Choosing OUR Mountain Slope, and Heading Straight To It

A CONFUSED KID crashes a passenger jet liner into a remote mountain, and we all pretend to wonder why, as if we didn't already know. Hopeless desperation loves company, and seeks it out, wherever it can be found, in the air, on the ground, at sea, within the hding places of our seduced, sedated minds. Somewhere, some nameless young lady understands why, and when she chooses to tell us, our morbid curiosity will be sated, the crowd can disperse, and we can all go home, morbidly, vicariously satisfied. In a back room "for employees only" at Wal Mart hangs a sign, saying :today's share price, $81; tomorrow's share price depends on YOU!. The only thing lacking is an image of Uncle Sam, finger extended. Eight dollar an hour "associates" dream of nine and even ten an hour, and an opportunity to further enrich the already rich, whose class they aspire to, somehow. These aspirations are a chimera of false values. Eighty percent of corporate stock sits in the portfolios of the one percent. Those ringing up the purchases at the cash registers and those stocking merchandize among the endless, always the best price shelves dream of the day when they too will be among America's exclusive elite. Deep down they must know; it aint hapnin'. Then they clock out and go home to their one room apartments and trailers and massive debts; their corporate master retreat to their gated, well guarded mansions of loneliness. And no matter where you go, there they are, here we are, the ninety nine percent, all going to Wal Mart to further enrich the rich, as we alienate ourselves from ourselves in our depression of escape, and sit in our own cockpits, deciding which mountain to make our own. What is the connection between a clinically depressed young airline pilot and those of us who toil and shop and strut and fret in the consumer laden isles of our local Wal Mart? It is this; they derive from the same source; from an impersonal corporate "civilization" of profit before people, wherein to be incorporated is to be human, and to be human is to be a corporate commodity, and where we are all trained from birth to seek the best deal, the most efficient means to exploit - everything. And as we approach our chosen slope, we tell each other; knock before entering, and have a good day.