THE VOICE

 

how does it happen

that a person grows old

against their will and

better judgment

how does it happen

that mirrors wreak havoc

and spines bend like classics

reread again and again

a page turned is one step

closer to death or

a chapter unearthed

is a photograph

that misses the joke

when you focus on nothing

expect a reminder

a voice may return

passion dug under

like a sower who turns

the earth not for profit

who strikes a pose

when the wind hits the surface

remember my voice

it says and I do

and tonight it returned

long overdue.

 

NYC 7.21.12

The Voice

how does it happen
that a person grows old
against their will and
better judgment
how does it happen
that mirrors wreak havoc
and spines bend like classics
reread again and again
a page turned is one step
closer to death or
a chapter unearthed
is a photograph
that misses the joke
when you focus on nothing
expect a reminder
a voice may return
passion dug under
like a sower who turns
the earth not for profit
who strikes a pose
when the wind hits the surface
remember my voice
it says and I do
and tonight it returned
long overdue.

A SHORT STORY

“Everyone has a story.” Neil La Bute

A GOOD STORY

For C.Z. Who likes a good story.

Melancholy, unlike vintage wine, does not improve with age. Brenda Miller had once depended on melancholy to jumpstart inspiration. She’d don the landlubbing artist’s equivalent of a diver’s suit—usually a melodramatic intake of bourbon—and lower herself into the abyss. She used to drink every day; smoke hashish when it could be had, which was fairly often. What she brought back from a lachrymose sea of self-pity was laid out to dry on the canvas. Then, it often felt as good to feel bad as it did to feel good.

Her canvas now was the screen on her laptop, a different kind of ocean; blue, clear, unruffled. She was reverential yet unblushing as she routed her stories across it in even rows of impartial type. Contemplative writing had replaced the writhing that came with that first acrid blast of the mixture of turpentine and oils. Writing was less dangerous. Painting had torn her to pieces.

Brenda and her husband were meant for something bigger, though their tacit agreement was that the bigger thing, if it had come too soon, would have undone them. Fame would have landed them a stint, or many, with Betty Ford. “We’re late starters,” he’d tell her. “Keep at the writing and I’ll see to the music.” He had a scrupulous smile—actual and undisguised—and when he said that, about being late starters, it was heartfelt and not meant to placate her. If she’d had a million dollars in the bank, he’d say, she’d still find something to be anxious and sad about.

She’d slept badly and woke in the dark under a patchwork of ennui. What was to happen to them? Why bother, she sighed, but threw the covers off and stretched.

Her husband had already left for the day job. Other songwriters wrote about the frayed blue collar and the rawboned paycheck. Neil Howe lived it. Years ago Brenda had been cast out of her long time job in publishing, having committed no infraction other than being too old and expensive at fifty. They made do. She had time to write, lots of it. Neil kept at the music. They got a lot out of being married, but there were times, as they got older, that Brenda quailed at the mountain of ‘what ifs’ she envisaged burying them.

At 8:30 she abandoned the laptop. Until she shed the melancholy any progress on the new story was stalled. Fermentation occurred naturally in wine without additives. Melancholy was augmented only by additional forays into depressive rumination. Her creative juices had to ferment naturally. There was nothing about feeling bad that would make her feel good anymore.

Brenda struggled into an athletic bra that tested her flexibility and only by dint of sheer will did she succeed. The running shoes were well past their prime but barefoot was the next big thing so why bother with new? She gathered her long brown hair into a ponytail only recently shot with laser-thin strands of gray. She pulled her cap down to shadow her eyes. A morning run was just the thing.

After a spell of irritable rain—dank, overcast days that smelled like the inside of an unkempt laundry room—the sun was in full flower again. Her pace quickened as she darted across Fifth Avenue. She had to detour a block out of her way because the East Meadow in Central Park was undergoing long-awaited renovation. Chain link fence derailed an early morning army of dogs and their owners and Brenda wondered where their reconnoitering had landed them. Next year paths, benches, and lampposts would be gloriously renewed. The meadow, restored to a lush lawn, would once again be rolled over, drooled upon, and trampled underfoot by canines of all sizes and temperaments.

