Now we‘re really starting to get into it. If we thought this was a bad dream before, now we are beginning to realize, this is real life. Just as we start to raise the bar higher, the trenches surrounding us get deeper, and the screams of those stuck in the mud start to rise above the girl singing Amazing Grace in the garden. But she is the figurehead of this ship that we are all on, and as long as she is there singing, we must go on, slashing through the hooks of delusion and greed and hatred that keep coming up from below.
If your heart beats, you must go on.
When asked about his father, the Governor says “If our better angels needed a spokesperson, they would have hired my father.”
This is a transcendent crisis, he says, and we must embody the meaning of Excelsior, leading people up, ever upwards. Up from the trenches, into the light, without falling down into the plight of the disheartened.
Even Google doesn’t seem to know how to use Excelsior in a sentence, outside of reference to a hotel suite on the top floor. But perhaps this is the meaning of a transcendent crisis, a moment where the portal opens up in between worlds, and enlightenment is more accessible than it ever has been, simply by virtue of the amount of suffering to which we are all bearing witness. It’s like piece of broken Japanese pottery with all the broken cracks highlighted with gold dust. Like this we can become a highly functional and beautiful vessel, all the more so for having once been broken.
Valiant Excelsior.
Here as we approach a new New Deal, we must not only Build Back Better in terms of our infrastructure, but also our vocabulary. We only speak of the Valiant, where there has been a moment of Courage, succeeded by Pride, when we have done what we intended to do, and done well. Now is the moment to change history for the better, in all countries, all over the world.
This is our wake-up call. A time for reevaluation all across the board. Things really matter now. Not only do we need to be Valiant, we need Resolve. Conviction and Fortitude. This is how we rise above the stress and turmoil churning all around us.
All the same, our new normal is becoming normalized, as people begin flocking to Drive-In Movies like it’s Back to the Future. Back to that future where we said Hi to our neighbors, where we didn’t do as much and that which we did held greater relevance.
The thing that I’m most proud of, the Governor says, is that I got people involved in the political process more than ever in modern history. This is unprecedented. People are being asked to govern themselves, to govern collectively, in the space of a void left by a complete lack of professionalism and skill on the part of the government federally. Who has time anymore, really, to watch this side-show called government politics? Instead we are actually doing it here, together.
People are engaged now, because it matters. This is their lives, their wealth, their children. It is as Lincoln said, “An informed public will keep the country safe.”
As will, apparently, the armed militias of ignorance patrolling for businesses opening in Texas illegally. Call it the armed reopening. We The People tattooed on your forearm as you hold up your semi-automatic rifle to protect a tattoo parlor. We The People protect your right to get a Covid19 tattoo, because that is essential right now, to your life and liberty.
It’s not for looks, they say; we’re willing to die.
How ironic that would be, if they did, and not by a bullet.
Further along on the idiocy spectrum we have an argument brewing around The People VS. Pork Chops. The sense that the American appetite for factory-produced pork products is more important than a few thousand lives, some of them immigrants who survived genocides, some of them poor white trash. You can go get cans of beans at the store and be just as full in your belly, but that’s not the same thing, as your constitutional right to pork chops, now is it? Meanwhile, as the production lines back up, pig farmers begin culling their livestock, which is just a nice way for saying they are killing them. One piped Carbon Dioxide into a contained enclosure. Another shot his pigs one by one in the head. Took him all day. I stopped eating pork some years ago once I learned that the nervous systems are quite similar to our own, more similar than other livestock. As a matter of opinion, not fact, I also find that people eat pork with a different kind of appetite, which on occasion can appear cannibalistic. The way they talk about bacon, and crave it — I find it kind of applying in moments, especially when in essence it is just the flavor of salt and fat. And meat. Shot in the head, euthanized, carved up by electric knives on an assembly line by Sudanese refugees.
Shanghai Disney opens back up with temperature checks upon entry, and all the international markets are thrilled. There is an outbreak of coronavirus in the White House, and everyone is required to wear a mask, except the president.
It is the original State of Exception.
I don’t wear a mask to protect me; I wear a mask as sign of respect to you. I respect you, therefore I wear a mask. Correlatively, if I don’t wear a mask, it is because I am clearly immune to all impunity.
As said by the Governor, the injustice of our system [is] glaring and obnoxious.
Not even annoying, obnoxious. That kid on the block who got too big for his britches and maybe he needed to get knocked down a notch, maybe he needed to get put on his ass on the sidewalk. We The People decided You don’t fit in here. But you don’t have anywhere else to go, and now we all
quite miss home.
In an act of genius the federal government decided this is a grand opportunity to implement virus border restrictions indefinitely, completely ignoring the human themes of mutuality and reciprocity, the value of exchange to promote diversity of both thought and biology.
In Brazil the indigenous population is seen as more vulnerable than ever, and now the deeper implications start to gather on the horizon, as we witness so much, just so much, all around us.
It’s the hard times in life that make you better, if you’re intelligent enough to make sense of it, and that is what we do every day at 11:30am EST, look at the numbers and give some opinions and makes sense of things.
You have my word.
(Do you keep your promises? Are you a person of your word? These are the things that will come back to haunt you some day, as words keep flying all around us.)
He is a man whose word means something. He is the one we think of, when we are on our ass and need to get back up. In this multidimensional new reality we are flirting with a new appreciation for the simple pleasures of life, our earth Eros is rising into a form of grounded embodiment. We will be sensible. We will also feel, and care, and love. The key is compassion. We have to be willing to see life differently, especially ourselves. Find the authority, get inside our inner control center.
Diamonds are made out of pressure.
Diamonds, shining out through the sweat, blood, and tears of our toil through this madness. A womb is a dark place; so it is, deep underground, the mass of aged continents weighing upon you. But this is where we find our faith, and release our doubt.
This is the eternal threshold, between good and evil; between our better angels, and the ones that would rather bring us down. Let us enhance our relation to all that we don’t know. All that we have not yet become. We must let go of all that was, or else anyway have it be ripped away from us.
Know and trust thyself.
If you have not yet been brought down by this virus, it is because you have been given this task, We The People, this army of angels, trudging through the fields of Tough Love. Who has written these laws that we are now following? What happens when we pull aside the curtain and see the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, for who he really is — an impotent man standing behind a curtain bellowing in a loud voice ignorantly?
Just a man with a microphone. Disinformation and illusion.
I watch the sky turn blue, and then lighter blue.
We are Dorothy who went on a journey, and then realized, we had all the power within us, all along. The risk to remain behind in our shells of protection has now become far greater than blossoming.
This is what it means to rise to the occasion.