I need a new Direction
For a few weeks now – maybe months – I muttered sarcasticly and angrily about the current goings on of the GOP and the (very) obviously doomed path We as a Nation are stomping. I sat down to write my thoughts a few times but I couldn’t get the thoughts down.
Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I was too unorganized. Maybe there was just too much or too little.
I don’t know – it just didn’t happen.
If one were to read my past posts or see the PDF of my writing on my Website, one could easily deduce where my socio-political ideologies reside so for once I’ll stay away from that. I’m writing this as I think so bear with me here.
I feel stuck in this place in my life.
I feel like I should be doing more but I don’t knwo what, exactly. I have the urge to go someplace but I don’t know where. It’s not a feeling of paranoid flight or a desperate escape but a desire to find or discover something. Man, this sounds hokey.
Often I feel disjoined from this once-great Nation and from Americans in general – or at least whom I’ve met.
All I ever wanted to be as a child and a grown-up is/was a journalist and artist. I’m fascinated with the world around me and I have a nearly endless energy to propel myself forward.
Or at least that’s what I want to do.
I have lots of excuses: I don’t have funding, there’s no work, no one cares, et cetera.
Well, so what?
As things are now, I’m just getting by. I work 6 days a week doing work that doesn’t matter. Even worse for me is that I’ve done worse. I’ve been homeless (not a street-walking bum. I worked my ass off) I’ve gone hungry, I slept more cold nights alone than with people and wondered how I would make another week. I live in a rotten, corrupt, self-serving city that should be burned to the ground, covered with earth and forgotten about. Well, it’s mostly forgottem about.
However, I enjoy my life. I do. I live in a very nice part of that rotting city in a very nice apartment with a fantastic Stacey. I’m in awe of the joy and life and beauty around me.
But, it’s not enough.
I feel like I need to be doing something important but I don’t know what and I don’t know how to find out.
Every day or maybe every week, there is more bad news about the war in Iraq (what a mess – based on lies), about Civil Liberties and the sinking economy, about another crooked thug appointed to another important position.
it seems like the people most affected care the least.
I just want to get out of here. Not to run and hide or even to find a comfortable place. No, I want to run toward the chaos, the decay, the ugly people and places not seen on Fox News.
I want to get away from the self-centered greed, the proud laziness and ignorance, the paranoia and other American Virtues.
I need to do something better – and I don’t mean making a pile of cash.
There is so much more going on – facts, details, places … that Story that was told by Frank Cappa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith is still current. Sebastiao Salgado, James Nachtwey and Tyler Hicks now and Larry Burrows, David Seymour (these are a few names from the top of my head of photographers I admire) in years past all reported and added to the story.
What do I want?
Not fame and glory but a chance to work in the less-than-glamourous, forgotten places on Earth outside of the reach of the 30-second soundbite War. Not just a photo of another starving but somehow beautiful kid in need of that pocket change we waste on a cup of coffee …
We all know that the GOP will win eventually and this once-great nation will become a Crisitan version of Iran or the USSR only the rich here will be MUCH more wealthy and a much smaller percentage and the poor will be much poorer and a much greater majority. And they’ll like it that way because it will be for the benefit of the People and the Good of the State.
I need to get out before the entire circus crashes in on itself in a firey mass of burning canvas, charred fat and forgotten promises.
All I want is a chance.