Behind the children’s playground, Brenda stretched for a few moments before she lit across the park drive between speeding cyclists who seemed temporarily blind and deaf to anything but chewing up the road before them. Safely on the other side she trotted up to the reservoir across the bridle path, which still smelled of verdant, damp sponge. A couple of times around would do her good, always the antidote to an unquiet mind. She glided around heedless tourists clogging the running track and the man on his way to work, but had long empty stretches ahead of her. Approaching a smartly outfitted walker she heard the neatly coiffed woman talking into her headset. She caught a glimpse of her as she passed and overheard mention of some banking firm. Brenda eyed expensive running shoes beneath tanned, willowy legs. At the railing, one young woman posed for another who dabbed at a palette and delicately stroked her friend’s face with a fine paintbrush, recreating, in a mask, a singular view of the skyline of Manhattan.

It had been a particularly lush summer and boughs, heavily laden, drooped across the track shaping leafy tunnels. But the duck numbers were down. Geese, for the most part, seemed to have disappeared from the reservoir. Cormorants still perched on the roof of the northernmost pump house, like black-clad clerics atop a medieval stone fortress. Though sometimes they reminded her of old men poolside, blackened by the sun, kvetching among them. And why was the water so green? In sharp sunlight it looked like pea soup. Brenda was unaccountably relieved to spot the presence of turtles, their coarse snouts breaking the surface.

The ancient white-haired man they called “The Mayor” used to greet her as he thumped his walker around the track, but he was dead for a few months now. Brenda pumped her arms, maintaining a brisk pace; nothing like the manic drive she’d once had. An image flashed before her of a lean young woman, stinking of turpentine and bourbon, who could sprint multiple turns around the reservoir. Now she’d been ordered by her doctor to lose a few. Up the running distance, just a bit. Ease up on the wine.

Brenda started on her second revolution and again came upon the neat blonde, still walking and talking on her headset. “No, nothing yet…kind of slow now. I have a little money, but….”

Nearing the finish she decided to go a little further, to the bench where she regularly exercised before the detour. Brenda determined quickly that the slight, older woman at the opposite end of the bench would not be disturbed if she did a few stretches, though the woman looked a bit sad. A casual glance reminded Brenda that she had met this woman, a stranger, only a few weeks before. They had crossed paths at the auction of a famous television cowboy. The woman had asked if Brenda would take her picture in front of a $250,000 stuffed horse.

“Miriam?” The woman looked up startled, her mouth agape. “Miriam Stolkowski, right?” Brenda hurried to explain. “We met at the auction; Sotheby’s? I took your picture.” Miriam’s hands flew to an unruly thatch of red hair. “Oh,” she cried laughing, “I must use better hairspray.” She leaned across the bench and patted Brenda’s arm. “You were such a dear for sending me the photo. I tried to reply but something went wrong.” She smiled broadly. “Anyway, here you are.”

An hour flew by as they exchanged pleasantries. Did she live in the neighborhood, Brenda asked? No, she had walked the entire way from the east 50s. Had Brenda noticed the color of the water, how green it was? Wasn’t that strange? Brenda responded to another question that she was a writer. She told Brenda she had been married to a Russian who grew up on the lower east side and Brenda revealed it was where she was born. Miriam and her husband once ran a Jewish bakery on Houston Street famous for its knishes that Brenda had only just been to for the cherry and blueberry ones she would have to forgo now. Brenda described Neil and Miriam replied gaily: “I love Brits.” Their conversation was punctuated with Miriam’s repeated exclamation: “I can’t believe we have met up again.”

“Can I tell you a story?” Brenda listened as Miriam recounted that a friend of hers whose husband had died wanted a memorial for his gravesite and so erected a statue of an angel. One day the angel was gone and she reported it to the police. They found the man who had stolen it. His girlfriend had ended their relationship. She loved angels and to win her back he stole over one hundred angels from graves and planted them on her lawn outside her house.

As they were about to leave the park, Brenda confessed: “You know, I was feeling sad this morning and came here, as I do, and I always find something to cheer me up.”

Miriam grasped Brenda’s arm. “I felt exactly the same way, so I came here. It clears my head to walk around the reservoir and I only just stopped for a rest before I go back home.” This weekend she had gone back to the house in New Jersey where she lived with her husband for 35 years. He died some years ago and the house was too big for her. As she no longer skied or took the boat out she sold the house to an Italian family of beautiful raven-haired children who have her as a guest from time to time. “It was always a nice visit, you know, but this time as I was leaving I saw them all in my old house and I got a bad bout of melancholy.” Brenda smiled and patted her hand, clasped tightly to Brenda’s arm. “So this morning I came to the park. And there you were.”

