When the World Stops Being What You Thought It Was …
When the World Stops Being What You Thought It Was …
Those who cannot remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
I can’t seem to shake those words right now. I sit here, watching the cursor blinking at me, demanding that I put something down. But what do you write about when you’ve just witnessed the rise of something that portends your undoing? What words can defend against that?
History repeating itself.
Has no one here watched the signs of what was in play? I keep seeing people who I thought were friends and colleagues all contribute to the demise of the world I thought I knew and doing it almost with a gleeful fervor that God was on their side.
God – if you’re out there … deliver us from your followers. Being an atheist, I am not sure I put much stock in that request. Just thought I’d throw it out there just in case someone is listening. Somehow, it rings hollow. God, or whatever imaginary being you might cling to, has little to do with this mess we find ourselves in now. This was man’s work. For only man’s work could give rise to this sort of malicious evil that colors the horizon now. The world trembles with what’s to come – and with good reason.
Being old, and believe me, nothing has aged me quite so much as witnessing the demise of what I hold dear to me slip from my grasp, I do not fret for what’s to come for me or my husband. Our lives are in their “golden years.” Why no one told me that the gold in those years was fake sort of rattles the soul. But my husband and I will weather this somehow. Our years are numbered, the conclusion to our lives now appearing murky at the end of a not so long tunnel.
It’s not our lives that I worry about. It’s my granddaughter. It’s her world I fear for.
My husband and I share a love of history. It’s something we’ve tried to impart to our granddaughter, Keely. We’ve shown her both the wondrous things in our collective past, and the horrors of what can happen when no one is vigilant, when we aren’t taking what freedoms we have for granted, when we don’t tend to those freedoms and keep a careful eye to what might threaten them. She’s witnessed how that has happened before. So with tearful eyes she came to us last night, begging for some nugget of hope. We gave her what we could. I know it fell far short of the mark. I’ve never felt so helpless.
For some reason TL;DR keeps coming back to me. For those not in the know, TL;DR means – “Too Long; Didn’t Read” – if there were any more inane and insipidly pairing of words put together I can’t think of them now. Why? Because that phrase explains the general apathy we have to nearly everything. We’re simply too busy with our mundane lives to bother. Deductive reasoning, analytical thinking, philosophical contemplation are nearly all gone. An elitist construct that the GOP has systematically worked out of what makes a decent human being think and reason for themselves.
The dumbing down of society benefits those in power. Cattle to the slaughter, that’s what it is. We’ve become a populace that wants to be told what to think and feel. Well, we’re about to get our wish.
I tried to write my current novel. I tried to add to my NaNoWriMo project and thought: what’s the point? When put up against where we’re headed, it all seems quite pointless.
And make no mistake, the words I write now, and anything akin to them might very soon be considered prohibited text in the not too distant future. The threat is very real. I write Queer Lit Fic. Do you think in a Trump/Pence world that those texts will survive? That they’ll still be permitted? I’m not kidding myself. Not only have we just handed him the presidency, we’ve given him nothing less than a mandate to do with what he wishes with a fully stocked “yes” vote on whatever they think is necessary for their America.
But America, the America I knew? She’s gone.
So with apologies to W. H. Auden for a gentle turn of phrase to suit the occasion, I wanted to pen my goodbye to what could’ve been, albeit, with a gentle and tearful hope that somehow, in some way, the world will find its way back to a more gentle, accepting and inclusive America. Not for me. Not for my husband. But for those generations like my granddaughter and those still yet to come. I wish it for them.
So, with extremely heartfelt emotions, a sort of requiem for what will never be now:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message the America that I knew Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Be kind to one another – it’s quite probably all we have left.
Until next time,
– SA C