47 days
In the season of insanity sanctioned by tradition and greed, the masters are allowed to talk grandiose things, and the subjects are allowed to shout, insult, and boast, pushing, gaslighting, and imposing ideas in what should have been a sprawling land of fertile soil.
It all seemed like a good plan in the beginning. But I have to wonder, with certain historical artifacts on the premises, is that only a romanticized version of the account that we tell ourselves? I already knew we turned around the stories of who did what to make ourselves look better. As the information age has grown to maturity, we browsed the books that we would never find over our morning coffee. Humanity suddenly looks different when you are a card-carrying member.
The burn of truth is persistent. That light that you can see even when you do not look at it can never go away unless you ignorantly deny it is there. Eventually, you find that you are actually living at 704 Hauser Street in Astoria.
Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash
You look back on the glory days for solace. Close your eyes. Court Street, the day after Thanksgiving 1988, cutting glass in an era when finding a place to live almost happened involuntarily. At one hundred, and fifteen dollars a week, it all reads like a stupid little fairy tale. All of it.
What is truth then? How is it that the hours of today are constantly unraveling the hours of yesterday? Did that happen to the generations before me, I dare say not. Who is better off. Is it them, sitting in a chair looking through their picture window into the past with a good dose of psychological valium? Is it better to be numb?
This brings me to the final thought about all of this: Last night, as with many nights in my life, I went to sleep wrapped in the Moody Blues Days of Future Passed album. I always wonder in my final moments, if would I want that playing as it has accompanied me in a molecular way all of my life. But then I think about that early Sunday morning room in the ICU at Bay Area Medical Center on SPID in Corpus Christie on March 31st, 1996. How would Dad have felt if I had put the Doors Crystal Ship on or Dave Brubeck Take 5? Something inside me says all he wanted to hear was his children’s voices one more time. I think I understand this completely now.
I found a recording the other day from December of 2009. I was reading Are You My Mother to Noah. He was a month shy of turning 3. It is the most incredible thing to go back to a time like that. It is more than any song I could ever hear could give. I guess I needed that. Watching society become so fragmented and thinking back on what once was believed to be solid and true, it is nice to look back and simply see something so beautiful. When I look at those things that really matter, my blessings are too great to count. I guess I can deal with 47 more days of what is happening in the news. I guess.