I'm a cheap date - even to myself. It's a reincarnation thing. I think I know who I was the last time around. She wrote about feeling as intensely alive during a walk around the block as other people did in their most extravagant adventures.
There's a real nice park in this city - known by the imaginative name of City Park - and when I ride my bike downtown two or three times a week to do necessary errands, my regular route takes me past the lake. Directly across it, several paddle-boats are attached to a dock. They can be rented from the college kids who run the swimming pool, which is also on the other side of the lake.
Last summer, I was pretty sure it was my final year in town. By autumn, by spring at the latest, I'd be gone. Last summer, every time I passed the lake I promised to rent a paddle-boat before the season was over. How sad it would be to move away, never having done that. But somehow the time was never right. The weather was too hot, or an important obligation waited at home, or I was carrying too much stuff, or reluctant to spend money on frivolity. The summer came to an end, and the lake and pool toys were stored away.
When this year's recreational season geared up, I was still in town, and tempted again by the paddle-boat idea, though not with quite so strong an emotional component this time. Still, it was an attractive notion. I applied the Deathbed Test: as I lie dying, will one of the things I ask myself be, "Why didn't I ever get in one of those silly boats and cruise around on City Park Lake?" The answer: probably.
Time went by, with many mundane errand runs, back and forth, and still the time never seemed right until I realized that today would be the last day for both the swimming pool and the paddle-boats. So yesterday I made a firm decision: if the sky provided some cloud cover today, no matter how much important work was piled up on my desk, I'd take advantage of the weather and go to City Park.
So this morning there are clouds, not too many, just enough. I leave my backpack at home and take along a little fanny pack with keys and cash and tissues, pens and notepad: the essentials of life. To go out in public without my "papers" is thrilling. By this time next year, we might all look back with fond regret on the vanished era of free travel without ID cards. The day might come when I'll recall this little expedition and marvel, "I don't believe I once actually went across town without any ID. I remember what it was to be an American!"
At the park, the concession guy says no paddle-boats until 3:00. It's only about noon, and I'm not prepared to wait around that long; ergo, no paddle-boat for me this year. It serves me right. You snooze, you lose - that's life. But as long as I'm here, why not tour the park a bit? There are parts of it I've never seen.
Riding along the trail, surrounded by greenery, I pass a clearing where eight or ten Muslim women sit at two wooden picnic tables, with a dozen or so of their kids playing nearby. That's beautiful. I love it that these mothers feel safe enough to bring their children to the park. Several national magazines have announced that my town is the best place to live in the whole United States, and for the first time I realize that boast just might be true.
I wonder if they come here on a regular schedule. I wonder if some racist fundamentalist homegrown terrorist yahoo will figure it out and bring a bomb here. Some people are upset about the pork-barrel aspect of how the homeland security funds are allotted. They're pissed off that money's being spent to protect the ice cream stand in Nowhere, Dakota. But anyplace could be the scene of carnage. There aren't enough cameras or enough sniffer dogs to protect all the possible terror targets. Everywhere is a terror target, and everywhere always has been. Gas lines explode, hurricanes descend. Even without wars, people get blown up, mashed, and snuffed in every possible locale, no matter how innocent. On cruise ships, playgrounds and in their own homes minding their own business. Anyone who feels more scared now than they did ten years ago, hasn't been paying attention.
One of the park's features is a brightly colored train, a string of little cars for little kids and just big enough for most mommies. I buy a ticket and get on board. A young guy mounts the engine and blows the whistle. This time next year, where will he be? Instead of driving young mothers and little girls around a track in the park, will he be over in Iran molesting mothers just as sweet and girls just as small? "We pulled a train on her" - ghetto slang for gang rape - is that what our cheerful locomotive engineer will be telling his friends when he comes back from a tour of duty overseas? In the right place at the right time with the wrong people, this young man, like almost any of us, could do almost anything.
