History.

A tale of remembrance, passed down the line of a telephone game to our screens and eyes of today. No matter how far back the memories, the reality is never to re-form its-self in real time as a play for us. We’re left with what media and oral stories remain, passed on legends helping us comprehend tales from the past.

Heroes in the storm some of those tales tell, larger than life figures whose names and personalities are used to uplift and encourage, inspire and motivate. Not always are those figures, praised from all sides or even known to all types. Some were forced into choosing a side with peace, sitting calmly in the middle with non violence that grew came from their inner faith in humanity’s ability to see peace. Personal freedoms, across pages of humans, taken by the rulers of the telephone game. Memories now written from cells where their forms were detained. Now we live out their seeking as we go about our to-day, believing.

We’ve also filled the the halls and media with idolized figures, ones placed a pedestal above us all, their elevation lifted not by our hands like those living legends throughout history who were lifted by the people, but by our tax dollars and our complacency. Our gazes, seeing these idols behind podiums, has halted any momentum. Now seeing all of these bigger than life figures as different than you and me, even though we are all the same.

We can reminisce back, glance at the black and white images of decades of history, thinking we know what we would have done or what the people in certain times had done. It’s still a blurry picture as we’ve carved these “forever” pedestals for handfuls and forgotten even chairs for the rest of the many as they listened and lived under those copy repeat speeches from past centuries of humans seeking.

With new AI bot minds dissecting data, will we see one day a resurrected version of old thoughts and personalities coming to life, calculated forms of those who were overlooked and forgotten eventually able to be projected beyond who was the loser and who was the leader headlines. Creating a living archive on a digital stage, one of the timeline that humanity has been a witness to while trying to aim for peace? New chapters added to our human story, a refreshed continuation of our jumbled telephone game communications?

For our time, we have countless images of our-stories, where we are each able to experience these moments from many perspectives (may take some digging to avoid the algorithms); passed down through the digital telephone line of social media timelines. The books of the future will be filled with these moments where we all had a choice to pick a side together. From political, to economic, to education, to peace.

A time in history where it our generation who has the option (responsibility) to not fall in line, but an option to work across all party, aisle and assembling lines. A decision to make known that the people are stronger than top down, trickle down currency systems. A span of time where mind and heart can connect us all and allow us to transact beyond corporate middle man lines.

We have failed so far, but can we blame it on our own thinking…or is it the contamination of headlines and currency—systems glitching the operation of our telephone game? Have we grown to love convenience in all ways, so much so that we have given up our self-responsibility and community responsibility for all things? Now only delegating it upwards as we go about living through our “pleasure” called convenience?

Sometimes looking back at our own past moments, it is discouraging to look at across the span of our nation, we had momentum and time during COVID. Did we build parks? Local schools? Repair the walls? Curbs? Decorate a neighborhood tree for those who pass by en route to work everyday? Together — not by asking for permission or waiting for legislation, but as a unit of humans? Or we needed the director megaphone yelling instructions?

Many are still left without—without the mind space to breathe or time to design on big solutions for their neighborhood’s evolution in solidarity with others. All generations have faced the same, yet not all have had the benefit of technology at their fingertips, nor were their basic human survival needs contingent on global shipping operations and mass factory farming operations. How did we get away from growing local foods? Sourcing small farmer foods for restaurant cooking? Away from building our own community schools by local hands, skills and resources? Away from temples built by the people or even spaces of land where the mind can experience the wonder of nature without gray cement blocking the waves amongst our city spaces. Communal design, but we left it to the ones who have taken a seat above you and I.

From clicks of morse code tapped along the line, to press lines sweeping written lines through, to books and radios, to photos and films, to mobile phones to “social” media. How is it that we failed to mobilize a million man march with all of these new mediums? One with demands and an after action, action plan beyond call the politicians? How is it that we all fail to agree on anything as a nation, even on how we breathe or eat, is that missing information along our phone tree or have we passed on responsibility to systems and centuries old corporations?