“And there you were,” Brenda laughed.

At the park entrance Miriam exclaimed: “I will be forever grateful for listening to my body that told me to rest on the bench.” Brenda smiled and turned to leave but Miriam called after her. “It was good, right?” Turning back, Brenda cocked her head. “The story I told you, about the stolen angels? It’s a good story, right?”

“Yes,” Brenda replied, “It’s a very good story.”

A GOOD STORY is an original short story by Linda Danz.

STORIES ON THE AMERICAN FRIEND Writers Guild of America, East #R28299

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The use of names of actual persons, places, and events is incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.
© August 2010

PHOTOGRAPH: BRIT SCHULTE

For some time I have been communicating with a young man on death row in Livingston, Texas; an innocent young man. His name is Robert G. Will, Rob to his friends. He sends me, along with more personal letters, his "Diary From Death Row," which I type and another volunteer posts on his website freerobwill.org.

I urge you all to go to his website and read his diary. You will never be the same. And once you know, and can no longer unknow, I'm positive you will add to the growing numbers of people around the world, and most notably, Americans who can no longer tolerate our heinous system of capital punishment.

There is much information on the Internet to sway even the staunchest supporters of this murderous act of revenge we call justice. You can start here. Inform yourselves. Be braver than brave and take a stand against capital punishment.

For regular updates and a growing sense of support for Rob become his friend on facebook.

Please read Rob's latest diary entry from death row:

I Must Fight.

Anything Less Is Treason To Humanity.

February 5, 2011, Saturday, 9:45 P.M. P.M.

“When the world is pregnant with lies a long hidden Sacred Truth will be revealed.”—Ancient Odinist Prophecy

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act..”—George Orwell

Quiet. Quiet at 9:45 P.M.—especially on a Saturday night—is a blessing. I do believe that the noisemakers and sports fanatics wore themselves out during the day with excessive hoopla in anticipation of the Super Bowl tomorrow. Oh yes, tomorrow will be insane, an absolute madhouse—men leaping about their cages with fervent glee, beating on their cell doors and screaming at the top of their lungs. Coping mechanism bliss. Imagine really living in an Orwellian environment, imagine how heavily this would weigh on your mind. Some would say out overall society is quite Orwellian—and interestingly enough I’ve heard several right wing commentators suggest this recently—but the Orwellian nature of this environment is overtly clear and distinctly evident.

I mean, it’s all here: Thought Police, doublethink, surveillance cameras everywhere, prolefeed, duckspeak…whew, just thinking about it is exhausting. Let me go wash some clothes and listen to this Groove-Soul-Jazz House show on KPFT, soak up this beautiful music…oh, wow, a song with excerpts from MLK speeches and now a Marvin Gay House Jazz remix—it can’t get much better than this!…And I did some Yoga, Shaolin Warrior Qi Gong, weight training and Jujitsu. If the beetlemen come to murder me they are going to have some very serious problems. Back to Orwell, but first do I dare?…Do I dare commit this act of bravery? Let me go to my door…O.K., my neighbor’s light is out and it looks like all of the other cell lights are off. O.K., I just took my earplugs out; hopefully I won’t be assaulted with any more hoopla tonight, but on never knows—the Great Hoopla Beast can be sneaky, suddenly appearing out of the beautiful quiet and devouring it and then immediately replacing it with maniacal pandemonic chaos! Some brief recollections on some passages from Orwell’s 1984:

“There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers, containing almost nothing except sports, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sensational song.”

This place doesn’t actually produce such things but these things are ever-present highly sought after here. Crime novels, shuck and jive radio shows, action movies guys can catch on their radios, urban novels, trite men’s magazines—these things are ever-popular in this environment.

“It was curious how that beetlelike type proliferated proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the dominion of the Party.”

This perfectly describes the warden and major who come from the Walls Unit to pick up people and take them back to the Unite to be executed. Extremely curious—this description of Orwell’s beetlemen really does fit the Walls Unit Warden and Major with eery and creepy precision. My God. I don’t want the horrible beetlemen to come to take me away. … Whew, O.K., I just had to breathe deeply a few times.

