on bondage...  By: Greg In Trabanca

I still remembered distinctly my first flight to a big world beyond my small world. I have traveled to different places but this one pumped my adrenaline. In the mirror of my mind I could visualize the flashes of my dreams, the pictures of what will be but will it be?

What really clung to the very fiber of me on that day was freedom. I knew what that word meant but I have yet to savor the new beginning, the new changing, the new environment, the new me.

I was on a big plane , Northwest 747. I was blinded by excitement. What I was thinking was nothing but to savor freedom, to be free from the bondage of so many pressures that pester me and like an arrow ready to hit my Achilles heel.

I saw in my horizon looming questions.

Many questions. Will there be answers? Solutions? On this new frontier? I doubt it.

Deluged with these unknown feelings, I was. Now I am free. This territory that I have known through books, radio, and stories from people. Now it is real. I touched it. I felt it. My body tingled.

The years floated by like the birds of prey in the sea of my yearning-to-learn life. I love to learn. Life is full of hidden treasures.To me, learning stops when my new life begins.

Now I learn that I am still in bondage in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Like so many of us from foreign shores, and don't tell me you are not.

When we step the soil of this new found land, we are readily welcome with open arms by the media, the merchants, the advertisers, the car dealers, the real estate agents, the banks, the mortgage companies.They all want us to be in debt; we are chained to the debt bondage. We are not aware of that. And they like that.

Truth and the deadly consequence!

Are we really homeowners? condo-owners? townhome owners? Do we all hold the titles of home, the car? How about the things that gave us instant gratifications - the big TV, the furniture, etc. Are they not paid by checks and credit or debit cards?

That was April 5 of '74 when I glimpsed the beauty of Seattle because I was not sleepless on that trip. That was cool. Only a couple of questions on the port of entry. I passed as I only answered yes or no. I am a few word person. I hate long speeches.

Chicago, here I come. Al Capone. Carl Sandburg. Sears Tower. Daley City. And Chicago is the Windy City.  Later, I found out that the city is really windy and the politicians, too. Am I politically correct?

Freedom or bondage?