It's all gone now isn't it.....

[The Straight Story]

While cleaning up the garage tonight I came across some Polaroids of me from yesteryear - from the late 70's to early 80's.

Me in a 3 legged race with Mike Beagle, me and my best friend David, birthday parties for me with everything from chess sets to electric football games.

Mom was alive, I was young and thought I could do anything, and in all those pics I am looking at now show me smiling.

My friends were all so young, and yet now so many have passed away. As have those I looked up to - from mom to her friends.

As I near 43 I look back tonight to when I was in 6th grade through when I was 16, and I see a joy that I just don't recognize now.

I guess I used to believe in this world, this country, this life. I look at myself now at 42 looking back at that time from these pictures and I feel a deep sadness.

I have tried hard all these years, and yet those in power have screwed me over - all the while making themselves and their friends rich.

We are at war with a country that could not possibly endanger us, and every time I pay taxes on my income/gas/etc I am contributing to this war.

I have made my mistakes, I take full responsibility for them all. And yet, while I feel bad over the things I have done there are people in power sucking us dry and bailing out the corporations and war mongers.

It's all gone now isn't it. The simple times. The times we spent just living our lives and dreaming of the future - a future that did not involve the Soviet Union and nuclear war, etc.

Thanks to bush and crew we are worse off now than we were before.

At one time I really believed that we might all get along and have a future together.

I was wrong. It's all gone now. We are in a worse position than ever before.

Damn.

I wish I could go back sometimes.

[atreides1]

1. Amen Brother

n/t

[lligrd]

2. I Think It Was Called Childhood.

Our job now is to make sure our kids have the same hopes and dreams. Nice post.

[opihimoimoi]

4. A lot of it is The Changing Times....Come, we look forward to POSITIVE CHANGES

I CAN be Done....

[billyoc]

3. Yep, and none of it is comin' back, either. nt

[The Doctor.]

9. Don't be so sure...

Once you're old enough, you might realize that nothing really goes away.

[LakeSamish706]

5. That is an awesome post Straight... You took me right back there as well...

I used to spend hours watching the news coverage of the Vietnam war and the number of wounded and dead that came from that. It seems that I have lived my life surrounded by war from either a crazy(or drunk) Nixon to an absolute screwed George W Bush... I keep asking myself, will we every see peace in our lifetime! We seriously need change to someone who doesn't want to send our young into war, that leaves many family members grieving there eventual loss. Its time for change from the Bush's and Clinton's to something that can possibly bring us peace.

[FirstLight]

6. I fully understand where you are coming from...

I have often thought about my life growing up in the 70s-80s and the fact that it WAS simpler then, that we had the last real easy childhood of our era...
there was an innocence that my kids don't have the opportunity to know...and a connection to the old, rural way of living that my parents brought forwrad to our time...people helping eachother, we knew our neighbors and they were like an extended family, I could ride my bike far & wide, go to the dime store for candy with my friends after school, and party at the "point" with my friends listening to rock on the radio with no worries except curfew or the cops telling us to quiet down.

and while I chose to raise my kids outside of the city to try and keep their innocence more intact, the fears of today on the streets, the inconcievable future that they may have to deal with are always in my thoughts as well.

:hug:

here's to our memories, and may we have the strength to help our kids find their way through what comes next.

PS
My teen is in ROTC at school and I keep reminding him not to get trapped into the service...
he said "that's okay mom, I'll just be the one leading the rebellion!"
here's to these little warrior souls, they know they have a hard road ahead, but they seem more resilient for it.

[BlueJazz]

7. Wasn't it wonderful when you were young and your mother or father would introduce....

..you to a new kid.
Either you or the new kid would say something like "Wanna go play?"....
..and with in 5 minutes you and the new kid were Best Friends

Damn...we were so..umm..."Open" then and so accepting of strangers... Sigh..
.

[The Doctor.]

8. You're not the only one. I've been writing a piece about that too.

It could be worse... you could be the Face of Beau.

[snot]

10. I draw on Yeats et al.:

All things fall, and are built again;
And those who build them again are gay.

[ClayZ]

11. I will be 58 on Earth Day.

Edit to make it the right age...I will be leaving 57 behind! (argh)

I am glad I found my way Back to the Garden!

[roguevalley]

23. its like another person living another life on another planet. I hope

I was appreciative enough, thankful enough for it. my parents passed ten months apart this year. That world is over. I am glad I am not young.

[WHAT]

12. you/we're turning a corner...

not a page

or even a book is not finished

(sub-thread delete has millions...

looking side-wise outta child eyes

opportunities

astound the night skeyes

'round

(what I'm trying to say is this narrowing is building-up pressure unselfaware and throbbing like youth skipping stones) there are ripples everywhere...

[Adsos Letter]

13. "Where there is life there is hope..."

I believe that Mr. Straight Story, although I am 52 and my life will never be what I had dreamed of, or worked hard toward.

Your post was very well spoken, and probably resonates with many of us who have come to a point in life where we have more years behind us than ahead of us.

I certainly made my share of mistakes, ill-considered decisions, and experienced unexpected body-slams from life...some of the consequences of those things will never be ameliorated.

I think maturity gives us a different view; we have lived long enough to gain a personal perspective hidden from most youth, and it is sobering, and often disappointing...discouraging, even. My retrospection often brings the ennui you speak so eloquently of.

I try to do good to those around me, to be easier on myself than in the past (regarding my personal failures), and to look for the good that still exists in life, and to contribute what I can to those working to make a difference.

Still...there is an element of growing older which me with the hard facts of mortality and feelings of futility...I just have to believe that where there is life there is hope.

