The Edge

“It’s badly organized,” my friend told me bluntly.

Well, I had sought her out for her opinion—what right did I have to be offended?

And she may well be right—organization is not my strongest point. You want ideas? Hey, sit down, grab a pencil and start writing. And probably you won’t be able to keep up.

But there was more. An ardent supporter of independence, she took umbrage at being included in a project involving the fifty states.

“We’re a separate nation,” she said, “and we’re recognized by the international community as a separate nation….”

I learned long ago—this is the thinnest of ice. I heard her out, and agreed on several points.

Virtually all the guns here in Puerto Rico are illegal, and come from the United States, where they are cheap and plentiful. And since we are a colony of the United States, we rely on the federal government to police our borders—if we were independent, we could do the job ourselves.

In addition, it’s our status as a colony that has made us a major entry point for cocaine and other drugs, which we ship up north. What comes back? Guns.

She made another point—we are about to privatize our airport, and to whom? Well, critics on the left say to a company which has ties to the drug traffickers. If true, the situation will be a mess—the drug lords will have assured their logistics, better than even Sam Walton could. And there will be guns littering our streets like cigarette butts.

Well, her suggestion was to focus on the Puerto Rican angle, organize better, get the media involved, and especially get well-known people involved. That’s how it’s done. One person sitting in a square reading names? Just another lunatic.

Or maybe a writer. I spent seven years inside a cold grey building. Then I spent another year alone in an apartment, creating a new life for my mother. Now it’s time to get out, get stirring, take the plunge, talk to people.

I’m scared, of course. Scared that some nut will pull out his gun and kill me, or worse, incapacitate me. I can’t look at Gabby Giffords without wondering—could I do what she’s done? Would I have that strength, that courage to come back after that kind of trauma?

Scared of looking ridiculous, though that’s lesser. I pretty much AM ridiculous most of the time—unlike organization, it’s really one of my fortes.

Scared of the passion that some gun owners have: the blind fury and paranoia that, mixed with fear and hate, makes them seethe with rage.

Which may be why I had a waking dream—a dream in which, inadvertently, I had stepped from a tall building, and was falling, falling to the pavement below.

“Courage is a muscle,” said Ruth Gordon, “and like a muscle, it gets stronger with use.”

Or words to that effect.

I say that it’s time to move out of the comfort zone. If you’re not out there poking around, hearing stories, getting people to talk or rant or weep, you’re not where you should be.

On the edge.