April First, Sun and Clouds
I felt awful last night that I seemed to be making light of the plight of the people who can’t flush their toilets with all this flooding. When I saw on the news this morning how many people have raw sewage bubbling up in their houses I felt even worse. That’s how it always is with me: I’m laughing AND I’m feeling so squeezed by empathy I can hardly breathe. It’s a weird combination.First, here’s some more of the empathy part: in connection with the plastic bags that our trees are wearing like brooches, I mentioned a tent city outside Tijuana many of whose ‘houses’ are made of plywood, tar paper, even cloth. In this community of La Morita, uncountable numbers of plastic bag bits cling to the barbed wire fencing off every vacant lot for miles around. I worked there for a week helping to build a house and the plastic bags looked like dead birds to me, their wings lifting and falling in the wind. Plumbing and electricity, phone service and trash removal: none of these exist in La Morita. The unpaved streets run in mud, and when it rains, no one gets in or out.And yet here were children in crisp uniforms walking toward the small school; adults perfectly turned out, picking their way down the rutted hills to ride the series of buses that take them to the factories.But it is April 1st when we're meant to laugh some. There’s nothing funny about raw sewage of course, or about having your friends pass out on you the one time you ask them to stay awake and help you mentally prepare for whatever crucifixion awaits you. But it’s also the third day of Passover and what a great thing that memorializes: Getting free after centuries of servitude. Making it out at last with that old Angel of Death sparing everyone you love..... So what’s a principle common to the three things that make this day notable? Maybe that you’ll be all right as long as you keep your spirit free, no matter what gets done to your body. This cartoon regarding that new God the computer is meant to keep that spirit up. I say stay awake to this day and to everything it offers you even IF you have to keep feeling your backside for Kick Me signs.
