Glorious, For a While

Darkness is the home of our vague fears and anxieties, but it is also the home of the Gods. Our lives contain “accidents,” which only exist in our heads. What proof is there that the five senses, together, allow us to participate in all possible experiences? We turn to Mother Earth and see her, but have long ago stopped listening, and even what we see, we filter into what we want to see; blooming California poppies, a newborn, and clear ocean waves, but only late at night, after beer, while you are woken up by Sarah Mclachlan’s “Angel,” that we are forced to reckon with what we have been doing since the invention of the cotton gin. Some hope that our capacity to invent something like the cotton gin, which also perpetuated slavery and spread it like a disease before Penicillin, will also get us out of this grave we have dug so deep we can no longer read the tombstone that says, “R.I.P. Homosapiens. You had a chance here.”

Others believe we are beyond saving our current way of life and can only contain the severity of the shift, and still, there are more people with differing opinions. Some believe every time we get involved, we make it worse there and then, or down the line, like when the British decided to draw imaginary countries in the Middle East after World War I, or America’s sadistic pleasure in arming an “Ally” who eventually turns into our “Enemy,” and kills our children with the very weapons their parents help make in Michigan factories, that everyone is against closing down, wether you are an enviromentailst or not. Robert Kennedy was extremely popular in West Virginia because he cared about the poor, just as he did about those in Harlem or “Ghettos” (Why do black people live in ghettos, and poor white people live in “impoverished areas”?), but imagine if he were alive today. He more than likely would have been an environmentalist, like his son, the guy who is married or dating (I refuse to look this up) the lady who was fictionally married and divorced to Larry David, and I wonder if RFK would have been able to talk to the people of West Virginia about the dangers of coal mining to the planet. Bill Clinton seemed like he was either able to do that, or was the last politician that didn’t have to talk about that, despite Al Gore being his Vice President, but then again, the Kennedys are a part of society everyone is pissed off at: the 1% who have controlled everything throughout human history. Whether that be the Gods, God, God-Kings, Kings, Emperors, Chairmen, Presidents, or Chase Manhattan Bank. The Kennedys marked the Democratic Party’s move away from ordinary citizens, toward becoming the Republican Party (Today’s Democrats used to be called Rockefeller Republicans), and the formation of the Corporate Property Party. The reason Donald Trump is so successful in places like West Virginia is not that he is like them; it is because he doesn’t pretend to be like them, except for his genuine love of McDonald’s, the way someone like Nancy Pelosi only cares about the homeless in San Francisco because they are lowering the value of her houses. The smell of shit is the last thing she wants to smell when she has a glass of wine with the lobby she will join when she retires. I am critical of the Democrats because the Republicans are so obviously morally bankrupt that to say anything bad about the GOP is akin to saying “The ocean is made of salt water.” There are Democrats I want to win elections, so I am critical because I am rooting for them, as is Mother Earth, who I heard donated to an action PAC for the first time and is thinking of changing her registration from Independent to the Bull Moose Party or Free-Soil Party, like me.

The Earth does not need saving. We do. The Earth will be fine; she just has to kill us first, and then she will heal. I don’t know if this statement is true, but I remember hearing a fellow say all Earth needs is three days to return to her healthiest state. Three days with everything off. This can never happen, but imagine a doctor telling you your cancer will be cured if you sit in your grass for three days and don’t move. Would you do it? Of course you would, even though it sounds ridiculous now, it wouldn’t then. You’d be crying with joy.

The Earth remembers what we forget. We have a limited perception of life. Of everything, and this is true because there is so much you would admit you do not see or think about, and then the rest we cannot even fathom seeing or thinking about. I am not sure whether this is good or bad; it is interesting or stupid. Native Americans lived in harmony with the Earth, as did many other cultures, past and present, but power, both in terms of fuel and control, is so addictive that I really did not grasp it until I saw Joe Biden’s vanity in seeking a second term. To live in harmony, we would all have to relinquish what belongs to Mother Earth. We don’t own anything here; the human species is a renter, and we pay for it. With lives, currency, resources, emotional and mental health, and the amount of empathy we can afford to give others.

I do think it’s too late. It has always been too late. We need Mother Nature like Mother Nature needs the sun, and one day the sun will go out, and thousands of light-years away, its light will still be seen. By what? Probably Steve Zuckerberg, or The Giver, the person who will carry the old knowledge and the real history. He’ll sit on his asteroid and tell the spider-men from planet X that it was glorious for a while, but now everything is frozen and dead, and this is because he will never die in the metaverse.