After Shocks

I have always found it hard to follow up on big intense posts like that. Sometimes I just don't write anything or sometimes I write something silly to break the tension. Either way, I usually feel a bit foolish - like somehow I should keep up that intensity (who would want to?) or that I shouldn't be that intense in the first place.

But here are my thoughts another day later. After talking to that guy, I am left with the bizarre impression that although at his age (retired) he operated from fear and was very aggressive, he expected my 14 year old son to a) not be afraid and calmly explain himself and b) have more presence of mind than he did. And of course, the next day, in the daylight, faced with the mother, he is minimizing his behaviour and insisting that he has the right to assault anyone who is on his property (so be warned - although I wished I had pointed out the fact, that I was right then on his property). And I am still a bit outraged about that. Andrew read my blog and we talked about it more last night. His comments are that he still thinks the guy is a jerk. Fair enough. He said it would have been much more satisfying for me to freak at the guy (and, yes, I know his name but I won't put it here as he is well known in our community). So we talked about that and I told him some of the things I thought of saying and we laughed a little and he said it would still have been more satisfying for me to have really said them to the guy.

And my other much larger thoughts reflect on how this little altercation is just a microcosm of the bigger world picture. Fear and aggression, fear and aggression. Tell me this isn't what is happening in the middle East? Tell me this isn't what happens in parliamentary debates? Tell me this isn't how politics basically works on every level. And we are incapable of changing those structures or how the work when this is still how we operate on an individual level. And this is how it is all related to me - the personal is political. And sure that is true when it comes to the personal choices we make - vote with our wallet and all that. And it is also true in how we feel about ourselves, how we raise our children, how we love ourselves and each other, the Earth. In this way the personal is political, too. Just as each cell of our bodies has the complete genetic information of our entire body, so do each of us for the world. We are at once a small pare of the earth and the entire world. Like the Prince of legend that when he opened his mouth, you could see the whole world.