In the waning days of this past summer, while I was on vacation at the tip of America, I started to write – to formulate – to explore – a seemingly endless stream of interconnected ideas and impressions about politics. It was fitting, at the time. It was election season. And the things I was seeing didn’t sit right with me. They still don’t. But I – like many others – am so over the whole electioneering business, that it’s a relief to not think about it.
Anyway, I spent a lot of time on my vacation thinking about these things, jotting down notes, forming them into paragraphs, and stringing the paragraphs into streams of reason and exploration.
And life was good. Everything flowed so tremendously, and it all seemed… well… completely natural and restoring, considering all the drama that was going on around. I truly felt as though I’d cracked the hard kernel of what was going on — the hard kernel in the midst of a shitstorm, if you will — the reason so much of this was happening.
There was a lot there. Truly, there was. And when I got back, I started working on the piece again, with the intention of posting it all online, preferably before the election, so it would be contextual.
Then, as often happens, I got busy. And the political pitch got turned up even more. And all I could think was, “Oh, God – Oh, God -Oh, God… when will this all be over?”
Like so many others did.
And things got even nastier. And Facebook got even more vicious and divisive. And I thought, “You know, what I’m talking about here is probably not what people agree with or want to hear. In the midst of this forced divisiveness, I’m talking about unity. In the midst of the political machinery, I’m encouraging folks to see the machine for what it is, and opt out of the artificial divisions and mind-controlling ideologies. And everybody’s pissed off. This might not be the best time for this piece.”
So, I tabled it. For then. For the time being. And I walked away and did other things – like despair quietly in my corner about the state of our minds and hearts… like answer neutrally when challenged by people who REALLY BELIEVED WHAT THEY BELIEVED AND DIDN’T MUCH CARE FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVED OTHERWISE.
It was not the time. That’s clear enough.
But now the election is over. One side won, and all the others lost. And I’m not talking about just Republicans. Winners (perceived and otherwise) chortled. Losers (both real and imagined) licked their wounds, railed against injustice, and marinated in their grief.
And life has gone on.
And I look to my work from the past months, the past year… I have a bunch of poetry I wrote at different points along the way. And I am taking another look at this stream-of-consciousness essay which comes both from the far margins of what’s recognized as “regular” and from the very center of this hard-shelled kernel we know as our everyday reality. And I look around at the world, which is changing so rapidly. And I look at the calendar, with the Winter Solstice approaching – with all its attendant apprehension among those who ascribe to the prophecies about the Mayan calendar – such as it is, in the minds and imaginations of so many. And while I’m far too agnostic to believe that anything will most definitely happen on Friday, December 21, 2012 at 6:12:00 AM (Eastern time), it does give one pause – what would I be doing with myself, if I truly believed the world was going to change/end/begin in 9 days, 22 hours, and 49… 48… 47… minutes?
You know, it’s funny. In a way, there’s part of me that thinks something might actually happen. Morphogenic field, and all that. Quantum/holographic universe stuff, and all that. I’ve read Michio Kaku, and that “Holographic Universe” guy. I’ve also heard Gregg Braden speak, and I’ve watched a ton of videos created by people who really, truly believed that something transformational is going to happen in less than two weeks. I’ve also spent a ton of time around people who either don’t believe a word about it, or who insist that it’s already happened, and we’re already in “The Shift”… as well as those who outright dismiss and condemn the whole business as a way to draw people into some weird conspiracy theory mindset that makes the less than what they could be.
Look at my Facebook friends, and you’ll see the whole gamut of individuals. From all over. With innumerably diverse points of view. I like it that way. I’m neither so hidebound to a particular ideology, that I cannot stomach diversity of thinking, nor am I so loosey-goosey, that anything goes. I actually relish the diversity. I love the mad rush, the churning, the stark contrasts that tell me, Life has a way of shaping you in ways you never expected or could have predicted, and from one generation to the next, we can swing as extremely in our opinions as Dennis Miller.
Amen. Let life be.
The only thing I know for sure, is that I actually don’t know. If you know, then great – I have no quarrel with that, and I look forward to hearing what you know and why you know it.
Which is ultimately what I come down to, as we near the possible end of the world. After all is said and done, what would I do with myself, if I had 9 days, 22 hours, and 43 minutes left to do whatever I wanted to do? What would I be doing with myself, if the tests hadn’t come back from the doctor clear, and that pain and swelling I’ve been having, on and off, over the past years turned out to “be something”? What would I do with myself, if I knew my days weren’t going to number many more, and I had x-number of hours to fill with what mattered most to me?
Thanksgiving has come and gone. My younger sister Carrie was not there for the 6th time running. Not all of us have all the time in the world. And on the other side of the coin, a friend of my partner was taken to hospice recently, with a rare, terminal (and as it turns out, often misdiagnosed) condition that’s a human variant of mad cow disease. Her doctors gave her days, possibly tortured weeks, to live. And she was slipping into a coma, on her way to passing over — or, as the less dainty say it — being dead.
Until the other day, when she came to and announced that she was not going anywhere, and hell-no she was not going to slip into a coma. And things changed.
This stuff happens all the time. We don’t know it, but it does. Countless stories abound, about the things people succumb to, and what we survive, despite all expectations and intentions to the contrary. We live in a magical world, full of mystery and frustration and pain and joy and everything we hardly anticipate.
And life goes on.
In the face of possible Shift, in the shadows of unending political gamesmanship and ever-increasing divisiveness, in the light of our coming new days… what would I do, if I had but a few weeks left to do what I please?
Just this – write a few words of wonder before going to work and finding out what life has in store for me… for us all.
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