From: rbear@inferno.uoregon.edu (Richard Bear)
Subject: Marching on the Potomac
Organization: University of Oregon Network Services
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 02:01:12 GMT


Rock videos, I admit, do hurt my eyes. They seem 
like moments that have been seized by those who believe 
they are young, and also believe that history is only 
words, and also believe that with images, words 
can be left behind forever, words and the history 
that is made with words, and death, which is made up 
of history, and pain that rehearses for death, 
and the memories of shame the pain is built on -- but 
the shame and pain are images, yes? and history, 
yes? your history, your story you tell yourself 
in pictures, is your music video sung 
to self-loathing; and the one way, short of becoming 
a filmmaker, of spitting it out, is to trade in words, 
the betrayer words that lie as soon as the ink 
is dry. While I, the new-made greybeard thinking 
on mortality walking off small ounces along 
the winter river, remember seizing a moment, 
standing with three hundred young such others 
in our vision of moral progress around 
the entrance to the dark abysmal cave: National 
Selective Service Headquarters. We begged them 
to come out, the denizens of the cave, and took up 
collections for their families if only they 
would come out. Some did, and even took the money, 
perhaps to return to work next day with a laugh. 
Provocateurs circulated among us, 
trying to hand out bad acid, but we stood firm, 
singing our power songs learned from those 
who had come here before us: Oh Freedom; We 
Shall Overcome; so then the men in blue, 
with their sunglasses and their long sticks, 
moved in and carried us away, one by one, 
to the buses. D.C. Central Precinct 
Station, in case you're curious, is, or was, 
twenty years ago, like this: a corridor 
long and grey, with few lights, and rows of animal 
cages, dark, with broken bulbs recessed 
in peeled ceilings. Each cage has two iron 
shelves hung from the wall on chains, and no 
matresses on the shelves; on the rear wall 
a strange porcelain thing, both sink (not working) 
and toilet (not working either); both filled with 
horrors, and run over onto the floor. 
Distance from front to back: exactly eight feet. 
From side to side, exactly six feet. Eight men 
to a cell. Rumor: in the women's section, 
much worse. Someone is screaming continually; 
another starts the ancient chant, AUM -- 
it catches on, a hundred and fifty short-time 
monks in retreat, and the screamer settles 
down to a comforted whimper. All day, half 
the night. At two in the morning, arraignments. 
Fifty people standing in an empty room, 
waiting, weak, hungry. A judge passes 
in the hall, returns, converses through the door. 
You weren't read your rights? You don't know the charges 
against you? No phone calls? Nothing? He goes away, 
returns, passes fifteen candy bars 
through the mail slot. All I can do right now, 
he says, I'll see what I can do about this. 
We never see him again. We are processed
in groups of four. An old black woman comes. 
She is our lawyer. Have you seen the charges? 
No. Hey, you, go and get the charges 
so they can plead; is this a court or a pool hall? 
They read us the charges. False, from beginning 
to end, and they know it! You can hear it in 
their shamed voices. They're young, like us, 
and got these jobs for the sake of Kennedy, 
their dead god; they aren't used to shitting 
on the people. I hear that I was seen by witnesses 
(in blue, with their sunglasses and their long sticks) 
committing unspeakable violence and destroying Property 
--hearing the shame in their trembling voices, I 
am brought to tears of a new kind, deep grief 
for my country, which I had somehow believed in, 
a little, until that moment, and for my now 
forever lost innocence in these things. The judge
leans forward. Young man, if you plead guilty, I 
can let you go right now with a ten dollar fine. 
If you plead not guilty, you will be held in JAIL 
and your trial will not come up for two months. 
I want you to know that the Central Precinct is clean 
and uncrowded compared to the City Jail. How 
do you plead? The tears are drying, but I tremble 
with sorrow and anger. Someone, a stranger, steps up 
and sets a flower in the lapel of my coat. Not guilty. 
All four of us say, not guilty as charged; our old 
lawyer's eyes are wet with pride. The judge hesitates;
says that for twenty-five dollars each, we 
can go bail. I'm eight hundred miles from home, 
with ten cents to my name. Someone, another 
stranger, hands over twenty-five dollars for me; 
I leave the courtroom dazed and hungry. I have 
nowhere to go. It is three o'clock in the morning. 
The demonstrations have been going on all week, 
and I haven't eaten in maybe three days, or four. 
I'm not sure I can make it to the Friends Meeting House 
where I know I can sleep. There is a voice from above: 
Hey, you! I look up. It is a middle-aged woman 
in curlers and a robe, in a third-floor window of, 
for God's sake, the D.C. Hilton Hotel. Are you 
one of the people that just got out of that kangaroo 
court? I heard about it on the radio! 
Yes'm, I am. (Yes'm is a reflex -- 
I'm from the Deep South.) Wait right there, 
says she, and disappears. A moment later, 
she's in the window again, and a can of Coca-cola, 
two orders of fries, and a half-eaten burger wrapped 
in foil come down from the sky. I'm dumbfounded. 
If it had been a thousand pieces of gold,
it would not have amazed me more. The Hilton Hotel: 
heaven, and someone else's hamburger: manna. 
The angel glances over her shoulder, worried. 
Gotta run now. Good luck! Twenty years ago. 
I am now a bureaucrat, with a tie and a paunch, 
and the young, pursuing their dreams, are sometimes angry 
when I check the rule book and tell them the 
entrance requirements have been changed. I do it 
to feed my children, just as the men in blue did. 
But I want you to know the rivers still flow 
as it did then, the Potomac, with its cherry blossoms.   
History is yours now. Be careful with it. Be ready 
when your turn comes, as it may, to defend the right,
and know that we tried, and though we didn't 
get it all done, all I can tell you is 
that we found out trying is something, after all. 

                                          1971-1991

rbear