Another Train Song

A busy day for moi, le President-For-Life of the People's Republic of Gumbolia, and I am winding down.  It feels good to stop, sometimes, and just rest or let the heart have its lead.  A hurried dinner of reheated last night's fettucine Genovese (from a local eatery), then it was out the door to cut the grass before it was too dark to see.  I finished my grass cutting adventures tout de suite, and then indulged in the luxury in a little websurfing time wasting.  I really hadn't wanted anything more.

I skimmed a lot of stuff, some fluff and some weightier material.  It was while reading that I became aware of just how tired I felt, and how quiet the house seemed.  The quiet was not unexpected, the weather has been mild enough the past four or so days that the air conditioning has been off the entire time.  Open windows and comfortable night air, along with a serenade of crickets.  Very serene.

For some reason I began to wonder about an issue that has been nagging me for quite some time, and that in the form of a question:

Why are so much of human relations tied up in the exercise of power?

It deflated me.  I felt wearier than before.  The deluge of information I had been absorbing, reading the news and op-ed pundits and lifestyle snippets...and it all seems to go back to power.  Who has power over whom.  Whom is getting power.  Exercising power over others as a form of social climbing and ego gratification.  Even who has power in that most basic of human relationships: that of being in love.

From those struggling against the ruling power structure, both malignant and benevolent (benevolent, at least, from outward appearances) all the way down to who is trying to leverage whom in bed,  the majority of the world seems to be addicted to power: acquiring, enhancing, wielding, amassing.

It never seems to stop.  The subtle corrosions of it seem to have infiltrated all levels of human interaction.  Some forms of it I can understand and accept, but much of it just makes me sad.  I have very little interest in power, and even that is primarily limited to the effort I have to take in order to keep others from exerting too much power over me.  And I am ever alert to keeping the taint of it out of the love in my heart.

I feel myself winding down.  I'm wearier, in the good way of effort making itself known in the muscles I used to cut my grass.  I stopped reading stuff on the web a while ago, just so I could think and listen.  Cool night air and sounds soothe me.  Off in the distance, across the river, the low hoot of a train horn carries wistfully in the suburban blackness outside my windows.  The thrum of the engine backed it up and I closed my eyes, rubbing my temples.  I feel my heart begin to lift, carried away on the wheels of steel and the bittersweet promise of another train song, one that lets me know there are places in this universe where Love triumphs over Power.  It is a dear wish of mine that one of those places is my heart.