This is a Burke vs. Paine moment. The recent shattering of windows in the greedy Scottish banker's mansion may be momentarily thrilling - but as Burke observed, you don't rebuild a house by knocking it down. The plans afoot, to storm the City banks next week, timed to coincide with Obama's visit to London, are entirely misguided. One does not pelt a pilot with stale buns during a crash landing. The time to restructure the capitalist system is tomorrow. And slowly. Today we should be speaking and planning, together, how to locate a globally-sustaining ideology, or system, to allow for the world to continue managing the many forces straining against each other. Yes, we need to enter into a post-capitalist world. I am a post-capitalist. However, radicalism in the streets should not be simply a wasted resource. Best to conserve that radicalism for a revolution of minds. Put it in writing, not through someone's window pane.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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