Apologies in Advance

For a good time, don't read this post

I think anyone with a thinking mind has felt maudlin of late. So many critical voices and institutions are being stretched, shuttered, defunded, and dehumanized. I want to look for the light at the end of the tunnel, the “helpers”, the bright side, but still... It took Spain 40 years to claw its way out of Franco's dictatorship, and though I do hope/pray/believe America will eventually right the ship, in 40 years, I will most likely be dead.

We went as a family to see Ari Aster’s Eddington this weekend, a paradoxical film that examines the hypocrisies and insanity on all sides of America’s George Floyd/Covid-19 moment. The movie has you remembering challenges we’ve collectively worked hard to forget, constantly questioning yourself and your opinions, and changing who you root for multiple times. It ultimately leaves you with the feeling that human beings are complicated and selfish, trapped in a period of history where no instant goes unstreamed and truth becomes blurrier by the minute.

My son’s Letterboxd review sums up the layer of doom the film slowly secretes on you during its 2-hour and 22-minute run time.

“America may just be the worst place on earth.”

While that is obviously not the whole story, it does feel a bit like it in the moment.

We are all here in this world for a short time. That’s what makes it easy for the haves to take and take and take, and the have-nots to pacify and consume and pretend or get angry and lash out at whatever the enemy of the moment is. It’s easy to hunker down, hoarding everything you have and not worry about the future or legacy or what’s left for your children or your children’s children. For the middle class, a blue mood is nothing a trip to Target can’t solve. People who are “othered” can remain unseen depending on where you live, and if you understand what the term “groceries” means. And those who live on the fringes continue to lose their rights, advocates, and the small means of help they fought to obtain in the first place.

I genuinely believe there are four things that will save us. A belief in the power of creative expression, both the consumption and creation of it. A love and protection for our planet, national parks, and the fellow animals who inhabit those wild places. Education and the places and people who make it their life’s work to expand minds and engage young people. And diversity and the understanding of people, places, and cultures different than our own.

Right now, all four of those things are at risk. Throw into the mix the energy and water guzzling AI, the collective addiction to cell phones, consumer overbuying of fast fashion/electronics/plastic, our pervasive gun culture, egomaniacal men leading their countries and allies into war, personal family drama, friends' sadness, and so on and so forth. And the fact that when it comes to climate change and the environment and children/towns dying from climate disasters, we are decades too late to reverse course.

It all reminds me of another film, Melancholia by Lars von Trier. This idea that the world is coming to an end, and like frogs in a slow-motion boil, we are watching and sedating ourselves, taking care of number one in whatever way works best for us personally.

Final movie reference of the day. I just showed my son Psycho for the first time, and my childhood crush on Anthony Perkins remains. I’ve always loved the scene when Norman takes Marion into the office and—surrounded by his stuffed birds—drops truth bombs on her left and right. Everything out of Norman’s mouth is peak. “People never really run away from anything…..You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch."

Felt apropos for the moment.

Jesus, this is depressing. Is this 53? Sorry everyone. We Gen-Xers really did live in the golden age of the world. Goddamn it, Burgin! You can’t leave your five readers like this. End on a good note.

School starts in a month. I am ready to distract myself with novels and young people and words and the herd of deer in the backyard at our new place and the hummingbirds and titmice and the big fish that live in the river and the green view from my office window and my new stovetop espresso maker and the place down the road that makes good kolaches and learning to make better quilts and bigger pots and the fact that I’ll be living 13 miles from the famous and fascinating body farm and will find a way to get a tour and aging gracefully and the chicks coming in the mail next week that will lead to all the eggs I can devil and my husband’s hair as it gets longer and more handsome from retirement and my son’s bird photographs and collages and his girlfriend’s art and the movies and music they tell me to listen to and watch that give me hope about the future still.

Still.