Saturday, February 26, 2022

truth and fictions

 

you do know that Zelenskyy [a birthsign Aquarian]  
was a tv comedian before becoing President on a 
 promise of getting rid of corruption when Ukraine 
was ruled by a real Russian puppet -- kind of like 
if Jon Stewart ran for President after Trump
 
 
 
 
I have been obsessing over the fictional graphic novel
 "Station Eleven" which is about losing everything
(planet Earth) and what comes next.  I have been so
obsessed with this story that I have been writing
my version and learning what it has to tell me from me.
 
 
 
True hate is intimate
one on one
This wholesale mania that
we call hate has no gravitas --
only tragedy.
 
 
 
it’s not about color
it’s about the culture
you absorb
 
 
 
Maybe some people are not really
lying, but rather so stupid and clueless
that they make up stories to tell
themselves to try to make sense?
 
 
 
How about an economy where the people
whose work we need can live on what
they are paid?
 
 
 

2/18-26/22

Friday, February 25, 2022

refuge (working title)


a story I find I appear to be writing:
https://lunaramble.blogspot.com/2022/02/refuge-working-title.html

refuge (working title)


Brutal dark and cold,
fear and pain.
Damage so great the only escape is vast, empty space.
The home that sheltered and created me forever destroyed,
I must find courage, a way, a place to survive -- or blindly
fall in chaos.
Spinning in infinite space within this ship made of pain
and desperation.

In my old life there were days when I felt loss, when
people I depended on departed, or places I had been part
of were destroyed.  I did not know the meaning of loss,
of being endlessly lost.

They loudly proclaimed their aim to save Earth from
human stupidity, toddlerlike greed and rage,
responsibility a loser's game when we can demand
our whims given honored status, even as trash and
choking filth overwhelm.
But that was not the world we believed, not then.
More or less happily adapted, we had no thought
of loss, or shame, or invasion.

I did not act from greed, offered no harm, living quietly,
loving my family and friends, enjoying entertainments,
sharing griefs, sharing the work needed to keep going.
Yes, arguments, anger, inconsiderations, but nothing
rising to harm toward Man or Earth -- just mostly petty
complaints, discomforts, dissatisfactions, rough edges.
Of course I am not humanity writ large, but as far as I
have seen most of us just stumbled along trying to find
our happiness, our peace.

I sit here in this crowded yet desolate ship in my little
quiet corner, telling myself stories of what I remember;
attached to a world I have no more.  These stories haunt
me, ghostly swirls to keep me from thoughts I don't want.
We are adrift without plan.
Food and fuel will dwindle.  Cold space will prevail.
Miniscule unnoticed space trash eternally drifting, cold
and dark and dead.

Yet, even without all we have known to protect us, for
now we survive, held in the terror, the pain, the loss.
This is our escape from certain death.
What kind of escape goes nowhere?

Many spoke, some passionately, of return to Earth,
somehow overtaking the enemy, saving those of our
fellows who were not destroyed, erased, from the live
storage pens where they were kept as broken, 
uncared for livestock to feed the invaders.  But how, 
with what?  We are outnumbered and weaponless.  
Did others escape?  Are we humanity's only hope
for survival?
Some thought we could organize hydroponic gardens
with the seedbank on this starship in preparation,
appropriated for our emergency exit.  Maybe we could
find an eventual home on the ship’s starmaps.

The stories that got us here.  The stories we imagine
to get us out.

I notice an old acquaintance standing apart, as if an
observer.  Perhaps like me he is musing and listening
abstractly to distract from fear.  We tend to like to be
creatures of habit, secure in familiarity.  Now there is
no familiar base to hang our habits on; our only promise
is no return to a casual normality.
 
The once rightful passengers meant for this interstellar
voyage would too have had to face a future of
strangeness, dangerous unknowns.  But one assumes
they would have prepared, have expectations of
vastly different lives, even be excited in anticipation
of their brave adventure.
I barely breathe, so shaky, weighed by trauma, terror,
unacceptable chaos, defeat.
 
Some of our population are, fortunately, starship pilots,
and other crew and technicians who were working to
get the ship and themselves ready for its intended trip
several months hence.  Most of us are random survivors
who knew about the ship’s location and were close
enough to get aboard before the launch.
Hundreds of traumatized human refugees set on
survival, too tragically raw, tied to unfathomable
grief, to even know what that might mean.
 
We have not even the presence to come together in
ritual in our common pain of loss so great.
Cloying remembrances, what we have left of our
identities, memories that fade, that change to suit
our stumbling narratives, our explanations.
Milling about like zombies with no purpose, no life.
Some families did manage to escape together.
Even they seem aimless, disconnected, caught in a
nightmare devoid of hope or sense or continuity.
 
Grasping for cracks of hope – if we escaped then
others may have as well.  Certainly starships exist
in other locations with populations that could find
that way out.  Perhaps there were other means of
escape.  Maybe there are by now underground cells
preparing for war to take back our planet, places
where our deadliest weapons are kept.  Trained
military professionals or experienced rebel armies
with guerrilla tactics could be gathering, fighting back.
 
Yes, some of us can still dream.  Of course, though,
if such human forces exist, if others have escaped
to their space, we have no way of knowing, or
communicating.  We are alone.
 
