Far from Home

Dear Kate,

What a beautiful spring morning. I lived 364 to live this day.  Maybe still too chilly for some, but right-on for me.  I know where you are such beautiful weather is the norm; I hope you will never take it for granted.  "God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them."

Apparently still too chilly for most.

I didn't see a soul walking my dog up the mount and all around.  I took away the comma in this last sentence to mean it both ways.

Finally I saw my neighbor getting his car ready before I entered my home and took from the peaceful façade of a peaceable neighborhood the only wandering souls, mine and Sumi's, a tenuous link between us.  She is getting old.

A quiet desperation can be beautiful too, too vulnerable to touch, a spell cast over everything.

We are all busy with stuffs.  Busy getting ready to work.  Busy sleeping in.  Busy picking up and dropping off items and objects, getting ready for a wetter or warmer or colder day: any day but today.  Busy staying at our own corners, keeping quiet, irenic and ironic.  The best neighbor is the kind that you don't see, staying out of your busyness.

"If you’re going to the grocery store and you know that you’ve got a neighbor that needs something, ask if you can pick it up for them and reduce the number of trips that we take," our leader suggested, something that you would have thought any good neighbor would say, would have been doing already, skyrocketing gas price or not.  People got very upset hearing that.  We have a very twisted sense of morality and it twists us up inside, in our own home, all quiet though on the western and every front.

There are many ways to look at this, look at ourselves.  A mental health crisis behind every door, we are ready to declare, meltdowns every good citizen should have the decency to clean up after oneself.  Spilled onto the street still, more of that I saw, walking on avenues big and small.  Surveillance, a peaceful friend suggested, keep an eye on the bad apples out there, human exceptions vandalizing our façade.  Another friend got his house just now and asked before anything else, Should I get a smart-home monitor, looking at who's out there?  I asked, Who on earth?

I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would've stayed home
Who uses all his power to do evil
But in the end is always left so alone
That man whom with his fingers cheats
And who lies with every breath
Who passionately hates his life
And likewise, fears his death

I pity the poor immigrant
Whose strength is spent in vain
Whose heaven is like ironsides
Whose tears are like rain
And who eats but is not satisfied
Who hears but does not see
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me

I pity the poor immigrant 

Who tramples through the mud 

Who fills his mouth with laughing 

But builds his town with blood 

Whose visions in the final end 

Must shatter like the glass

I pity the poor immigrant 

When his gladness comes to pass

No one knows what exactly Dylan means with these words.

Everybody knows.  It's about a diaspora we are retraditioning with every closing of our door.

Yours, Alex