Holy shit. So much going on in the world. Fires. Pandemic. Global unrest. Election worries. WTF is going on? Change, Flux, madness. It really is a bizarre time. One of those scenarios from an early 1970's science fiction movie. You know, the ones that usually have a nihilistic ending and star Charlton Heston. Is it Omega Man? Soylent Green? Planet of the Apes? I don't know. But any and all of those plot lines seem seem feasible of late. I am completely used to masks on people. Everywhere. In cars. At the park. On children in the park. Outside here in Denver, the sky is brown with smoke, and it smells like a BBQ gone wild day in and day out. You can't even see the Rockies on some days. This has never happened to me in the fifteen years I've lived here. But this year, I gaze at the ochre haze and think "yeah, that fits". We have fires all over the state. Big ones. I am told, one of them is the largest ever recorded. And what was that storm in Iowa? The one with the name, like some demon from a Stephen King novel? Derecho. I just googled it. Because google of course knows everything. Isn't that odd? How we just accept whatever google tells us as fact. We really do rely too much on technology to do our thinking. To do our everything. I fear we will indeed become like those useless humans in that other film of a dystopic future, Wall-E. As you may recall, Wall-E takes place in the distant future, when Earth has been totally rendered uninhabitable. A little robot traverses the ruins, seeking life. And the human race is off on a space ship, sort of like Yogi's Ark, doing a lot of nothing, with jelly bodies and tapioca brains. They end up ok. I think we will too. But not without a lot of soul searching, hard work, and unpleasant conversations between the masses and the powers that be about how the planet is being managed.
I think we need to get our collective shit together. To grow up. And to realize that growing up doesn't mean making a lot of money or having a house or a nice car. That it means recognizing your effect on the world, on your fellow human beings, on the animals and plants and air and water. To breathe deep. To acknowledge that we are not the be all end all, and can always improve. Always find better ways to do things. To speak truth to power. Why do we continually, throughout our history, allow those with the most out of sync needs control things? Why did Rome last so long, way past the point of being clearly corrupt, morally bankrupt, and of no use to the world? Complacency? Fear? Were we just not quite evolved enough to say "enough"? I think on the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Velvet Revolution. That was amazing. Kind. Groovy. We need something like that. A rising. Like Bruce Springsteen sings about.
I've been watching the DNC these past two nights. It's been nice. Lots of uplifting ideas. People trying to find a way towards hope. Maybe some of their ideas won't work. But I am much more interested in people trying things, than people devoid of hope, telling me to be afraid. A life lived in fear is a life half lived, as the film Strictly Ballroom taught us.
So, yeah. Things are crazy. And scary. And our problems are huge. So let's get busy. Let's get on it. Let's do something we can be proud of. Let's reach out, reach up, reach in, and find the love. Let's take care and live our too short lives as best we can. What else can we do?
Here's a song. It's The Rising, by The Boss.
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