Rising Above Mediocrity
by Benjamin Geiger

I ran across this today, and while I guess it’s too late to repair the damage already done, this is my philosophy from now on:

“If You Forget Me”

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

— Pablo Neruda

I came across this passage while reading Homegrown Democrat, by Garrison Keillor. I think it sums up everything that’s wrong with the South:

Redneck used to refer to farmers like my uncle Jim who did indeed have a red neck and forearms and face right up to the cap line on his forehead, but he was a generous sweet-tempered Christian man who lived out his faith. Now redneck just means someone who’d happily spend $40,000 on a new pickup for himself and rise up in rage if someone asked him to pay $200 more for his kids’ education. They’re not farmers, they’re selfish bastards with shit for brains who only pay attention to education when they get pissed off. The school board, a dedicated bunch of hard-working underappreciated individuals, decides to change the school nickname from the Redskins to the Hornets, and word goes out to the tavern dwellers and for the next school board meeting, the gymnasium is packed with furious large men venting their lifelong frustrations and in the fall the school board is thrown out of office and replaced with angry large people. That’s redneck politics. The new school board sets about restoring Redskins honor, and trimming the budget, cutting out French and Spanish, establishing creationism as the prevailing science, cleansing the library of impurities, teaching faith-based social studies and history. High school becomes a forced hike down a long corridor of locked doors. You earmark your children for a career as drones—no need for them to learn a second language or write poetry or study physics: in a good redneck school, they only need to learn to sit quietly and recite the official patriotic liturgy and become angry rednecks like their daddies.

The few children who won’t become drones become exiles. I grew up in a redneck community (in the modern sense—almost no farmers, just ignorant bigots) and had to flee to civilization.