Please take my hand.
I can hear it coming, soft but seething, like
whispered profanity. Like a matchstick burning, slowly, backwards,
ready to fire up at its sulfurous tip.
There’s a kindling movement rising in St. Augustine. Embers of
political, social and artistic idealism are being fanned in bars and
living rooms. The unmistakable taste of imminent change is in the air.
These forces are fed by both the young and the old.
Those raised in the corporate age and educated enough to see through
the bullshit materialism it offers. And those old enough to remember
our country before Wal-Mart followed McDonalds into every hamlet. St.
Augustine is becoming a last bastion, a holdout for individualism.
But kinetics alone won’t protect it. The fringes
of downtown look more and more like any suburb in the Union every day.
The centuries-old bricks of the interior slowly begin to resemble a
quaint backdrop in Disneyland more than a viable place to live and
work.
Realizing this, people are rising up, working to
establish this city as a place built on ideals. More artists end up in
St. Augustine every day, more socially conscious music is being
performed in more locally owned and community-oriented storefronts.
If this continues, our kindling movement could grow
into the launch point of a raging cultural counterattack. If the city
council would focus on improving its citizens’ quality of life
instead of annexing and developing countryside; if we could starve out
the chains, keeping money in the community; if we could give a little
to our increasingly marginalized poor; if other towns could see a
working system built on meaningfulness instead of money, celebrating
its own culture; then others would be emboldened to claim their cities
and towns as their own.
Yes this is as real as a dream, as the main street
in Lincolnville is named after a man who dreamed.
But other movements have burned themselves out
before. These centuries-old bricks have seen war and fire, brotherly
love and the soft drums of blind hope. And like many of these now dead
revolutions, ours today is often a fragmented cacophony of voices. I
meet our city’s lucid dreamers every day, I talk with them over
coffee. Sadly, they don’t know each other.
We must unite in order to succeed. Too many living
ideas have died as cults, based only on ego or misguided angst.
Perhaps it’s more fun to be a leader instead of joining a cause. But
an army full of generals will never win a war.
I offer an example. While sitting at a coffee shop,
an acquaintance declared that he wanted to start a poetry magazine. He
had a beautiful vision. But while pissing an hour later, he saw a
solicitation for poetry for a new local magazine. He zipped up, cursed
and lamented. Neither his magazine nor the one advertised ever made it
to print, perhaps because he refused to join instead of lead.
There are neighborhood associations whose meetings
are open and advertised online. The
Betty Griffin House, Food
Not Bombs, Surfrider and
countless other groups need volunteers to help in their critical work.
Local groups and local chapters of national groups meet regularly at Loose
Screws, city hall and other locations.
Before starting an organization with the same stated
goals, forming competition instead of aid, we should at least look
into joining others that are already in place. We must unite in order
to succeed.
Venues like the Collective Press and OldCityCool.com
are emerging as venues for discussion and thought. We must unite in
order to succeed, and join the discussion instead of going on our own
tangent and only forming two smaller voices.
Please work with me, take my hand and join those in
the trenches before starting your own fight. We can listen and help.
We can be comrades, neither leading nor following but building our
city together.
Our city’s leaders, and the interests that control
them, ignore our kindling movement hoping we will fragment and
whither. But they can’t ignore a thousand resolute men and women,
hand in hand.
St. Augustine is at a cusp, and its future is
uncertain. If we don’t unite now, these centuries-old bricks may see
another generation pass by like so many unwanted visionaries, written
quickly on tickertape and lost to the wind.
-Wren
This essay simultaneously appeared in The
Collective Press, Issue #6, March 2005.
