Free Spirit of DC

By Phil Penner

 

     Aponi guns the Envirobile away from the construction entrance of the White House. This SUV of a mobility chair sports a wooden Native American Jesus standing at the rear. He’s adorned with beaded braids and feathers, these are mostly cindered by his crown of fiery thorns. This mock execution device snaps violently with arcs of electricity that have fried the head of Environmental Jesus. Dried greasewood vines grasp his feet and torso and splay his raven graced arms out to form the cross.

Aponi rented this cart and mounted her Jesus on the back. Her friend programmed the cart to automatically do laps in front of the Whitehouse. The sides have electronic signs scrolling her latest socio-environmental poem. Her recorded voice is crisp and yet massages her mantra of global survival. She preludes her recording with:

“Say friends, are you fully informed about reality? Humanity and our environment are bottoming out quickly. Our world economy is going under, our dysfunctional corruption is the cancer on our collective inspiration to thrive. Our violent world is promoting unjustified destruction of innocent lives, and our extremists can only get worse. Let’s hit the reset button! Many believe only science can save us by engineering a healthier and more balanced human race.”

She’s nestled into her boxed in fortress with a do not disturb sign blocking clear sight of her face. Aponi is a thirty something chemist. She has large vial of her proprietary ectoplasm. This vial exudes a mildly sharp off gassing that tingles one’s nostrils like a swim in salty surf.

Aponi has concocted potions that free her of her spindly legs which have refused to carry her frame since an accident when she was quite young. This chemical process could kill her so she bolsters herself with a Navajo war chant, “Hey ah na na hey ah na na hey ah na na HEY.”

Aponi meditates briefly on the will of the greater good. She sucks up two blasts from her red inhaler canister. She drops her baseball cap over her eyes and slumps into her chair. Suddenly she sees her body below and feels herself propelled away by the heat from her ectoplasm. Her soul is still grounded in her body while her spirit travels and transmits back to her brain. This gives her spirit self-willed determination on the fly.

She propels her ectoplasm away from her auto-piloted Envirobile while sensing the thoughts of a passersby. Another damn environmentalist that’s gonna drive down the stock market and take away our motorhomes.

Aponi blasts a message back into him through spirit, “We’ll free your children’s children to love life abundantly, in electric motorhomes.”

She thinks high five while passing the sculpture of our prime progressive, George Washington. Aponi pumps her ectoplasm cloud up, like a jellyfish, up to a second floor window. She senses the presence and brainwave sleep state of the First Lady.

Aponi races into her sinuses and melds into the nuances of electro-bio-chemisty. This is their seventh session and the familiarity produces a welcome response. They banter as though Aponi is merely her friendly alter ego.

“We must recruit millions of sisters from free and willing nations,” thinks Aponi to the First Lady. “The masculine influence will come later from many of the scientists who plan our new reality and may get voted into the NGO’s by the public. None of them will be political figures, only architects.”

“I’m very concerned,” thinks the First Lady. “History tells us that the radical right will attempt to kill the intellectuals to maintain the status quo.”

“We must provide them anonymity and secure networks for communication,” thinks Aponi. “The sisters must be allowed to operate in tolerant countries who protect them and freedom of speech. The other countries will eventually collapse from within when their citizens witness the evolution of a better world.”

A sweet smile pours over the First Lady’s lips as she thinks, The love of God, and dreamily kisses her pillow.

 

+

     Succulent aromas are wafting from the wood fired steak house next door to the spiritual center. Aponi wheels up while thinking, After five years as a vegan, it only smells good, who wants to get breast cancer from food that’s tainted with hormones?

It’s difficult navigating the doorway into the spiritual center, the building is old and has no room for proper handicap access. Fortunately the brothers who clean the modest lobby have given her a storage closet for her chairs and robotic Exos legs. She slips into them, they sound like an aquarium pump while grasping her thighs.

Aponi loves sprinting up the stairs, half a floor per jump, with smooth and articulate landings, controlled only by her thoughts.

On the second floor she greets the residents with namaste hands. They return her gesture with mindfulness and smiles. Her heart is warmed by wood paneled walls and the serenity imbibed in the room. A prominent You have arrived, You are here, is scrolled out on breeze driven cloth that dances against the wall.    

