While it's true that I've outlived my rage without losing my passion ...

This is the 50 year anniversary of the bus burnings at Anniston, AL.

... it is also true that on these occasions when I re-visit those periods of anger and outrage all of the affect returns along with the memories.  The pain is full-blown as if I'm again trapped in the experience with no way to flee its agony.

The above statement is true only as long as I stay in this particular time warp and don't wander too freely into the once-lived; then all bets are off.

There is need to protect myself from that which I cannot go back and change -- even when I see the nation in denial that it ever was -- and that "it's all over now" -- and that there is no need for protective legislation or defenses against those things over which so many human lives were lost or stunted by social injustices too burdensome to overcome; yet we did -- despite all.

I'm guessing that the underlying angst started with that dastardly Supreme Court unraveling of the fabric of the great struggles of Black Americans for the simple right to vote.   What is being expressed throughout the South and beyond through Stand your Ground laws giving license to vigilante justice, and Stop & Frisk practices -- assuring the further degradation in the lives of young African American and Latino males.

Those things are playing in the background right now, and unlike those younger days when I could pick up a picket sign and join the marchers to mute the pain and straighten my spine, now I can only try to remind those around me of the dangers of peeling back our visible social progress to the quick against a rising tide of ignorance that continues to exercise the right of White Privilege to the detriment of all else.

While I do acknowledge the vast changes made over time, that's now being combined with a sense of hopelessness.  My logical mind is resistant to allowing those two concepts to co-exist -- I suspect that  the collision is going on somewhere in my head that reflects that which we're all living out in the great society.  Maybe my radar is simply picking it up more accurately than is true for some.

I admit to identifying with Mr. Allen, the White House butler, in more ways than one might suppose.  How could I not?

Surely there is room for these conflicting truths to co-exist as we sort out our next moves toward that "more perfect Union" that we've promised ourselves.

Meanwhile, the knowledge that I probably won't live long enough to see it is at the bottom of these feelings of helplessness, but that was never meant to be.  We only get to influence Fate through our tenure upon the Earth for microscopic bits of eternity.

Maybe my main reason for being, after all, is to deliver the Charbonnet/Breaux/Allen DNA safely through this century without spilling it or otherwise despoiling the human gene pool.   Maybe that's enough.

... but then what is the mission of those who so stubbornly stand in my way?