“For me there is only the travelling on the paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel – looking, looking breathlessly.” – Castenada’s Don Juan.

Unemployment, sickness & homelessness as a lifestyle choice .. it’s an interesting NeoLiberal concept – dont you think? A lot like saying that old age is a lifestyle choice… I think it’s because one of the tenets of Liberalism is all wrapped up in ‘Choice’.

Neither of them, or is it none of them, are things that I would ever have thought of choosing. They all appear to accelerate old age – which surely can’t be considered as a choice – certainly not a choice I would have made. All my life I’ve taken what could be called the ‘left hand path’ and I suppose that this was a choice – Dreams, are they motivated by some choice within? – how subconscious, or unconscious is this?

Choice wasn’t something I’d ever really considered but the actual choosing of the path has, in my case, always been a choice – though perhaps I didn’t consider the consequences of my choice. My choice did have motivation. My motivation had everything to do with both what I’d like to call self-fulfillment, my enjoyment, my soul and to what I’d like to call, what I believed to be, my duty to a higher good – to build a better world. Yes, to build a better world that fulfilled my dreams. They weren’t just my dreams they were also the dreams of a time – a place to take our world. A Utopia .. perhaps. An humanitarian, inclusive and happier dream world. The ‘left hand path’ is most definitely a harder path.

Once, in our world there were many more of us who dreamt of the pot of gold that rests at the end of this left hand path. The path is still there but it’s a hard path & in this new world its not so much more dangerous than before, but its crowded with cant signs, with barriers erected by a small and seemingly powerful elect; an elite self-centred few who took the ‘right hand path’ – a path of guns and force and fear and greed.

It does appear that they have won … But its just appearances .. just appearances. I have not lost.

For Monica Holm & Mejed Allameddine & our youth .. and for Rowan Druce. I no longer ‘.. have light wings to fly’.