is it fear?

i just walked past a black guy raising money for the homeless who said 'save a life?!' to the bland apathy of the students walking by
and i said 'sorry, got nothin on me'
but i did, i just a. figured i couldn't really spare it, b. reacted to him like i would to a panhandler, and c. was shocked
i should have stopped, asked him what it was for, given him a dollar if i had it, apologized if i didn't
but i was scared

our modern world is based upon fear
or so many would have us believe; v for vendetta tells the story of a not-too-distant london that more resembles modern US than any scifi i've read
altho it does little for the original voice of the graphic novel, the film really effected me, not only because it spoke of love as powerful, as powerful as destruction, and not merely as emotional, pukey sentiment
but also because i saw myself in evey hammond
which i didn't see in the book; she was too weak, too insipid and trusting
but there was a fire, a weakness in the film that i found believable
and that i saw in myself

i'm scared to death of the future
i was scared today that my dollar might be needed this summer, when i may or may not have a job
i'm scared of the riots in paris, where people are beating fellow protestors all in some mindless fight to be able to live the 'dream' of suburbia
we don't want to be alive anymore
we want to be dolls in houses that we can't get out of
but at least no one can get in

v for vendetta might not be right about some things
for one, it's often cheesey and a lot of the cool torture parts of the book are gone
(tho thank god it's not so masterbationally moore)
but it's right about america, about maybe the whole wealthy world
we know our success is standing on teh top of bodies and corpses and ruins
we know it's a careful balance we hold, that at any moment, we could descend into the pits of despair from which our profit comes
we know that bush could come into our homes and arrest us if someone made up a lie about something we didn't do, that witch hunts are very modern, that suburbanites would rather skewer an environmentalist than see the effects of their actions

i was so scared of him, asking me for money, that i walked right by
because i'm aware, i see the world, i want to change it
but i'm too scared that i'll lose what i DO have in the process
so i can't help but think that we could all use what evey hammond got, a little awareness of the fleeting nature of all things but that 'last inch'...tho because i know this concept, because i understand it, shouldn't i be able to live my life with the awareness that no matter what happens, what people take, what falls apart, there is always something beyond humans, there is light and life and the black love of the universe...?
shouldn't i be able to walk back there, give the guy my dollar, and not worry whether or not i ever make it to that bungalo in the sun with the girl of my dreams?

i was afraid, i am afraid, and that's why i'm not so motivated to contact any activist groups, to join their protests,
because the little life i lead is so precarious,
because i don't think that those people in v for vendetta, if they were real, would have joined together to oust the big bad, because i don't htink i would have either..
because all our little lives are so precarious, because we are so intertwined with our flesh, because we've forgotten our roots in the soil, in the earth, in the air, in the galaxy...
because we are so fragile,
i am afraid
and i don't know what to do