The oval course doesn't cover very much ground, but to make up for the deficiency, it goes around three times. I love this ride on the miniature train. It might be the very last time I board any form of public transportation in America without having to show ID. And it reminds me of something Werner Erhard said. He compared our situation to a train rolling down a track, and some people notice it's going in a bad direction. We try sitting on the left side of the aisle, and that doesn't change things. So everybody goes over and sits on the right side of the aisle, and still nothing changes - the train is still going in a bad direction. What we need to do is get out there and lay down some new track.
On my way past the pool complex, I notice a sign: the schedule has been extended, the pool will be open a few more days, and presumably the paddle-boats too. I haven't missed my chance. "You can do anything you want," I have been taught, "as long as you're willing to pay the price. And sometimes you don't even have to pay the price." I did what I wanted: made excuses and procrastinated. I was willing to pay the price: to miss the paddle-boat season. But I didn't have to pay the price. It's not too late, I can still come back another day and fulfill this goofy whim.
Partway around the lake there's a stone bench by the water's edge, shaded by lavish foliage. Perfect. The sky is blue, the leaves rustle. Along with everything else, the government wants us to be scared of chemical and biological warfare. But of all the Americans who suffer from the effects of those substances, a huge percentage are sick from the Agent Orange or depleted uranium owned by, controlled by and administered by the U.S. government. Not the government of Cambodia, Afghanistan, or Canada. No. American troops were poisoned by their own bosses and leaders. The very large majority of Americans who are sick from chemicals or microbes got that way through the activities of their fellow Americans. If they happen to be seasonal farm workers, they got sick from pesticides unsafely used. If they happen to be from one of the cities where the government carried out experiments on its very own citizens, they got sick from stuff dumped out of airplanes. If they live in the country, they got sick from the wells whose water was contaminated by the ruthless ways of agribusiness or oil drilling. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
City Park Pool really is a masterpiece, with all kinds of waterspouts and showers and a channel to float around in tubes. And two very tall slides, one straight and one curly, that were just added this season. From across the water, wild guitars cry through distorted amplification. Then some other music, not what I'd have chosen, but what the hell. The college kids are in control, and the roistering water-babies can't hear it over the sound of the splashing and the shrieks. Only everybody else in the area. But it's cool.
Well, no, it's not. Because now a haranguing male voice comes over the loudspeakers, and then another, and some discordant sounds, the kind they insert into commercials to make you pay attention. And then, dammit, more hectoring vocalizations. I want to go tell the college kids: if you must play music that other people hear, at least have the couth to play music that doesn't include commercials. Ever hear of tapes or CDs? In a recreational setting, nobody should be subjected to the sound of voices booming over loudspeakers, whether the intrusive noise comes from an actor trying to make you buy something, or from Big Brother trying to make you believe something. How long will it be until we can't get any respite from Big Brother, can't shut him up, or out, or down? How long until they figure out a way to make us listen to their lies whether we want to or not?
Maybe I shouldn't have come outside with no ID. What if I'm hit by a car on the way home, and end up in the morgue? But the likelihood of this bicyclist's toe tag reading Jane Doe isn't very great anyhow. I know my fingerprints are in the database. For the authorities, to figure out my name, if not who I am, will be but the work of a moment. What is ID, anyhow? Credentials that show what you're entitled to. But there's another whole mindset that addresses the question differently, a parallel universe where what you're entitled to is exactly what you can earn with your demeanor and your ways and your accumulated karma.
And what is this obsession the authorities have about physically implanted ID chips for the people? Why do they want it so badly? Sure, to fight crime, so the bodies of murder victims can be easily identified. (I have an idea. How about putting that energy toward old-fashioned police work, so there won't be as many murder victims?) But there's more to it. I have an uneasy suspicion that they want us all tagged like sheep to facilitate the work of coroners and forensic anthropologists. So the mess will be easier to sort out, in the wake of the mass disasters they have planned for us.
Denial is never a good game plan. If you live in a house and pretend that termites, mold, cracked pipes and roof-rot don't exist, it will bring you only grief. America is my house, and it is infested with all of the above and then some. At the top is the biggest dictator wanna-be and scourge of the people who has ever held high office. How can he stand there with his bare face hanging out and say, "They hate us for our freedom?"
