But our culture prevents us from comprehending what it says.
One of the most notable memes going around these days is of the sign next to the cliff. Oriental markings are then translated below for the English speaker's edification. They read: "Fall off the cliff carefully".
There is a saying that post modern society views as a sort of benediction of sorts. It is this: "May you live in interesting times". Originally, it was a Chinese curse. When one's life is incoherent and pointless, curses become preferable to a life immersed in mediocrity.
There are two persistent ideas that have been bubbling up in my consciousness lately. One is a dream I had as a small child where I was flying over my hometown. I landed in a courtyard down at City Hall, and went inside. There was a great deal of confusion, and turmoil, enough that I felt it necessary to take refuge under a clerk's desk. I hid as a search was conducted, and then after it seemed that the coast was clear, I emerged only to be snatched up by some government official. A strange dream for a child to have, no?
The second is that scene in "The Sound of Music" where the Von Trapp family is hiking up over the Alps in their lederhosen. Again, I can remember as a child thinking why don't these fools run before things get out of control? I didn't like the idea of leaving my familiar surroundings, but I didn't see the possibility of tyranny taking over the country back then either.
I'm noticing a lot of people wearing their masks below their noses, or even below their chin while they shop in establishments that have mandated masks. I intuitively know why they're doing this. They've had a talk with the people at the front door who have told them that they can wear the masks until they feel sick or need air etc. Some people appear to be about to pass out, and are pulling their masks off and practically hyperventilating in order to make sure that any of the citizen Nazis don't have a fit and blow their whistles to release the dogs on them.
I sense a smoldering seething resistance, but I don't know if this is enough to eventually burst into something significant or if it will just continue to seethe until it simmers down into hopeless resignation.
Honestly, I just want to run away to some tropical deserted island or key, and swim, snorkel, or lay out on a white sandy beach watching the clouds roll by.
I've done it before, and the more this country creeps towards more and more twisted episodes of The Twilight Zone, the more I see this as the go-to default option.
Just in the last two weeks I've noticed a lot more people diapering up their faces. People riding alone in their cars or people riding bicycles on the trails are wearing masks now. A lot more signs as well, warning or cautionary signs to wear a mask.
The signs and arrows on the ground everywhere remind me of walking into a United States Postal distribution center a few decades ago. I was making a delivery, and needed to find out which bay door to back into. As soon as I entered this enormous warehouse, I was greeted by a wall of signs. I must have stood there for a good five minutes trying to find the one that was most relevant to me.
I finally found the sign that instructed me to follow the yellow arrows on the ground to the receiving clerk's desk buried deep inside what appeared to be a sick idea for a roller coaster ride at Disneyland. There were a number of caged conveyor belts shuttling packages over my head with secondary and tertiary conveyor belts and chutes followed by walls of caged packages. Lot's of noise, and as I meandered through this dark and foreboding forest-like maze, I suddenly saw an office with a row of bright lit windows as if from a cave revealing half a dozen other drivers standing in line.
I opened the door and took a position at the end. There was one clerk helping a few people, but then she disappeared leaving another clerk sitting at a desk with a large felt marker making out yet another new sign. He had a ruler out and was coloring inside the lines of his newest creation while we all stood there waiting for him to finish. I felt like I was watching a five year old kindergartener admiring his attention to detail. He seemed quite content with this artistic preoccupation.
Somebody has to make all these signs, and place all these decals, arrows, lines etc. on the ground, and I've noticed that they're all meticulously centered, equidistant from each other, etc.
I envision something similar as people are rounded up to quarantine centers where they will all be shuffling obliviously in lines towards some chute where someone in a Hazmat suit covered in happy faces or the stars and stripes, and a decorative cattle stunbolt gun awaits to give them their latest vaccine.
I also have this dreadful picture of myself sitting with a bunch of other losers in some cage awaiting God knows what as we lament all the opportunities we had to escape, but were too complacent or hopeful, and then some other loser points out that they saw this coming, and nobody listened to them back then. Of course they will be summarily pounded into the ground by the rest of the losers.
We all see what's happening, but I don't really see any good options here when so many people are zealously eager to dawn hazmat suits if necessary and hunker down in their basements for the rest of their lives. As long as they have cable and internet, and their Star-Spangled, high fructose, hog fat Ding Dongs, they're good.
