Woke up this Thanksgiving morning with many thoughts
all jumbled together, trying to form a coherence. Rather than coherence here, I’ll aim for
images and splotches of feelings.
Thinking of William Burroughs, having finished reading
Naked Lunch last night. I know people personally wounded by addiction,
or the addictions of their friends or relatives.
Thinking of Burroughs poem, “Thanksgiving Day, 1986”
(quoted below).
Thinking of guns.
A friend of mine is buying a gun to defend herself from a stalker. I’ve been reflecting on that, but I’ll share
those thoughts later; they need to settle a bit more.
Thinking of friends far away, hoping I get to know them
better as the years come and pass.
Thinking of the United States, and all the countries
and people of the Americas, actually; and the world.
Thinking of places I’d like to visit and know better—particularly
Latin America.
Thinking of the film I saw over the weekend, George Wallace, with Gary Sinise and
Angelina Jolie.
Thinking of the white
southerners depicted in the film, and the blacks brought here as slaves, “freed,”
then left to fend for themselves in a hostile, exploiting society.
Thinking of Martin Luther King, killed for demanding justice
Thinking of John Kennedy, assassinated on this date, forty-nine years ago.
Thinking.
. . .
Wondering (when I woke up, anyway) whether people
fall into three categories: People who
have always lived in the same place, people who have willingly travelled about,
and people who are taken against their will to other places.
Waking this morning, I felt a great connection to
all the people who had come to the Americas from Europe. I’d been reading, last night, about Buenos
Aires; and thinking about the many people of the Americas who came here from
Europe (and wondering why someone would leave the place they were born, to live
and die somewhere else, far from their parents, family, and what they were used
to).
Then thinking about people who have never lived
anywhere other than where they were born; whose ancestors have lived there as
well, as far back as memory or history goes.
Wondering how it is possible to stay in one place. My own background is so different.
Thinking about Africa, the original home of all humans,
scientists say (though indigenous American legends and so on would dispute
that); Africa the Great Indigenous Homeland (yet how differently “Whites” think
of the “Black Africans” and the “Native Americans” and the “Australian
Aboriginals” and themselves).
And thinking about the people who were conquered, or
who were enslaved, or who were kidnapped and dragged off somewhere else against
their will; abused, exploited, tortured, killed; considered of no importance
other than for how they could be used.
And thinking of our current situation, the vast
machinery of Black Friday, in the land where the commercial exploitation of
each holiday begins at midnight at the end of the previous holiday; or even
sooner—where Santa Claus now appears in stores not long after Halloween, before
we’ve even staggered into Thanksgiving.
A friend of mine calls the United States a “heaving
monstrosity.” Burroughs, in his
inimitable way, says “Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons,
destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.”
Nevertheless, I’m still thankful for my friends, my
lovers, my family. I’m still glad I’ve
grown up and live in the United States.
I’m thankful for my own past and my own present, in spite of the
contradictions and paradoxes and darkness contained therein (along with the light).
