“With age comes wisdom.” This was the thought a friend and I were recently contemplating around a camp fire in the desert. We no longer communicate with our elders, and our elders are not as wise as their age might let on. These were scenarios swirling around the glow and warmth of the fire and burning at our beliefs like the wind-blown smoke stinging our eyes.

With my own witnessing of the world, I’ve drawn up a rough draft of criteria for a “civilized” society I hope to one day pass on to my children’s children.

My first look is at how a culture views and treats creatures other than itself, or whether it considers its own part of the animal kingdom. If their zoos resemble display prisons, or if their wild populations have been depleted down to stray cats and pigeons; if they talk of “thinning the herds” but refuse to whisper the words of human population problems, there are deep issues.

Next, I observe space dedicated to public use and access. If private property and the automobile rule, city parks are nonexistant, and nature preserves are for show only, then it explains much about priorities.

Lastly, but of just as much importance, I ponder what a society wastes. If it is a country without forests and I see a dumpster filled with lumber; if it is a country with little space for landfills and I see the aftermath of a festival looking like a landfill scattered in the streets; if it is a country with malnutrition and there is an abundance of vegetables being discarded, well, then… I see serious room for reflection.

“A Literal Reflection”

I heard about you once,
transparent man with iron-pressed pants.
You look familiar,
even though I can see through you.
You follow me on sun-lit days
and lamp-lit nights.
You shine in silver streams
and float in framed photographs.
Now you gaze in glass
and hover in the hues.
Your presence is a comfort,
a clue that I exist.

Doubt reigns in the dark…

-Annah

“Santa Claus is proof that children are more important than truth.” – Friend

Someone explained to me recently their theory about how men speak the truth and woman act in their true nature when drunk. In each case, I deducted, there is a repressed self only allowed to escape with a social lubricant.

It has always perplexed me how a few drinks can split the personality of a calm natured Dr. Jekyll into the devious Mr. Hyde. I’ve witnessed the transformation. A woman spoke with controlled elegance moments before shots of tequila and a truck-stop prostitute soon after. Or the time an inebriated priest threw a wine glass into a bonfire. The changes happened quicker than I imagined it took alcohol to enter the blood stream. It was as if the alcohol was only an excuse to carelessly take ones hands off the wheel and press down the gas.

Did Robert Louis Stevenson reveal the truth that in all of us lies a devil and a saint? If this is true, what does it mean when we say someone can “handle” their booze?

The United States attempted to ban alcohol during World War I, but the reasoning was so tied up in a mix of convoluted interests and the enforcement so relaxed that the end result was an increase in violent crime and an eventual repeal. It is said woman were at the front of the movement of prohibition because of the way alcohol affected the household.

Saudi Arabia and other countries with large muslim populations have banned the sale and consumption of alcohol. Mohammed says of alcohol and gambling in the Koran,”In them is a great sin, and (some) benefit for men, but the sin of them is greater than their benefit.” A thriving black markets fill the gaps.

If I were a carpenter,
With calloused hands
And all to be expected of a man,
Would you still love me?

My grave and allotted soil
Will know only what I provide.
It asks not what I was, or what I am
But only for me to stay.

Am I not like the tree?
Whose limbs lose the burden
Of yesterday’s season, rest,
And birth new form.

The me who has been
Will no longer be.
Freed from the worldly,
I return. Reborn.
Naked, I hold no instruments
Of art nor the tyranny of trade.

I ask only for the breast
To feed me
And the warm comforting calm.

They may not break my bones, these names, but they hurt.

Lately I’ve been haunted by the name wasichu (pronounced wah-she-chew). It is Lakota for “non-native” but has come to mean greedy, or “the one who takes the best meat for himself.”

My plate is full of meat, and I sit across from a Bengali whose tray has broth with few vegetables and a piece of bread. He sops up his broth, drinks his glass of steaming water, and makes his way to a job likely to last late into the night.

In the stores of Saudi one can buy soap for “skin whitening” or lotion with “skin bleaching agents.” I’ve gone from a town in Ohio with more than five tanning salons to a place where people are doing everything they can to look white.

Whites want to look dark to give the impression they’ve vacationed some place with a beach and had little to do but relax in the sun. Others bleach their skin to make it appear as though they are not the peasants in the field laboring. Both groups aim for the illusion of those privileged with leisure.

Martin Luther King Jr. hoped for a day when his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” When will this day come?