Mark Morford-Where Is Your Hallowed Balm?

[realFedUp]

(I like it when Mark uses our imaginations...)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/03/notes090304.DTL&nl=fix

== Where Is Your Hallowed Balm? =
Music? Yoga? Porn? These are the things that can defy the savage GOP
gloat and give you hope
(By Mark Morford)

I am searching for a few good things.

Things to counteract, to dissolve the simmering dread, to deflect the
waves of nausea and karmic pain induced by the incessantly depressing
media maelstrom and the appallingly hateful gloat of the GOP convention and by the most tyrannical administration and least articulate American president in 100 years. You know how it is.

snip-

Is it John Sayles' brilliant new "Silver City," which has Chris Cooper playing a bumbling, slightly moronic, grammatically challenged son of a Colorado senator who stumbles into a murder mystery while campaigning for governor? Or what about the funky indie cred of ""? Are these all usable balms? Well, why not?

It comes in all shapes and sizes and colors and smells. And here's the thing: When you start to look, when you finally turn away from the news feeds and the embarrassing Fox News propaganda, and begin to re-notice the wide array of genuine voices of hope and progress and dissent in the country, all the creative types operating off the media grid and striving like calm dedicated Zen-like maniacs to make the world better and to carve out a slice of humanity amidst the clamor and the rabid postindustrial capitalistic cry, well, you begin to feel a little better. A little.

Because there is always magic. There is always the paranormal, the mystical, the vibrational. There is the old man who plants fresh flowers in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco every week because no one else is taking care of them. There is utterly brilliant Indian quantum physicist turned ecologist Vandana Shiva, and local organic farms, volunteer disaster clean-up crews and meditating monks who endlessly strive, in total silence, sans ego and self-consciousness, to up the vibe of the world.

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