The day before yesterday, I went for a walk in the Memorial Day rain. I'd had to flee facebook as everyone there was reminding me of how exactly I should celebrate the day and whom to thank and the differences between Memorial and Veteran's Day and to thank our current troops for their sacrifice and to certainly not to think about how, every day, the U.S. goes to great expense in personnel, equipment, fuel, and ordnance to "protect American interests" around the globe. I sometimes wonder about days like that and the message-peddling by seemingly well meaning folks who are by proxy spreading the establishment's long-standing and absurd propaganda of American exceptionalism and I can't quite understand how there apparently is, among the peddlers, no realization that, when in power, every nation-state since forever promotes and has promoted this idea and it's nothing new and it's every bit as absurd as promulgating "Mongol exceptionalism", or "Aztec exceptionalism", or "Tudor exceptionalism", or, gasp, "Arab exceptionalism".
I see from my phone that the U.S. has topped 100K deaths related to COVID-19. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter of masks, and quarantines, and shelter-in-place, and people's rights to do things, and the economy, you have to acknowledge that this is a large number. For comparison, total casualties at Gettysburg for both Union and Confederate ran around a half of that number and was such an extreme loss over a three day period that Lincoln had to train his ass up to the battlefield and, in passage, write one of the most iconic speeches of American history in order to respond to the carnage. It's truly amazing, not in a percentage wise mindset with respect to total population, but in a sheer size aspect. In Alaska, the state population is 700K+, so if the losses were localized in the state, that's one in seven folks. Here, at the Moosehead where I type, we could be down one person of the seven sitting at the bar, and given the demographic/lifestyles of these patrons who are spending their glorious afternoons, myself included, revving up into the nightly oblivion, to reasonably expect, 1 to 7 ratio wise, to lose Paul, or Jay, or Sam, or me. Or, since a virus doesn't know shit all about numbers, all of us could go.
Henry Rollins once wrote, "Natural disasters are not enough. You need it to happen to you." When I first read this line it struck me as necessary to keep, like a mantra or prayer, a grand petition to some higher conscioussed being for implementation among us down here in the muck. It's a terrible idea, one that people pale from, the welcoming of unbearable suffering in order to grow/change/whatever. But it's a true one too, a failingly true one. It brings to one's mind people like climate change deniers who have had their homes destroyed by, you know, the effects of climate change, who fail to acknowledge the idea that our individual actions have collective consequences that can lead to our individual misery. The thought doesn't sink in because what happened to them, what happens to us all, is a tragedy, an act of God, something that no-one could have predicted. The sentences fail to deliver on their premise and it hilariously punctuates the theory that, several million years ago, our primate ancestors only had the capability to attend to how many figs were in any given area of tree cover or the overweening urge to squabble among rivals for territory and breeding access.
The assholes in charge cancelled the State Fair, the Scottish Highland games, etc. etc. I fume impotently at these decisions yet I can also acknowledge it is probably for the best. The lack of summer entertainment is a trade off, I suppose a small sacrifice, for the possibility of societal change RE: work schedules, the mass realization of the absurdity of the 40 hour work week, and, hearteningly, the raft of actual consequences for people like that lady who called the cops on a black man in Central Park after he asked her to leash her dog, and the actions being taken against the four Minneapolis police officers who killed a black man in broad daylight, and the gunning down of a black man in Georgia as he went for a run. That it took legions of people on social media to post and repost and repost and mob streets and repost still until enough people across the country got so pissed that, "hey, we live in a police state", and to demand that something, anything be done is awful, true. Yet it's also a reason, for me, for hope, for a grand shouldering on into the bullshit, the everyday garbage, the moiling away for nothing, the quotidian horsecock of life, the never-ending nascent apocalypse and abyss.
brb, biking.
We went berry picking in Hatcher Pass for one of the last hikes we'd do when K was here for the summer. There were other pickers and hikers there and the trail was mucky in some places and we passed by a rock covered stream which could be heard from beyond the boulders hiding it. Off trail, there were massive, industrial sized blueberries of the high bush variety and we filled our containers, netting a full 2 pounds of the fruit. Later, K and A would render some of the fruit into a pie for my birthday.
During the trip, Ulybear lost his stick that I'd carved and lacquered for him and I went down the trail, alone, looking for it. I found it amongst some crow berry bushes, glinting in the sun. When I returned with the stick to where the others were foraging, K asked me how I'd found it so easily when he and A had been unable to do so. I replied that I was good at finding things when I wanted to. The pie forged from the berries we picked would prove to be a tart, delicious thing, much like the mountains whence it came.
I've found a lot of things in this experience, most of them bad. There are, however, some good things out in this world, and I have to believe this, because otherwise it's the big shutdown.
I'm a fan of thinking that this reality is a simulation one, one that other, probably simulated in their own right, beings created and I'm growing strangely okay with this. Like, yeah, none of this matters but at least I can do a thing for a consciousness that thinks the thing I did matters, even if I fully believe it doesn't and it, the action, is illusory in the grand scheme of everything.
This past week we had a graduation of students at work and the biggest compliment I got was from a former student of mine who introduced her son and significant others to me as "the coolest guy on campus" and the one who she "would go into his office and say I want to burn this whole fucking place down". During the commencement ceremony, I had wanted to weep with hope and pride, but forced myself not to because none of them needed to see that.
K went home to NC this past week. He didn't want to stick around for the fair because his brother had gone on before him and, through a teary conversation we'd had, he told me that he didn't want to go because he'd miss all the things he'd normally do if G were around. We went to the airport, Tuesday, a terrible day for flight, and we went through the song and dance of check in and security and handing him over to airline personnel . When he went to board, a pencil skirt uniformed gate agent asked if he'd like a final hug and he came to me and I held him and all I could manage was "Be good" before he loped off, down the skybridge, gone. I drove home, alone, and proceeded to drink a copious amount of liquor in my sadness and woke to a text from him - "I made it home." Sometimes, you think today is the day.
The north is burning. I took this picture on the drive back home from K's departure. The smoke is thick and choking and the mountains are obscured in the fires' grenade pop. I can't think too much about the future, as I've mentioned earlier, but the gut feeling that I have is one of despair tinged with resilience. I've thought about trying to explain this dichotomous feeling to others in my "real" surface-level life, but have quailed because of the awkwardness that the conversation would engender. I saw a Vice article (not linked because fuck them) recently about "How Millennials Use Weird Memes To Cope With Their World" or some shit and it was pretty true. I liken it to a sort of Gotterdammerung, a last laugh, a gallows humor but collective in nature. Everything is dark yet the thought remains that "I" might make it, into whatever "it" turns out to be.
We went to the fair yesterday. Uly likes the truck ride and the train, but when he went with A on the "Fun Slide" I stood at the bottom and watched their descent. He was good on the way up, the previous year he had called the ride "fun" but as I watched him swoosh down, I saw his face turn to terror on the first bump, then grow increasingly awful before the bottom where he burst into tears and fright. A picked him up and consoled him, child to mother's breast, and he was a long time in calming, the way I remember being the time that I ran into the freshly mopped kitchen and fell, chin to the tiles, and wrecked my face, my own mother holding me in the same manner.
Maybe today is the day.
On RTJ's third album they rap about... things. It's inspiring? Killer Mike has lines, "I sip a fifth of the whisk, I smoke a dub in the tub, then I will split both my wrists." Uly bear made this collection of words. That "DAD" made it into the mix was grand. He had his first day of preschool today. Gavin had his first of high school. K had his first day of middle school by himself. There is no universe where this is okay.
