BLINDNESS
Today was a good day. I slept well in a comfortable bed, had a good breakfast, counted out my pills for my trip to Paris, searched for an Airbnb in London, had a very nice lunch with Beverly Ohler and Celia Miles, came back and ordered my prescriptions at CVS and then took a long nap and when I woke up went for a long walk up Jones Mountain with Susie. It was a good day.
And then I read the news. I read a long story of a family that dropped from the middle class into entrapment in poverty while trying as hard as they could to stay afloat but through bad choices and major medical bills were left destitute and hopeless. I read about young Russians who had protested government actions for years and now had given up in fear and loathing and were fleeing the country. I read about American political dysfunction in the Senate, posturing and pandering and pontificating politicians. I read about the terrible pain of ordinary people living in Ukraine being bombed into submission by other ordinary people.
And suddenly yesterday’s feeling of the crowd at the basketball game forgetting their differences and letting off steam over a bouncing orange ball, the feeling that we are all Americans, or that we are all humans accepting each other, that feeling of togetherness vanished.
I argued a few days ago, not quite believing it at the time, that each of us is dropped in a time or place or social setting not of our choice and all we can do is to be as alive as we can be in our own way. It is fine to argue if you are going to Paris on Sunday and leaving everything behind, or if you by chance have comfort and food and education and a loving family and good enough health. Leaving everything behind and eating croissants and walking along the Seine and taking photographs of flea markets seems very attractive to me now. But it is out of reach of so many people in the world, and out of reach because of so many people in the world. So for no specific reason, no specific event, but just a sudden realization, tonight that none of my ways of making sense of and accepting the world seem to be valid.
I’m down now, but I know I’ll sleep well tonight and wake up cheerful and continue to look forward to April in Paris. But tonight I suddenly can’t. My advice about living as fully as you can seems fatuous and stupid and blind.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 