You’re Fine

Mignon Ariel King
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read

(This was originally posted on FB on August 18, 2017. Fortunately, the amazing assembly of anti-bigots and the “freedom of speech” rallyers both being on the Boston Common that weekend resulted in no bloodshed or loss of life.)

You’re Fine

It feels like the ’70s from where I sit, from a town I can afford to live in, virtually watching as a figurative debate over freedom of speech approaches the Boston Common, the large central park of my home city. You know the place. Ice sculptures stand on it in December, just down the street from Summer’s lagoon of Swan Boats. Hundreds of very old, botanist-tagged trees burst into leaves, flowers, and nuts in Spring, scuttle their leaves over grass and walkways in Autumn. In the park, a tall spire of a solo soldier stands atop the monument to soldiers who paid the ultimate price defending the US. It could be any large park, in any large city. Perhaps in your neighborhood there’s a scaled-down version. At any rate, if you’re at all like me, you don’t think much about your neighborhood park while going about your weekly and daily business. It’s a pleasant place. It’s a given. Two opposing sides of a hotly-debated issue will literally, physically, descend onto the pleasant green of the Boston Common tomorrow.
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It’s the Common about which Robert Lowell wrote a poem, from his chosen perspective, standing back-to the State House across Beacon Street. From that spot, one can look down at the Common, a good thirty feet or more below. From that spot, one can look right at the monument to the 54th regiment, the all-Black-soldiered regiment that marched to their deaths in the Civil War, led by the horse-backed, White command of Colonel Shaw. The names of the deceased are listed on the large, flat back of the frieze. It’s a powerful statue, yet Black versus White was only one aspect of the war. Why is this division still so prominent, even in “liberal” Massachusetts? Race is only one aspect of the ideological and political war tearing this country apart today, but it is an aspect that will always poke its head out, high above the generality of bigotry, quite simply because the racial binary and attendant strife has not been resolved. Division is a building block of American culture. The Black men of that regiment paid forward the dignity of being considered legally human in our own country.
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Yes, I said “our,” meaning Black Americans. It’s a personal perspective and self-labeling, not a group-approved, “pro-Black and anti- others’ self-defined categories” statement. All wars have military tacticians and physical soldiers, political strategists, visible and private civil rights preachers and activists. Ordinary citizens who survive rebuild civilization in the aftermath: they make houses; mend fences; change their minds or stick to their cultural mores; and pray for or against new neighbors. Every battle that was won in my home town…state…nation…cost someone other than myself. Someone recently or long-deceased. Someone who deliberately thought, spoke, or responded to threats against a collective human union. Someone who inadvertently helped or hindered social progress for all.
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How am I today? Reminiscent — not in a good way! Only 2 weeks of being bused to middle school with a police escort in the 1970s has had a lasting effect on my psyche. The second Boston massacre, i. e. the Marathon bombing, has taken its figurative pound of flesh. But each and every First Night parade, Duck Boat brigade, and Fourth of July spray of fireworks helps to celebrate survival. Regardless of how little or how much I’ve lost while others exercised their right to free speech and ostensibly peaceful, lawful assembly, I’m comparatively fine.
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Someone paid my tithe, my fine, my fee in exchange for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Whatever rage I feel is for those affected today or tomorrow, not myself. I have the luxury of distance and reflection. Because I know, honor, and respect the past, but I do not live in it. Look around you, behind you, and forward. Make peace with yourself first and foremost, as a contributor to the past or to the future. In your unique way. Assess whether you’re fine, having paid your civil fine; whether you have kept your opinions to yourself for too long; or if you’re all talked out yet feel a need to do something constructive without being obstructive of the very freedom you are breathing. Pay your fine as you see fit, but don’t presume to know another citizen’s toll or limits.

photo by newsweek
photo by anonymous

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New England small-press publisher. Writer: Poetry/Memoir/Short Fiction

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