I do not know where the thread is. No, that’s not it. I see the threads scattered across my imagination’s landscapes, but those threads are in motion, changing colors and lengths, skittering about. No, I don’t know which thread to choose. All are of equal importance. All are tied to pressing concerns, to matters of life and death, to the survival of democracy, to the survival of flora and fauna, to our longevity as a species. As an amateur writer, I have been overwhelmed by the speed of catastrophes present and to come and by the unearthing of histories that show patterns I had not seen before, the past sending up flares from those excavations, and the light throwing the harshest glare and shadows as defined as steel blades.
I feel as if I am living in the pod of a centrifuge, all the way at the end of the arm, the whole contraption spinning so fast that 8 or 9 times the weight of gravity makes my body sink back, my reflexes slow. I am struggling to make sense of all the news coming down that arm, the news pushing the speed higher, the news never stopping but growing in intensity and force. I cannot keep up.
This is really about my own fear. No, fears. The plural is the true choice, but perhaps fear is also too imprecise a choice. ‘Dread’ is better. ‘Apprehension’ better still, an anticipation of trouble coming fast, of the future, the near future, being filled with tribulation and dire events. Apprehension means I am always watching for warning signs, that I am trying to listen carefully to the language used by those who wield power, that I am looking for patterns in events while still observing the rules of empirical evidence. It means being alert to the weather and rage and above all else, to the powers of suggestion at work in the Republic.
I do not think I am alone at all in my apprehensions. I think we, its, us, ours, all of it, is beginning to come apart.
We all live inside the 24 hour news cycle, the blasting out of atrocities, attacks, nature coming unhinged in climate disasters, the crying out of voices of victims and cynical players and preening politicians and the enraged, all of this roaring into our collective consciousness hour after hour without ever ending, a stream of doom we may dip into every time we open a phone, a computer or snap on a TV. What that stream emphasizes is that no place is safe, that the worst scenarios are the most likely and that in this America, you are on your own. The empirical truth of these fears is unimportant, the rarity of the worst scenarios unimportant. What matters is the feeling, the fear, your imagination watching your door break down.
Fear creates questions: Where do we look for safety? What kinds of ideas are we willing to tolerate to ensure that we, and our loved ones, are safe? How many guns do we need? Who is the enemy? Fear unravels every other emotion. Fear unravels reason. Fear feeds the imagination.
What does my fear look like — guns showcased in public in the hands of the deranged and of bully-boy bro’s in camo and MAGA hats. Fires, floods, rising temperatures, dying animals, rivers and reservoirs drying up, climate migrations already in process and growing in numbers. Voting rights being gutted and then tailored to fit right wing needs. The prolonged whine of individuals proclaiming their freedom at the expense of the public good and their freedom to endlessly announce their victimhood. The relentlessly demoralizing effect of social media, of celebrity culture, of 10,000 TV channels. The disappearance of quiet, of reflection, and of solitude, and the universality of a bone deep loneliness that is inextricably tied to the demand of so many to absolute personal freedom governed by nothing except desire. The presence of murder in the zeitgeist — Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene implying that public health volunteers going door to door about Covid vaccinations should be met with guns drawn. Congressman Madison Cawthorn spreading lies about the 2020 election and threatening bloodshed. The mob that injured 140 police officers now being praised as ‘political prisoners’ by the right, coupled on the left with the folly of calling for police forces to be defunded. Our war in Afghanistan coming to a close with 10 more children killed in another of our drone attacks, 125,000 Afghans rescued, 13 marines and 170 Afghans murdered in a suicide bomber’s explosion and media pundits and reporters crying we should have stayed, we could have done it better, it didn’t have to end this way. The Delta Variant of Covid carrying away more of the unvaccinated. Vaccine cards being counterfeited. Teachers, school board members and principals being physically threatened by parents in the hold of anti-vaccine, anti-mask madness. The wealthy believing they will control everything forever. Trump preparing to run for President again.
Rage saturates the air — gun sales through the roof, people screaming at school board members, at retail workers, at flight attendants, homicides up in cities all over the country, and the unmasked unvaccinated proclaiming their freedom to infect at the top of their lungs.
There is nothing exceptional about America or Americans. In any country civil structures may break down, political conflicts metastasize, vigilantes come out of the poisoned atmosphere believing in their own righteousness. Bad people do come to power. Sometimes checks and balances become corrupted. The law, imperfect in the best of times, becomes a weapon of the powerful rather than a shield for the powerless.
I’m just not sure I can make sense of what is coming to pass except that the centrifuge is still accelerating. How many multiples of a g-force can we take? What happens when the rotors overheat, when the arm gives way, when the pod fly’s off?
Once I found a 3 room house 50 miles from Santa Fe, windows all around, stripped down, simple, a place where avalanches of stars would remind me that there is more to life than this plummeting down toward who knows what unimagined violence, but every time I looked at it and thought of a life there, I knew it was nothing more than a fantasy of escape or a timeout from ‘what is coming to pass’.
I also cannot deny my nature which is inherently hopeful. Those 125,000 Afghans are thankful to be here. Those men and women and children gathered at and heading toward the Border want to be here. Millions across the world would trade places with us immediately. They see a reality here that I know exists — this is not the realm of a Putin or Orban or Xi Jinping. Not yet. There is still room to move about here, to be left alone. I remind myself of this all the time. And of this: Vaclav Havel wrote that “Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the conviction that what we are doing makes sense, no matter how things turn out.
I have nothing else right now, especially not a perspective that can see what all of this means, how it fits together, or what comes next. So for some time to come, I’m going to step back from the chamber where the centrifuge is housed, until I can figure out a way to handle the g forces and until I can see an order in the chaos and hear sequences in the noise.
