Yesterday, in the evening, a garden party in Kenwood. I sat in the lawn chair looking out across the valley at the eastern mountain range, the Mayacamas, the hills of rolling vineyards leading up to them as the light made its soft shift, signaling the day's end.
One must really go out of their way to ignore the natural beauty of this place. It can only be done with great effort and much time spent inside. I feel guilty even going to a daytime movie in this valley.
I want the world to last. I'll admit that I was blasé about it for too many years of my shambolic youth, then my lingering adulthood. Not any more, brothers and sisters. I want the world to carry on in much the same fashion that it has for some time now. When Rhys falls in love with the idea of adventure as a young boy I want the possibilities to include something other than just struggle. I want him to read comic books, not survival manuals.
There is no perimeter left to this world in which to retreat. Mountains and islands will become violent and crowded with carcasses, overrun with hyenas, jackals. It is one reason that I not only believe in gun rights, I believe that we should enforce gun rights completely and make gun ownership mandatory, punishable even, and gun safety should be fought with our few remaining resources. Safety should be finally be recognized for exactly what it is: unnecessary, frivolous even... dangerous!
It requires no special skill in logic to make an argument that opposes all others. Those who now deny Darwinian principles should be required to confront the facts more closely. Perhaps the evidence has not yet been compelling enough to convince those that require proof. They lack the requisite faith.
Whatever happens... we asked for it, we're told. Demanded it!
Freud told us about the basic impulses, sex and death, or maybe it was life and death.... though we are now instructed that Freud oversimplified. We have known and felt all along what the result of our earthly excesses would be. It is all written in our myths. God is always a landowner, his messenger always a peasant. I am feeling the impulses now, the havoc of time on the body, and I am only at mid-life. What I would like to believe is my mid-life. My father turns 80-something this week.
82, my brother just dutifully texted back. Is it lucky to have lived so long? My father certainly seems to think so, and has told me a handful of times. I once asked him how much longer he wanted to live and he gave me a strange look and responded, as long as I can without being miserable.
I almost responded back, But what if I am miserable now?
Though a son does not, should not, plant the idea of suicide in his father's head. That would be unnecessarily careless, cruel. He does not need to know that I think about such things.
I used to try and quantify suffering, I would wonder which would be worse: to lose a child to sickness or suicide. These were among the worst things that I could imagine, but then I grew up a little bit and realized that things can become much worse than just that. It is why drug lords will kidnap the families of their rivals. Suicide seems merciful in the face of such a thing, sickness an act of cosmic love, in comparison.
Now I worry about global warming. My guess is that the suicide rates will rise dramatically along with the water. The conversation about the act will change along with it. It will shift from being about giving up hope to the hope that less humans might make the temperatures and sea levels drop, as if there is an appeasing that can bring nature back, a sacrifice that will suffice.
I have heard some suggest that the poorest will die first, many of whom live in underdeveloped regions susceptible to rising tides. The idea of a few billion deaths does not appeal much to me, though I understand the 'them vs. us' nature of such an idea. Why should America have to suffer the indignity of the apocalypse.
I have heard Christians almost invite the death of the earth, because their rewards are elsewhere. I have heard agnostics tell me to leave the Christians alone, that they're not hurting anybody.
I checked the altitude of Sonoma a few days ago, for fun. My dreams and daydreams turn more and more to escape. Escape.
If things do unfold as poorly as we are told they might... then Iran might be pleased that soon enough everyone will forget the Holocaust. The Nazis will not seem like the worst possible group to have ever existed, at all. In fact, many will turn to those just like them in the hopes that sort of order will bring order to an uncertain future. Live long enough, you will see.
But are there not many fascists in your country?
There are many that do not now know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.
- Hemingway
The future fascists will all be agrarian, naturally.
I'll admit it, I live in both vague and specific fear of global warming, not knowing much but also knowing enough. Imagination fills the gaps of life, the gaps in knowledge. I have read reports that 97% of the scientists who study such things agree that it is man-made and we are heading towards doom. Yet there still seems to be a fair amount of partisan bickering about it and what should be done, as if it started in Benghazi by Al Gore.
I wonder why these same scientists don't call on an international cessation to all cancer studies. That money is needed to educate, provide guns, and prevent impending disaster. If we did a study showing the carbon footprint of cancer treatments then people might turn against it, them.
This is not an actual suggestion, it is only to make a point. If we can argue for gun rights then why can't we argue against cancer.
There will come a point when the collective idea will be: let the dead die, sooner.
Can you now see why I wanted to take a break from writing?
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