Where is the world where I used to stay?
Where is our Lone Ranger?
A Serbian schoolboy has slaughtered his peers. As so many have slaughtered their kind, in hails of bullets, before.
Where is the Glesca?
Oh, where is the Glasgow where I used to stay?
Wi’ white wally closes done up wi’ pipe clay,
Where you knew every neighbour from first floor to third
And to keep your door shut was considered absurd.
Where are the we’ans that once played in the street?
Wi' a jorrie, a peerie, a girl wi' a cleet.
Can they still cadge a hudgie or dreep aff a dike,
Play hunch cuddy hunch, kick a can, and the like?
And where’s the wee shop where I used to buy
A quarter ae tatties, a tuppenny pie,
A bag of broke biscuits, a wee soda scone,
And the woman aye asked, "Hooze yer Ma gettin’ on?"
Where are the Tallies that I knew so well?
That wee corner shoppie where they used to sell
Hot peas, a McCallum, ice cream in a poke?
(Ye knew they were Tallies the minute they spoke.)
And where is the cludgie, that cosy wee cell?
The string frae the cistern, I remember so well,
Where I sat wi' a caun'le, and studied the rags,
A win for the ’Gers, defeat for the Jags.
Where is the tram car that once did a ton
Doon the Great Western Road on the Ol' Yoker run?
The conductress aye knew how tae deal wi’ a nyaff,
"If yer gaun, weel, come oan; f’yer no, weel, git aff."
I think o' the days o' my tenement hame,
We've got fancy hooses but they’re just not the same.
I'll swap yer gizunder, flyover and jam,
For a tuppeny ride on the old Partick tram.
Gone is the Glasca that I used to know,
Big Wullie, wee Shooie, the steamie, the Co.
The shilpit wee bachle, the glaickit big dreep,
Yer baw's on the slates, and yer gas in a peep.
Those days wernae’ rosie; the money was tight,
The wages hauf finished by Saturday night,
But, still, we came through it and weathered the ruts,
The reason is simple — Our parents had guts.
Hey-ho: silver lining?
I deal cards with a correspondent; playing poker for posterity; the stakes are cynicism.
“The original Lone Ranger,” says he, “started something that lives on to this day; he became a Batman-like character, his silver mine making him a billionaire and providing a front and alter ego as a rich philanthropist. For a few generations he passes the secrets and power of The Lone Ranger to an heir, leading to the present day where the modern Lone Ranger battles evil on a global scale and faces the challenge and conflict of selecting and preparing his future replacement.
“I think we need a modern Lone Ranger. It’s time to make Silver Bullets fly again!”
“They, my friend,” say I, “are good but for werewolves.”
He counters me with analysis: “More figuratively speaking, using the symbolism of the term silver bullet to describe a magically simple solution to a difficult problem or enemy.”
I’m moved to pontificate.
“I’ll see your analogy and raise you a posit: that rangers roam the realms of the Earth in their multitudes, imbued with ideals of justice and a determination to eradicate injustice; armed with voting powers and social values; they carry in their hearts a true sense of brotherhood and unity; they avow their disdain for self-interest; they ride high and proud, and declare the corrupt to be their and mankind’s enemy.
“Their silver bullet is this: to live as they proclaim; to pursue truth and eschew falsehood; to embrace the bounty of the Earth as the well from which all shall drink, heedless of creed, colour or race.
“They are lauded by leaders, praised by prelates and wooed by warlords; recognition brings responsibility, reward reaps temptation; and the justice they once vaunted turns from universal to unilateral.
“Justice, their erstwhile silvern speech, taints to the glistering gold of silence; little by little, it becomes not an aspiration, but an inspiration for gain; far less a goal than a systemic lie, by which they too join the scramble for lucre, with which their leaders lure their lackeys.
“Among them is perhaps our Lone Ranger, who, with his rise, holds justice not only in his heart as his hope, but puts it to work in every step of his saga. Otherwise, its sentiment and its substance are soon lost to advancement and avarice.
“Our Lone Ranger is indeed but lone. Alone, he is doomed.”
We fight for the platitudes of freedom and democracy. But the fight is one whose fray we rarely enter. Justice, which all would avow they seek, remains unachieved, because the fray is one we abandon to those who but mouth the notion and, when they say we possess it, we willingly are duped.
We don’t seek justice, freedom or democracy. We seek a form of justice that will set us free enough to engage in democracy, which we abuse not as we met it but as a device absent justice; in that, it becomes a ploy to do as we please, and too often it pleases us to aspire to, attain and wield an upper hand. Once the controlled, we seek to control; once poor, we seek to retain riches; once powerless, as the powerful, we wield power as those who wielded it when we were powerless.
Streaks of backbone become streaks of malice; evil is vaunted as necessary; justice, to which there was once no alternative, turns to rape of the Earth and, for that we cannot rape, we instead rape our fellow man; we serve not justice with silver bullets – those rest unshot. We instead aim them at fellow mankind in the service of injustice, perceived as a path to our goals.
Man’s struggle for betterment is its scramble for superiority; equality is cast off as impractical; the freedom we vaunt is ours alone; and the democracy we embrace is but a crampon on our ascent, whose precepts lie as dross as we attain our apogee, exercise will, untrammelled by conscience, in the heady, thin air of our summit.
Those who rise through the fray armed with sound intentions so rarely emerge, their intentions intact.
Was that a world I ever knew?
Hey-ho.