     Resident nun – Tangin, gives Aponi a smiling gaze in hopes of hearing of her travels.

     “The President terminated the whole Keystone fiasco and redirected investment into solar,” says Aponi, “If they want to sell that garbage it will have to be on another planet.”

     Tangin and the three brothers cheer the hard won battle.

     “He’s going to come around this term,” says Tangin. “Don’t you think?”

     Aponi can’t resist her huge emerging grin. “He certainly will,” she says. “And more than you can imagine.”

The others have no actual knowledge of Aponi’s spirit journeys.

     “Give us some clues to imagine with,” says brother Mardhi. He’s seen chemicals and supplies among Aponi’s belongings and they’ve heard her slipping out at night.

“There’s nothing to be concerned about,” says Aponi, with a smile. “I’ve been visiting a special friend. We’re working on a speculative project that I’m not free to discuss just yet. Soon it will ring out as clear as a sound bowl.”

Mardi and the others nod in compliance and give Aponi her space. Mardhi rocks forward a bit, gleams a smile at her, a friendly pass for activities that must be concealed.

For the last five nights Aponi has visited the President in his dreams. She has helped him remember his roots and feel the suffering of the common man. She has gained strong familiarity and inspired him with a new sense of purpose. She has encouraged him to trust his wife’s judgment and recent endeavor.

 

+

News crews at the United States Capitol are concerned about the young woman with the do not disturb sign draped over her eyes. Why, they wonder, is she sleeping next to their vehicles? Aponi’s toned torso is slouched in her lime green ProActive wheel chair. Her laptop is closed and cable locked to her chair.

     Aponi’s spirit is sweeping through the Capitol Building. Here comes the Chief of Staff, photographers, and a cameraman motoring in reverse on his platform. They maintain a decent lead on the President who strolls with distant eyes. He shoulders the world’s problems like Atlas with his poker face honed to perfection. He blows off his distractions and decides that he’ll handle this State of The Union Address with flare and panache because he’s a star.

     Aponi sweeps up into his nostrils at full tilt, filling his sinuses with buttered salinity from her ectoplasm.

The President stops instantly while shaking his head. A cameraman taps at the Chief of Staff who looks and says,

     “Mr. President, are you alright?”

     The President whiffs a bit thus lodging Aponi’s ectoplasm firmly in place. For a brief moment his spirit is being lulled into submission and his eyelids drop. Aponi tunes into his brainwaves and blasts him with dopamine. He smiles as big as Texas and says,

     “I’m great, just archiving a boatload of issues in my head so I can focus.”

They stroll out to the Chamber of Congress and receive the standard mixed reception from the bipolar legislative body. He grabs the edges of the podium like he’ll shake his adversaries into submission and begins speaking,

“Dear ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, fellow Americans, and brothers and sisters of humanity:

     I am compelled to bestow upon you the audacity of truth. The type of truth that is self-evident and when denied, it’s usually at one’s own peril.

The time for change is long overdue. Most cultures have divorced themselves from nature. This has been happening for thousands of years. The consequences of our philosophy of dominion over the Earth rather than healthy stewardship is now threatening a great deal of humanity with extinction. The truth is: If we don’t change the Earth will change us. This will be far worse than if we begin to adapt now. Personally, I find it unfathomable that any of us have considered passing our crushing debt and destruction of the environment on to our children. Therefore I believe it is absolutely incumbent on ourselves to begin cleaning up the mess we have created.

Although there will be many necessary changes that have yet to be defined, they will define us as citizens and they will define us as a species. We will either adapt and survive like honey bees, or persist in greed and delusion while continuing to consume our resources like locusts, who ravage the land and collapse due to their own consumption.

The truth is often painful and that which people refuse to accept. If we can’t accept it we can’t fix it. For decades our society and in some form, nearly all societies on Earth, have been in a moral freefall. How many innocents must be slaughtered by crazies with guns and terrorists before we recognize our collective mental illness?

In many ways we can’t admit to ourselves what we’ve done and how bad it has truly become. This is because the media doesn’t show us most of the social and ecological damage our rampant consumerism is doing around the world. This damage is reaching critical mass. The truth is that our present economic system can not sustain it’s trajectory and will in fifteen years or so, collapse like a dying star.”

