Tantalizing Tragedies


TANTALIZING TRAGEDIES AND USA LIFE

Were we sufficiently informed about the classified  designs of the NIH,  FBI, CIA, CDC, NSA and a few other government agencies, we would flavor each meal or snack with dread.  Each tick of the clock would be the noise of a bullet or of an eardrum shattered by a massive explosion; each ballot, an opportunity gone wrong.  How normal it would be to burn our absurdly priced garments and footwear and  baptize ourselves with those ashes.  Without discrimination among genders, ethnicities, and economic status,  the posture of Job would be the only posture.  Neither "The Star-Spangled Banner" nor "Lift Every Voice and Sing" would ever be heard.  Either Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth," Curtis Mayfield's "Underground," or Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" would be the anthem of choice. The most revolutionary patriots among us would protest and sing praise hymns for the salvation of death.

 Our minds would be our metaphors. Our nation would be the simultaneous hell and heaven of  nowhere.
 
We are not informed.  We are sentenced to suffer  enslavement to hope!  Despite our common sense and better selves, we demand (and get) illusions of progress.  We are condemned to rob, bad mouth, murder, hate, and rape our fellow citizens with glorious alacrity.  We are confused and confusing.  And we are decidedly uncertain about to whom the pronoun "we" might refer.

Laugh. Do not panic. Laugh. Find solace in memories of  once upon a time before the advent of the Age of Trump. Laugh. The patron saint of the USA is Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade.  The Bible is Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo." Laugh. Our manifested destiny is a single grape of wrath.  Laugh. Tulajit.  Laugh. Tikkun Leil Shabbat. Laugh.


Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            May 30, 2018
 



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