Those moments

in motion or sitting still

by the window or by the seas.

Lost in time.

In space, anchor-less – ly

Free time, free from chores

of burden and of obligation.

Free to choose- or not to

Don’t let others sway, persuade or influence

via social media or mass media

push or pull, soft or hard sell.

You and I are free: in thoughts and action

We live. Leaving behind footprints and fingerprints

posts and profiles , smiles and sadness.

We are.

Born, survive and die.

On our own. All alone. Period.

Unencumbered and unaffiliated. Unfriended and unfamiliar.

Don’t let others sway, persuade or influence.

To tell you otherwise e.g. what J6? or Tianamen Square.

Or Tutu, a priest , who once fought for a freedom.

What’s with freedom that everyone is longing for, looking for and dying for?

Isn’t it a right, a guarantee once we belong to a certain political entity?

Like a Democracy whose citizens have the rights to vote, to free assembly.

I know your right to bear arms. Good for you. It’a not a pick and choose Democracy. Lots of guns and lots of fence around you.

Frost said fence made for good neighbours. NRA said guns made for good pa(y)triots.

So be proud Dad, gun owner and diploma holder (or to borrow it, as if one just shows a library card to borrow a book) to defend an out-of-state car lot, claiming self-defence and hailed as hero.

Education is out. Opioid is in. Cannabis in. Cabinet and Congress out.

Court in. Let’s lawyered up. Armed up. Going to war. To fight.

Always fight, for “freedom”. Die for freedom. Never live for anything. Like waiting for a sunrise.

For a hot meal (slow-cooked.) Or a kid to graduate.

Women in the field, planting and harvesting. Men in the field too, but battle field.

Machine-aided wars. Nuke ‘ m. Or make a deal, a pact, a peace with Putin.

Orphans without (parental) guidance. Orphans without directions home. Orphans bargained and bartered away in deep Afghanistan.

And so it went. You can’t go home again.

Aimlessness. Purposelessness. Weightlessness. Repurposing one’s life (refugees’), one’s ambition and aspiration. Starting point: the toilet. Ending point: the urn/ grave. What’s the point? of – extract and subtract – of pruning and trimming, living while dying? Helping others less fortunate? (those people? holding a sign, that begins with PLEASE… living a more tragic life than yours)…When we were orphans……

Go fund me. Go help me. Go see me. Go figure.

We’re sinners called to be saints. Saints schools we did not attend. Sainthood we did not attain. Cannot.

Not with current undercurrents, underneath the tide that shifts. Earth shifts. Its atmosphere and stratosphere.

Climate Change and Attitude Change. The former mitigatable. The latter? God help them. We, relics of the Hippies and the Yuppies, just want to win.

Always First to the Field and first in line (to the grave), finger in the hole. Lord, help my disbelief.

Moments of waste and of want. In motion or sitting still. By the window or by the seas. Feel like All are nil. All vanished – like the 2021 Star-studded Obituary list, and not the Olympics roster.

Lives lived in full or half-way. All disintegrated and turned into recycled nano particles (used to be called “bones and marrows”, MIA’s with previous impetus and impulses. Brain and gain. DNA and RNA. NRA and NRB (the former kill, the latter last rites).

Vanishing vanity. In their place? Wild flowers, more beautiful than all the treasures of Solomon. Dust come to dust. Ashes to the seas. Wind-swept and scattered in constant flux and flow, filled with Oxygen (albeit a bit late) in the ozone.

We’re fortunate: to have existed at all, full of foolishness and fearfulness. In awe and awestruck. Amazement and amusement. Trembling in fear and foreboding, at times, doubling down on some thesis and antithesis, then regrets and rewrites, without reluctance.

Meanwhile, out there, in weightless space, those Moments all-spent

(before you know it or even aware of the futility of it all).