there is that moment when

there is that moment when

when what leaps free is YOU

is YOU, however bound

when the inner chains snap

and Life escapes

and all manner of wellness is peace

no matter what

this moment is music

a song signing Thanks

the Pris'ner has freed the jail

and all manner of life is well

you own your self

are loved by God

breathing free

no matter the cage you're in

*Thoughts of Richard Rodriguez:

  -I see, for example, that my own individualistic generation is beginning to think about growing old.  Already there are suggestions that a lot of single people may be brought to live together in their old age.  I certainly saw community develop in the Castro district of San Francisco.  Here you had a highly individualistic gay culture facing the inevitability of AIDS, and from that suffering came a community quite unlike anything I had ever seen before.  It was not a familiar type of community - because in many cases families wouldn't want anything to do with it - but it was the woman next door, it was the man across the street, it was a whole community of strangers coming together to form a new city.  I m interested in that prospect.

When I lecture to young people, I try to teach them this paradox: American young people need to realize that their I, which each generation necessarily believes it has invented - that each person in that generation has singly invented - is itself a communal value.  That it comes to them from their grandfathers and from their great-grandfathers.  That their individualism is what ties them to America, to the tradition of the community.