Hidden Thanks
lightening in a bottle
Tucked away hidden in the neck of a bottle is the image of an oak upside down in the sunlight of a day pretending to be part Autumn. A mask is being worn, the weather has been all sorts of wrong for the astronomically calculated time—the Seasons have been shifting slightly to the right for years now, and perception has finally caught up with grim reality. Good thing there’s pie.
I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t one of the better T-day meetups. Perhaps the buffoonery going on in the hallowed halls of gubbment have finally reached some sort of critical mass, and the subconscious is catching up with the grim meathooks of reality, a phrasing I will forever steal from HST. I would be nice to imagine a world that was so far removed from the trajectory of that sainted Doctor of Journalism, but here we are, dealing with the hellspawn offspring of the Doctor’s worst fears, a purer, distilled breed of cruelty, stupidity, and likely lead poisoning. But hell, this year I took a drumstick home. And a whole pie. That never happens1. Are these truly the end times?
The ills of this society, the racism, the bigotry, the myth of white supremacy2, are all learned behaviors3, and what is learned can be unlearned, but only if the student is willing, and only if a teacher is there for the schooling. The forces behind the perpetuation of these ills knows this, and also knows that divide and conquer works, and the easiest way to keep the division going is to enforce the ills. Part of that division strategy is mangling the idea of education into perpetual indoctrination. All education should be concerned with emancipation, if not of the body, than at least the soul. But why not both?
Here’s a quote, guess who said it and what century it’s from:
The century now closing is luminous with great achievements. In every department of human endeavor marvelous progress has been made. By the magic of the machine which sprang from the inventive genius of man, wealth has been created in fabulous abundance. But, alas, this wealth has been created in fabulous abundance. But, alas, this wealth, instead of blessing the race, has been the means of enslaving it. The few have come in possession of all, and the many have been reduced to the extremity of living by permission.
If you said Eugene V. Debs and February 1898, then ring-a-ding, you get the golden donut. For those still in a turkey-induced coma let me say just this:
EIGHTEEN NINETY-EIGHT.
That’s about as loud as Substack will permit me to shout online4, minus uploading a media clip, and I have too much tryptophan for that at the moment. What the hell is going on here? Are we stuck in a time loop?
Just in case you’d like a repository of Debs’ extensive body of written work, here it is. You’ll be hard pressed to find much to effectively argue against, unless of course you enjoy the taste of boot leather. Had I my druthers I’d drop everything and go into History with a chance of phud, and do a comparison and contrast of Debs’ time versus ours.
For a moment, just a moment, light gets caught up in cut crystal, exposing its hidden virtues, its secret multiplicities that make up its radiant whole. Perhaps these times, these hidden times we live in are the prism of the moment, and we bow humbly to the diffraction brought and bought by the weight of our history. Standing inside the crystal groove, it’s easy to get lost in the luminous, lost and blinded even, if only would could step out of the channel for a moment to see how beautiful things are when we let ourselves get out of the way.
The dissection itself is just a tool, though, not an end goal. There is no perfection without it become a static trap, the goal is a process of eternal refinement and analysis: this works, this does not work.
And on, and ever on, until a cat comes by and knocks the whole thing off the table.
My prayers to Euphrosyne answered?
Most specifically white, male, semi-educated (matriculated, not necessarily top marks), property owner, who understands the benefits of Club Membership.
With benefits, which makes it all the more insidious.
Golly, but i do miss original Myspace sometimes…oh, to edit one’s own CSS.
Readi-whip and whiskey in one beautiful portrait. This is perfect!
I loved this piece of softness and levity. It’s true that our culture gets all caught up in the idea of our own fanciness … then we spend heaps of time writing and wringing our hands about it… then we start casting blame. It makes it all very hard to see the beauty in the everyday-ness. Shhhhh everyone!