No longer running madly, no immediate threat,
having time to regain breath, find stillness, the true
impact of reality descends.  More than can be
comprehended, consciousness in stasis to hide
or absorb.
It’s not like all those disaster shows on tv.  We are
not drawn into community by our common tragedy.
We are made numb, disconnected, emotions so
overwhelmed, we are unable to process more.
 
Time, duration, are meaningless.  Identities lose
cohesion, substance.
How do I know what others here think, feel, deny?
Words seem to gasp from throats to ambient air,
as shattered survivors grapple with sharp agony,
dulled awareness, questions of most basic nature,
who we are and why.
All I want is an end to consciousness, to fall into
some kind of coma so I can feel no more, not at all.
How can survival be a friend, desirable?  Do I owe
those erased by alien terrorists my memories, selfish
and limited as they remain? They, at least, are free
from the pain of survival.
It does occur to me that if the violations, the shocking
violence of my experience is to gain the balm of
meaning, I need to think beyond myself, find some
means to connection, to some continuation of
humanity.  These are not clear, linear thoughts, of
course.  I am grasping for what I can, as if life itself
makes me worthwhile, no matter what life entails.
Yes, I can raise a metaphoric fist against my
tormenters – a fist they will never see, that would
not impress them.
What I have seen, what I can’t stop seeing, feeling,
knowing ...
I was able to escape the devastation, Earth.  I can
never escape the catastrophic agony, profound hollow,
while consciousness remains.
I become aware of myself standing here by the
Observation screens, clinging to the constant of
space.
 
Bouncing through excruciating images, flashes of
violent aftervisions, the thought emerges that
there must be wounded survivors who escaped aboard.
A star voyage must anticipate and provide hospital
facilities.  Some of the escapees must be trained
medical types now tending to others in need.
That must be the key:  purposeful work to wrap up
in, allowing no room for unbearable thoughts to
surface.  Having no immediate chores, this small
epiphany offers no relief. The work I did for all these
years is meaningless.  I am not a leader, was never
blessed with those organization, motivational skills.
Now I can count on no well-honed discipline to hide in.
 
I imagine I am experiencing, we are being given, a
period of stasis to decompress.  Once this mass of
horribly damaged people stop hyper-vibrating enough
to connect, though, is there any promise of kindness? 
What kind of compassion will survive?  What kind of
wounded human monsters will we face, become?
 
 
 

Monday, February 14, 2022

pisces siren call

  

 
 
untethered
tossed and scattered
by random wind
 
 
 
Rise up against the bullies
Prove them irrelevant to
our dynamic synergy
 
 
 
 
maybe if instead of thinking of people as
evil for participating in common practice
even if that practice is evil, thinking of them
as weak, perhaps willfully ignorant, or merely
unconcerned with larger issues just going
through their accustomed lives, so it's not
about labeling "good" and "evil" but about
learning, communicating and changing to be
better people because the human
super power is adaptability
 
 
 
how about we do the smart thing and move
toward renewables, let big oil take care of itself
without government subsidies or special influence;
give the consumers who need it energy
subsidies while we're working out the changes
 
 
 
how about we teach practical skills,
scientific method, logic, critical thinking,
arts, civic responsibilities and how
democracy works, communication skills
 
 
 
silly rabbits, it's not "leftism" or "rightism"
or "socialism" or any of these stupid isms
we use instead of communicating -- it's that
we use these stupid isms instead of communicating.
 
 
 
 
there's plenty of "canceling" to go around
it's not about RvD, but on one hand pure
capitalism -- giving the customers what
they demand; on the other it is fear-based i
nsularity -- don't tell me what I don't what to hear
 
 
 
A child unaware of how
to avoid punishment
carelessly enjoying frivolity or
deeply engaged in grand passion
when suddenly “You!  Nasty brat!
causing me to feel disturbed.
Now, we can’t have that!
You must be beaten to feed my
equilibrium,my pay.”
 
 
 
 
2/7-14/22

Friday, February 4, 2022

continuing Winter

 

 
Freedom isn't only for you.
You insist I respect your rights?
I insist you respect mine.
 
 
 
 
Co-existing with loss
along the way.
Dare to grieve, to feel more than
I can contain, yet never breaking
out of skin and guts,
out, out, all excruciation.
Mangling, squeezing viscerally,
to expel!  what I never want gone.
I scream to tell -- again and again,
but only within my bleeding mind.
I see, hear, smell, grab to my heart.
Courtyards swelled with Spring,
with bursting flowers, green.
Aching green, awash in loss.
 
 
 
 
Your cause may be just.
If your actions are assholish,
that's all we will see.
 
 
 
 
 
of course it's scary; it's meant to scare --
domestic terrorism to take over the country
(perhaps the world) without the messiness
of actual war that could be lost
 
 
 
 
we do not serve ourselves or our causes by
overextending limited energy -- we need to
feed ourselves with care and kindness
that we rediscover inspiration and action
 
 
 
 
 we really ought to rethink "economy" to understand
it is about distribution of and creation of resources
for everyone's potential benefit, not about hoarding
and destroying them, certainly not about destroying
the source of all of our "wealth"
 
 
 
 
if we want voters to show id of a particular kind
to vote we must give that id to all registered voters
and to each newly registered voter at registration
otherwise it's not about id, but discrimination
 
 
 

1/26-2/3/22