Breakers

The Southern Poverty Law Center, whose

address has been in the sidebar here,

as Context for years, bring perspec-

tive to policy announced by the White

House this week as a Presidential ini-

tiative in human rights, lacking pre-

cedent in our politics except as prop-

aganda. The Obama Administration has

recommended the abandonment of the na-

tion's infamous abuse of psychiatry

for the purpose of destroying gay life.

Like many of my generation; no, like

all of us, who must always wonder why

we were not slated to die with friends

in the great health crisis of the 1980s

and 1990s, I see the breakers of the

present as humane footnotes of benumbed

existence. I scan the waves for all the

life they once so exuberantly held, to

pass the word of the torment's disinteg-

ration. Their warfare is accomplished.

I cannot, and would not, remark to the

new people, on the novelties of the day.

Nothing can taint, nothing can elevate

the place they create for themselves.

This month, this page will reach a mile-

stone in readers, I never contemplated.

But there is nothing in that dull sta-

tistic that can mollify the sense of

achieving nothing, to redeem its license

of time, when I think of those I've al-

ways wished to invoke, claim, praise.

However, I can say, it suits me, and

it suits their memory, that the South-

ern Poverty Law Center are in the boat,

and as they pull, I know we don't have

to say, Hurry. They know the tide.

Jeremy Young

Martin Pichler

Isaiah
XL, ii