Yesterday and Today

[Yesterday]

I’m sick. And I’m sad. And I think I’m losing my mind. Nothing’s falling into place like it tends to. In fact, things seem to be falling upward and out of my control. But I’m sick – sore throat, fever, sleepy as hell, so the falling upward is a good description to my feverish mind. It truly feels like life is being sucked up around me into some slo-mo tornado so I can reach up to try to, but grab nothing. It’s out of reach. It’s out of control. It’s nightmarish.

It’s the emotions
that swirl like air
whirling the debris
of life
of which
I’ve lost control.

***

[Today: So my therapist tells me to journal when I’m at a point like I was yesterday and I got this far in my writing when my phone rang and it was a good friend who just called to see how I was doing. I was able to articulate my frustrations and fears about life, love, work, money and the state of the nation. He talked me back from the ledge and we were soon laughing. He was just doing what friends do and didn’t have any idea how incredibly well-timed, important and helpful it was to me. Keep your friends close. And don’t be afraid to reach out to them before you get to this point – something I need to get much better at.]

One Nation, Two Movies

A friend of mine had wanted to watch Idiocracy with me for years. It’s a Mike Judge film. Here’s how IMDB describes it:

Corporal Joe Bauers, a decidedly average American, is selected for a top-secret hibernation program but is forgotten and left to awaken to a future so incredibly moronic that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive.

I knew what the film was about a long time ago – the title gives it away I guess and I didn’t want to watch it all those years because I just knew that I would be struck by intense feelings of, we’re already halfway there! and it’s only funny because it’s becoming true! and blah, blah, blah. So after the election I figured now was the time, so I called said friend and we sat down and watched it.

Holy crap, Judge is a genius. Yes, it’s a little ham-handed, but that’s the funny and so are all the citizens living in our future; but the movie is also razor sharp in its skewering of the true and actual dumbing down of the nation, the thrill of violence on the stupid, the overconsumption of media and addiction to entertainment. Sound familiar? Idiocracy came out in 2006 – long before we slipped rather quickly into our own reenactment of it.

The other movie I happened to watch was Civil War, a 2024 movie by Alex Garland. IMDB again:

A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.

I didn’t plan to see this one either and for similar reasons as Idiocracy (we’re already halfway there) but had the opportunity and watched. Depressing. They do a very good job of not making it into a MAGA Republican versus American Progressives war movie and in fact have Texas and California in cahoots on one side of the civil war. But it’s hard to completely avoid the obvious when threats have come from mouths of people who will have a say in the new administration, so of course it’s depressing and frightening. That it’s so new and current makes it even harder to watch. It looks feasible right down to the folks in some towns they travel through who simply ignore the entire Civil War due to callousness or media misinformation – or both – ugh.

Too close to home, that one.

Funny how that works

The author, Edith Wharton, who has written ghost stories herself, once said: “No, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.”

Right? I’ve seen enough ghost chaser shows to know that there probably ain’t no ghosts. No one’s been able to properly photograph or record any sort of ghost-like phenomena, even in the ghostiest places. One doesn’t read about people being murdered by ghosts, just other people. So all actual evidence must lead one to believe that there are no ghosts.

Then how come I get scared by weird unexplainable sounds in my house? Why do I get all goosebumpy when someone tells me their own ghost story? Why did a huge flash of beautiful golden light fill the room the night my friend buried her mother? Not that we were afraid of the golden light, mind you, but we definitely got the goosebumps.

I suppose that, like being scared watching a horror movie, where we suspend our disbelief, we just might suspend some disbelief with ghosts, too? At some level, fear must feel good, although we’d need to define good in that particular statement.