There Is No Time

Left my car on the east side of town to avoid the expense of parking it nearer the Occupy Dope City rally, protest, rebellion, embryonic revolution or whatever the fuck you want to call it. From there I caught a bus downtown. Had not been on one of those for so long I did not know how to feed my change into the thing that lets a person get on a bus without the driver giving you a dirty look. Driver had to help me out and as I started to walk towards the back of the bus he yelled after me, "Don't forget your ticket."

I looked out the window as we drove along. At every stop a little voice told everybody what cross street we were at. World sure has got all technical. I could have used that little voice back when I used to travel on the bus all stinko. Would not have got off at as many wrong stops; may not have headed off in the wrong direction as often either.

Behind me on the bus some people were talking about going to the rally. One or two of them were to be facilitators at the event. When we got off the bus I introduced myself to them. A few of them were from the city, the other few were from one of the Anarchist Islands. I was with friends, motherfuckers.

I have seen much in my life but I have never seen anything quite like what I saw on October, 15, 2011. The crowd was very much like what you would expect to see at any summer fair near any city in this wobbly old country of ours. Young and old; firm and infirm; every skin tone; uniformed and un-uniformed - it was like the crowds from during the 2010 Olympics except everyone was not bombed out their heads.

Maybe there is hope for democracy. That is a sentence I would not have written as recently as this past summer. Maybe this New Democracy is a cure to the Wall Street, Bay Street, Howe Street cancer that has been threatening to snuff out our civil society. Maybe our Situation Hopeless, to borrow Fred Woodworth's apt phrase, is not quite hopeless after all.

I signed up for the Occupy Dope City first aid team. I do not have a lot of talent to bring to this effort but I have that.

Lou Reed, a man just about always ahead of his time, wrote an urgent song called "There Is No Time" quite a few years ago that fits the way I feel now that I am home and have got a couple drinks in me. It is time to gather force, motherfuckers, take dead aim and attack.