I’m a Stranger Here Myself

While taking my son to look at possible high schools, I remember the head of the Tech. department saying “We are preparing kids for the jobs of the future, for jobs that don’t even exist yet” That phrase rang in my head and still haunts me to this day. I remember my father telling me of how we went to visit his grandmother who lived in a log cabin with no electricity nor running water, now as my dad was born in 1936 so he may have been remembering something that happened around 1940.  I remember thinking that must have been impossible- I only knew life from the 70’s, where everyone had all the modern conveniences and our black and white TV was soon replaced by a colour one.  My children can not imagine a world where TV shut down for the night, where there were four networks and- if you could get them 6 channels available. My youth would look equally incomprehensible to my kids. No cable, cell phones or internet- only bikes, backyards and being home when the street lights came on. We have immersed ourselves in a explosive velocity where change occurs so quickly we find ourselves constant strangers in a new strange world.  Don’t ask me where we are or how to get somewhere- I’m a stranger here myself.

Life is a noun, but living is a verb

Waking early that Sunday morning in Paris, I knew what I had to do. Of course, coffee and a croissant but then on to Mass at Notre-Dame. As I stepped into the sanctuary on that cold late January day, I was struck by the sense of peace and light in the space, the amazing warmth from the rows of votive candles and as the service started the ethereal sound of the men and boy choir singing the Kyrie. It was easy to see how one in this day and age could be affected by the experience, coming in from the cold bright morning into the incense filled air, the stained glass filtered light, the sounds in short the entire experience. 

In this post  Covid world it seems that we seem, however to be content to watch rather than experience. (As I revise this, I am struck by the fact that content means both a state of happiness and information and experiences that are directed toward an end-user or audience) We are content to watch the shadows on the wall and call that reality rather than go out and have a physical experience of it, forgetting that while life is a noun, the living of it is a verb. We will loose many things as we come out of this plague, people, businesses, opportunities but please, let us not loose the search for wonder in our life. Lets not trade the lived experience for one lived by someone else and posted on line for our comfort.

Fooling all the people all the time

I’m old. Lets just get that out there right now. I grew up watching Watergate unfold, and each morning brought a new bit of news about the plumbers, the tapes and the cover-up. If nothing else, that experience taught me, in addition to a deep skepticism of the governments ability to function for the common good, to follow the money. Basically, the main motivation in most situations is profit, so to get to the bottom of things, follow the money. So when we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic and  it seems as if many have taken the blue pill, barricading ourselves in our homes, freely accepting the closing of our economy, the destruction of many or our livelihoods, even shunning social and physical contact from one another and believing that a bandanna or simple mask will keep us all safe- not even considering ulterior motives. No please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying here that there is no virus or that it isn’t a matter of concern However, when did we jettison common sense and belief in our own thought process and drink the “government knows all” Kool-aid. There is only one way to survive this and there is no other option or possibility.

Where was and how well served was the trust in government for those sitting on their roofs in the lower 9th ward as Katrina’s water came higher and higher. What about the children in the back seat of the car whose parents have passed out from opiate abuse of prescribed  drugs that our government seemed helpless to stop. Perhaps we can “Just Say No” to Covid like Ron and Nancy Reagan’s response to illegal drugs- remember how well that worked out (not unlike the response to the AIDS crisis but one can go on and on.)

Perhaps the real question is when did we decide it was ok to just suck on the government teat (well, they do give us money after shutting down the economy and our livelihood and a few more sips couldn’t hurt…) or more to the point, have we become so drunk from the fire-hose of 24 hour media that we have lost any sense to think for ourselves.  We blindly accept what ever is fed us and gladly wait for the next post to send us into apoplexy. While you may read this and say “oh no, not me..” just wait till we are all told the only thing that will save us is wearing tinfoil hats and see how fast you fall in line.

Slouching toward Quietus

High school was when I first heard the term Domesday-book- and of course we quickly changed the title to Doomsday book and instead of being a record of survey of William the Conqueror’s holdings in England, it became the foretelling of oblivion- like the book of Revelations, (A prophecy, not a foretelling of doom- indeed the word  Apocalypse means a revelation or unveiling- the end of the world was added later) and it seems this need for despair has become a necessary transition for all great bodies of surveying. As the Domesday book became the dooms day book- so to the internet has gone from being a place of accumulated knowledge to a spreader of doom. This is noted in the recent article in Wired, “Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health” while we can use internet to find the worlds wonder, information and connect to one another, we seem to be dedicated to only seeing the worst of things, passing joy on our way to despair or as Joan Didion wrote “Slouching toward quietus“.  We start our day with the worlds despair from the night before, and news amalgamators are pleased to oblige with the If it bleeds, it leads, point of view. Really, what is so important that we need minute to minute coverage. When I cant find my glasses or don’t know how to cover next months electric bill, I seldom find the neighbors in rapt attention (even if I were to make them aware of the situation) needing moment to moment updates. Perhaps putting things on the screen is the same as putting them on a pedestal. They become important and necessary while our own lives go on as drab and unexciting. Yet what makes their situation so different than ours? As Oscar Wilde once said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”, perhaps now more than ever we need our eyes to the light.