It struck me this morning, how I have maybe always seen that statue in New York harbour as a prize, and not what she is, a challenge, an ideal, to try for, be willing to fail for, stand for, face, question, embrace, remind, you, me, them, depending on your perspective, what we would like to be, sometimes fail at, and that’s ok, as trying for it is far better than not. See, to fail you first have to try to if you’ve tried you either learn the lesson and try and fail again, possibly succeed or else lie down and wallow in the failure, that’s the choice.
Our perspective shifts as more voices are added though, and the chorus grows, the diversity of the voices adds strength, through the years, and the future strolls ever on, oblivious, and where it leads depends on how we see our past, and what things we may take with us, and what things we no longer need, that no longer serve us.
“Walk past to get past.“
[ quotes {“”} and my thoughts after watching Stone Ghosts: A Journey Through The Confederate South, From Charlottesville To Selma. ]
Like ideas, and once traditional social graces, laid by the wayside, abandoned, as they no longer have any value to us, or have become unnecessary, have been replaced. That is, when we are given the opportunity to stop and look around, check in our gunny sac, relax our grip, do a clean out, and become aware of our needs, of the community, the state, the nation, and then, finally, maybe, and lastly but not the least, the world, and what things we all need, want.
Shelter, security, hope, faith in something so that we don’t fall for everything, and a recognition that we will fail, and I believe this with my whole heart, that we shall be judged by how we treat the least of us, by whom, well, for what you shall give out to the world you will receive back three-fold, or so the ancient wise ones repeat from one fable to the next, so there must be something to it. And, as we eventually learn, what we want, what we get, and what we deserve, well, no one said life was ever fair, ya get what ya get.
hidden from view
feeds the fog of denial
if we do not share
stories
[ IBID ]
Racism is sticky, and racists, often, don’t like to be called racist, and generally have all sorts of reasons why they aren’t, and eventually, you have to wonder, doth thou protest too much?
But without the conversation, without the dialogue, there is no voice, the answers can not be found to a question that is not asked, to a topic that is shrouded in fear, divide, perspective and shame, anger, intolerance, ignorance, all impede the pilgrims of progress and open-mindedness loses face, and common sense is all in the eye of the beholder, and really gets us nowhere, and we become entangled in ghosts of the past, instead of those beacons towards the future, and maybe that too is what the Statue of Liberty stands for, and we can learn.
“How to speak and not repeat.“
[ IBID ]
Freedom to speak your truth, succeed, fail, hope, faith, charity, disagreement, anger, opposition, are noble things, necessary things, I believe.
unflinchingly
clenching
equality
for all
who stand for
democracy
knows not skin
nor colour
or belief
but
liberty
for all
[ IBID ]
The one part, the part where they show this stump in the centre of town, a piece of a past, filled with agony, cruelty, dehumanizing, and painful, and there on display on the sidewalk of this Main Street U.S.A is this thing where people were sold, and stood while others paid for their fate, and now you too can have your photo taken standing on it, and it was that one thing that pivoted, confused, and that it was still there was stunning and that it was there was conflicting, a piece of history, or a piece of something else?
The values we hold today, are not the same as yesterday, and these symbols, where the statues of men who betrayed their nation stand in public squares across the south are coming down, and the same is happening here in Canada, with Prime Ministers who stole children from their families in order to steal away the thing about them that made them different, their nativeness to the land, and immigrants that we are all, a colonial draconian mindset has no place in the 21st century.
Not all statues should stand throughout time, like the once mighty statue of Zeus or Apollo, these ideals of the past no longer serve.
The statue in the harbour of New York, she stands, she reminds the many of the hope, liberty and the pursuit of the light, a beacon, not the prize, of a dream, strength of the many voices when they speak and not repeat the past, and I do have faith, still, that change is possible, inevitable, and only happens when we try, and listen, and learn how to walk past to get past.
by PaulaB 
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