Sunday, February 21, 2010

Finally free of the lifelong rage?

Drove to the Oakland Museum yesterday for that oral history interview which meant revisiting the awfulness of racism of the '50's, and noted on the way home that there was an element missing ... the long-simmering and highly-controlled fury that has played in the background of my life, throughout. Talking into a microphone about those years no longer reactivates the pain of rejection. Wonder when it was dissipated, and just how it happened? Is it over now, or will it return full-blown through some negative experience but get expressed in some new form?

Is this the effect of my day-to-day work with the National Park Service -- the ongoing research aspects of having to deal with my personal history objectively that has brought change?

There's a vague familiarity about the feeling -- like sitting in a frozen metal chair in 17 degree weather in front of the nation's Capitol watching the Inauguration ... yes! That's it.

Could it be that I'm finally feeling "heard," in the world because I've been handed a megaphone? It's as if the silence has broken around generations of injustice leaving space now for reconciliation. And -- why does this bring to mind the image of melting massive glaciers -- with the deafening cracking sounds and rising sea levels ...

Transition?

What do you suppose comes next?

Is this what it feels like to have "processed" one's history? This can't be a singular experience, but suggests that I'm not alone -- that my life may have fallen within the bounds of a change generation. I suspect that humankind has moved through the ages with pulsations like the one I seem to be experiencing; those occasional and unpredicted thrusts that moves humanity inevitably toward -- I know not what ... and that this feeling of social well-being will be short-lived, lasting only until the next outrage occurs ... .

Maybe I can blow it apart by turning on CSPAN for a few hours.

That should do it.

But in the meantime ... .

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