“…petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep [the proles] in control was not difficult…And even when they became discontented as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.”

Terrifying, absolutely terrifying. This passage is so very relevant to this environment. Need I even include any commentary at all? I don’t think so, or at least not much—I’ll go ahead and say a few things I suppose. Myself and the few others who have engaged, and continue to engage in what I suppose could be called psycho sociopolitical activism have made much progress, but we’re up against a Behemoth. This is the hardest environment imaginable to organize in this place—which is a Control Unit Prison—designed by psychiatrists to destroy the human Mind, Body, Spirit, and Soul.

There are scholars and academics who have suggested that the death penalty is a form of sexual control and the reason those in power who support the death penalty do not want to abolish it—even though capital punishment serves no valid societal purpose—is because they do no want to relinquish any sort of control or power. This is an interesting theory. One of the most horrible things about this place is that the vast majority, 98% of guys willingly walk to their own execution. The devious Party Man and dedicated Myrmidon to Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, O’Brien spoke of power:

“Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing…power is power over human beings. Over the body—but above all the mind. Power over matter—external reality as you would call it—is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute…we control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull…”

I read a transcript of an interview with members of the TDC execution “tie-down team,” the group of officers who actually strap people to the gurney right before they’re murdered. One of them talked about how the guys who are about to be executed thank them, they’re nice and friendly to them, and they thank their murderers. This is the most sick and twisted thing imaginable and I’ve seen similar depraved interactions between officers and inmates who are scheduled to die. Again, Orwell’s O’Brien:

“…no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured…The party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies: we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?

We are not content with negative obedience nor even with abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his mind, we reshape him…we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely heart and soul…even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation.”

Most TDC officers aren’t O’Brien-type party men, they just “do their job, they’re cogs in a wheel of the larger machine and they’re not conscious of their place within the machine. There are devious and treacherous O’Briens here and I’ve known some of them and have had extremely interesting conversations with them. I actually have always been able to interact decently with the intelligent, deviously Machiavellian types—even in the midst of heated battle but the slap-stupid, ignorant-to-the-point-of-obscenity, almost incomprehensibly witless fools are the ones I have problems with. There was one high-ranking officer who used to work here who was on a real-deal O’Brien type vibe. I’ll call him “Officer X”. Officer X and I battled and then came to a sort of mutual understanding after he realized that none of the psychological tactics of social control that he was so fond of utilizing would work on me and that it was in his best interest and the best interest of “the Part” to not try to use them on me.

Officer X was good, very good at breaking people and he loved doing so—he really fancied himself some type of modern day Draco or perhaps a more fitting comparison would be a more intelligent version of the warden from the movie Cool Hand Luke (or maybe a TDC Mubarek!). One day I was out on visitation on the day a guy had an execution date. He was in a visitation cage about to be taken to be executed, when Officer X came around the corner and cast his glance in his direction. The suddenly like a hawk who has spotted easy prey he darted over to the cage and he did his thing—a twisted macabre scene ensued: Officer X forced his Will To Power upon the guy and made him “follow the rules” and shave right there in the cage.

Do you understand the depth of the depravity of this? The guy was about to be executed in a few hours and Officer X forced him to comply with an asinine order. (Note: Enforcement of petty demands is a strategic tool utilized in control unit prisons to breed a Pavlovian-style complacency. Echoes of O’Brien:

“By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow…and love of Big Brother…

What happens here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or of living or laughter, or curiosity or courage or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves…

The heretic, the enemy of society will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again…Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible—and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling your feet of his own accord.”

Before guys are executed they take the handcuffs off and 98% of the guys walk to the gurney, they fully participate in their own murder. I’ve seen it too many times—guys laughing and joking with their murderers as they lead them of to be executed. Once, I watched as a man was led off to be executed and he said these last words to the other inmates present: “They’ve been good to me, the, the officers have been good to me, they, they’ve been good to me…” And then he was loaded into the death van and taken to the Walls Unit and murdered. This person was on death row for about 12 years and was repeatedly oppressed by officers and openly acknowledged that he was well aware of the oppressive conditions of this environment.

