for Omer
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People are too sick too often. It’s interesting to notice. I know a few people who never stop having a cold. They lose one and immediately catch another. This has been going on for months. They go to the doctor. They take medication. Nothing works.
I’m sure I’m just imagining things, but with the swine flu problem, I’m encouraged to stay home from work. If I am feeling sick at all, I’m forbidden to show up at work. They send me home. I’ve tried it. Sure, people are paranoid. I know. But there’s more.
A lot of people seem emotionally unstable lately. I hear about a new breakdown almost every day. I’ve heard about record expulsions at universities. I’ve heard about a rise in self-destruction. I’ve heard about irrational sexual behavior and frightening drug use. Pills and mushrooms and acid and alcohol, all in one night.
And the health problems. I hear about horrendous health problems from twenty year olds. Everyone knows someone with cancer or has cancer themselves. Every other mother is bipolar. Every other father is a rapist. I haven’t met a woman without a molestation story in years.
Am I crazy? Why are there so many dead animals on the road? Why is no one cleaning them up? Am I imagining these things? The supermarket seems so much less crowded. Has anyone else counted the cars on the road? The numbers are dwindling slowly. Should I be worried?
Is the apocalypse happening and nobody’s noticing? Is this how the human race will die? Distracted? Or am I just paranoid?
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Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
In “Quick Fix,” William S. Burroughs wrote:
“To put the country simple, earth has a lot of things other folks might want…like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made. Like more carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, and room for their way of life. We’ve seen this happen before, right in these United States.”
Mr. Hardie, you are always subverting expectations. I was expecting a description of the trailer for the movie “2012″; I got the more subtle–maybe more real–dying out of the human race.
It was still nice of you to dedicate this to me.
Three Points (as disconnected as they seem)
Yesterday there were a number of people around me all spouting off about the same story…the Adam and Eve story. Apples, temptation, the fall of man, blah , blah, blah. But apparently there is a version of that story in most every religion. I believe that the Adam and Eve story is a story told in patriarchal societies by misogynists. It is a story repeated and used throughout the ages to suppress and oppress women throughout the world. It’s about control.
So now as to your hypothesis about the end of the world. Most people are so busy trying to find their niche in the world, are so busy establishing a place for themselves, or so busy trying to escape the pit that they live in, or so busy trying to bust out of the box that others have built around them, that they don’t notice their own destruction. All of the above manifests in illness, addiction, violence.
And finally. About two years ago…actually during the time that the Al Gore movie and coffeetable book were receiving a lot of attention, I came to a conclusion. It was an epiphany of a sort. I thought about this: long after we are gone, long after the human race has run its course, this little blue-green planet that we have named earth and that we have called home, will still be orbiting the sun. And it might be beautiful again.