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: Never In Our Names

Late For The Sky

By Alexa

Now, y'all didn't think I was gonna just take a pass on the Edwards scandal, did you? Ay, no.

Truth be told, the death of Bernie Mack is a much bigger loss to me, personally.

It takes no particular skill to be dishonest and selfish.

But someone who could see the Very Funny in just about any situation and share the joke so well as Bernie Mack, now that was some mad talent.  
Let's get the horndog du jour out of the way. I'm not surprised by John Edwards' extramarital affair. I've always thought Elizabeth was the best thing about him, much the same as I've always thought Michelle Obama is the best thing about Barack, but hey, my opinion and $5 will buy you a chai latte with a shot of vanilla.

On the other hand, just once: Fuck you, John Edwards. Fuck you for risking our chances for a Dem presidency and condemning us to McCain and four more years of war and torture and Republican policy. Fuck you very much for thinking your little dick mattered more than a million Iraqi citizens.

Fuck you, John Edwards, for building ordinary Americans up and letting them down hard. How many minimum wage or out of work voters sent you $5 or $10 donations because they believed you were being real about ending poverty and making their lives, and their children's lives better? What about your tired and your poor now, Mr. Edwards? How many will bother to vote? How many will ever permit themselves to believe and hope for a better future again?

I remember the stump speech story about the single mom who had no heat in her home, put her children to sleep wearing layers of clothing, their winter coats and blankets, and then begged the kids to lie if they were questioned at school . . . . "because if anyone knows, they'll take you away from me" . . . and I have to say fuck you, John Edwards, for exploiting this poor woman and her children. You knew when you said it, every time you said it, that you were a con and a liar who couldn't be president because opposition research and the paparazzi and your own mistress would make vetting you a quick business. Did you somehow forget about The Eight Years of the Clenis, muchacho?

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Relationships, as we all know, can be matters of tolerance, matters of necessity, matters of convenience and sometimes, matters of love.

Conversely, a relationship that was grounded in love and respect originally may not hold up to the test of time. How do you know, amigos, that the person you love today won't change on you in a few years? How can you know your great love of today can grow and evolve with you as a person?

I submit that you (and I) can't know. In the most vulnerable recesses of our hearts, we who seek proof and facts and studies must act on faith.

looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer,
I was taken by a photograph of you;
there were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more,
but they didn't show your spirit quite as true.

you were turning 'round to see who was behind you
and I took your childish laughter by surprise.
and at the moment that my camera happened to find you,
there was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes.

Mi gente, if you can be happy in love, I'm gonna be happy for you -- plain and simple.

I collect old postcards and old-old, black and white photos I find at classy shopping establishments like the flea market or yard sales. They usually sell for 5 cents each. These ancient photos fascinate me. There's something oddly soothing about poring over my old pictures of people I never knew who were, for the moment the shutter caught them in, at least, happy to be together. Older folks, interracial couples, same sex couples, straight and just married - dancing, walking, sitting in a juke joint during Prohibition or on their front steps, looking at each other, not the camera, smiling, caught up, loving the moment.

now the things that I remember seem so distant and so small,
though it hasn't really been that long a time.
what I was seeing wasn't what was happening at all,
although for a while, our paths did seem inclined.

but when you see through love's illusions, there lies the danger,
and your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool;
so you go running off in search of a perfect stranger,
while the loneliness seems to spring from your life
like a fountain from a pool.

fountain of sorrow, fountain of light . . .
you've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight;
you've had to hide sometimes, but now you're all right;
and it's good to see your smiling face tonight.

And it occurs to me on the edge of 28, and without no white-winged dove singing a damn thing about it, that being happy in the moment is a helluva lot more realistic than the sappy Hallmark love that I simply don't believe in anymore. Here's a fun fact for you. Only something like 1 in 500 songs written are not about love. No question about it; that syrup sells, always has, always will.

now for you and me it may not be that hard to reach our dreams,
but that magic feeling never seems to last;
and while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it seems
it would be easier sometimes to change the past.

I'm just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you,
in my lessons at love's pain and heartache school
where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you,
there's this loneliness springing up from your life
like a fountain from a pool.

But life isn't a Hallmark card. Life is actually more like a song by Jackson Browne.

On the second track Browne sings of a "Fountain of Sorrow," perhaps alluding to William Cowper's hymn about a "fountain filled with blood," but with a twist of hippie camaraderie and a bit of T.S. Eliot-style regret.

Browne's literary arsenal here includes inversive wordplay, ballad-like rhyme (a true ballad only rhymes the second and fourth lines), and ballad-like meter (in which the first lines of couplets are always longer then the second). This declining form corresponds to the poet's sense of decline in the relationship and in himself.

The imagery is just as careful as the structure. Especially poignant is the idea that although "[his] camera" took the picture, it is now the picture's turn to take the poet's image-or more accurately, his heart.

Or as mi querido amigo once described this to me, perfecly, precisely: "the beautiful sadness."

fountain of sorrow, fountain of light,
you've known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight;
you've had to hide sometimes but now you're all right
and it's good to see your smiling face tonight;

you've had to struggle, you've had to fight
to keep understanding and compassion in sight;
you could be laughing at me, you've got the right,
but you go on smiling, so clear and so bright.

Yes . . . like that, y'all.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).