Dear Gentlefolk at Compassionate Care, Natural
Resources Defense Council, Amnesty International, Southern Poverty Law Center,
DNC, Planned Parenthood, Save the Polar Bears, UNICEF, ACLU, PBS, AARP,
International Rescue Committee for Syrian Refugees, Doctors Without Borders, Friends
of the Earth, Habitat For Humanity, Coalition Against Gun Violence, Santa
Monicans For Renter’s Rights…. plus KPCC and S.M. Emeritus which receive
monthly pledges and those I’m sure I’ve forgotten…. I have supported you all
and you’re all deserving and tied for first place.
But you’re killing me with Thank You notes. When I
send you twenty-five bucks you send me $23.00 worth of acknowledgements in the
form of bumper stickers, address labels, shopping bags, T-shirts, coffee mugs
and maps. Enough already; just cash the check and shut up or remove me from
your list. I know you are out there. I don’t need these costly mailers. Get a
grip. Please, no more slick pictures of emaciated children, melting icebergs,
mass-shootings, battered housewives or shipwrecked rafts. I get it.
You are clogging my mailbox, real and virtual. I
spend an hour each day deleting the glut of petitions and surveys from
Democratic Headquarters, Move-On, Nation Of Change, solicitations from worthy
magazines, research for diseases from AIDS to Zika, Congressional campaigns and
advocacy groups for the elderly. Yes, yes, I know about the dwindling bee
population, danger of pesticides, reckless greed of Big Pharma and cruelty to
chickens. How should I rank the pleas? Is the threat of a dysentery epidemic in
Mali more or less deserving than rebuilding homes in the devastated ninth ward
still waiting after Katrina? What about the inhumanity in the treatment of our
undocumented detained and deported? Or the homeless right here in Los Angeles?
And notice, I haven’t once even mentioned Trump, the elephant in my brain.
I’ve reached the point where I dare not open the
mail. Saying, No, hurts too much. I wish I were a rich man! Fixed incomes don’t
stretch. I apologize for having been born Here in the cosmic crap-shoot as
opposed to There. Yes, I do live under fair skies, all body parts accounted for,
neither ill-clad nor ill-fed with fair skin in this white-man’s bubble of
humanity. So writing is what I do. A message in a bottle thrown off the Santa
Monica Pier, as Maud said to Harold, so
I’ll always know where it is.
Even the best words in the best order won’t feed the
hungry or reverse our acceleration to Fahrenheit doom but words can become
swords with the addition of a single letter. Poets, and writers do best when
they render their authentic selves, not as diatribe but as expressions of imagination
and honesty, the ultimate subversion. Deceit lies at the core of our ills and
truth-telling through art is a threat to the masters of denial and subterfuge.
It is no coincidence that support for the Arts is on the chopping block.
As for the marriage of Art and Society, that’s a
subject for another day. The task is to channel vehemence into an evocative
voice which speaks to an audience beyond the choir … without expectation of
return mail.
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