Jaws stop, drop then flap all through the chamber. The President continues,

“It’s not good enough to allow the feeding frenzy of financial sharks that bankrupted our system to continue on and devour all of our common resources. If they succeed we’ll live on a miserable third world planet with its capitols in corporate boardrooms and offshore banks.

We my friends, are trapped in a large box. We can’t fix it until we take our minds out of the box and seek freedom from the turmoil that’s going on inside. This turmoil destroys too many things, primarily our ability to cooperate and progress as healthy spiritual human beings.

This is why the First Lady is by my side to announce her bold new initiative. When she told me about it I was skeptical, as most of us will be. Then I realized that all of our best efforts throughout history have propelled us into our present quagmire of global dysfunction. We have very little management of complex global issues because corporate self-interests control governments with little oversight or guidance. Our system is far too broken for an overhaul. We need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and build a world that works well for most people, not just a privileged few.”

The blue side is cheering voraciously while the reds flush green with envy that they have no real leadership. The First Lady takes the podium. Many are perplexed by the joint delivery of the address. She’s beaming like the sun is coming out from a long winter and begins with,

“Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen of every nation. Most of the problems bearing down on humanity should be confronted by governments. But instead they are powerless because they have been emasculated by entrenched power. These are issues of greed and self-indulgent behavior rather than working toward the greater good, as God would have us do. Therefore we can’t solve our biggest problems with more money or the military or our old school ways of self-interests rather than the global interests of everyone.

We are experiencing a collective crisis of consciousness due to corruption and being told we have reached the end of times. This is creating a massive chronic low-grade depression for humanity as a whole. Until we can bring our species into balance with the Earth, humanity is in essence, homeless.

To repair this dilemma we need to reach out to the man on the street so that our children will still have a street. Everyone needs to know that in this finite world, we are all connected. We must treat all life forms with due respect or we will disrespect ourselves and pay the consequences.”

Many of the Democrats are hopping like tropical birds performing a mating ritual. Republicans are crimson and scowling.

She nudges the President while continuing,

“The initiative of which my husband spoke of is called the Numanity Project. Listen up; all of you scholarly sisters from around the world, listen very closely. We must not fail to form a coalition of Non Governmental Organizations. From these we will form armies of other women all around the world. They will practice deep listening with compassion. They will listen to their white-collar husbands who don’t feel good about hurting people in the name of business. They will listen to blue-collar workers who will die before they can retire. They will listen to the soldiers who need just cause to kill their fellow man. They will listen to the talented musicians who are marginalized due to our focus on materialism. They will listen to their neighbors whose children have contracted cancer from our poisoned world.

After listening with sincere compassion they will explain the need for population reduction and living in God’s will of the common good. They will convey the determination that we shall join together to build a better world.

The NGO’s will then take what they have learned from the man on the street and boil these messages down to their simplest terms. The scholars operating Numanity’s NGO’s will boil it all down again, into the essence of the suffering of humanity.

Then the NGO’s will seek out the best of the best in the sciences of sociology and economics, and those knowledgeable in energy and the environment. These scientists will partake in the essence of the suffering of humanity and our biosphere, this will water the seed of compassion in their hearts.

These scientists must recognize the interdependent nature of our finite planet. They will know that what happens to one group of people will ultimately affect everyone else for better or worse. They must cast off the shackles of failed thinking that brought us to this condition. Greed, prejudice and delusion are not healing our hearts, they are poisoning our minds.”

The First Lady softens her tone and continues,

“When you were a child, if your little sister crashed on her bicycle did you abandon her and race quickly home to eat her dessert? No, it’s more likely that you loved your little sister and cared for her. On this finite planet we need to understand that other nations are our brothers and sisters too. Our United Nations must be given the authority to act like moral parents to all corporations and nations. We must seek the greater good in all our affairs.

I believe that most successful people appreciate the love and respect of their fellow man. They would rather be carried on shoulders in a parade, and not be barricaded away with guns. We need to inspire the disadvantaged to look up to their leaders, not be repulsed by their corruption.

Numanity’s NGO’s must be completely independent from all governments and corporations. Any donations channeled into Numanity must be anonymous and given only for the love of humankind.

