Now that it's the New Year, I had a hard boiled egg, cabbage and black eyes peas for dinner with Henry. We had some chocolate and talked a little bit about college football and his traveling to the East Coast over Christmas. It was a little cold to walk tonight, but very clear. I could see Orion and Cassiopeia very clearly along with a few of the planets. It is around 40 degrees which is cold for Shreveport. There is not much traffic through the neighborhood, just the occassional popping of firecrackers like random gunfire.
Now I am home. I have taken off the sneakers which I bought last year before I went to New Orleans to visit Brian, the aikido master, who lived near the 9th ward for a while there. I have put on a warm new robe. I am listening to Mozart on Windows Media Player and drinking Diet Dr Pepper, mainly because I am temporarily out of Earl Grey Tea. Later I may have some red zinger by celestial seasoning.
Henry and Brian are two of my friends whom I have known for years now. I enjoy their company and conversation. I think we are all "into" music like classical and jazz. We all like public radio most of the time and tend to eat more vegetarian food than really meaty dishes. I am the heaviest among us. I am trying to diet but it is not easy when eating plays such a central part in the things I look forward to each day. Both my nephew Ray and I are pretty heavy and I think it just runs in the family. We are from the South and have been raised on biscuits and gravy and pork chops and corn bread and all that. Of course we are both 40 now and should know better than to eat such fattening foods when we are overweight. We shouldn't need comfort food at our age. It is just one of those things I guess someday soon I will get over it or it will get me.
It's the new year now -- 2011. I have to admit that I slept through the last three hours of 2010. I slept well and I don't regret missing the ball drop in New York City one bit. Another of my friends, a neighbor named Eric, and I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie at Henry's house. Henry wasn't due back in town until the next day (today) but having a key to his house and needing to feed his cat anyway, I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up with Eric and watch a funny, dark, suspense/comedy movie like Sherlock Holmes and kind of kill two birds with one stone. I took my DVD player to Henry's and Eric provided the movie from the Red Box machine and away we went. At first the DVD player failed to work properly, but eventually the machine read the disc. Overall, I was happy with the movie. It was not too cerebral and may even be a minor cult classic someday. It was definitely not the worst movie I have ever seen.
I shopped for clothes at the department store sales today in the big and tall section. I took about 10 minutes to pick out 200 dollars worth of shirts that all were marked down after Christmas so that the total bill was less than 80 dollars. Granted these are not name brand shirts, but they fit and I am not so picky when it comes to work clothes. Remember, I work at the non profit where we serve many people who do not have enough food to eat. We give away second hand clothes, and 2 hot meals a day, for free.
We served people that are usually quite happy to have second hand clothes for themselves and their children. Keeping warm is far more important to them than making a fashion statement. I feel obliged to stay on their wavelength and as much as possible. I try to live my life now with the same sense of priorities that the homeless and hungry in this community feel. Otherwise what am I doing there? If not trying to get in touch with the plight of the under privileged, what business do I have even walking through their neighborhoods? I ask myself this every day as I drive to work deeper and deeper into the wooden row houses: as cars yield to old men on bicycles and former prostitutes with toothless grins wave at everyone passing by; the now empty lot that once contained their house now holds nothing but hay and mist and a dying sycamore tree in front of the ruins of some crumbling concrete steps that lead nowhere. "What could I possibly be doing here?" I ask myself every day.
Usually my answer is two fold: 1) helping to keep these people reasonably healthy and happy and 2) keeping myself out of this sort of poverty myself. When I realize, "there but for the grace of God go I" the feeling of purpose really does penetrate my heart. My priorities which can so easily get shaken out of place by ads and music and magazines, falls back into the basics and I spend all day in the back of my mind trying to make sense out of all the poverty and sickness even here in the backyard of my hometown and many other places throughout this great country.
And Mozart still plays in the background. Things haven't really changed much for mankind. The heavens still dance in the sky as they did for all the great composers of music. The scale of change is so much bigger than the life of any one man, like the curvature of the Earth: it is there right before your eyes but only so slightly that we cannot see it. Change -- the great delta -- will stay the same enigmatic force just beyond the perception of the living save perhaps the keen perspective of visionaries, historians, and hopeful social scientists. Even in this advanced year of 2011, we all fight against the desire to lose our own versions hope.
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