Stuck in the Tunnel
As a kid I
thought going thru the Lincoln Tunnel was so mind-blowing. Quietly we’d sit in the traffic and I’d look
at the tear-stained tiles; then a feeling of nostalgic longing would seep in my
consciousness. I only say nostalgic now—I
was so young how could I possibly be nostalgic beyond the previous day? Occasionally, there’d be that transit officer
sitting in one of those woeful booths. Perhaps
my sadness was associated with fear.
Wouldn’t even a little pin prick cause the entire tunnel to collapse and
cave in on itself? As a kid (and for a
long time as an adult) I thought the tunnel was not underneath the water not in
the ground—but went right thru the Hudson—that there was water on all sides of
the tunnel, except the bottom. I figured
either Charlton Heston—or some other macho biblical figure parted the Hudson
just long enough to erect the structure.
A scary thought for a child of the 1960’s. After all there was no Sly Stallone to save
us all to get us to the daylight. Well,
that’s not entirely true; there was Sly Stone.
He saved me in the late 1960’s. I
loved that he had a band with both black and white musicians. His 1st Lp was so great—Stand/You’ve been sitting much too
long/There’s a permanent crease in your right and wrong. Sly Stone, aside
from every day people where he articulated how prejudice was ridiculous,
demonstrated open-mindedness and progressive thinking by the very way his band
was structured. It’s like one of the basic
rules of writing poetry, or perhaps any kind of writing—Show, Don’t Tell. That rule applies to how one should raise
kids too. You can tell them something
until you’re blue in the face, but if you show them something different they’re
either going to be confused, or they’re going to follow the example that the
parents illustrate by their own behavior.
It’s like my stone-faced, anesthetized, apocryphal father, Abraham Lincoln. You enter the tunnel into his tube of darkness.
You may become stuck in this darkness--a
labyrinth of theoretical emancipation.
But, sooner or later you’ll emerge from being stuck in the tunnel and
realize there’s light on the other side—Mitt Romney. After all, his dad metaphorically walked with
Dr. King (Mitt said that for over a year that his dad marched with King). What a Dick! I mean what a Mitt, along with his close-minded,
non-inclusive religion; so unlike Sly and the Family Stone.
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