I'm going to try and bring back this blog in a shorter format, something more conducive to my new situation. It has been a difficult stretch for me, as for many of us.
On April 2, I started to show symptoms of COVID-19. I proceeded through the stages: weakness, fever, then later lung and some kidney issues. It never became very serious, but it lasted a while. I took myself out of quarantine on May 13. In the rural area where I live, there was no testing at the time, and I relied on CDC web pages for general guidance.
Around the same time, as with many of us, I was hit with new financial and professional challenges. (I work as an adjunct professor, never more than a contract worker for the state university system, which gives me no benefits and a poverty-level income). While before I could save a hundred dollars a month, if I lived like a stoic, I now struggle not to sink too fast into the red.
Then on June 3, I went to bed wondering if I would wake up in a dictatorship, due to Donald Trump's wish to send ten thousand troops to Lafayette Square to break up a peaceful rally of citizens exercising their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Fortunately, two individuals stopped that from happening (according to WaPo): the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley. On that night, these two men saved the Constitution as a viable document.
We here in the USA continue to live in a vortex of pandemic, economic crisis, social protests, and Trump's continuous and major threat to our democratic system. The period from now until 2021 may be the last time in my life that I live beyond the grip of an authoritarian regime. Conversely, if Trump is thrown out of office, it may signal a reformation, a bright epoch for equality, rights, decency, and democracy. The USA is the wealthiest country and has the strongest military. It isn't far-fetched to argue that as the US tilts, so tilts the globe. The fate of humanity-- --autocracy or democracy--hangs in the balance during these precarious, tumultuous months.
To be clear, autocracy as present in the USA includes: White nationalism, fascism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, kleptocracy, plutocracy, and the monarchic worship of hate-mongering demagogue who, by clinical standards, is both a narcissist and a sociopath.
Indeed, part of what has crippled me mentally is the fact that so many people could bow down to such a repulsive figure, when by resisting him they could live such better lives and more noble lives, and also found a quality future for their children. For instance, we could have good government healthcare--but instead, more than half of our White population fixates on imaginary problems related to supposed dangers posed by immigrants and Black people.
Democracy, in contrast to Trumpian autocracy, is indeed, as Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for President, put it, on the side of Light. For instance, Biden's Vice-Presidential pick is a Black woman (who also has Indian heritage). Yes, this alone is a magnificent thing, all by itself. If that comes as a surprise, you aren't engaging the full virulence of racism and sexism in this country.
Aside from all that, Kamala Harris, the VP candidate, is inspiringly and outstandingly competent.
Although for years I've been warning about the rise of fascism, this blog being one of my standard soapboxes, I find it very different to face what's going on directly, rather than just writing about it with foresight. Intellectually, sure, I saw this coming. Psychologically, I can't come to grips with how quickly the Republican leadership sold out our values, whether in abject cowardice, or simply lust for their rung in the hierarchy. Either is awful. Either is despicable, dreadful, pitiable and infinitely sad.
As for me, my writing time is more precious than ever. Most of what time I have, I put into my novel. I'll be finishing the current draft soon, the fourth draft, and then I'll read it through out loud, one last time. I work on it every day, even during the teaching semesters, except when a migraine headache looms. I have to stop then. The migraines are absolutely debilitating. I'm talking paralytic pain. No light, sound, or movement allowed.
I do think it will be a great novel. It deserves to reach the world and to change it. Desert, of course, doesn't translate into success. I did write it to be stimulating and engaging and I'll market it aggressively. In any case, it is something I've always wanted to do--the extreme exercise of my mental potential for the greatest challenge I could possibly face. The content has been as soul-draining as validating. It has plundered my passionate, social, and spiritual riches. There is a higher statement buried in the dual plot. This statement is sotto voce and it is not pure or innocent. It gets heavily challenged, diluted, and suffers within the drama, love, war, beauty, monstrosity and apocalypse.
As I see it, my purpose is to finish this novel, whatever the financial or other expense. It's not merely selfish. I am no better than anyone else, but no worse either. And to the extent that we can throw ourselves into the ordeals of prophets, channeling something greater than our carnal needs--aspects of art, good, and collective conscious--I consider myself a prophet.
I am also, still, a poet, writer, thinker and ethicist. My head is full of thoughts. They bustle through, quite impatient. My hope for this blog, at this juncture, is merely to share some of those thoughts in a brief format. Maybe they will be useful to someone 'out there'. Even if not, at least I'll relieve some of the pressure on my bulging, scattered, inefficient brain (A brain I love by the way, though I'm no Albert Einstein or Mary Shelley).
Owl
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