Angela and David: Tale of Two Citizens

I was reading David's book on

why he switched sides in

the war between Left and Right,

and I was very moved by his life-changing event,

when the Panthers killed his coworker

in Oakland in 1974.

But then I took a Netflix break like

so many citizens do these days and so there was I

hearing Angela's soulful lament to a Swedish reporter

about growing up in

violence

in Birmingham, contending with KKK and Bull Connor

and for me it was like tale of two cities:

Brooklyn and Birmingham.

David grew up communist household in Brooklyn;

Angela grew up black neighborhood in Birmingham.

But then in their diverging odysseys

they both gravitated to other far-ranging places like

(tale of two cities) San Francisco and Oakland,

left and right, black and white, male and female,

gut and theory, feel and think, stare and blink.

One switched sides and the other

didn't.

Now I'm a white guy in sixties who grew up in the sixties and

I can understand why David switched from radical left to

conservative right

cuz I be little bit like that myself but not nearly as extreme as

his sitiation,

since i grew up in baton rouge, upriver from n'orleans.

That be the deep south you know where magnolias grow

and de moss hang low and de thinkin is slow

lit bit like over in Birmingham where Angela was raised up

'xcept she be black and i be white so I don't know

bout her sitiation, but she did get to study in Paris

at the Sorbonne so what does that tell you bout black folks in

Birmingham or Oakland?

Tale of two cities I guess:

theory and gut

heal and cut

oh shut

my mouth.

Glass half-Full