There is only one of me.

There is only one of me...but there is power is that one if I choose to move out of the crowd, off the couch, into the street, into the fray. There was only one Mother Theresa, only one Martin Luther King, only one Charlie Chaplin, only one Mae West, only one Hitler. I am just me. And there is only one of me.

"There is only one of me, dammit!!" How many times have I screamed that (sometimes out loud sometimes under my breath) to the hundreds of people that have placed too many demand on me? How many times was I the one making the demands - on myself? The answers are in the questions.

Maybe the Beatles said it best..maybe.."I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.....Don't you think the joker laughs at you?" They recorded I Am The Walrus the year I graduated from high school. It has been forty years since the Beatles played at the Coliseum here in DC. Where does the time go? Things can happen quickly. In a recent article on Commondreams.org, Thom Hartmann wrote that core samples taken from glaciers indicate past ice ages may have occurred over a couple of years instead of over thousands of years and that it might be happening again. It might be time to move to Costa Rica. The Northeast US may be uninhabitable in a couple of years. Some say it is uninhabitable now. Things happen quickly.

Am I the same "only one of me" that I was when I curled up on Aunt Gladys' couch at 1365 East Norcova Drive and watched Ed Sullivan introduce the Beatles. I am the baby that lay on her belly on an army blanket in front of her house at 3437 South Woodlawn Avenue and saw - for the first time - the spiny gumballs that covered the ground..saw them clearly because they were at my eye level. Today I can't hear a Beatle song without thinking of that green nalgahyde couch. I can't see a gumball without seeing that brown army blanket.