Blowing In The Wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows,
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Bob Dylan’s masterpiece protest song has always among her favourites, even in its many incarnations around the world. This morning the lyrics came quietly to her as she contemplated a snapshot of today’s screaming media headlines: “12 MEXICAN AGENTS TORTURED AND SLAIN; CLASHES KILL DOZENS IN SOMALIA; DEATH TOLL IN CHINA RIOTS RISE TO 192; SUDANESE WOMAN FLOGGED FOR WEARING PANTS.” There were many more but she was too shellshocked to delve much further. It is not that she has not seen similar headlines over the years — it is just that today something in her shut down emotionally. She couldn’t click into the usual mode of assimilating the desperation and repressed rage that ignite these events around the world.

The danse macabre was too much to bear.

For one fleeting minute, her somber appraisal of the human condition led her past the simplistic existentialist explanations and into a contemplation of a larger, cosmic evil as proposed by the Christian and Islamic fundamentalists. Maybe Man is really a puppet being controlled by negative elements through his repressed subconscious mind. For a few minutes it seemed to make sense.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

She pondered the quotation by the Sufi poet Rumi. Maybe this anguish is karmic retribution being played out in a cosmic game that wasn’t meant to be understood by finite minds? Maybe we are not meant to know the answers or pass judgment on that game — God’s lila — because we are only half-awake in a transient, ever-changing world?

But she did not dwell there very long; her spirit felt violated by the abrasiveness of linear thinking.

She laid down her sword of prose for a while and went into the silence of herself. Today she could find no solace as the self-righteous blogger writing up a storm of protest against man’s inhumanity to man. She couldn’t even muster up the idealism to wax satirical about mankind’s rapid descent into barbarism. Her spirit was tired and she felt hopeless. Maybe the gentle, peace-inspired poet whom she buried years ago in her heart is being reborn to replace of the battle-worn scribe — the voice in the wilderness no one wants to hear anymore.

The realisation finally dawned after years of searching…. very few people really care about this world or welfare of downtrodden and impoverished beings. They are too busy trying to survive themselves or too infatuated with the palliates of self-indulgent sensory pleasures. Today that realisation finally hit home, like a hammer on a tiny, fluttering butterfly.

Now she is all cried out.

Her inner self searches for quiet detachment amidst the rubble of a futile quest for peace and justice for all. There is nothing left to say. She wants to ask a thousand questions starting with “Why….” but there are no answers to be found anywhere — just the angst and hopelessness woven into the age-old drama human beings call life.

Tomorrow she’ll be back on the road again throwing words at the wind. But tonight she is listening to the silence in herself. The silence whispers softly and she is weary.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind….