Since we're all about to be radiated, it is an unfortunate admission that we live in the nuclear age. That genie, out of the bottle. And I like bottles.

With the atom age came, as if by consequence of the original, the big bang, the fact we're shot far apart, ever distanced from our fellows in our own nuclear carriage, whisked away into our own dimension, our own warp of time and space that is the consequence of driving an auto. Your life is now Doppler Effected away from mine which is Doppler Effected away from yours.

It makes sense that the only way we really meet people is through walking, but this happens less and less, because we're so used to stepping into our own time and space envelopes. The television that brings us horrible event for the human creature brings us in the same breadth a cold distance, a video game I-saw-it,-but-it-didn't-happen-to-me-or-anyone-I-know, so-therefore-it-is-not-so-real, real enough for me to worry about beyond my normal worries.

It's like walking along an avenue, a major artery of a city, like Massachusetts Ave. at four o'clock. A car whisks by. You're on foot. The car driver doesn't care about the pedestrian seen, if at all, in fleeting glance. The walker, moving slower, feels more vulnerable, worries more in general, but cannot see the driver, but just the big vehicle that comes charging along, going too fast, burning up some fuel energy that, seriously, will one day run out, totally out. The pedestrian feels fear and alienation, and steps into a path in the woods and feels a form of peace not to be had on the commuter run.

Every time a bomb goes off, human relations, in general, suffer, applicable everywhere. Historically, the bomb was small to begin with, a pebble, a stone, a rock. Then they got bigger. The bomb answered, or set the pace, every single time, to match the current thinking, the current economy. Brady's photos of The Civil War show the shot's effect, the neatly severed hand, not far away from the bloated face displaying teeth to the sky. That was the economy then, so to speak. Friendly was dehumanization back in 1860. Lincoln's death, perfect metaphor. I'm looking forward, with my wife, watching a play, and I don't hear, don't see, until I turn at the last moment, and Lincoln, of course, had excellent peripheral vision and saw the guy, Booth, coming, raised arm, bang. Was it pain, exactly, Lincoln felt? Some horrible feeling in the heart. Strong bastard, as if to say what we now call 'fuck you,' he lived for eight or so more hours, getting his spirit in shape to depart this fragmented world he had tried to bring together into the same space and time, by words, a union, sad though it was. Mystical, the start of a gathering, a good revolution, never for selfish reasons or base reasons or economic gain, that sort of thing. We stand together, because human atoms do, because we are one with all creatures, and nature is the great democracy, where all things are balanced out.

Then, of course, same the first of world wars, and then, the second. Each showing it wasn't so friendly anymore, and more the quantum opposite. But what do we know, there are only some old farts left, some stories passed down, sons and daughters of those who went through the actual.

But, thank god, the human spirit always fights back. There was Emily D., and so many other poetic spirit and efforts, as witnessed in letters, truly empathetic, caring, all that.

And this is why some of us don't mind standing for, in our humble service way, the public meeting house, a place where cuisine and ambience and stuff to drink are matched with accompanying friendliness (if anyone cares for it anymore, that ugly peasant legacy of the middle ages and serfdom--and who wants to recall that? Except the Buddhists, and all those cool cats of that cool tradition.)