We conjure up our skeletons
Enlist the den of thieves
Frightened from our closets
Then sewn upon our sleeves
In classical antiquity, the cornucopia, also
called the horn of plenty, was a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly
a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers or nuts.
This one will be filled solely with nuts.
The Age of Science and Reason?
For a society – even a world –
that swears by science, reason, testing, facts, etc. – anything but “faith” or
“revelation,” it really is pathetic to watch the hysteria that comes with
irrationality. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the devastating
consequences for the countless millions who are losing their jobs and
businesses.
The War on Death
Our masters have successfully
(so far) been winning the battles in the war on death of favored companies;
they have failed to convince us to take meaningful action in the war on the
death of the planet – climate change was way too distant in the future to drum
up emotional hysteria in the population.
So,
what do they come up with? They made it very personal: the immediacy
of a war on death…of death. No one is allowed to die, even if
it kills you.
An Essential Worker
Every time I hear this phrase,
I think of this. I feel very saddened for
those whose work is deemed non-essential.
Living in a Material World
When all you have is the
material world of atoms randomly smashing together, what else do you have to
live for but a war on death?
Prepositional Obfuscation
It isn’t the same thing, to die
“with” coronavirus” as it is to die “from” coronavirus.
What Comes Next?
There have been countless
editorials speculating on this – chips inserted via vaccine, no more paper
currency, documentation of vaccination or immunity, etc. I am sure
that there are a million more.
I have been hearing inklings of things like “you will have to wear a mask
and gloves to go out in public.” That will be great…for
criminals. No facial recognition, no fingerprints.
Sure, you think this is
silly? But really, is it any sillier than what we are going through
right now, today? [Well, that didn’t take long; see below. *]
The Market
My shopping trips have been
great:
· At
checkout, we now have distance markers on the ground – 6 feet apart.
· The
customer behind me, wearing gloves, had no problem getting right next to
me. I was about to ask “what the f^c& are you doing wearing
gloves and crowding my social distance,” but I don’t think I could
have got it out without breaking up in hysterical laughter. Talk
about an irreconcilable incongruity.
· A very
nice couple shopping with two babies – no masks, no gloves, nothing on any of
them. I wanted to give those kids a big fat kiss!
· Lines outside waiting to get into store
with empty shelves inside. A picture is worth a thousand words, and
this picture reminds me of the pictures from the Soviet Union.
Silver Linings
· Traffic is way down
· I am saving a lot of money on gas and
eating lunch out
· More time at home
· Getting outside more (until they catch
me without my papers, I guess)
· Going cold turkey on sports, and
praying that I can get really used to this
· Ammo and firearms sales – way up!
My Best Self-Defense Advice
If assaulted or confronted by a
stranger, sneeze or cough as loudly and hard as you can. And then
pray that your assailant is brainwashed with the afflictions gripping all of
humanity.
Next Year?
What happens next flu
season? What happens this allergy season?
Easter
I cannot write anything here
without breaking down. Church closures will leave a very
long-lasting scar on Christianity.
The Suicide of the West
Jacques Barzun writes: “The blow that hurled the modern world on its course
of self-destruction was the Great War of 1914-18.”
This is true enough, but the
disease was introduced much earlier. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, from his
Harvard University commencement address, “A World Split Apart,” delivered 8 June 1978:
How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West
decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal
turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West
kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the
help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself
in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of
human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of
the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political
expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for
government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or
humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any
higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man
seen as the center of everything that exists.
No church services during Holy
Week? This could be called the final breath of a man dying from a
self-inflicted wound.
How would St. Dionysius the Great feel about
this? Writing of a devastating third century plague (HT a good
friend):
…out of the blue came this disease, a thing more terrifying to them
than any terror, more frightful than any disaster whatever…
Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never
sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of the danger,
they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to
them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were
infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of
their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.
The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the
disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing
them into the roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as
dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease;
but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.
Remember
that death
Is not
the end but only a transition.
From G.K. Chesterton (and thanks to Paul
VanderKlay):
Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who
knew the way out of the grave.
Conclusion
In the stream of consciousness
There is a river crying
Living comes much easier
Once we admit
We're dying
-----------------------------------------------
* The Trump administration is expected to urge all
Americans to wear cloth masks in public, based on a forthcoming shift in C.D.C.
guidance. (NYT)
I drafted this post on Wednesday, April 1, published, obviously, today –
Friday April 3. In between the two, out pops this headline.
Now…I am thinking of a meme: no mask, no gloves…no service. I
won’t add the picture. For one thing, it is beyond my technical
abilities. For another, the picture is best left to the imagination:
a grocery store, a pharmacy, a gas station? How about a cat house,
or a lady of the night?
Better yet, a bread line. Because that’s where we are headed.