On these sides of our human coin, somewhere in the middle … there’s a line of reality, reflections of us as a human. While, there are no two party campaign lines that ever agree, even in their two sided rhetoric…there is agreement in the middle hidden between the pant suits and aisle seats where they secretly agree. November 9th red and blue, bleed purple.

Why can’t we do the same, genuinely moving with intention? We trust one another speeding down the freeways without knowing party affiliations or spiritual believings, trusting one another with food preparation as we wait for other humans service in these food lines—lines where we waste mind and time waiting and the employees wasting as they rarely get to use their mind. Button pressing nation of human convenience, will we break the chains wrapping us all together with this mindless idol gazing?

The national headlines on repeat and copy, mass media attention on select injustices, the misdirection of momentum, the misrepresentation of representation, the misinformation of the society’s direction…those two sides pump out their expensive blurry lines missing lines of action. A chord pulled, muffling the lines between our human interactions. Complimenting the distractions…campaign donors, advertising sponsors, international lobbyist…pumping capital into policy, falling in line for red or blue, all of their moves easily predictable as their rhetoric matches those lines the politicians for decades have spewed.

A telephone game carried on by political idols with centuries of documentation so their story is easy to represent as “true." Though there is still much left to tell and discover in our human story, many voices are still with no speaker’s podium to explain the struggles of what would certainly be heart wrenching stories. May be inspiring compassionate thinking, heart strings holding the keys unlocking understanding of the realities in our human story as we unweave the fibers mushed together from human labors throughout the centuries. Insight to new paths, realities beyond the “Look, Squirrel!” distractions currently painted as the reality.

While we have these tools at our fingertips to megaphone citizen stories, our public assemblies are left to be organized by these forums owned by corporations, the same who are the sponsors of the expensive campaign lines—lines that make a mockery of us still playing by the rules of their telephone game they made up back down ancestral lines. From “social” media to our voting booths, endless capital poured into these potential spaces for community assembly. They left us with fancy ads, chanting broken and empty promises of “Hope!” “Change!” “Call your politician, they lead the way!” These simple ideas of community assembly lead by top down thinking, ignoring the rights that allow all of us the Right to Assemble.

Humans forever adapting our heART and design thinking to not fit the solutions needed, but to fit the algorithm—the algorithm of the timelines and the worker lines established. What will is take to not be another generation that looks back and says damn, “…we got COINTEL pro’d…” Misinformation, misrepresentation, misdirection, and mistrust. . . all things not combated easily, but through seeing the picture in a wider view, the solutions are simple: ignore the political parties and build with those who are to the left and the right of you.

Can we use our free time to build the new systems or would we only recreate what we already knew, rebuild new companies that continue top down stories too? Will we use the media and technology we have to build something that is truly a vision of our generation following through, as we show we can all grow humanity past this doom and gloom?

A switch in mind and in action, from this top down ask for permission, to the bottom up linking of our global telephone game. We need a unifying foundation. We’re crumbling, still failing to collectively appreciate: we are these unknown creatures in a form we call human bodies. On this planet which really we don’t as a society in depth understand yet (beyond the science laboratories and research centers we also pay for). Globally, the plants and animals with us, floating on this giant mass of particles…another mass barely known..even though it is our home. All with a blazing, unfathomable, spotlight that is continuously giving this planet in its perfect position…life. Do we need a hashtag for that reminder? More designated days of Sun observations and Earth Day celebrations in order to show we all love this home? Or can we simply drop the tags of both sides, meet in the middle and say,

“Hey!”
“Hey”
“I love this weird human experience.”
“I appreciate it too!”
“Now we live new?”
”With nature as the witness to our truce.”
“Yes, truce” 
”Truce”

Do we need a top down director to vocalize our new roles before we can telephone history with the message of our new pact?

— 2023 draft, edited in 2024.