Quiet Please . . . By Bishop, Special Eccentric Free Lancer
Silence is always there; all we can make is noise. . . . Mother Mirabel
Time was that neighing of horses was the loudest noise in old Sedona with the exception of closing time at the old Oak Creek Tavern when publishers and film stars went screaming off into the night. Now it is airplanes which seem to cruise above town, faster and lower and louder, accompanied by helicopters.
In the streets to the west of uptown, bellowing Harleys race up and down while autos with out of state plates scrape by one another, often blocking postmen and women from delivering mail. “I can’t do job,” complained one postman in broken Russian. “Its dangerous, car alarms trigger vehicle alarms. This is progress?”
Days roll by, with more and more tourists being encouraged to come here, regardless of whether proper places to park exist—short of homeowner’s lawns. But good old Alan, the Brit, sees the future which our outgoing mayor could not: The Last Traffic Jam. As the wise old Brit tells it, now dry as a desert gulch, “one does not need to have the imagination of one of the Goddesses in the mists of Avalon to see the future which is already here, devouring the present.”
As he sees it, one day soon, Oak Creek Canyon will soon be closed in various areas, thereby backing up traffic down into uptown Sedona. There traffic will run into traffic backed by to the roundabouts given the fact the ADOT will be resurfacing 89A, down to one lane in many places.
Result: Vehicular paralysis.
However, there is a flip side to this future and that is that future is in our midst, devouring the present: Democracy. Yes, the time is near when those feeling guilty driving around in luxury cars while lines form at food banks, will abandon their vehicles since there is no where to go, and look for old trucks and Beetles.
At the same, intellectuals from the no-name bar near Cornville will abandon their Beetles, spattered with peace signs and hop into luxury cars. Why has this been allowed to occur? Wept the Brit, “people never do any research. Not only do they deny the existence of climate change, even though trout are heading north in Oak Creek, they don’t believe in an outfit called ADOT, so new in town are they.”
Whatever, by week’s end everyone has a different car and no one will be moving.
Relationships are being created, couples are breaking up, cell phone batteries dying slowly, no rain in sight, and all was too quiet. Years ago, a singer named Phil Ochs, sang a song called “I Ain’t Marching Any more.” Well, for anyone getting too used to the quiet, perhaps the time has come to march. The best place to start is a march to the voting booths. The time has come to vote many obliviously ignorant elected officials out of office, send them to work in food banks.
This outgoing scribbler, headed soon to a quiet monastery on the border, is not preaching revolution. As one objector named Lisa put it recently, “The time has come to take back Arizona. Change can be free, and bloodless. We can vote.” Truths be known, in some districts only one percent bothers to vote. Marching is a good idea. In that way, people might learn a few things in the fast changing world around them that has yet to be tweeted or texted.
To begin with, menus are changing across the nation, changing because of rising fears about eating beef, chicken or lamb. Based on fresh discoveries about the nutrient values of native food around us, herewith is the menu of a San Francisco restaurant, whose leaders are thinking of opening up in uptown Sedona: *crickets * grasshoppers * chocolate covered spicy super worms * moth larvae salads.
Remote-controlled robots may soon run for office, equipped with skype and internet chat rooms. A bad idea you think gentle, wise reader? Maybe, but it would kill the efforts of large corporations trying to wreck the voting process. Corporations from nowhere support one candidate or another, peddling distortions, wicked charges, often untrue, of their opponent. The voter never knows who funds these candidates. The good news? Robots eat lobbyists for lunch.
No doubt these are confusing times. In Georgia, the governor will soon sign a law permitting guns in schools, churches and hospitals; no mixed metaphors, there. Gaining ground are severe cases of amnesia, led by the idea that poor and unemployed people are born with flaws. There is no reason to support them. They have no future.
They’re going nowhere, and are too lazy to work. In many cases this is being bruited about by candidates whose own antecedents were from Ireland where they froze to death after starving because the King said they were too lazy to work.
It’s time to jail the bankers and march on the legislators always cutting education and school lunches and teachers. How can this be, when billions in subsidies still flow to corporations letting employees go home for good?
The Northern Cheyenne had a way to deal with people like that. It was called the “Night of the Long Knives.” In our time, voting will do.
