BY JASON WHITE
The Poppy, a symbol of hope and courage rather than its profitable cousin which we knowingly create opioids and heroin with, the flower from Flanders’s is certainly a Gemini. Two years ago, we suffered through a cultural objection regarding pucks and sticks and so-called icons. ‘You people’ witnessed one old man yelling at another to respect our culture, which gave way to one corporation deciding for us, that we as a society, had had enough of the shenanigans. That will happen when you owe $5Billion to another corporation for the right to broadcast those pucks and sticks.
This coming week, our neighbors will decide the fate of the planet and as nine-days in November commences, you will hopefully see real icons holding boxes of plastic replicas. And let us hope you will have a crisp $20 in your pocket to cough up, a small price for those so-called freedoms we like to yammer on about. The ATM is full of them. The world is full of men and women who gave everything, who will never get the recognition they fully deserve. Sadly, we are losing them to time. Now, more than ever, we need to remember the things we take for granted. Life is too boring not to try.
The internet is today’s cultural appropriation of freedom, “it was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it’s really given us is Howard Dean’s aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn.” With the amount of hatred and misinformation streaming the globe we often forget that in our everyday lives, we focus on understanding the world, not remembering it. ‘We appreciate, manage, enjoy, negotiate, confront, praise, love, argue, get through — all ways of understanding’.
Forgetting is necessary. It allows us to experience the world more fully and immediately. It helps us manage the painful events in our lives. And it encourages us to remember what is important. I know, a little much for Sunday morning tea…
Wear a poppy, don’t wear one. That is your right. Being honest, last year I did not sport one on my lapel. I have one in my living room and another in my car year-round. I am not an exceptional human being, that is just my journey. I do not wear AIDS ribbons or ‘fight cancer’ wrist bands, nor do I type Amen to ridiculous posts about starving kids or three-legged misfits. I try not to take things for granted and be a decent human. It does not always work out that way or that well. All we can do is try.
So as the seasonal music ramps up, baby its cold outside, and the nights get longer, let us try and remember what really matters. Above the pointless shopping and excessive gratuities, give me a cold drink and a hot meal. A warm bed and a genuine smile. Friends and family. Its these things that they fought for. Its these things that they died for. They did this, so we would never have to.
they shall never grow old.
