APATHY OF ANGELS: AN ESSAY

I’m neither fat nor lazy. I am out of shape and tired. It isn’t easy living life these days. Television is taxing and taxes are television. Death and steroid use haunt us from every direction. We are not safe on the street and we are not safe in our home. The world is hate and confusion. Yet, I know there is good out there, even in here, in me. I have the ability for good. I also have the ability to jog, but I don’t do that either.
My days are made heavy by stresses known and speculative. My shoulders sink in a constant hunch, as if ripped open at the neck and filled with endless grains of sand. Am I a sandbag to hold back floods of whatever is thrown upon me, or am I an hourglass, always trudging along, even as time runs out? Regardless, I am heavy. I am not your brother.
Or am I? We are supposedly all brothers and sisters, according to numerous cult literature and Motown songs. More so, I have an actual brother lost to me before I was even born. I know not of his whereabouts, his name, or if he even lives. He is nothing but sand to me and it slows my steps.
I saw on the news today that a tsunami in Asia has killed over 200,000 people. I didn’t know any of them. That does not make it any better. Maybe I did know someone. Perhaps I said ‘excuse me’ to one on the train, or stood next to them at Starbucks. I helped a guy push his car up a hill in Prague once, just like the jeans commercial, he could have been there. My brother could have been there. How would I know?
There are so many people suffering in the world, so many people full of anguish and hate, loss and love. What of us? We are indifferent thanks to venti lattes and plasma screens. We feel pity, perhaps sorrow. We feel that someone should do something. How about those pundits in Washington? They aren’t doing anything productive, just killing our own for no apparent reason, why not spend some money to save someone else? Someone should do something, but we have to go to work, plus the game is on tonight. I would go over there in a minute mind you, if I were to find that my brother was there, but how would I know? We’re all brothers aren’t we? Funny how we show it.
My sister and I used to fight all the time. We fought over many things, but never religion or oil. Yet, now our world is on Amber Alert for those very reasons. Why should I care what someone believes? Shouldn’t we be looking for alternative fuels at this point anyway? What is it about these things that makes my trip to the market so dangerous? Your beliefs are your own problem. Leave me alone.
Leave me alone. What an easy notion, but we can’t do it. In a world of avoiding eye contact and stepping aside for fleeing purse snatchers, we can’t leave each other alone. It’s ‘I want we he’s got’ and ‘they better think like me’ and of course the famous ‘or else’ that really puts our collective back against the wall.
How is it that in the same world where 200,000 people have died from an act of god, we are still fighting wars over which of ours is the god that did it? Who cares? Just help those people! How is it in a world where brave men and women fight wars against AIDS and cancer that my stepfather is having a tumor removed at the same time a carbomb is going off to prevent such forward thinking? Would fanatics rather those of us that survive earthquakes and tidal waves instead die from explosives and disease? Or would fanatics rather those of us that live with anguish and hate focus it upon the officials in Washington. There are floods of questions that grow stronger with time, and perhaps that is my answer: I am both the sandbag and the hourglass. And I am your brother.