You best believe that there are those in our society who would love to create some type of Orwellian, Huxleyian, Margaret Atwood A Handmaids Tale type of world. Hell, just listen to some of the ultra Right Wing talk shows, they say as much. These are the same people who virulently support capital punishment. I understand this. I understand that this place, Texas Death Row, is a microcosm of the larger U.S. Society and indeed the World. I must act, I must fight—anything less is treason to Humanity. The last line of Orwell’s 1984 reads, “He loved Big Brother.” Mark my words on the scroll of life, write them in the Sacred Stone of people’s History: I will never ever, ever love Big Brother.

A Rebel-Jazz Trumpet Call: Come Now! And Dance To the Music Of a Thought Crime Renaissance!

Rob Will

“Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.” Ambrose Bierce

THE ODYSSEY TO UNPLANNED CRONEHOOD:

What are we afraid of?

It takes a lot of patience, getting older. One can’t go off half-cocked at the latest insult from the rant-filled right wing talking fat heads. Patience is required when being lectured by those who won’t abide being lectured and instead take another to task for having an opposing view. Attending a rally for the rights of one people does not automatically make me hateful of the people who live under the government that practices the apartheid I protest. Those younger males who laugh at Sarah Palin’s ‘antics’ demand my patience as well. After all, they weren’t around in the Dark Ages when young women like me were making furtive plans with the unknown to have an illegal abortion. I have to patiently calm the cynic in me who has seen what flowery political campaign speeches turn to strangling weeds in the cold light of post-election.

One has to choose one’s battles.

I went to the Planned Parenthood rally/demo/protest/political grandstanding last Saturday afternoon with Rennie, Beatrice, Christina, and The Mister. While others were pleased with the turnout, I thought it only a fair showing. Maybe it was because Manhattan is a bastion of Liberalism anyway. We have avuncular Chuck Schumer cheerleading the troops. Kathleen Turner offered up her ashtray voice for Planned Parenthood to a giddy crowd of admirers, older admirers that is. All spoke in the shadow of a 60-ft, black granite sculpture called Triumph Of the Human Spirit by Lorenzo Pace. It’s meant to represent an abstract female form and serves as a monument to honor all Africans brought to America. Surrounded as it is by government buildings I can also imagine it as a great big ‘up yours’ from said human spirit.

The Mister, as usual, cautions me not to get arrested. At this stage it’s a long-standing joke. I heed the cops who direct me to the freedom of speech pens blocks away from a perfectly empty area of the rally. I bite my tongue. A lot. Though I did indulge my inner Pollybollocks and shouted to the cops flanking the peaceful parade of demonstrators. I cheer and tell them, “This is about all of us, this right to our bodies, our selves. We are marching for you, too.” All smiled and nodded in return. Except for a lone female cop. She was kinda on the short side, it has to be said, and remained stoically grim-faced.

The cops may have been more at ease in their skin on Saturday. It was, after all, a bunch of women, but any change, any perceived threat to their authority and you’d be closed in so fast you wouldn’t know which way the tear gas was blowing.

Perhaps what got any decent-sized crowd out at all was the recent move on the part of the anti-abortion group, Life Always, which is based in Texas. They had a news conference in Manhattan last week to discuss the opening of an advertising campaign intended to reach black women. This misfired on a grand scale when New Yorkers spied a huge billboard above a Mexican restaurant, located a half-mile from a Planned Parenthood center in SOHO. It showed a young black girl in a pink dress and the words “the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

Really? Did they seriously expect New Yorkers NOT to react? This city is thriving with enough educated, righteously indignant Black women alone to have given them pause. The billboard was taken down within days. In keeping with the ‘blame game’ the reason given for the retreat was that employees of the restaurant were being threatened, their lives were in danger, of course. What still exists are the advertisements, with a similar message of intolerance from the same group, on the outside of city busses.

Ah, but I was talking about patience and fear. What don’t I have patience for? What do I fear?

Friends responded to my query with humor—“I think of the consequences of not responding to your request!!!”—and seriousness— “Being strangled, restrained by anxiety and weighed down.” Some expressed the fear of death, or of missing out on something, which will certainly happen after death. “Fear; being trapped…in any sense of the word—physically, psychologically, emotionally. Panic attacks are the worst.” I was relieved to see this friend had added: “Mine are all gone.”

