I posted something yesterday asking if anyone else had been feeling as if they were running in sand, and if for any one thing accomplished, several new items would unhappily show up on their to-do list. The responses surprised me. Whatever is going on is being experienced by many others.
Review
"Does it matter how we got here?"
Under this weight of words
there is still a voice, almost audible,
urging nothing at all —
a hum more than a moan.
My suffering thrives in separation
My fear, in imagination.
And yet there is darkness and dis ease
spreading like a virus.
I have no antidote
unless it be in anecdote
but trapped in an aging body
my perceptions are suspect.
Are we, crowded together,
more alone than ever?
We plan gatherings, laugh
in shared moments, but whatever
joy is mustered fades with goodbye.
The distracting book, the riveting movie,
disappear upon completion.
Everything slipping quickly away.
I hear complaints that startle me
with their irrelevance while relentlessly
repairing what I can as if that might
be a cure, an answer to the question:
What is not precious?
A headline that caught my attention this morning was how global ocean temperatures have soared to their highest level on record. This came after learning that overall global surface temperatures are probably higher than at anytime in human history. And Antarctic ice, as measured this July, is 2.6 million square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average. That's about the size of Argentina.
Much has dropped from my days except the anxious sense of not doing or being enough. There is much to dread on planet Earth in this 21st century.
Sometimes, I worry too much to speak. Only through writing can I focus all that churns in me. It's not a traditional conversation I know, but I listen to many before I respond to all.
I want to be strong for her; clear for him; funny for them; positive in public; quiet in private.
A pained relief remains where once was an ache and a longing. My hand reaching in one direction is not grasped; my other hand avoids those reaching for me. Some contact, negotiated or accidental, is inevitably made, but no one is saved.
We retreat back into whatever cave of busy idleness we have. Someone, seemingly on top, shouts the way. Another, aimlessly striving, complains of the steepness of that path.
It's not supposed to be fair, or just, or kind, or anything really. We only wish it were . . . while we wait . . . wait for the wave that will wash us, either away or together.
In any given moment, on a crowded planet, there are ten million bad choices being made, countless prayers going unanswered, and a handful or two of one kind or another lottery winner. Still, even midst war, disease, or famine, the birth rate is always outpacing the numbers of those exiting.
Once, when I listened to those claiming to be in the Universal Know, it was said that Earth was the place to be. Souls line up for their chance into this amusement park to revel in all the corporeal sensations not readily available elsewhere. And, look at us: We all got in — Big Yip! — along with billions of others, some even professing to have done it over and over: shedding worn-out bodies, then waiting for new ones, like eager kids at a water slide.
But how many signed up for the Fun House of Mirrors but then got trapped in a perpetual House of Horrors followed by the Roller Coaster Ride of Death straight back out of here?
And so, I'm rethinking this vanity of autobiographical writing. What is the point? Who or what can I possibly influence with lopsided personal narrative? Even in my small jagged circle of contacts, there is quite the range of beliefs. Few change their minds about anything. And so many are easily offended. I can only be somewhat sensitive in what I say. My language, this writing even, is shaped by what I imagine others can hear. It's not so much that I'd prefer to not offend, but some part of me keeps searching for the voice, the idea, the rallying cry that will make a difference. How futile.
I remember a solitary voice once explaining coping with a life path of fruitless activism. He judged himself not by any measure of success other than how true he remained to his convictions. I admired such clarity and dedication for a very long time.
Today, living in an era of crisis with so many cemented in their own opinions, no matter the consequences, I now question such unwavering positions, even those that line up with my own. What is a consensus reality without the possibility of discussion, compromise, and forged agreements?
The trend world-wide is manifesting as intolerance and nationalism, a rejection of multiculturalism for tribalism, and, as a result, allowing authoritarianism to rise and end the discussion altogether.
The only way forward I can see is to confront and suspend my own judgments, my certainty, so that I may genuinely engage with those with differing points of view. How will this awareness change what I write? I don't know. I only know I need to venture forth from my own fortifications and re-think everything.
Can't focus on current project
or plan for any future.
It's hard to even read
or laugh at a joke.
Something ancient and malevolent
in modern guise marches
on a golden city.
Right when the peoples of this planet
most need come together to meet
a common challenge,
the long peace is now unraveling.
Make no mistake
no one is immune
from the consequences
of such concentrated force
moving in the wrong direction.
Like it or not,
we are in this together
tied in spirit as well
as in our exchanges.
Suffering
will not be contained
by any sanction
and
innocents lost
the only certainty.
YOU ARE READING
Who Dad?!
FantascienzaAfter a revealing search for his birth mother, Lee declined to pursue the paternal side of the story. Little did he know how the fate of the planet itself was wrapped up in his own star-crossed origin. Only through the unexpected appearance of an al...
