Unknown Artist
1959
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When I saw this image, I thought immediately of one of my friends, who’s a kvas maven. He learned to love the home-made stuff… ah… you don’t find THAT much any more. I listened to him… that’s how I know that. When you listen to others, you not only learn about them, you learn about yourself. You react… you process it… you think of what you could do. At least, that’s my method. Often, I talk to draw people out. You see, a good listener has to be a good talker, too. If you don’t speak up, your interlocutor can’t respond. That’s what makes face-to-face communication so exciting and indispensable to me. Each conversation is unmarked and uncharted territory… for you can’t know what your friend is going to say! A conversation is one of those things that’s “greater than the sum of its parts”. A person talking to themself is crazy… two people talking together might argue, they might disagree, but they could also choose to see past that disagreement and get something done. That’s what love’s all about. It’s not about being “nice”… it’s not about “politeness”… it’s not about “civility”. It’s not even about “agreement”. It’s the action of holding your out hand to another, no matter what.
That’s why I oppose the rightwing and all of its works in politics, and that’s why I oppose Paffhausen, Lebedeff, Reardon, Potapov, Lyonyo, and the rest of the konvertsy in religion. They’re all “ME FIRST”, despite all the smarmy rhetoric that they deploy. If you stand for Christ, you stand for Concord, if you stand for Concord, you can’t stand for Greed and Cupidity. If you stand for Concord, you hold out the hand of friendship. If you stand for Greed, you smash others with the fist of hatred. That’s why I oppose the Republican Party and all its works… it’s why I oppose everything that the named Orthodox clerics stand for. The USA has been a ravening beserker in foreign parts since the fall of the USSR… and the Republican Party has mutated into a gibbering apologist for Permanent Warfare, and the Christian Right has become its obsequious running-dog lackey. It’s time to say, “Enough!”
Quite a long go-’round, wot? You can fight for Love or you can fight for Hate. I choose to fight for Love and stand by my friends. If you stand for Love, you MUST fight Hate… yet, oddly enough, it isn’t “hatred”. You CAN be a Lover AND a Fighter all at once!
My friend knows that I wrote this especially for him… this one’s for you, kid…
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Saturday 3 December 2011
Albany NY
