For Everyman

FOR EVERYMAN

Everybody I talk to is ready to leave
With the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe
That they've heard their last warning
Standing alone
Each has his own ticket in his hand
And as the evening descends
I sit thinking 'bout Everyman

Seems like I've always been looking for some other place
To get it together
Where with a few of my friends I could give up the race
And maybe find something better
But all my fine dreams
Well thought out schemes to gain the motherland
Have all eventually come down to waiting for Everyman

Waiting here for Everyman--
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go I understand
Waiting here for Everyman--
Don't ask me if he'll show -- baby I don't know

Make it on your own if you think you can
Somewhere later on you'll have to take a stand
Then you're going to need a hand

Everybody's just waiting to hear from the one
Who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun
Where sweet childhood still dances
Who'll come along
And hold out that strong and gentle father's hand?
Long ago I heard someone say something 'bout Everyman

Waiting here for Everyman--
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go I understand

I'm not trying to tell you that I've seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am--
But don't think too badly of one who's left holding sand
He's just another dreamer, dreaming 'bout Everyman

It's been raining all day, one of those thousand mile stare days where you find yourself looking out the window, your eyes focusing on everything and nothing at the same time. There were a lot of days like this in Seattle, I think the overcast out there soaks into your soul and burns out some circuit that lets you have higher brain functions. All day I've been restless, musing on the oncoming freight train of economic and climate madness about to decend. Between worldwide drought, the colapse of our unsustainable economy and the slowly cracking facade of the folks I see trying to not think about losing jobs and homes and retirement, I wonder how long it will be before the big freakout hits.

So today I went out and put a downpayment on Summer and our future food security. And flower supply, too, because bugs don't like lots of them, and I really do.

I went to Farm and Fleet and bought seeds, lots of them. Spinach, lettuce, rutabagas, turnips, beets, cucumbers, marigolds, cosmos, four kinds of sunflowers and nastursiums. I'm doubling down on the amount of garden I'm planting and making my own "other arrangements" as James Kunstler says. And I'm giving away of half the bikes we have and building one or two very well tuned ones with the remaining bikes.

I just hope the rest of the country wakes up and starts doing the same, because after reading Matt Tabbi's article in Rolling Stone and reading Krugman's NYTimes blog and Caluclated Risk and Clusterfuck Nation, I think we're headed for that scary new normal I've been writing about for a while now. Too many people running this country have a deaf ear and no sense of what's in the wind, so it's going to come down to us, working together in communities to make it on our own. Like that dirty hippie Jackson Browne says, I'll be waiting here for Everyman to join me when he wakes up.

If he's not a Christian Republican, anyway. If he is, he'll find we're the kind of pacifists who don't start a fight, but makes sure we finish one.