Spend a couple of hours reading The New York Times and a deflation is in order. A hissing of an escape valve distracting from earthly impotence is needed for the brain.
Lately, it been especially needed. War, as it's been for many millenniums, comes to the center of man's preoccupation and suffering, the world's residuum. Gaza more a pile of concrete dust than a habitat, dampens from human blood. Ukraine, a land poisoned by lead and lithium from of boom of artillery and exploding suicide drones, under assault by those in a grandiose empire fever dream. China, Russia, and Iran form an alliance for a "new world order" like Germany, Italy, and Japan decades earlier. Defense industries boom and the Times reports on America's lack of investment. The Eisenhower era praised, years later its infrastructure legacies deteriorate.
At least the conflicts between the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens left cave art.
But curiosity can wane among the news junkies. The speed of communication makes anxiety a passing headache and body bags that all look the same. Trump, a fabulist ladened with orange jokes, has made himself a bore. Acceptance of a dual-justice system for a deranged past president long been accepted. The "House of People" a congress of miasma amid minds closed off by belief in monuments and ideological podcasts. More wretchedness must be newsworthy without torn bodies or wails to a god, or near stumbles to a microphone.
So, I read of a civil servant living in her car with her daughter and shelter-rescued pit bull. Her $70,000 a year civil service job lacking the buoyancy to get her across the moat of unaffordability. A bad credit rating, four-figure deposit requirement and high rents keep her anchored to her 4-wheel apartment. Governments step in, not with rent assistance or to reinstate the humanity of rent control, but allowable parking spaces, minus a deluge of tickets or threat of tows. So, she clusters with others like her on asphalt, practicing humanity by waiting her turn at a public restroom.
The drought-stricken Amazon, once called the "lungs on the world," has COPD as pyromaniacs prepare the land for droppings of cow dung left behind after feeding fast food. The sea rises, days get hotter, aquifers sucked dry by monoculture farming and Taylor Swift visits an NFL game. Is entertainment a way to be informed?
I think of my grandson, thankful his mom and dad have the economic means to give him different avenues of thought scarce to others. Such views can be armor to what he may confront, this maddening world simile of death as constant as fire, light only seen without spirit. Is the world immutable in its ugliness or are we merely being deceived in this form of existence?
How long I will see this world, I don't know. Many of my contemporaries have moved on, my search for new friends not pressing. I still like rock 'n roll, fast cars and want to revive my pool game. I seem to have made peace with my family and former loves, yet I still wonder about those beings I circled with my emotional deviousness and later feeble attempts of reconciliation. Will chance come again?
Guilt does not weigh me down despite a lack of ambiguity about where the world is heading. In my skin, in the restfulness of my mind, in the sureness of my soul, I am happy. Skepticism a counterbalance to complacency. I let the nature world seep in as much as possible — my cats spread at my feet, eyeing the Bougainvillea bush for scurrying lizards, a mockingbird screeching at their presence, me listening for the loud open-bill breathing of the Muscovy ducks wanting seed, hoping to stroke the feathers of a few, dragonflies out of their torpor hunting food on the fly; its fall in Florida, the sky is blue. If we only knew being aware is not the same as being important.
Ahhh, Bruce........ I think the world is immutable in it's ugliness, and I cry for my children and grandchildren with a broken heart. Unfortunately, they are not in a position of being able to afford and provide a 'safe zone" for their wellbeing and survival against the terrors and horrors of this world. And unfortunately I believe we are in a downward spiral of a pure life on this planet. I hope I am wrong and I will always hold out for a just, peaceful, serene world. But I am angry and afraid. { WOW, I am really pessimistic today. }