We will take what we have learned from scientists and boil it down to regional solutions with vibrant global trade. Trade must be accomplished with green energy to compliment the superorganism of Earth.”

“This is high treason,” rings out from the minority whip.

“No sir,” blasts out the First Lady. “Our old world is collapsing under the weight of greed and short sightedness. How can you hold young people at fault for seeking a better world? We have taken the best of times and tolerated the fleecing of our economies by vulture capitalists. How can you even begin to suggest that our children should accept massive debts and our fraudulent behavior? Would you, and with no benefit to yourself, accept this treatment sir?”

The minority whipped is dumbfounded. The First Lady’s eyes casually cast him into the lake of fire and she carries on,

“And for you rightfully skeptical folks, consider this; our entire organization will emphasize decentralization and broad base networking of information. All we have done is create a framework for safe communication. We will know the truth as self-evident and we will not allow anyone or anything to impose control upon our process. We will guard our children’s future like momma grizzly bears.

We will not be seeking corporate sponsors, or super stars and politicians that confuse our goals. The star participants in the Numanity project will be local heroes from everywhere. They’ll be paid in brotherly love, for they will be the brave men and women who forge a healthier future for our entire Earth.”

Most of congress is at once stunned and swept away. The red side looks sadly shameful and applauds with hollow hands. The Dems are like teenage girls at a Beatles concert.

The First Lady bows curtly then continues to wave and salute and tamp down their applause.

The beaming President takes the podium, “See why I’m so proud of this lady?” After a few moments he continues,

“In the mean time we have a diseased economy that must build our gateway to the future. We need to wind down the use of fossil fuels as fast as possible. This will be a huge undertaking in itself.

I believe that as we move along, the inspiration of building a better world will enable us to do incredible things. When the ninety nine percent join hands we can build a global railway system for the future. Railways that replace air travel and cargo ships, railways that will be powered by clean energy.

Just the fact that we would begin to focus most of our energy on working together rather than fighting wars will move mountains and bring heaven into our hearts.”

     “Goddamm communist,” shouts a furious Congressman.

The President furrows his brow and thunders from on high,

     “How can you label something that science hasn’t created yet? Some think we can let global warming take its toll and that then us more fortunate ones will be just fine. It’s far more likely that many societies will collapse with the economy and wreak havoc on everyone. If we choose to bury our heads in the sand, or in underground shelters, when we come back up it will probably be to a living hell of gangs and potential cannibalism.”

The President lets that soak in for a moment and continues,

“It may take decades to transition from our dying expansionist way of life into a sustainable world. Economic models suggest that we can adjust our world economy to last for 20-30 years. We will then watch our corrupt reality collapse and we will take flight like the Phoenix.

I personally believe that it is incumbent upon us as civilized human beings to allow our young adults to shape their own future, guided by the wisdom of their most capable elders. I believe the Numanity Project is the best way to do this. We must do this my friends. Not because we have to, although Mother Nature is proving this to be true, we will do it because we are the champions for the world.”

 

The President tamps down their applause and bows curtly, preparing to depart. Aponi will have her hands full now. She’ll have scores of hamstrung leaders to influence in the ways of spiritual solutions to material problems.

One of the red crazies runs toward the podium while pulling something from his pocket. It’s tucked into his palm and not visible yet. He stops and points his tiny ceramic gun at the President and fires, BAM, the bullet screams like desperate propaganda.

     The President drops to the floor while his bodyguards rush to his side. “Idiot,” says the President. He rips open his shirt to reveal a nasty flesh wound. He jumps back up to the podium with a grimaced smile.

     “I’m okay, it’s only a scratch. Peace be with all of you.”

He salutes the Chamber, does an abrupt about face and boldly walks away.

This is the shot, felt ‘round the world, the hinge-point of the metamorphosis of humanity. We will fly away from our cocoon of insecurity and greed and into the sunshine of a brighter future. A future that benefits everyone to the extent that they embrace it. A future that rewards us well as individuals for achieving great things for the greater good of all life.

     Science tells us that we all evolved from a common grandmother in Africa. Now we have the proud parents of Earth’s first truly advanced and thriving civilization. They will be loved and celebrated for millennia to come, long live Numanity!