dense fog.

inland, you wouldn’t know.

inland it is sunny and warm.

but here – on the coast of lake michigan – with very specific circumstances – we are socked in with fog. it rolled in on cloudy waves. it lingers in the trees and hangs over the street. it brings with it a damp cold – much different than a couple miles inland. the lakefront is its own weather system.

it was a foggy morning, soupy and grey. we put on extra layers. we left to hike one of our favorite river trails. it was sunny there – so much so that we were shedding those extra layers of clothing.

and, then, on that same day in the early evening, we watched the advection fog stake claim to the neighborhood again, just as it had done that morning and for the past mornings.

all the same day.

and so we sat in the quiet of the fog as it surrounded us, our home, our ‘hood.

and, just as we didn’t know what the people in the sun were doing, neither did they know we were sitting in a blanket of dense fog.

we don’t know what we don’t know.

but isn’t it our job – as humans living in nation-wide community with each other – to seek knowledge of the other? of others’ circumstances?

are we culpable for an awareness of other-ness?

if i am on the lakefront and you are inland, do i care about you, do you care about me?

is there a line – somewhere between the lake and inland or in this country – that divides the needs of the people? is there a line – somewhere between the north and the south, the east and the west – that divides the needs of the people? is there a line – of race, of ethnicity, of orientation, of birth circumstance, social ladder-climbing, status, society’s trappings – that divides the needs of the people? is there a line – somewhere between the haves and the have-nots or the have-it-alls and the have-nothings – that divides the needs of the people?

where is compassion? a sense of decency? of humanity?

there is – apparently – no line that is too low for what is happening in this country now.

how is it that people – real people – mean so little to this administration?

and i think about those people – humans – who are cheering this on. i wonder how they have been seduced.

have they read the bills, the laws, the executive orders, the project, the intentions?

do they realize that this is decimating our country – the same country that is their country?

do they even give a second to wondering how all this cruelty, greed, destruction, moral corruption is “great”?

is their lack of concern because it does not directly impact them…yet? do they even know if it does?

is their state of great glee because it’s sunny where they are right now?

do they know that weather systems are not static, that they travel and affect communities at will, that it could be them next?

how can they linger in their cold dense fog – oblivious and unconcerned?

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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