Heart of Darkness

Will you desert or defect when the price is too high to pay?

Will you turn your back on the heart of darkness when the traffic, crowds, filth, poverty…the raw stench of it all starts to seep into your bones and emanate through your pores?

Will you trade in a dream for a well-lit, well-planned, and safe to walk on street?

Will you run off to the mountains and live the rest of your days in a sound proof house that comes with window blinds free of charge?

Where you will not see burned victims, street children, naked bodies on skate boards and prostitutes with their daughters on street corners.

Where you will not hear “Tumhi ho matha, tumhi ho pitha” bellowed from hungry bellies and soar throats that have asked for help too often.
Were you not called here?

In your dreams, in your waking hours, in REM’s all five stages….did not the voice penetrate even then?

To the heart of darkness!….for if love, peace, justice cannot be squeezed out from its dying millions then it does not matter at all.  All else will fade in that discovery….that love has boundaries, limits, places it will not penetrate and cannot be invited into…

Pray that, that moment is never realized…that it doesn’t exist.
Will you leave the hungry, homeless, voices, broken millions to fend for themselves and justify it with theories of Karma and Universal evolution? (The reign of cockroaches to blot out eco-systems dressed in plastic)
Yes it is tempting. It is easy. It is safe ….and it would mean no more groping, no more cum dogging, no more glaring at eve-teasers, no more having to smell humanity’s stench! Call it an early retirement, take my pension and hide out in whatever beauty is left. Follow rivers to their source, venerate mountains and meditate on their summits, greet stars, sun and moon……and spend many hours watching birds build their nests. Observe the miraculous transformation of caterpillars into butterflies.

Do you have the courage to sit in the heart of darkness, put your mouth to its rotting, dying, decaying, despair filled core ….and woe love? Begging it to walk in your streets once more. Your streets, your home, your people….your beloved heart of darkness. Or will you defect to greener pastures?

You know though – that it  will come to the Shire and engulf all that is green and beautiful there as well. It is only a matter of time before its stench and dark fingers have covered earth’s entire being and squeeze all life out of her. Then this dance will end, transform into something, yes…maybe….but look at what exists now!…..Is it not beautiful? Is it not a miracle? It is not the patient evolution of a million ages? For the first time, a branch that can turn its head, look back at what has come to be and let its jaw drop at the exquisite tree of life.
Does it not deserve to be fought for? To be spared? …..to be preserved and allowed to evolve, transform, reach higher and higher…..to a place that can only be imagined in our dreams?

Will you stay and fight?

It will not be easy. But then what worthwhile fights ever have been? It will come with the highest price.
The highest price.!

Are you willing to pay it?

To sacrifice clean air for a smog-filled city. To taste clear river water only in your dreams, while you wade through sewage. To only have memories of forests, while you clean up dying eco-systems dressed in plastic. To look up to the heavens and never see stars or the moon – in the heart of darkness, even the sun is blotted out by pollution. The only songs you will hear are bellowed from empty bellies. The only music you’ll hear will be from groups of lepers trying to stay alive. The only laughter here will be from newborns that have just arrived….and who soon too will forget how to laugh. Sarcasm will be available freely….hate, despair, anger are overflowing from storage rooms and thriving in the fields. No government subsidies necessary for them. They grow in abundance here.
Rivers in all their magnificence will only be a memory…..never again will you sit on their banks and feel that rush of energy…..vibrant and alive….
Here they have all been dammed, straightened, polluted….strangled to death. There are no summits here from where sun and valley can be greeted. They’ve been eroded into hills of dust and mined into rubble. Birds do not visit the heart of darkness, do not sing within its borders, do not dive, soar or fly here. The only ones who live here can be found sitting on electric lines awaiting electrocution.
This is the heart of darkness.

Will you stay and help?