Having grown up in the 1960s and 70s, with the long Vietnam War playing nightly on every TV set and the occasional domestic explosion of a random big-city building, FBI office or DoD facility serving as counterpoint, various riots and protests a constant undercurrent, I thought I was immune to surprise at the politically-based imbecility of my fellow Americans.
I was wrong.
The wrongness haunts me, with a sense of floating unreality that dogs my days and confounds my nights. I struggle to find engrossing reading, ideas worth writing, anything, anything at all other than look at the news or the crazier blogs.
And it's all enmeshed in this damned pandemic, which we still have not got shut of. Maybe in late Fall or early Winter? Maybe? --Barring yet another mutation, maybe. Barring further craziness that helps to spread it. Barring the too-early, self-defeating return of hope. And maybe that last pitfall is the most maddening part.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
5 comments:
I hear you. And I find myself, in the dark of night, wondering if the first fifty years of my life did nothing to prepare me for what is coming next - shortages of essential goods? widespread violence in the streets? a New Great Depression? And it makes me worry, because I am Very Alone and would have really no tribe (or at least I think not) to vouch for me or help me in a very large upheaval - so I am left with hoping to be an "early casualty" in whatever horrors may come next.
it's not good for my state of mind.
Your comment about failing to find engrossing reading really jumped out at me. I've noticed it too. Do you think it is linked to the shrinking of newspapers and magazines? Do you think this is temporary, or the new normal?
Fillyjonk: I stumbled over an article recently, of which I only needed to read the headline: "Our brains are not made for this much uncertainty." While that may or may not be true -- human existence, as Thornton Wilder famously pointed out, is a precarious, skin-of-our-teeth thing -- it's damn sure not what we were *accustomed* to. The adjustment is damned difficult.
Overload: For me, it usually means I have mined out my stable of faves, and I need to look more widely afield. I recently read Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," at the intersection of alternative history, gritty noir detective and modern-day midrash, and found it fascinating. The guy can *write.*
A Yodaism...
When old you become, certain is change.
I'm 68 and there is no time of my life that I didn't see changes that
were predictable but not unexpected. After all the only constant is
change.
I read a lot for sanity's sake.
Eck!
I don't know if you want reading recommendations, but a brain twister I recently enjoyed is, "There Is No Antimemetics Division", by qntm.
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