“I Have a Dream Today…” 50 Years Ago In a Land of Struggle, Progress, and Struggle

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." –

(Excerpt) By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr… Given on the steps of The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC-- August 28, 1963

One Love.

DISCONNECTEDNESS

Have you ever felt completely and utterly disconnected from the rest of the world?

I do not mean in some desperate, aggressively sociopathic-serial-killer way that people should hurriedly cross the street whenever they see you approaching…

No. I mean have you ever felt so relentlessly unusual and so blatantly different… that no one else, not another soul ever truly GETS The Real You?

I do. I feel that way most of the time. In fact, I’ve felt that way since time was a child.

It’s this quiet sense of deep inner stillness and it reminds me that no matter where I am, or who I’m with... I am always ALONE.

Freak!

Although there are and have been instances where that lone voice of my freakiness didn’t always hurt or bleed or scream so loudly and I was/am or have been able to blend in with the prosaic rest. However, it was such a part-time phenom that it felt like an almost bogus existence.

Freak!

Have you ever thought that if someone else, anyone else at all truly KNEW you, your card hand would be peeped, the jig would be up… and you would have to forever relinquish each and every one of your Cool Creds?

I do. In fact, any Cool Creds I've collected or amassed would have to be erroneous at best.

I am only me: a freak just beneath my skin.

I don’t think or feel there is anything remotely wrong with this condition---at least not anymore. We can chalk that up to The Riddle of Humanity, the march of maturity and the rules of human evolution.

We are EXACTLY who we're supposed to be.

And what we are supposed to be is different, unique… singular. That is the way God meant for each of us to be.

So this state of disconnectedness, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a wicked thing or a source for hidden shame.

FREAK!

But damn it, sometimes it gets sooooooooooooooooooo freakin’ LONELY.

Smell me?

One.

Ten Recent Things That Give Me Pause… Make Me Ask WTF…(?) Or Just Cause Me To Ponder…

One: How three people from my childhood all just died within a week of each other. WTH???

Two: How certain laws are so deviously designed to keep large segments of this population down... permanently.

Three: How it always falls to us to keep those tedious folks who procrastinate— honest and to remind them to live up to their word.

Four: How some friends take these extended sabbaticals and then you never hear from them again.

Five. How doing someone a favor, being in someone’s corner, or a constant source of support doesn’t necessarily manifest in any form of reciprocation.

Six: How several years of making a concerted effort can render absolutely no positive result.

Seven: How people can deny and lie continuously and somehow arrogantly believe they won’t be discovered. Right, A-Rod?

Eight: How willpower isn’t a sometime concept, but a perpetual muscle to be tested and flexed incessantly.

Nine: How people have taken and perhaps always will take kindness for weakness, and how loyalty seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur, the Edsel… and good ole B&W TV.

Ten: How snatching JOY becomes very much necessary, because the bastards and mofos of this world will always try their level best to steal your JOY away from you (& yo quasi-happy azz).

Just sayin’, yo.

One.