An Altered Reality, Rev. Obama

After yet another night of very little sleep, I feel like doing very little.  I am tired.  Physically I am tired, but with a big breakfast and some caffeine I am making myself be active.  I believe this is the plight of millions of Americans and possibly citizens of other countries as well.  "Sleep is a rose the Persians say," quotes Clare Quilty in Nabokov's novel Lolita.  It is where your troubles are supposed to melt away.  For me my troubles begin when I sleep.  After tossing and turning for hours, my skin irritated by irate sound waves produced by diesel locomotives, finally I drift off to never never land.  I have an altered reality, and it is my dreams.  Rarely are they pleasing, except once in a blue moon I get to kiss the girl.  The rest of the time I spend in action, adventure, and thriller scenarios solving problems by which to stay alive.  It is quite the challenge.  I am used to it.  I am not used to being tired all of the time consequently.  It is an interesting sacrifice, your daily life versus a subconscious nocturnal adventures.  I would rather experience my adventures during waking hours, but so be it.  Most creative people are most prolific in the wee hours of the night and morning as was Cole Porter.  His popular song, "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," was a metaphor for his draft into the armed services and having to rise to the sound of a bugler at the crack of dawn.  This song served him well later in his life.  I guess I should be thankful, that I have dreamt two small novelettes in their entirety one I have written down and one I have not.  It is new to me this business of dreaming novels.  It has been said that when God closes one door He opens another.  I would prefer to continue my musical adventures, and I am trying the best I can despite my fatigue.  Yesterday was a monumental day in the history of America, and I am too tired to blog about it.  Yesterday was a monumental day in the history of America, because our first African-American president sang the spiritual song "Amazing Grace" during his eulogy for the victims of Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  Did you hear what I said?  I said, "Our first African-American president SANG the spiritual song "Amazing Grace" on live television to be rebroadcast again and again and again on what will become syndicated television.  This is a watershed event.  While all Americans have known that President Obama is black, he has done an admirable job of dispelling racial stereotypes about black people.  One does not get elected president of the United States by talking jive, eating chitlins, and drinking Colt 45 malt liquor.  One should not receive misdirected persecution for possessing an affinity for the confederate flag.  The seemingly comprehensive admonishment of the confederate flag of the American South is a stretch.  While I do not embrace such an archaic and anachronistic symbol, flying a flag does not a protagonist of genocide make.  There are many ignorant red necks in America.  There are many ignorant gang bangers also. Connecting the will to commit racial hate crimes with a flag....  well, it is quite a conundrum.  I find it quite fascinating that a heinous multiple murder in a predominantly black church in the American south has brought forth such a movement against a symbol.  What about the murderer himself?  Is Dylan Roof connected in any way to this confederate flag?  While I applaud the sudden dissent having lived in an oppressive south for many years, still it is a stretch.  What is more of a stretch is that our first African-American president sang the spiritual song "Amazing Grace" live in public.  What is it that is so groundbreaking about this action?  Everyone in America knows President Obama is black, but not until now have we seen him integrated with the black church.  Who knew he had roots in this stylized mode of worship?  There are black Episcopal churches who adhere to its formal structure based upon the Catholic mass.  Submitting to this social demand President Obama created history in America.  He departed from the Constitution's separation of church and state, and freely acknowledged that God is a necessary part of the fabric of American civilization.  (as it is of all civilizations)  With this trip to Charleston, South Carolina President Obama may have entered America's history books just like our Supreme Court's rulings on the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage.  This is a lot of history for one short week.  Wow.  The president sang "Amazing Grace."  Bill Clinton played the saxophone and not that well.  Governor Pappy O'Daniel danced to "Man of Constant Sorrow."  Boris Yeltsin threw down on stage at a rally in Russia.  President Obama sang the spiritual song "Amazing Grace."  It was an unprecedented event.  A deranged Caucasian youth murdered nine African-Americans at a bible study in Charleston, South Carolina.  Are these lives more important than the lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut?  Are these lives more important than the lives lost at the Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado?  Are these lives more important than the lives lost at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado?  The Constitution says no, but cultural heritage says yes.  It says yes, because these people were more high profile in society.  It is interesting, that martyrization is a powerful entity.  The killing of high profile African-Americans practicing freedom of religion in the American South is symbolic of the struggle of the Civil War.  It, like America's original Civil Rights Momement, represents heinous practices against humanity in America.  While students attending school or engaging in the recreational viewing of a film equally are as important as the nine victims in Charleston, formerly enslaved African-Americans practicing their constitutional right to freedom of worship represents a greater cause.  We must ask ourselves if this was a determinate in Dylan Roof's choice of victims.  Could it have been consequential, because this particular church happened to present his correct opportunity to murder multiple blacks?  Did worship and Bible study enter Dylan Roof's mind?  In either case the combination of church and black is too strong an image to suppress.  Let's be thankful it was, because this combination is a fundamental part of America's history and enlightenment.  Let's be thankful a sitting President took a stand and against a common, erroneous, and politically-motivated view, brought God into the presence of America.