I am in Washington, DC for a three day poetry festival called "Split This Rock". I am wearing a hat that says: "Navy: Accelerate Your Life". I believe in the U.S. Navy.
I believe in the acceleration of progress–a thing that might be different from the Navy’s sloganeer’s idea of acceleration.
Strictly speaking, if you accelerate your life you die more quickly. Strictly speaking life is life and no one needs to be faster to experience it.
What an amateur Buddhist I am!
My hotel is old and the windows are drafty and I think John Wilkes Booth has the room next door .
I was surprised tonight by a lurching drunk who managed to ambush me while my guide dog was taking a pee.
"You want some pee?" I asked?
"Nah," he said, as if contemplating pee for the first time in his life. "nah," he said, then staggered away.
Washington is the most disgraceful capitol city in the developed world.
Of course historians will tell you it was always this way.
In America we love to say "it was ever thus" as if by doing so we’re exonerated from taking a part.
I don’t believe in accelerated life.
This is of course the language and symbolism that preys on human despair.
I suspect we have plenty of despair to go around.
No one should be drawn to join the military out of financial hardship.
If the Navy had to attract the children of the rich would their slogan be: Navy: Slow Down Dude!
You get my drift of course: the rich don’t have to accelerate a thing.
Except when they’re driving through neighborhoods like this one.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 