[Voice for Peace]

14. The body ages, that is nature. That's just the way it is. Everything changes, except one thing.

Something in us never ages. That's what's real, and what we really are.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

15. I look at those 43 as "kids."

I hate to tell you this, TSS, but
it gets a lot worse.

-----------------------------------------
"If only I hadn't stopped to think."

[housewolf]

16. I've got a few years on you...

Here's what your reading your post triggered in me... a little Bob Dylan, if you don't mind


"Baby Blue"
You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
All your reindeer armies, are all going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Live, 1965 http://youtube.com/watch?v=E06SoECIp1U

[Lasher]

17. The Moving Finger writes

and, having writ, moves on.

[PatSeg]

18. I am older than you and

I've never seen anything like this. I never thought I'd see such things happen in my lifetime, in this country. It is truly difficult to be optimistic about the future.

[Hekate]

19. Nothing Is Wasted

That came to me in a flash of insight about 10 or 15 years ago.

I have deep depressive episodes, and that was one of the times I was feeling particularly worthless. My screen name here is Hekate in part because of the time I spend in the underworld.

Then this inner voice said to me -- "Nothing is wasted." I can't tell you how much it meant at the time -- my experiences, my jobs that were interesting but seemed to go nowhere, my struggles with my teenage kids, and on and on. None of it was worthless. None of it was wasted.

The world disappoints us again and again. The part about the past that seems simpler is simply that we were young, and had it all ahead of us. Our hearts had not yet been broken and put back together.

The past 8 years have been very hard on those of us who pay attention, and I think especially so for those of us who are sensitive and/or prone to depression. The odds against us have been overwhelming. And yet...

The sun chases clouds across the lovely mountains, each child we bring forth and love is a vote of confidence that life will go on, spring wildflowers are carpeting the desert in brief ecstasy -- and nothing is wasted.

Hekate

[ClayZ]

26. I will print that and post it in my studio!

I like it when Barack Obama reminds us that there has been babies born and they are now up an walking/talking 18 months old, since he began running for President.

It is a complex world.



Save something! (recycle)

Play something! (a musical instrument)

Do Something! (plant wildflower seeds)


"Nothing is wasted"...


Our local zoo sells a product called Zoo Doo. It is zoo poop packaged and sold to gardeners. That is what I call making shinola out of sh*t!

[cornermouse]

20. We can't go back.

We can only keep trying for the sake of our kids and our grandkids. And if in the fight, we can retain our principles and our sanity, we win.

[lostnfound]

21. The dark years come and go.

I've had similar thoughts. But the world changes every generation. Leonard Cohen says 'there is a crack in everything, it's how the light gets in'. We will never be as strong as our forefathers without our own generation facing dark hours. Our forefathers (and foremothers) had the Holocaust or the civil war or the plagues and epidemics or the dust bowl or the depression etc etc. After the stock market crashed, the Great Depression brought 30% unemployment among adult men. We can never go back to our own childhood; our challenge is to create one -- an innocent childhood, a safe world -- for the next generation.

[deutsey]

22. I understand what you mean, but the late '70s early '80s weren't that great for me

Sounds like you're a year younger than me, so it isn't that I was much older than you back then. We were very poor and my first step-dad was unemployed and struggling with heroin addiction from '77 to when my parents divorced in '79. Then the '80s ushered in the Reagan reaction, Lennon was murdered, I was approaching graduation from HS in a couple years with no money for college, etc.

For me, the years I look back fondly on were between '72 and '76. Those weren't simple times for me, but there was something about that span of time, culminating in the Bicentennial, that remains special to me.

Hang in there...I believe where there is life there is hope to cultivate new meaning.

:hi:

[misanthrope]

24. No time is really simple...

...only our perception and nostalgia warps our view.

I'm as guilty as anyone else but we have to keep ourselves in check and realize things have always been complicated and perilous.

[riverdeep]

25. Simpler times are an illusion.

There were no simpler times. That cozy, safe, open world for you, was a strange, bewildering world for someone else. Maybe someone who was getting older, and to whom the world made little sense anymore. All is not lost. If Obama gets in, we can show the world the last eight years were a horrible nightmare for us as well.

In other ways life is as simple as it ever was. You have only this moment, and nothing else. You never had anything else. Live it like you mean it. We never stop growing up, there's always more to learn.

[Kitty Herder]

27. "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"

One good thing about having had a hellish childhood is that life is better now and I don't look back with longing on those simpler times. Even with the country going to hell in a handbasket, I'm still more content now than I was as a child.

[leftofthedial]

28. the last seven-to-ten years

have destroyed hope and optimism in me.

Give us this day our daily dread . . .

[blues90]

29. I think of simpler times and they did exist

I am 59 and yes things were simpler then . There was not the great seperation between generations as there is now .

Everyone knew how to use all the household devices and jobs where a carry over and done the same way .

Now we have all of this new high tech crap that changed everything .

I will never get used to that stuff and i prefer things simple .

There was always a phone or letters to keep in contact with friends and other people .

[galledgoblin]

30. I don't know, I'm 22 but have a BA in US History

and personally I think I'd have gone crazy if I were living in 1970.

we've made so many advances, socially, technologically, you name it! I can walk around and be ME today and 40 years ago I would have been shunned for that.

we've made huge mistakes and the consumerist/suburban culture seems to be imploding, no question, but we can address problems today, whereas 40 years ago doomsayers were just ignored and laughed about as kooks.

2004 was the lowest point we will ever see in our lives (I hope) because we (well, a little more than half the country at least) saw all the problems and chose to stick our fingers in our ears, close our eyes, and start humming "high hopes". now the pendulum has swung back towards action.