I can always rely on the cheeky retorts of my Leicester Friend: “Being trapped in a room with 20 beautiful young ladies for a week. At my time of life I don't think I would come out alive !!!” Or the wry commentary I have come to expect from Noozeguy: “When I think of fear, I think of getting emails that ask me what I think of fear.”

Isabel, who is a journalist and a writer in Barcelona echoed some of my own fears, things we have discussed: “Fear to be sick, fear to be subjugated to the medical system, fear of dying because of their shamanic death sentence, fear to be homeless, fear to become crazy, mad before the injustice, fear that the world becomes more and more subjugated, that critical people are eliminated...” Kalev, too, anticipates a great suffering, “…which, after all, is what fear is.”

“When I think of fear,” Julie wrote, “I think of holding my breath—not feeling comfortable to exist.”

Missy’s definitive assertion suits her relentless optimism: “Fear is the greatest sin and the biggest roadblock to progress. Mine or a nation’s or whoever’s.” While fear of the unknown and dwindling prospects causes a sleepless night for another.

“Cool, great question,” Lexie wrote, “but requires maybe three sentences.”

“There are two types of fear, one is useful, and the other is not. The first kind is essential and alerts us to danger, it’s animalistic, and it kicks in when you know, without knowing why, that you’re in a dangerous situation and something must be done NOW to avert a bad thing from happening. I like to call this the lizard brain and it's in our DNA we can choose to take action, which is usually wise, or not (at the risk of appearing foolish) to our own detriment.”

“The other kind of fear is usually self imposed and serves no purpose at all other than to keep us in a status quo, unable to move forward or reach for a dream for fear of losing whatever it is that we think we have. This is the fear of failure or success and it is completely pointless and debilitating.”

“Ok there's a third kind of fear that governments and the media instill in us, equally useless but it keeps us in our place. Either by continuing to buy and consume or by allowing atrocities in the name of safety, I know I don't have to elaborate on this one. So, what do YOU think of when you think of fear?”

Well, pretty much what has already been described? Ill health, the prospect of hospitalization sends me into that sphere of anxiety that tightens my chest like a vise. Close friends have recently ended their days in hospital beds. I fear the surrender a doctor demands from the patient. I fear capitulating to that demand.

I fear the complacency on the part of Americans, and what nefarious use powerful, greedy, soulless individuals will make of that complacency. I fear the patience I have been striving to achieve will be undermined by inaction, that I will continue to go to protests, but that I will capitulate to complacency and allow myself to be penned in these new-age freedom of speech zones. I fear that I might not make the best traveler on my own odyssey, that I might not get to complete a self-examination that will strip away the fear and replace that with courage to bolster my convictions, no matter how others might react.

And, while I am trying my best not to, I fear encroaching age for a myriad of useless reasons. Rob Will is a young man I know on death row. He has every reason to be fearful and yet he ploughs through his fears with activism behind bars in a world that I am gradually learning more about. A world that is really the culmination of all of our fears; the Kafkaesque rabbit hole any one of us can fall into and never crawl out of; a place so dire and soul crushing.

I have to learn not to mistake patience for complacency. I have no patience for the feel-good-soft-focused-within-an-inch-of-their-screen-lives moments.

Terrorism is all smoke and mirrors, dangerous smoke and mirrors to be sure, but we have to wrench that smoky curtain aside and see just who or what is running the smoke machine and installing all those mirrors.

Rob’s incarcerated youth is my mirror as I age. He shows me what I must value, where my priorities must lie.

I went with friends to another rally some weeks ago, where even fewer demonstrators were in attendance. This one was in support of the peace activists in the Midwest who have been hounded and arrested by the FBI. The case before the Grand Jury is a fishing expedition and could very well be thrown out of court. But the government has very long poles and plenty of them and they will keep fishing until the fish are too exhausted to fight.

“Stop the subpoena!

Stop the raid!

We are here and not afraid!”

As I chanted with my friends Christopher and Tom in that moderate-sized clutch of demonstrators, so much older than the ones we saw at the Planned Parenthood rally, I felt the familiar surge of, if not fearlessness, then, at least, willingness.

A very tiny and elderly white-haired lady scrambled to the podium toward the end of that rally. “This is what happens when you become part of a movement,” she cried, “if you’re small you stand tall.”

And when you are aging, you will be young again.

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy." Dale Carnegie, American lecturer, author, 1888-1955