The 12th day of the 9th month of the year of Emergence

Someone, before this day is out, is bound to ask me what I did on September 12 ten years ago.

Such a landmark day when everything in this country had changed.  As I recall, I did not physically do anything.  Mentally, well that may be another story.  One I am not so sure I know how to put to paper, or on the computer now that paper writing is relegated to but a few who really know what they are doing.  Today I try to arrange some thoughts regarding my own last ten years, how I view things through my meager words, and one of my photos.  My remembrance of the 12th ten years ago was that my world was stormy with a weird light.

I was working (part time)  at a menial job for a builder who was unable to trust anyone despite how hard they worked or how honest they were.  I was one of the first unpublished antique pickers, auction sellers, and buyers at a local auction which is a book all of it's own.  I was watching two wonderful kids build their families and was probably not as much a part of that as I should have been.  I was making pictures that would occasionally sell at art shows, fairs, to publishers and kidding myself that I was not retired and doing all of this for profit and not just for fun.  I never have been able to do things the easy way.

 I had just spent an entire day in front of the television watching a few blocks of a city come apart at the seams.  Wondering if any colleagues I knew had died.  Knowing some had.  I worked for 25 years within a block or two of that insane apocalypse.  What could I do two hundred miles away other than to grow angry at those who caused what now is called simply nine eleven? 

So I have learned to yell at the television news everyday.  Learned to distrust, more and more, the politicians that the people of my country elect and send to Washington every year.  They (the people)  keep doing the same thing,  getting the same results, but expecting more.  I have stocked up on dried food in case of emergency, boxes of ammunition, and cases of bottled water.  Most probably I will die of a stroke before I need any of that stuff. 

But life is good!

In reality, we live in a country that offers individuals every chance to succeed.  Well, if not succeed at least to live a decent life.  We get the chance to screw up our own lives all by ourselves without outside influence.  And some of us do a pretty good job of it.  We are not Europe or Asia.  We are the US and as such are the most blessed people on the planet. If only by birth.  We are part of a system that actually works.  The system needs to be tweaked a little bit every hundred years or so, but it is the best and most proven, productive system in the universe.  In the long run everything is going to be just fine.  I am only angry now that I am so dam old that I could not be part of a proactive defense of our system.  I am sure I would have made a great James Bond, but now am only an aging Winston Churchill.  Will someone please pass the cigars!