PANDEMIC DIARY

TO BE AWAKENED

November 6, 2020

To Be Awakened

When sleep slips into memory, and
the nocturnal fog of fantasy has lifted, Atlas
undertakes to lift the world, once again
to bear up and brace its weight upon
his shoulders.

Beginning another day asks so much
of us: to rake the pig shit into piles; to
reconcile endless implacable numbers; to
slap peanut butter onto white bread at 6AM; to
protect children from animus and assault.

Who wouldn’t want to dream…the fruitless
barren drift, never laying anchor or pulling into
port…hovering, descrying dangling dimensions where
reality renders not in this realm, where humans can pretend
to be Gods.

Cataclysm can cause retreat. Who hasn’t ignored
their children’s pleas? When did you last bathe in Epsom
Salts? Or, prepare your own Mac n’ Cheese rather than
that stuff in a box? Pulling out has its price; a haven is not
Heaven.

That “…the forces of destruction no longer needed the shelter
of the dark”(*) emboldened a contingent of calamitous
charlatans to pierce the veil of norms and
rationality, to threaten a society under undue
pressure to seek solutions.

Our savior evolved from crumbs of bankruptcy and
Big-Mac’s - a sad, pathological narcissist without
compunction or care. Graduating from ‘Mein Kampf U’,
tutored by Professor Roy Cohen, and supported by
vacuous legions with much…or nothing…to hide.

No autocrat survives rose gardens or oval rooms
’in perpetuum’. You either step nobly down, or
stumble and fall without garlands and wreathes.
Anxiously we await for doves. Anxiously we await
to be awakened.

• “…the forces of destruction no longer needed the shelter
  of the dark”. from “Shalimar The Clown” by Salman Rushdie