Corona-copia

We conjure up our skeletons

Enlist the den of thieves

Frightened from our closets

Then sewn upon our sleeves

-          Lines in the Sand, Dream Theater

In classical antiquity, the cornucopia, also called the horn of plenty, was a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers or nuts.

This one will be filled solely with nuts.

The Age of Science and Reason?

For a society – even a world – that swears by science, reason, testing, facts, etc. – anything but “faith” or “revelation,” it really is pathetic to watch the hysteria that comes with irrationality.  It would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the devastating consequences for the countless millions who are losing their jobs and businesses.

The War on Death

Our masters have successfully (so far) been winning the battles in the war on death of favored companies; they have failed to convince us to take meaningful action in the war on the death of the planet – climate change was way too distant in the future to drum up emotional hysteria in the population.

So, what do they come up with?  They made it very personal: the immediacy of a war on death…of death.  No one is allowed to die, even if it kills you.

An Essential Worker

Every time I hear this phrase, I think of this.  I feel very saddened for those whose work is deemed non-essential.

Living in a Material World

When all you have is the material world of atoms randomly smashing together, what else do you have to live for but a war on death? 

Prepositional Obfuscation

It isn’t the same thing, to die “with” coronavirus” as it is to die “from” coronavirus.

What Comes Next?

There have been countless editorials speculating on this – chips inserted via vaccine, no more paper currency, documentation of vaccination or immunity, etc.  I am sure that there are a million more.

I have been hearing inklings of things like “you will have to wear a mask and gloves to go out in public.”  That will be great…for criminals.  No facial recognition, no fingerprints.

Sure, you think this is silly?  But really, is it any sillier than what we are going through right now, today?  [Well, that didn’t take long; see below. *]

The Market

My shopping trips have been great:

·         At checkout, we now have distance markers on the ground – 6 feet apart. 

·         The customer behind me, wearing gloves, had no problem getting right next to me.  I was about to ask “what the f^c& are you doing wearing gloves and crowding my social distance,” but I don’t think I could have got it out without breaking up in hysterical laughter.  Talk about an irreconcilable incongruity.

·         A very nice couple shopping with two babies – no masks, no gloves, nothing on any of them.  I wanted to give those kids a big fat kiss!

·         Lines outside waiting to get into store with empty shelves inside.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture reminds me of the pictures from the Soviet Union.

Silver Linings

·         Traffic is way down

·         I am saving a lot of money on gas and eating lunch out

·         More time at home

·         Getting outside more (until they catch me without my papers, I guess)

·         Going cold turkey on sports, and praying that I can get really used to this

·         Ammo and firearms sales – way up!

My Best Self-Defense Advice

If assaulted or confronted by a stranger, sneeze or cough as loudly and hard as you can.  And then pray that your assailant is brainwashed with the afflictions gripping all of humanity.

Next Year?

What happens next flu season?  What happens this allergy season?

Easter

I cannot write anything here without breaking down.  Church closures will leave a very long-lasting scar on Christianity.

The Suicide of the West

Jacques Barzun writes: “The blow that hurled the modern world on its course of self-destruction was the Great War of 1914-18.”

This is true enough, but the disease was introduced much earlier.  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, from his Harvard University commencement address, “A World Split Apart,” delivered 8 June 1978:

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

No church services during Holy Week?  This could be called the final breath of a man dying from a self-inflicted wound.

How would St. Dionysius the Great feel about this?  Writing of a devastating third century plague (HT a good friend):

…out of the blue came this disease, a thing more terrifying to them than any terror, more frightful than any disaster whatever…

Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.

The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.

Remember that death

Is not the end but only a transition.

-          Scene Three: II. Fatal Tragedy, Dream Theater

From G.K. Chesterton (and thanks to Paul VanderKlay):

Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.

Conclusion

In the stream of consciousness

There is a river crying

Living comes much easier

Once we admit

We're dying

-----------------------------------------------

*  The Trump administration is expected to urge all Americans to wear cloth masks in public, based on a forthcoming shift in C.D.C. guidance. (NYT)

I drafted this post on Wednesday, April 1, published, obviously, today – Friday April 3.  In between the two, out pops this headline.

Now…I am thinking of a meme: no mask, no gloves…no service.  I won’t add the picture.  For one thing, it is beyond my technical abilities.  For another, the picture is best left to the imagination: a grocery store, a pharmacy, a gas station?  How about a cat house, or a lady of the night?

Better yet, a bread line.  Because that’s where we are headed.