I suspect, but cannot prove, that the real virus affecting us is not Covid 19 but something like the winter of our discontent, some kind of dis-ease of the mind, a misplaced longing perhaps. Something is stuck in our brain.
People are unhappy and yet we’re living in one of the most successful countries in the history of the world. We have conveniences that are so convenient that we only need to touch a button and our garage door opens, our TV turns on, the coffee maker starts to perk, and Siri asks ‘how can I help you’.
Maybe we have some kind of a subconscious urge to go back and live in the pre-history, when there was none of this, just our little tribe and we had to survive on the strength of our wits (and our legs, lots of walking).
But the thing is, if we go back to pre-history there won’t be any guns either. All those people who love guns will have to make their our own bow from a branch, and arrows from river reeds. There won’t be any cars either or cities or TVs, we’ll have to sit around the fire and tell each other stories. There won’t be any business and nothing to buy and no money to buy it with but there won’t be jobs either. You can hang out all day long if you can get away with it.
Some folks believe we’re waiting for Jesus to return and fix everything because it’s all screwed up. Women are marrying women and men are marrying men. Kissing them too. Jesus will fix this shit. Or maybe he’s bringing a big fiery war, I forget. But the point is, we’re still waiting. He must be late or something, maybe waiting for a dramatic entrance. How dramatic does he want it?
America is running amok and losing its democracy. Instead of trusted institutions and a tradition of compromise, now there’s hate speech, acrimony, unprecedented divisiveness, endless lies and armed rebellion. If America falls, the whole world will be affected - it will become a world of crumbling alliances and wildcat nuclear weapons. Good grief, people. If that’s what it takes to bring Jesus back, I say we don’t need it.
Not to be disrespectful, but really. If you’re going to come, then come. Let’s do this thing. Humans are causing suffering for millions of innocent creatures on this planet. Now we find out the bugs are going extinct. I think we could use a little supernatural help around here. We’re not managing this well. We seem paralyzed, unable to respond to the situation, as if we’re bogged down by our own internal confusion.
Things change. By the way, people, things change and that’s the way it is. In this world everything changes - me, you, the trees and the red balloon. I mean, it deflates and drops to the ground, doesn’t it? You can pump it up again but the same thing will happen.
Changes happen whether we’re ready for them or not. It’s hard to let go of what’s familiar because it brings us comfort. Our lifestyle, our beliefs, our everyday habits of how we live are familiar to us, but it was not always that way. We learned all that when we became socialized. We traded in our wild, untamed nature (along with our diapers) and joined the society of people. We also became ‘normal’ and ‘sane’ so that the machinery of society would run smoothly.
Maybe that has something to do with our misplaced longing. Being normal, or trying to appear so, can be a form of anxiety. You always have to be performing. Do you see what I mean? You have to fit the mold of other people’s expectations. Maybe our winter of discontent is related to our frustrated need to be crazy, or atleast not normal, or atleast just ourselves, our own authentic selves.
Maybe that’s why there’s so much foreboding in the air, so many false narratives (also called lies), crazy conspiracy theories and denigration of our fellow comrades. We’re all members of the same tribe, it’s not like some of us are aliens from Uranus.
Here’s the classified secret information that they don’t want you to know. You are alive. Courtesy of this beautiful breath. Its coming and going pretty much defines the beginning and end and middle of our life times.
We are alive and we are perfectly free, except for the associations we have in our minds, the web of interference that we have built in the window of our minds. As we look out of our window we see a scary world or a weird world or a dangerous world but we hardly ever see the real world.
A quote from William Blake. “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.” That, of course, was the name of Aldous Huxley’s famous book ‘The Doors of Perception’, not to mention a famous rock band from L. A. (the Doors).
Everything changes, just accept it if you can. It’s also a returning to where things came from. Like our bodies returning to dirt. Dust to dust. I think mortality is probably the biggest (though unrecognized) source of anxiety in our societies. We just don’t know how to deal with it.
But things have been dying all along. Everything that has ever lived has died except for the small sample of things that are living right now. Insects sometimes live for only a few weeks, just long enough to find a mate and procreate. Subatomic particles live for milliseconds and then blink out of existence only to blink into existence again. Dying is the great returning. The great turning.
It’s the second week of January. Winter is here. That’s a turning of sorts. Everything dies back, slows down, the trees go to sleep - but only so they can wake up again in the Spring. One of the things wrong with our crazy species, Oh Humans, is that we don’t feel a connection to nature, our Mother Earth. We’re estranged. That’s got to cause some cognitive dissonance.
Winter is here. It’s cold. No offense Mother Nature, but this is cold. Not warm anymore. The sky is clear with a few cirrus clouds up there. Like adornments in Mother Nature’s hair, it occurs to me in a poetic extrapolation, wispy and wavy. Laying out up there for all to see.
She is a beautiful mother from any angle. We really should spend more time with her. Feel her love that flows in every gust of wind, in every growing thing, in the air itself which is part of and a product of the biosphere of life.
We have passed the Winter Solstice and are heading for Spring. We have to endure the coldness for awhile, let nature take her timeout and then Spring will come again. I promise, even if there are no humans here to witness it or even if we’re too distracted by our wars to notice it, the warmth will unfold and embrace the world like a lover. Like she has always done.
music: ‘Dime’, featuring Natalie Oliveri from Cafe De Anatolia - Historia De Un Amor (mix by Rialians On Earth) 00:00-12:48
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The Virus and the Second Coming of Jesus and the Second Week of January