Nothing to Say, Ma
As a result of recent conversations, my life-long closest friend Diego wrote the following. If you’re lucky as we are, you have such a friend whose interests and thoughts match yours so closely that it seems that you were separated at birth in a dream. We both felt from the days of our youth when chance brought us together that, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, it was not he, she, them, or it that we belonged to, or that we would ever gargle in the rat race choir for those who make the rules to terrorize humanity.
By Diego Sandoval
“Does anybody ever say anything?”
“Not really. Everybody talks all his life, and many write for many years, but nobody really says anything. It’s all right, though.”
– William Saroyan, Not Dying: A Memoir
Because I have nothing to say, I am writing this. It’s all right. I have nothing to say because I am disgusted by all the words I have written for deaf ears and by the news that just repeats itself like an endless Greek tragedy to the chorus of commentators of all persuasions echoing each other as if their words made a difference in the butcher’s bench world of ruthless actors with their motto: acta non verba. I’m just sighing, Ma, like another man of many words, Bob Dylan:
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only
Life? Yes, Dylan is right: “If you’re not busy being born you’re busy dying.”
But what difference can words make? I don’t know. Quén sabe?
William Saroyan was a witty man, a Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner, very famous in his day, and he didn’t know either. He claimed he wrote to ward off death and said he expected an exception to death would be made in his case. He was a man hiding in a house of words, always ready to bolt when death came knocking. But he never grasped the contradictory meanings of bolting, a common
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
