the man” now. No, instead we’re going to talk about finding God today – a kind of personal how-to manual for finding the Lord. And we don’t have to serve any breakfast and haul up a bunch of politicians to do it.

You see, a long time ago when I was around eleven or twelve years old there came a big flood. The Mississippi River swelled up like a giant floating swarm of liquid bees hovering around in a giant mass, forever growing into larger and larger pools of unimaginable death and destruction. Those were the days before there were such things as levees. Nobody had any money either. We were all poor – black and white. What little we did have we needed just to get by. Everybody was so tired at the end of each day that nobody had an ounce of energy left to even think about engaging in crime of any sort. Sometimes I think back on those days and marvel how we got through it all without so much as an unkind word about anybody. But we did.

And now here we have a situation where your whole life depends on everybody else. When you go to bed at night, you wake up and put on the same clothes you had on the day before. There were no washing machines and dryers and fabric softeners and fancy smelling detergent that some cute gal puts up on teevee like she is really enjoying doing the laundry. Whenever I do a wash – which isn’t very often because I don’t go nowhere nowadays – I sit there and marvel at the machine as it does its rotations and spins. When the water starts to rise and the guts of the thing starts to shake and roll I remember back yonder when the water of the great river started to rise.

A whole life that we used to know came to an end when the great flood came. Us children used to gather together in groups and pitch in whenever we could down at the levee. We would haul sandbags and bring in cinder blocks from downtown from behind the stores where the owners had planned on remodeling the place. Instead we were all preparing for disaster. Our town was going to be under water and Lord only knew back then who would live and who would die.

Putting this all into perspective, however, was the fact that just a few years prior to this time we were having the time of our lives. Everybody had money it seemed – people were living it up. It was the roaring 1920′s, but to us kids we were just free to roam and play and do the things that kids liked to do. We didn’t have a care in the world. As I happen to recall, there was only one minor instance of a kid ever losing his temper over anything. We were so busy living our lives that nothing seemed to bother us. There weren’t no dadgum teevees either back then – maybe that’s what made the difference. Outside influences back then were things like thunderstorms and tornadoes. My how times have changed. Nowadays, an outside influence could be some child blowing himself up in front of startled, albeit terrorized, adults.

I for one do not understand these times today. I have no recollection in my 90 some odd years on this planet of there ever being a time when people felt like they don’t have a pot to piss in, yet they have more today than I could have ever dreamed of way back yonder. Frankly speaking I would give anything to go back to those times. We didn’t really go to church like people do today. Church was a place where anybody would gather to praise the Lord and be thankful for what we had. This pretty much happened during every waking hour – in the fields, at home, at the dinner table, taking a bath – everywhere, every day was a kind of ritual cleansing process – we were not afraid – we just wanted to let the Lord know that whatever happened and whatever came our way, then we were grateful to have been here for this short period of time.

It didn’t really matter who you were, what you believed in, where you came from, how much money you made, or who you knew – everybody was in the same boat. We were all about to lose our way of life. Natural events were sweeping us downstream into a hitherto unseen world that we could never have imagined being lunged into. Our life was all about our town and what took place inside of it. What they call gossip today was news back then. Knowing who your neighbors were was as important as knowing how the fall of Prussia led to the rise of Hitler. We all had to know the facts. It’s just human, shall I be so succinct to say.

We all knew what it meant when the neighbors child became ill because folks in town used to talk about yellow fever and how so many people had died. I remember laying in my bed at night and praying that the Lord won’t come and take me. I made promises to the Lord, that if He saved me and led me out of whatever was about to happen to our town, the world, and generally our entire way of life that we had grown accustomed to, then I wouldn’t stop singing His praises all day long. In short, I would keep on doing exactly what I was doing when I was child way back yonder.

Here I am today still sitting here – a little older – but I’m still here. I curse and swear, but that’s because I am so frustrated and don’t really understand folks any more. I just don’t recognize this behavior from anything I had ever read about or known when I was coming up. I don’t understand how people can be so angry and upset all the time and worried about this, that, and the other all day long, when in reality folks have it better – far better – than anybody I ever knew when I was coming up.

People are worried about the deficit, and nuclear weapons, and earthquakes, and airplanes being hijacked, and bombs stuck in some nappy headed knucklehead’s undershorts. And people are worried about the Muslims and what they’re up to and all that nonsense. Hell, I ain’t never heard such nonsense in all my life. I know exactly what the Muslims are doing and I don’t have to turn on the teevee to find out. They’re over there thanking God or Allah or whoever it is they pray to for all that oil they have stuck under the ground. Here we have in the most educated (so to speak), so-called ‘wealthiest’ country on Earth, and yet nobody has figured out a way to properly treat other people in the world whom they depend on for the lifestyle that they lead. I don’t know about you, but the only thing O-what’s-his-name has done right is to bow down to the Saudis and the Chinese, because these spoiled folks in America need them – and apparently need them rather badly.

It is one thing to want to live a life of leisure and comfort, yet it’s another thing altogether to hold the ones who make that life possible in utter disdain. Talk about hypocrisy – and now to smooth it all out and make it palatable for folks to swallow, they got them a slick talking half black dude from the south side of Chicago to run over there and smooch their butt cheeks for all this crap that nobody can figure out how to pay for. Well, ain’t that special. Maybe I’ll run on over to my neighbor’s house and ask them if I can use their washing machine instead of using my own and then talk about them like they were trash. I don’t know about any of you, but the way I was brought up was that you ain’t supposed to be hanging your dirty laundry in some other person’s house, and especially if all you’re gonna do is talk about them like trash afterward.

