Say it again.
Today I woke up thinking about war. Again. And I wondered if I had any other thoughts left. Reaching for beauty when the world offers nothing but ugliness.
War.
What is it good for? Like the song – absolutely nothing, say it again.
It’s good for erasing all the thoughts in my head. Better that, I tell myself, than weeping for a dead…
No. Even the mention makes disaster commonplace. An image of the TV leaders of this catastrophe comes to mind. From the Greek katastrophē, to overturn, from kata – down, strophe, a turning, strophe – a unit in a poem. So much overturned, while they turn over the remains, scraping money from the ashes. The TV image, as they give us the gospel according to the loudest and most cynical, blessed be the name of the vain. Not a painting, but digital ugliness, costumed as leadership. A flawed outfit with overly large shoes, sweaty skin, caverning, wide mouths with American teeth spewing the language of war crimes.
Can you not listen to their voices, and not wonder how people do not hear the hollow evil of a televised bully. The screen makes things larger. The compressed sound makes voices bigger than they really are.
And the endless flow of words that follows each televised sermon or middle of the night “truth.” The articles, the think pieces, all trying to make sense of these terminal actions. So many blogs with the rhythm of AI, like bombing, desperate to make a point, a connection. If the new prophet of computer rhythm results in destruction and emptiness, craters in the mind – never mind! Someone has made money from it.
AI would insist here on the next few paragraphs being one sentence. Only. Short. Staccato. Like gunfire. One. Word. Then. Another.
Like the television bullies, social media maniacs, spitting out one lie, then another, wrapped in cliché, as we sit, rapt. We are audience, we believe. Devoid of agency. Hypnotized, one hand reaching into the popcorn, as we wait and watch to see what comes next.
What is that joke about American propaganda? The short version:
Person 1 – We don’t have any.
Person 2 – That’s how good it is.
What do we do?
Last night it snowed and this morning the trees were covered in white, or were before the air warmed up, and the branches started dumping their snow, like the windscreen of the cars parked outside, snow sliding off the glass. That may have been the last snow of the winter. The equinox is next week, April is two weeks away. Everyone seems convinced we will make it to April. Maybe we will.
There seems to be no instinct left to protect or love. There’s no money in it, after all. Everything is Very Loud and Up for Debate. Anger makes you buy things. So does Fear.
Have you ever worked adjacent to the extremely wealthy, not just well-off, but stinking, absurdly stuffed with money? Ever had to plan things according to their plans? Because they will not, do not, change their plans. Until they do, of course. Meetings must be scheduled around their imperious choices – they will be in this country in July, that week they will be on their property in another state, that month in yet another place. After all, they have the money, someone wise once said. What they want is what happens. As if their decision to do something was inviolable and proceeded, regally, from a diktat that could never be argued with. They will not move things by as much as a day. Compromise is not on the menu, and whatever is served, literally or figuratively, must be approved, altered, agreed upon according to their wishes alone. Without argument. Like the markets, like the war – this fighting and trading of the rich is presented to the rest of us – and there are so many of us – as a god-like decree. Just make a note in the calendar and wait for instructions on when a meeting can happen.
Until I don’t. Until we don’t. Until someone says no.
