Can We Just Make Dystopian Hellscapes Fiction Again?

Dentistry Department at the University finally called, and my appointment was cancelled, as expected, they are still closed, non-essential. It was just for the consultation, but it was a step forward.

Finally, I think it has all fallen into place, and 2020 walks in, says… not so fast… you’re on a time out for some indefinite period and left with your crappy teeth. Oh, good luck with the job.

I’m not fond of 2020.

It can go now.

So, suppose I will have to remain your scary ass daughter with the horrifying teeth for a bit longer it would seem.

Though, with the pandemic, the physical distancing of strangers has gotten actually much easier to guarantee. So there’s that. You know, just one smile, and they tend to go away.

Ok, so getting old doesn’t suck. Mostly. Actually. I’ve managed to get by, food wise, coping wise. Generally. Usually. Creatively.

Course, growing up next door to a Depression era Grandma has given me some tricks.

Blackfriars wrought iron bridge — ***Erected in 1875, Blackfriars Bridge is one of the oldest and rarest bridges in Canada*** – after re-opening last summer to car traffic, it has closed again – pedestrian and cycles only due to the pandemic.

What I wouldn’t give some times, just to sit there cross the kitchen island, with our red wine stained lips, Friday night, drunk as skunks and oblivious to what life had in store.

Yea, life taught me it ain’t fair at all and get on with it. But still. Those down and dirty, whisky and wine soaked nights, lately, I suppose they have a certain charm now in retrospect, with all the ground we’d cover, the things said, what we shared, our darkest fears, and you listened. We told you stuff, many things other families never shared out in the open. All the stuff that for some reason we just were never taught to hide. Unconditionally you loved us anyway.

Oh, well, no. I’m wrong there, we hid stuff. Gawd, I know, I know.

Maybe waxing on. I guess I do just miss when I could look at my father and not question who he was. Back when it was easier to be sheltered from certain truths from just boring old ignorance, and maybe too not really looking that hard. Not wanting to see stuff.

Maybe some of that.

It’s not that though. Really. This isn’t about all that.

Lately the world just seems… sideways.

I mean, I used to think that walk I took the day after your stroke, I thought that was a defining, life-altering, no going back, and it was.

And, it was. I was.

Pulling back that curtain and seeing you as you were, a slow and painful reality.

“I wish people weren’t so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.”
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

You know me mom, though. You know how idealistic, how knight in shining armour, how much the great injustice just knifes me in the heart, and I rage inside against it, at how others can be so nasty, so heartless, so selfish, so mean, so cruel.

Screaming into a void of anger, a choir of rage is all my voice becomes, amplifying its range.

Lately, why I haven’t written you? You know why? Cause I didn’t know what to say.

I’ve been trying so hard to master blissful ignorance, poorly mind you, but one must always practice perfecting the joy one must feel from not wondering every single damn morning with their first cuppa java and a glance at the news… which dystopian hellscape conspiracy deranged lunatic fringe chaos clusterfuckery are we on now?

And turn it off, and Pika kisses me and her little tongue goes right up my nose… and I am released from its grip.

You know, pandemic or no… what is going on down there is an in your face lesson on how fascism swept through Europe.

Some people really suck.

So many decades gone, many veterans from those wars now dead, the great forgetting is taking hold. We became lazy, believing that it’d all been solved, the good guys won, democracy was a shining beacon and all was well with the world, goodnight.

Music stage at Harris Park, London, Ontaro — ***Harris Park, London, Ontario*** – no music festivals this year… this park will stay empty. Which, makes it a beautiful place for an introvert such as myself.

“This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.”
Robertson Davies

I think we’ve lost the plot.

Some I guess blame capitalism. And I can see that. Some just greed, or money. Or, maybe it’s not maybe a good thing that the ruthless acquirement of wealth is a justified and accepted form of addiction, and what we would punish the meth attack for the rich man is praised.

Idealism in this world today, mom, it is cruel.

My heart races, my chest tightens, I swear words, awful words. The nastiest most horrible words I can say. I throw them out with spit, cause of my shitty ass crappy teeth I can’t get fixed cause well, cause we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I guess I’ll just have to damn well gum my food with my scary ass horror movie teeth.

I’m not saying I feel like this often though mom.

But its there. It sits there, in the room with me, looking at me with knowing eyes… and I click off twitter, or facebook, or The Washington Post article, and… well, you know me… puff puff, puff the magic dragon… turn on the Binaural Beats and calm myself the heck down, climb off the ledge of rage at the injustices I see, what they get away with, I tell myself, whatever it is, they will pay, some way, somehow, the debt to their karma will come round.

I still ask though, why people have to be so mean and selfish?

SO I make Cornbread. Take the doggy for a long walky.

Plant Morning Glory seeds, and a Dahlia bulb, and some pretty Snap Peas, and Nasturtiums, and smoke my cylinders of sin and watch the garden grow.

Oh, ignorance C O M E T O M E.

They are nuts you know.

Absolutely lunatic fringe has taken over… in some spots. You would not believe the images we are seeing, the stories. Middle of a pandemic and once great and mighty leader of the free world is now inching ever closer day after miserable day, towards being just another shithole country you really don’t want sitting right at your doorstep.

Who knows what is igniting the wave of morons, but it would seem as though their bark is bigger than the movement. Lots of big money trying to make itself look more widespread, break peoples spirit, this anti-lockdown machine gun toting terrorizing lunatic fringe conspiracy junkies of the commander of chaos down yonder where I was born.

And where my father is, amongst people I know nothing of, and wonder who he is, who I am, who my American cousins are?

I think most Americans are as horrified as the rest of us. They must be? Right?

I don’t know anymore.

Sadly, I scroll thru Facebook, and the lunatic fringe has infested Dodge, or a few from Dodge, which is why I have turned off that Wi-Fi soul sucking reality it offers, as much as I can.

Well, so I have still been writing, but just not to you, not here. You can check it out here if you’re interested… it is hard-core history with a folksy charm… or that’s the drift I’m trying to craft.

But, anywho. I am lucky. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just venting.

To be honest, as the days go by, the fucks I give have dwindled. Maybe the whole country can just go to hell in a handbag.

I just really find it hard to sometimes just not say what I think, old high school friend or whomever, but I don’t think it would make any difference.

Frankly, I can’t be bothered to argue with someone over such stuff.

From what I can see, some people are scared, maybe they are more interested in believing some video from some disgruntled doctor they saw on a YouTube video than actual internationally respected virologists…. have at er…. I am not going to be the one to tell them science doesn’t care if they believe in it.

You know what? I roll my eyes so much now… I really seriously think they may some day truly and actually stay that way.

And I am not joking.

It is entirely possible.