Thursday, April 21, 2011

An Optimistic View of a Comet at These End of Days

Polls show that people have reached their bottom of pessimism.

All sorts of art (and I include movies here) are apocalyptic or post apocalyptic.

The Right and the Left are in a huge fight---but even so, most people cannot even listen to it any longer.

These are the days when everything is dead---but even worse, stale.

We fly back into the sun and let ourselves burn to a crisp. It’s over.

All logic fails. All attempts are thwarted. It seems.

People hate each other. Groups hate each other. Small towns hate big cities. Big cities hate small towns. San Francisco hates L.A. New York hates L.A. (But funny, L.A. hates no one.)

Rich people resent the thievery and thuggery of the poor. Poor people resent the thievery and thuggery of the rich.

Education has failed.

American babies are sicker than ever.

Bridges fall. Nothing works.

And that’s the good news.

I am once again thrilled about the state of affairs. I believe the only way out is up. And it’s going to be so creative and lovely. I’m putting on my Nikes. Hale-Bopp, come get me.

(But I’m going alive.)

2 comments:

Jeff said...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

* said...

One of the best poems, ever...right? Oui.