There's a Distance ...

No Rebuttal (bridge between mix)

the bridge between

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” - Alan Watts

Today is the 10th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. With all the horror-porn floating around, and flag waving seemingly oblivious to all that has happened in the intervening decade, it's hard not to feel a little hopeless.

DNA gives me hope today. There is no statement so swiftly and widely derided in these times as this: "we are all connected, we are all one."

Any variant of that sentiment seems to dredge up visions of new-agey hippies navel gazing and living off the dole. It is, however an inescapable, concrete reality. There is absolutely nothing hand-wavy about it. You and every living thing on this planet are an assembly of tiny, self replicating machines, running on DNA.

You share upwards of 99% of your DNA with every one of the 9/11 hijackers, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ and Mohammed.

I was weeding the flower bed in my front yard a few weeks ago. I had really let it go, and the Bermuda grass from the lawn had creeped under the little divider and was growing up through the mulch. As I started pulling blades of grass, I noticed that I was merely tugging at an incredibly dense mesh of roots that permeated the entire garden.

This is the picture of humanity that I'll try to hold in my mind today, as I tune in to the first big NFL Sunday of the season. It's sure to be full of tear-jerky 9/11 remembrances, filled to the brim with the usual "us versus them" subtext.

It's been 10 years. Maybe we should not only "never forget" what happened that day, but also never forget what has happened since. If you don't believe the terrorists have won, you haven't been paying attention. We were always capable of destroying ourselves, and all those jackasses had to do was give us an excuse.

If only it was so simple to give us an excuse to love one another, to build, to give with open hearts, to make a future together, rather than separate.

As for the track, it's an oldie. In fact it is the third track I ever did and posted to the internet, way back, if you can believe it, in January 2007 using only GarageBand and duct tape. That's almost 5 years ago. As old as it is, that's still 6 years after 9/11.

It's about race, but ultimately it's about divisions between people, and the senselessness of focusing on those divisions and fighting over them. It seemed sort of appropriate for the day, to me.

As promised last week: more crickets. That's Ms. Vybe spittin' mad knowledge on the raps