Here We Are

We're all still here. The judgment day has come and gone, and all of us sinners and all of the "true believers" are still kicking up the same old dirt, sharing the same old planet.

All of the people who drive down your street in their cars with the bass turned up so high on their stereos that the buddahs you bought at World Market shake, rattle and roll on your IKEA shelves -- they're still here.

The people who seem to feel the need to talk very loudly about personal matters while in public places -- "There's something wrong with my right nipple. Yeah, I'm seeing a doctor about it next Tuesday" -- they're still here.

The women who bring their kids into gift shops and sip their Starbuck's skinny lattes and talk about their Pilates classes while their kids play hide & seek amongst the shelves of blown glass -- they're still here.

And I'm right here with them. I did not get pulled up into heaven -- a place where, according to David Byrne, "nothing ever happens", but in my mind, a place not unlike Yellow Springs, Ohio, or Asheville, NC, or maybe even parts of West Virginia (John Denver might agree) -- a place where little independent coffee shops and bookstores, artists' studios and street art and art-house movie theaters abound -- and I have the money and the time to spend at all of them. Heaven is eating baklava every day and never getting fat. Heaven is the total absence of cellulite. Heaven is a great big dance party with people who respect each other's personal space. (Yes, I am white, and a liberal, but my heaven is also a multi-cultural, diverse heaven where one can get authentic Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and soul food at any time).

No one got pulled up into heaven -- we're not getting off that easy.

Living in the crime capital of the U.S can be pretty distressing, particularly if you read the paper or watch the news (I try to do neither, but sometimes curiosity gets the best of me). Every day here, someone is murdered. Every day. Most days, there seem to be multiple murders. Many of these murders seem to be related to drug deals gone bad (I wonder how many drug deals would be described as "going exceedingly well"?). But some of them are just cruel and senseless -- heartless people who must be dead inside, preying on the elderly and the vulnerable.

The poverty-stricken, drug-addled crackheads who kill on a whim, the robber-barons of Wall Street who laugh (at us, poor saps) all the way to the bank, and all of the rest of us just trying to lead good lives -- we're all here together, whether we like it or not. We can move to other parts of the city, to the 'burbs, to other states, to other countries, to try to get away from the bad guys. But "bad guys" are everywhere, and sometimes bad guys are just good people who do bad things. We can hope that the heavens will open up and all of the good folks will be taken up, and all of the bad ones will be left to sizzle and suffer here in the hell the earth will become (what happens to the animals, though? Do they all get taken up, too, or are they just left to become bar-b-que for the sinners?). But that's not gonna happen (unless God is actually Steven Spielberg, and large space-ships appear with gentle aliens who usher kind, cuddly-looking humans into the stratosphere).

We're here, I think, to try to figure out how to make this all work -- this life, this place called Earth. There's no deus ex machina that's going to solve all of our problems, or divide us into the good and the bad. There's just us. And while I have no idea what the answer is to our problems, I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve guns or weapons, or people floating up into the sky.

The answer might, though, somehow involve a dance party.