


Sunday, October 29, 2017

Wednesday, October 25, 2017


Hope is the thing with feathers--

Today's ominous headline from the New York Times:

This is just a note to say that I have nothing to say about the state of the nation, the state of the world, or the dark night of ignorance, fear, hatred, and folly that seems to be engulfing humankind at this time, swallowing it whole.  I see the headlines, occasionally I read a whole article, and once in a while I watch a news report on television - it's not that it's fake news, but it is so very often utterly trivial news delivered like tabloid melodrama, even by the top stars of the top networks nowadays, who should know better, and replayed mindlessly, endlessly, in Orwellian fashion until you almost feel you would do anything to make it stop, just stop stop stop stop stop.

I see what is happening and I have nothing to say.  I could say many things but I feel such pain, disgust, and despair at the brutality and ugliness corrupting the world and everyone in it, that it is simply not worth the effort to put my thoughts into words.  Other people have already said, and are saying, the things I would say; although some things I would also say are things nobody wants to hear, either on the right or on the left.  So there would be no point in saying anything, not really.  Anyone with intelligence and good sense can see what I would point out;  if they haven't seen it already, nothing I say would open their eyes.

I see what is happening and I would rather say nothing.  I do not wish to read this new chapter of history, do not want to see it played out.  I feel the ghastly tragedy building day by day, and it sickens me to the core.  But I am too old and tired and heartsick to man the barricades, either literally or figuratively.  I have no strength left to beat my head against a brick wall, which in some way or another I feel I have been doing a long, long time now.  I see the world as I have known it sinking into a black, stinking tide, and I have no idea how to stop it or save it; certainly my little squeaks will be of no help.  Prayer is the last refuge of the helpless; but how often, alas, "that which they greatly feared came upon them."

I see what is happening and I have no words.  Since the dawn of civilization, priests, poets, prophets, preachers, and philosophers have spun out a fulsome tapestry of wise words, but words alone do no good when people do not listen.  Time and again, fathers and mothers have labored across the long years to build what their careless children, or children's children, spurn and toss away, or destroy in a day:  it is all recorded in the histories of other countries, other ages.  All that I would say, in some way or another, has already been said and can be found among the golden writings of mankind; but to the willfully ignorant, the voices of the sages are like those of so many birds chirping in the wind, an indignant ruffle of feathers and no more.

I see what is happening and I cannot say more.  I know that nothing I say will change anyone's mind, and at this point it would not help my feelings, either.  The world will bump and grind and careen along in just the way it has so many times before, to the inevitable end of its present course; and after some cataclysm or another, it will pick itself back up and with however few are left start all over again - as it has so many times before.  The end of the world as we know it is not quite the same as The End of the World - no matter how cruel the hurt or how great the destruction, the very next morning the sun rises up exactly on schedule, as if nothing had happened.  And the irresistible, irrepressible cycles of life begin anew.   This of course gives prophets of doom a bad name, so why bother to be a Cassandra?  Clear-sightedness certainly did her no good, nor anyone else, come to think of it.

I see what is happening, and I have no words.  Thoughts but no words.  Feelings but no hopes.  What can anyone say that has not already been said, and better than I can do?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. . . .

--W. B. Yeats, 1919

At this late age, I am already worn out with grief and loss. I wish I had something more to offer my readers, but I don't; I can barely keep my own head above water. What will happen will happen, and we must all deal with it the best way we can.

I wish you peace, and comfort amid the storms of life, my friends. I don't know what else to say.  What is there to say in the face of the unspeakable?

I could be wrong.  I hope I am.

Friday, October 20, 2017

Friday, October 13, 2017

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