When I entered the City Senior Center
with my Open Mic proposal
to increase resilience
and decrease apartheid dissonance
I could hear no music,
see no dancing.
The quilting room
and the game room,
even the pool tables,
were as quiet as the library,
which at least held four contemplative people
scattered in their own secluded spaces.
Like visiting a sad monastery,
without tai chi,
chi gong,
walking meditation,
and/or yoga classes
filled with abundant creaky grace.
Back then
The Senior Center felt like a sad retirement home,
day care for some,
a reprieve from unmitigated loneliness
away from an empty nest,
a dusty divorce,
tiring widow weeds,
snarky dark separations,
untimely and unwanted departures.
A place to avoid risks
of dying unhappily
in sequestered
marginalized 24/7 isolation
More anxious now
than anticipating
long weekday evenings
dark nights
and bleak winter weekends
Where no outside kindness
for aching bones
and sinus cavities
could be found
in one’s private old age tomb.
Fading
failing
irrelevant
uncherished rooms feel frightening,
sometimes angry
waiting to die stations
for prisoners of neglect
Victims of systemic trauma
aging alone
in a retiring
and not repurposing
silent place.
Now returning,
as we cooperatively rebuild
our Senior Wisdom Center,
former inmates remember ourselves
as guilty criminals,
blaming and shaming
and judging our sins
of lacking compassion
Throwing our humbled lot
in with all those Otherers
accused of Earth Matricide
Smothering our organic Center
with extractive plunder
Abortion of our regenerative Planet,
HOME plant
exploited for anthroprivileged
economic
and short-term apartisan gain.
I couldn’t feel
much active hope
for multi-regenerative communion
For sacred transmutation
of bad
and mad
and sad
becoming win/win cooperatively owned
and managed
root systemic glad
Back before we became a Senior Wisdom Center
conjoined with the City Arts Center
exploring neighborhood after-school and weekend
Open Mic
and Community SingAlong Dances
and Flash Mob WellBeing Engagement events.
This switch
from segregated Senior Center
and unhoused lack of any Youth Center
to Senior Wisdom Center
supporting neighborhood MusEcology Skill Centers
Began with cooperatively engaging
healthy CrownChakra songs
while dancing wealthy RootChakra
cooperatively co-invested rhythms
Dipolar co-arising mind/body patterns,
win/win indigenous governance systems
more friendly to universal health care minds
seeking resonant opportunities
through unitarian wealth care bodies
drawn away from risky win/lose trauma
repurposing toward resilient win/win
co-passionate engagement.
