December 23, 2019


THE PECULIAR POVERTY OF THEN



They can neither write nor read cursive.  If they happen to write a tweet on paper, they must print it. They adorn their bodies from pate to sole of foot with  tribal markings, tattoos incapable of explaining themselves. Please note  that the markings of maligned "primitives" follow an exquisite logic.  They do not have the ability to articulate such logic.  They practice gluttony in the consumption of tweets, allow what little remains of their minds to grow obese and lethargic, and  habitually confuse ignorance and steel-clad misinformation with lore or wisdom.  They equate what was once deemed to be "good, true, and beautiful" with excrement that saturates the air they breathe and renders the ground upon which they walk to be a toxic wasteland. Gender, blurred or blended gender, and no gender has high priority in the domains they inhabit.  Content to become post-human machines, they have no curiosity about bio-cultural evolving on their planet; about climate change and/or the obligations of the child, the woman, and the man to make choices which might retard Nature's disintegration;  or the construction and growth of anything one might reasonably identify as food for thought or equipment for living.  They thrive on self-hate.  They discover boundless pleasure in murdering one another on the basis of trivial excuses. They are unaware of just how well they assist systemic racism, inequity and implacable hegemony to condemn them to benign genocide or death-bound futures.  Whether they are black,  yellow, white, red, or brown, they are all so-called  wretched "people of color."  Therein we locate their abject tragedy!



From the executive summary of a report dated December 23, 2091



THE COMMON HORROR OF NOW



The possibility that the fiction above seems to be "normal" in the closing days of 2019 is a matter for alarm as we celebrate, either with a dearth of spiritual regard or an excess of commercial anxiety,  what in Christian belief is the anniversary of the birth of the Prince of Peace.  There is slight comfort to be had from listening over and over to the words and music of Handel's Messiah.  On the contrary, it  is a sad state of the blues that distinguishes holy days and holidays in the dubious Age of Trump.   We do not have an existential option to escape the discomfort of time.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            December 23, 2019

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