Beirut, Lebanon
I sleep at the Beirut YMCA. There is a letter for me at the American Express Office from my good parents. They have managed to keep track of me in spite of the weird mail service and my bizarre itinerary. It has been five months since I heard from anyone.
To avoid feeling alone and lonely, I concentrate on repairing my traveling gear. I wash and repair my clothes and fix a broken zipper on my backpack. I cook some nourishing food in the little common kitchen of the YMCA, finish reading “The White Nile”, watch some karate classes and think of what to do next. I decide to walk up the Mediterranean coast to Turkey, save the bus fare and maybe go on to Europe.
I have been thinking about some words I wrote once as a slogan for a naive “people’s movement” in Hawaii: “The Land Belongs to the People”!
How simple, trendy and stupid!
Now I see that people almost everywhere on this planet lay claim to every square inch of land they can reasonably expect to defend. They guard their land, their “nests” and whatever objects and animals they can collect with their lives. This behavior seems universal and instinctive: “human nature”.
The individual’s position in society seems relative to the amount of space he or she controls. The “control” may be velvet or iron, legal or outlaw—it exists and no vacuum of control is tolerated.
Weak control is usurped by strong, which, weakening with time, is overcome by stronger.
Ruins are built upon ruins while humans enjoy temporary satisfaction in the preposterous notion that they control their bit of the earth and their own destiny.
No, now I think the land does NOT belong to the people, or to the rulers of the people. The land “belongs” to itself. The earth exists momentarily.
The life forms of the living earth co-exist, in or out of balance, as life continues to transform into life forever.
(And forever is a very long time,)
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