Like Richard Parker, Martin Luther King, Jr., seems to have disappeared - along with courage and civil rights. Our large cat of humanity, driven by rules transcendent, leapt into our time (I was in grade school) and as quickly fled (I was in junior high), captured mainly by soundbites and clips of his graceful courage and fierce beauty.
What does it mean that a camera could film holiness in a black-and-white chemistry of time and space but lose the human? Is not this the ceaseless chase of our time - to discover authenticy within strata of deceptions. In the sunken culture of canine madness, Republicans may put their trust in a God, but they certainly don't trust each other or most Americans.
In a land of secrets, in a nation of illusions, citizens of the masses doubt their reality, memory, and common humanity. Petty betrayal - television's new tragic concept - is sensationalized. But corporate, national, and international betrayals continue on with impunity. A castle of wealth and power isolates and immunizes itself against the waves on which Pi Patel rides or which overcome poor Asians, leaving boys and girls living without parents or shelter or food.
Why I should not escape my castle.
But the Dec 26 wave woke some up, set the globe a wobble, touched scrooges everywhere, penetrated the castle. Was Martin as provocative, as sudden, as beastly? Many would say no. But think again. King - like all pacifists - was highly aggressive. And this paradox fits the analogy of the giant surf.
Of course the analogy is, by extension, between the tsunami and the bengal tiger as well. For in Pi Patel's hallucinary experience in Yann Martel's extraordinary novel Life of Pi, it is a sea-tossed stranger that finds a soulmate in Richard Parker.
Where is Martin on the sea of unkindness?
Some say he is dead. But my black college students in Chattanooga remember him, calling him "Great Martin." However, they do not recall that Martin first came to Chattanooga to interview for a pastoral position at a Baptist church. He was turned down, too radical (some said). Too real and like Christ, I retort.
It is a memorial day, today (Jan 17), for Martin. But it is not a day of the dead, unless we want to give into the death-making schemes of Republicans - war, tax cuts, destruction of the social contract. And if we do, this is all we will adore: