That was my answer when a friend asked me how I was. First, I looked at her and asked myself, ‘Should I show my fake smile and lie like a robot?’. Then I decided to be honest.
The response to my reply was an up-tick of the eyebrows and peering over her glasses, with a loud silent ‘Ohh?’.
The many inner dialogues have been argumentative, unsure, illogical, but all too human. I’m sure I’m not the only one panicking, sometimes a bit unsettling, other times trying to put a cork in the volcano. Keep physically busy to calm the mind, and the moment you let your guard down, the fury screams through the gate. But it goes nowhere. Because you bite your tongue and clamp your mouth shut. Instead you see the silent scream when you look in the mirror.
I don’t want to be the biting dog barking all the time; we have too much of that already from the pulpits, the streets, and the White House. But I don’t want to be the Pollyanna, either. Sometimes I want to rub the faces of the Pollyannas in the shit that is being thrown around from all directions. “Here, take your joy-joy and your little dog, too. And get out of the way!”
In the past it all used to flow through my fingertips, but something broke, snapped, in 2013 and there’s no smooth conduit anymore. I’m not a writer, although writing was always my cathersis. And I have asked myself since then why it doesn’t work anymore. I always jokingly tell myself I need a flash drive to insert in my brain. The monologues and stories are still there, but they always trip over the door sill and never make it out. Except the stupid juvenile ones that sprint past the door and spew fury.
Then I found a perfect explanation by writer Jeremy Wade, “Tr*mp has traumatized so many of us to such an extent that attaching any positive descriptors to his name is infuriating. You don’t need me to tell you that’s a valid response. He is fascist garbage, and he’s responsible for some real heinous shit. I’m sorry for all the ways it’s affected you and the people you care about.” I feel partly vindicated, despite that it’s more than that ‘T Name I Cannot Speak.’
It’s not the virus, the pandemic, the social distancing, or wearing a face mask. I’m a biologist; I know the virus, what it is, how it works, what it does, and what I, we, need to do. I’m fine with that. It’s the politics, the history, and the humans. They are illogical, unreasonable, unintelligent, memory impaired, and blind to long-term consequences beyond their noses. And they would all rather fight against each other than try to work together to make this unfunny universe more a joy to live in. They are always right and everyone else is always wrong.
It’s also all the collateral damage. Everything we hear and read about the environment is unavoidable doomsday-esque. It’s hot, it’s on fire, polluted, becoming scarce, radioactive, dead and extinct animals, no more butterflies and bees, oil-covered ducks, fish with mercury, children drinking lead, calamitous storms, and not one acre on the planet without a human footprint. Instead we shove the flag of Planet Plastic waving over a scorched earth. I try to do more than recycle and reuse, but it’s like taking one grain of sand from the Saharan desert. Meanwhile, I’m surrounded by frenzied shoppers on their cell phones and their loud cars.
Then I found the perfect descriptor from the book, “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?” (By Lorrie Moore): “The bad news of the world, like most of bad news, has no place to go. You take it to the bulletin board part of your heart. You say, ‘Look’. You say, ‘See’. That is all.”
This has been the bulletin board, translated and deciphered. But there’s still a pin hole in my heart.
