A PATRIOT DIRGE: Emerging from The Void

Riding the Dragon Toward the Light

It had been seven months since Rome had retired to the cabin. The floors, tables and chairs were strewn with books, articles, newspapers and notes. Notes everywhere. He rode the dragon through layers of introspection and extrospection. He examined his psyche and his place in the world. He punished himself for his failings and remembered his virtues. He had relived his life from the womb to the sunrise that now graced the northern Pacific on a clear June morn.

The dragon was crashing. He was emerging from the darkness and moving steadily toward the light.

It was time to clean house. It was time to clear out all the old ideas, the archives of past struggles, to make room for the new. It was time to organize his thoughts, formulate his plans and renew his contacts.

Only the goals remained: Stop the war, end the occupation, redefine foreign policy, defend civil liberties and build an independent movement to challenge the dominance of corporate politics.

The questions that remained were: How far was he willing to go? Would he compromise one objective (as he had done in 2004) to achieve another? Did his priorities reflect his values? Could the resistance find a formula that would hold them together?

No matter how much things seemed to change, these were very much the same questions that dissidents had always faced. Progressive movements rarely achieved lasting unity. When they did, it was invariably the result of some cataclysmic event like the Great Depression or the Vietnam War.

The traditional wedge issues in Republican politics were as potent as ever and now they added fear of a terrorist attack. Was opposition to the Iraq War powerful enough to overcome the coalition of rightwing neocons and Christian fundamentalists?

Was he ready for the struggle ahead? Was he ready to meet the world? In the age of technological acceleration, would the world he greeted, after a prolonged absence, be the same world he left behind? He was completely cut off. Every bit of news and analysis he possessed was at least seven months old. Anything could have happened: an assassination, another terrorist attack, civil unrest, martial law or an environmental catastrophe.

He was suddenly hungry for the same sources of news and information he had cast out of his life in order to discover or rediscover his soul.

As soon as he put his house in order, he began to plan his reentry into society: a drive to Vancouver, a ferry to Port Townsend and, then, Seattle.

He did not hurry the journey; he took time to talk to the people who lived and worked in the world. In coffee houses and bars, he sat quietly, opened his mind and listened as he had never listened before. He listened to Canadian lumberjacks, tired of a corrupt Liberal government, hoping that better relations with the Americans would somehow translate into a better life for themselves and their families. He listened to angry leftists, railing on Canadian cooperation with American wars and neo-liberal trade policies. He listened to American waiters, retail workers, laid off industry workers, workers of every trade, complaining about the decline of living standards, lost health benefits, collapsing pensions, declining wages, feckless unions, the cost of living and war. He listened to artists, writers, sculptors, musicians and designers wondering if they had lost their way – if there even was a place for them in the new world of global enterprise and manufactured consent.

By the time he crossed the Sound from Port Townsend to Seattle, he understood that people everywhere were undergoing the same period of doubt and reflection that had consumed him for seven months.

There was a change in the air. There was deep discontent. The people were looking for a way out of the void. They were still bogged down by the hunt for scapegoats and easy solutions but there was hope they would soon go beyond the standard automatic reactions. Deep down, every man and woman knew that human sexuality and the tragic necessity of abortion were not at the core of our problems. Every woman and man understood that religious values, like pharmaceutical drugs, were not solutions but only remedies to relieve the symptoms of disease.

Rome understood that the war, itself, was part of a much bigger problem and that it could not be isolated from the whole. The plight of the workingman was the plight of the Afghan, the plight of the Iraqi, the plight of the Paris suburbs, the plight of the Chinese industrial worker, the plight of the Guatemalan coffee farmer, and the plight of the woman behind the counter at Starbucks.

It came down to economics. It was not enough to stop a war when the powers behind the war would only start another. It was not enough to target any particular problem, no matter how global or earth changing, when the infrastructure of corporate control remained intact. Any solution to a global disease had to attack the root and source of the disease.

"I know you," said a woman with dark probing eyes.

Rome was sitting outdoors at a waterfront café, sipping a latte and devouring the Times, when a woman approached him without warning.

"You’re Rome Mason," she said.

She sat down and they began to talk as if they were old friends. She knew him from his activism before the last election. She was aware of his sudden withdrawal from the movement. As they talked, Rome began to suspect that in the archives of things forgotten, he knew of her work as well.

"I didn’t catch your name," he said.

"Amy," she replied. Just Amy.

This was not a chance meeting. She was holding something back. Something was building and she wanted Rome to be a part of it.

"We’ve been waiting for you," she said, as if reading his mind.

He smiled. It was good to know someone was waiting for him. She smelled of jasmine. Why hadn’t he noticed before? It was the same scent Anna had worn before the darkness pulled them apart. He had no sense of romance. She was much too young and his desire was all but spent. Dreams. Only dreams. Still, it was soothing to remember.

"We’ve been waiting for you to come out of retirement," she continued. "We knew the minute you hit Vancouver, you were back."

He did not wonder why or how. He knew there were ways to track a man. He had not tried to cover his tracks. He believed in fate. He believed there was a reason for every action, every thought and movement, every fluctuation in the field of play. This was the reason he emerged from his hole. Amy was his connection to the world.

They shook hands and set a date for a meeting of minds. All the players would be in attendance.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, PACIFIC FREE PRESS, LEFTWARD, DISSIDENT VOICE AND COUNTERPUNCH. SEE RANDOM JACK