One of the most notable memes going around these days is of the sign next to the cliff. Oriental markings are then translated below for the English speaker's edification. They read: "Fall off the cliff carefully".
There is a saying that post modern society views as a sort of benediction of sorts. It is this: "May you live in interesting times". Originally, it was a Chinese curse. When one's life is incoherent and pointless, curses become preferable to a life immersed in mediocrity.
There are two persistent ideas that have been bubbling up in my consciousness lately. One is a dream I had as a small child where I was flying over my hometown. I landed in a courtyard down at City Hall, and went inside. There was a great deal of confusion, and turmoil, enough that I felt it necessary to take refuge under a clerk's desk. I hid as a search was conducted, and then after it seemed that the coast was clear, I emerged only to be snatched up by some government official. A strange dream for a child to have, no?
The second is that scene in "The Sound of Music" where the Von Trapp family is hiking up over the Alps in their lederhosen. Again, I can remember as a child thinking why don't these fools run before things get out of control? I didn't like the idea of leaving my familiar surroundings, but I didn't see the possibility of tyranny taking over the country back then either.
I'm noticing a lot of people wearing their masks below their noses, or even below their chin while they shop in establishments that have mandated masks. I intuitively know why they're doing this. They've had a talk with the people at the front door who have told them that they can wear the masks until they feel sick or need air etc. Some people appear to be about to pass out, and are pulling their masks off and practically hyperventilating in order to make sure that any of the citizen Nazis don't have a fit and blow their whistles to release the dogs on them.
I sense a smoldering seething resistance, but I don't know if this is enough to eventually burst into something significant or if it will just continue to seethe until it simmers down into hopeless resignation.
Honestly, I just want to run away to some tropical deserted island or key, and swim, snorkel, or lay out on a white sandy beach watching the clouds roll by.
I've done it before, and the more this country creeps towards more and more twisted episodes of The Twilight Zone, the more I see this as the go-to default option.
Just in the last two weeks I've noticed a lot more people diapering up their faces. People riding alone in their cars or people riding bicycles on the trails are wearing masks now. A lot more signs as well, warning or cautionary signs to wear a mask.
The signs and arrows on the ground everywhere remind me of walking into a United States Postal distribution center a few decades ago. I was making a delivery, and needed to find out which bay door to back into. As soon as I entered this enormous warehouse, I was greeted by a wall of signs. I must have stood there for a good five minutes trying to find the one that was most relevant to me.
I finally found the sign that instructed me to follow the yellow arrows on the ground to the receiving clerk's desk buried deep inside what appeared to be a sick idea for a roller coaster ride at Disneyland. There were a number of caged conveyor belts shuttling packages over my head with secondary and tertiary conveyor belts and chutes followed by walls of caged packages. Lot's of noise, and as I meandered through this dark and foreboding forest-like maze, I suddenly saw an office with a row of bright lit windows as if from a cave revealing half a dozen other drivers standing in line.
I opened the door and took a position at the end. There was one clerk helping a few people, but then she disappeared leaving another clerk sitting at a desk with a large felt marker making out yet another new sign. He had a ruler out and was coloring inside the lines of his newest creation while we all stood there waiting for him to finish. I felt like I was watching a five year old kindergartener admiring his attention to detail. He seemed quite content with this artistic preoccupation.
Somebody has to make all these signs, and place all these decals, arrows, lines etc. on the ground, and I've noticed that they're all meticulously centered, equidistant from each other, etc.
I envision something similar as people are rounded up to quarantine centers where they will all be shuffling obliviously in lines towards some chute where someone in a Hazmat suit covered in happy faces or the stars and stripes, and a decorative cattle stunbolt gun awaits to give them their latest vaccine.
I also have this dreadful picture of myself sitting with a bunch of other losers in some cage awaiting God knows what as we lament all the opportunities we had to escape, but were too complacent or hopeful, and then some other loser points out that they saw this coming, and nobody listened to them back then. Of course they will be summarily pounded into the ground by the rest of the losers.
We all see what's happening, but I don't really see any good options here when so many people are zealously eager to dawn hazmat suits if necessary and hunker down in their basements for the rest of their lives. As long as they have cable and internet, and their Star-Spangled, high fructose, hog fat Ding Dongs, they're good.