The way I was brought up is to believe that the Lord has a plan for all of His children. We just have to allow life to unfold the way it’s supposed to. Folks make a big deal about how we all used to sit around the radio to listen to the president back then. The only problem is that nobody I knew could afford one and the only folks who did seemed to always be up inside of their house all the time. They stuck out like a sore thumb. In a town where everybody knew everybody, suddenly for folks to be all holed up inside was as though they had become drunks or were cooking up some dark plot. Us kids would think that there was some old crazy relative that they had tied up in the basement. The rumors would fly, rumors would turn to suspicion, suspicion to doubt, and finally what started as a tiny tear in the fabric of our town tore open to reveal a dark underside to life.

The world was changing before our very eyes. It had come under the grip of the great electron beam that was hurtled at the speed of light through the air and wound up inside your house. People who you never knew or heard about before were suddenly sitting there talking about all kinds of things that you never heard about before. I could imagine being in Mexico or New York just by listening to these voices. People talk about Chris Matthews, Katie Couric, Rachel the Madcow, and Keith Slobberman like they know who these people are. And everybody follows what Bill O’Reilly says and so forth and so on – as though we know and understand these people. But it just ain’t so.

The world changed for the worse. Looking back, I don’t know why the Lord brought down His wrath on this Earth. Maybe it was slavery that did it. Maybe the Lord was so angry at all of us who participated in it – the slaves as well as the massa’s – that He just wanted to teach the whole damn world a big lesson. And so the flood led to the Depression and the Depression led to the great war, and World War Two led to a bunch of hippies talking about love and peace, which of course led to a bunch of brainwashed media dupes who can’t put a cohesive sentence together to save their soul. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe the Lord does work in not so mysterious ways as I have pointed out before. Maybe, just maybe, ignorance is bliss – because if people today really came face to face with how foolish they acted in light of all the technological advances that have improved everyone’s lifestyles all over the world, then if they had half a conscience they would have to be restrained from committing mass suicide.

This is my prayer on this day when all these politicians march on over to profess their faith in a system which obviously is not only broken but is in a complete state of utter neglect – that everyone should be cursed with the self-consciousness. I pray that mirrors become the great savior of America – that everyone should have to be subjected to looking at themselves 24-7-365 until they figure out what a goddamn jackass they are. And in many ways, this curse is already upon us. The great mirror that I have in mind is the lens of a camera. To me, youtube is nothing short of emblematic of how badly many people need to be paid attention to – always searching for their “character” by portraying themselves in the most randomly weird poses that ever should be allowed to be transmitted to the free world. I think of this phenomenon as a knockoff of Radio Free Europe which broadcast gleeful messages about freedom to the commies. Now we have Video Free America, whereby we transmit images of our most disgusting behaviors in hopes that people will learn something about themselves and improve upon themselves. Fat chance of that happening. It just seems to get worse – that’s all.

The best one can probably hope for in this wing and prayer environment is to basically just sit back and laugh at all this stuff. There are still some of us who have a little bit of the proverbial gray matter still working properly, which has not been tainted by years and years of public relations propaganda spewed forth by the corporations. There ain’t a whole lot of us still left out here, but by golly the Internet sure did show up right in the nick of time. Now, the ones who have the most important things to say and who also have the time on their hands to say it right get to sit here and rag on and on about how stupid people are. Hell, I bet that makes the networks jealous as all hell. To think that some old black man can sit here on his porch and tell the truth about what’s really wrong and not even break a sweat, when all the rest of those idiots have to be paid big salaries and sit in big fancy studios wearing expensive-looking clothing that looks more like what the preachers used to wear when the revivals came to town.

I tell you what, some things just don’t make any sense to me any more, but this does. People are flat out crazy these days. I don’t blame people at all for buying guns. Hell, I’ve got my old shotgun sitting right here by the door right near the porch just in case these crazy young people get any ideas. By that I mean, anybody between the age of 40 and 65 and who wants to get rich trying to make me spend money that I don’t have for things I don’t need. But of course I don’t really care what anybody does any more. As long as my social security check comes and my false teeth still fit and I can get up and move around and tend to my collard greens out back then I am fine. There is a nice lady two doors down who goes to the store for me every now and again. I give her two dollars for gas, and she comes back and gives me the same old thing every time – five cans of sardines, a two-pack of Saltines, some chewing tobacco, and a six pack of diet Coke. That’ll last me through about one week, but even though I can make it to the store myself I like to send her because I am also teaching her a lesson she will never learn from anybody else. In times like these I have learned that it is always to make yourself less available. Let all the crazy people work out their problems on their own and find the truth on their own. Get out of their way, because the wrath of the Lord is almost surely on its way.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the Lord’s wrath is our national wake up call – the fussing and fighting over things that in the end don’t amount to a hill of beans. People who are almost never satisfied – always fussing and fighting – ungrateful, unworthy, and unaware of just how lucky they are. This country is living on nothing more than a wing and a prayer. If it were up to me to deliver a word of faith to those of so little honest faith, that which is rooted in a profound sense of gratitude for everything they have regardless of how bitter life’s struggle may be, then it would be that it is never too late to start back down the road where you came from. Go find yourself where you left off umpteen years ago. It ain’t too late to do it. Go find the simpler life – the life that made sense – the one without all the ungrateful fussing and fighting. And learn how to respect people who have things that you want or need as the case may be. The Lord put all this stuff here on Earth for all of us. The key to being successful is how to get along with the people that have what you want. In this instance I have always referred to prayer – silent prayer – the kind that follows me wherever I go, whispering in my ear more loudly than any high-powered speaker could ever bring himself or herself to foist upon me with all their power and with all their might. I have seen death face to face. I know what despair and misery look like. I am unafraid and unmoved by these times. To me people are quite simply foolish and in need of honest thought and prayer. Fat chance of that happening though…

-TDN

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 11:39 and is filed under Free Speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.