Give Me Back...

[Fred Steeves]

[Christine]

I love Caitlin Johnstone, truly love her and her poignant expression that captures so completely how many of us feel. I read this post on Twitter and it touched me, however hearing the reading took me deeper. That part of our being will return, it is not gone forever just stunned to silence by the unbelievable horror, the heart too full of pain to bear anymore. We need to not feel so deeply for the moment, in me despair started taking hold and I can't let myself go to that place. There is work to do, for as deep as grief and sorrow run in our veins so too will the return of joy.

[Fred Steeves]

I love Caitlin Johnstone, truly love her and her poignant expression that captures so completely how many of us feel. I read this post on Twitter and it touched me, however hearing the reading took me deeper. That part of our being will return, it is not gone forever just stunned to silence by the unbelievable horror, the heart too full of pain to bear anymore. We need to not feel so deeply for the moment, in me despair started taking hold and I can't let myself go to that place. There is work to do, for as deep as grief and sorrow run in our veins so too will the return of joy.

Yes, Caitlyn certainly has a way of cutting right down to the bone on issues of the day. She cuts like a knife...

There was one episode of "The Grayzone" I remember from a ways back, somewhat early on in Israel's obliteration of Gaza where Max Blumenthal, and especially Aaron Maté, literally looked shellshocked (maybe right after the first big hospital bombing?). And it struck me to the core because it was like I "see" you, and feel the exact same way, a part of me shattered and reeling. Surely that went for a lot of people.

I don't necessarily see that same look any more, and what you said Christine, coupled with that, reminds me a lot of how my wife and I operate in an emergency/crisis situation. First there is the shock at what has happened, but by a certain point that aspect of ourselves is forced to take a temporary back seat in lieu of the greater overall need of tending to the problem at hand.

Kind of like how Kenny Rogers put it: "Thery'll be time enough for countin' when the dealing's done".

[Fred Steeves]

And then just like that, the good guys win a round. I heard it nicely put that watching this homecoming, was like looking through a window into a parallel universe where good things actually happen, seen from our side where things just always seem to keep getting worse.

Not quite sure if we truly realize yet how historic this moment was.

[Christine]

Caitlin Johnstone, poetry in prose.

I want a free Palestine and a free mind, a free heart and a free world.

I want the oceans teeming with life and the air full of plant sex and dragonflies.

I want a society where nobody needs to work but most people want to, except for the occasional eccentric dude (and there will always be the occasional eccentric dude), but he will have a flute and a story to tell.

I want to write essays that open eyes and poems that open hearts and fan the flames of a revolution that will open the iron fist of the empire.

I want to make something so beautiful that people will want to destroy it, until they recognize it’s just a mirror of the beauty that hides choked back within themselves.

I want a fiftieth birthday party with a somber accordion player and his weeping wife who plays the saw, and I want everyone to drink ambrosia cocktails out of teapots and tell each other things they’ve never told anyone else before.

I want to hand out unconditional flowers at Flinders Street station and be happy with however they’re received.

I want to smack that smirk right off Matthew Miller’s face and release a swarm of shrieking male cicadas into the press gallery.

I want to wink at the moon and have her wink back, and then never tell a living soul about it and just keep it a secret between me and her.

I want to dance with sincerity, all my psychic armor on the floor like clothing on a night of torrid lovemaking.

I want to sing through the soles of my feet and let the earth roar through me like a primordial bagpipe.

I want to snort up the beauty of the world like a Hollywood producer off a hooker’s tits at 3 AM.

I want to greet everything that comes into my senses with a wet, gooshy love, and I want to be wide open to letting it all love me right back.

I want to meet everything that arises with brand new eyes, and with more awe and reverence than if I was meeting Actual Biblical Yaweh.

I want plastic to be a controlled substance and for magic mushrooms to be in supermarkets.

I want everyone to realize how pervasively we’ve been lied to, and how badly we’re being screwed over, and what a beautiful world we could all have if enough of us saw it as possible.

I want my species to stop living in its head and to finally come back home to Mother Earth.

I want a free Palestine and a free mind, a free heart and a free world.

Thank you in advance,

Love Caitlin.