by LJ Frank

Better a clear escape than good men’s prayers.  Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, Part i, Chapter 21 (1605)

In Africa and the Levant there were haunting proverbial sayings – if you are not sitting on the edge, you are taking up too much space and, the crucified mind occurs before the bindings are placed on the body and the body hung, and this – he tries to escape and yet shouts at the top of his voice.

All that is in existence requires some form of motion or movement, whether a disintegrating rock, or a decaying civilization and especially animals (includes mammals/humans) that are in a state of escape and migration.

How shall one measure their time when trapped, literally or metaphorically? A feeling of being inert, stationary in a world in which we are surrounded by movement, including the Earth itself. To move is to experience life. It’s life itself even sitting still our mind and body are breathing, inhaling, and exhaling, cell-based movement. Yet even in death there is energy (movement) released – that energy is living. That is a transformational movement.

All physical matter falls apart. Epiphanies may or may not occur along the way. Belief can be stronger than science. Rationalizations become essential to survival unless…

The global exigencies of “greedflation” whereby to exist is becoming less affordable for masses of people as the culture of competition for resources and their consumption is a chess game in which people may think “we are participants” when in reality, we may only be spectators.

The want to move above or beyond spectatorship when unable to becomes a problem for the ambitious but disabled or disadvantaged mind and body. What is involved with chance? What are the internal pleadings, and fears? To find your joy requires more than intent. It requires reframing meaning.

Those with power suggest “we are all in this together” but those with power and resources deep within should know better…. crumbs are spread on the ground within eyesight of the crowds seeking a crumb…what are the alternatives but to migrate, escape, to change the nature of the games played… but how, to where and on what or whose terms?

The weather is heating up faster than predicted…both within the landscape of the mind and the planet.

The terminus of survival migrancy is suicide and the right to die. For those at the threshold of existence where disease and pain are no longer tolerable then decisions are made without regard to the laws of the time and place.

The survival migrant asks how much longer can I afford to exist? Do I have the strength to walk away regardless of age, for there are those who are unable to move further? What is humanity’s responsibility to humanity?  

To move away from your present position, status, location requires more than the motivation to survive. It requires ability and mobility. What is gained or what is lost…or is it an either-or proposition? 

Of the time I have at hand, how do I wish to fill it within the context of my ability?