Let it be known....Numbers and words

 When the pandemic crossed over 200,000 deaths, the news I watch made the font bigger.

People are talking about the virus, but the literal dumpster fire of problems going on now has made that just one piece in a mandala of crisis pints. 

They made the font bigger, and nothing has changed in getting this pandemic under control. 

Let it be known that this is what they did when a number was crossed and the nation was not on the same page to unite in stopping the deaths and violence seems to be an inevitable point of arrival for this society.

I cannot....I do not...I have no words for this.

I'll keep using the same font to prove the power of words, not graphic design pandering to a situation where numbers now mean nothing.

There is No Line To Cross

 It is Sunday, and tomorrow we will cross the 200,000 dead from the virus...and it is not what everyone is talking about.

In The Plague, Camus sets up a town that is run by a functioning local government and a stable central government. While there is a severe problem with the living conditions of the Arab population, as is stated when Rieux talks to the reporter for the first time, the town in presented as stable. The chaos of the plague grind against the stability of the city. That is to say, the reference point of sanity can be returned to when the plague is over, a return to the political and culture stability that runs beneath the crisis.

Here is the United States, we don't have that option. This pandemic is running within the chaos of a political crisis that is beyond what we have ever experienced. As this is woven into the 24 hour news cycle which itself is polarized, there is no way to stay stable. The point beneath or feet is changing so fast that is has made us blind to it. There is no point of reference from the past, only the next crisis that seems to hit us each day.

But this is different than in The Plague. It is reported that the main thing people cared about during the raging of the plague was the amount of dead reported, each week at first, and then every day. While the people of Oran seemed to even grow numb to this after a time, there was still a singular point of reference for the level of the crisis. Not so here this time around. We just lost a Supreme Court Justice whose presence was deeply needed to maintain a sense of equality of political voice. There now seems to be a full court press to get a new Justice into place with an opposite political view from its deceased predecessor. This will have an effect on the laws of the land for decades to come.

Tomorrow, the number of dead from the pandemic will reach over 200,000 and, while it will be noted with harsh voices, there will be many more problems, new and recurring, that will be focused on. This huge number of dead should cause a pause, a moment of silence, political outrage and screams for change. But that will not happen. Things will continue to roll onward as they have.

While I am on the topic, people think that once there will be a vaccine introduced, all will return back to normal. This imaginary line seems rather dangerous. While a vaccine would be amazing and a blessing to be sure, it is not going to be an immediate panacea. The efficacy and safety of the vaccine needs to be shown and, with a mass treatment, problems are bound to show up, not to mention a rather long process of getting the majority of the population treated. There is no insane return to the old life. At best, this will take years and by then society will have started being rebuilt upon memories of the old and the habits of the plague years. Economic reasons and cost cutting measures will change the way people work. More and more people will now work from home, at least part time. Most small concert venues will close and the ones that remain will have to figure out a new business structure. The habits of being insulated and singular at home will remain in one way or the other in some degree and the value of outside entertainment/diversion will have to be recalibrated. To put it exactly, the life before this past March is gone without our expectation. Our lives have been changed forever overnight and hopefully we will remember that is always possible every time we wake up in the morning when this is over.

The line in the sand happens everyday and I hope we never forget that when this is over.

The Mandala of the New Religion

It would be too easy to say that the center can no longer hold within the deep crisis of this pandemic. But there is a center and it is holding...and it is not pretty

As of this typing, there are 197,397 deaths from the virus since the counted started earlier this year. As in Camus' "The Plague", we too have all grown numb to the numbers, though I believe that when it crosses over a large enough point, things may get serious for a short while before it gets drowned out and imaginary like it is now. I have been pretty much entrenched in the house for 99% of the time, with the exception of going to the post office and driving around to nowhere so as to not go insane. I don't even bother to turn on the news anymore because it is all the same: a mandala of utter chaos and no sign of a real end to this.

But there is a center within this that refuses to budge. The once dominating organized religions have been on the down slide for decades for reasons that are both obvious and illusive. But as this country is losing moderate toned religions, the extreme versions have been on the rise. I do not say this as a slight to anyone, but simply as a statistic based fact. The United States has had a deep religious bend for some time and that longing for something to believe in and others surrounding them with the same zeal is very much alive and well.

Briefly, religious faith cannot be proven by science, which is why it is called "faith". That being said, many people, including myself, can point to more than one instance where what has happened to us could not be explained by physics or biology. And I love science and physics deeply, so please do not assume I have an extreme bias towards one or the other. When one starts going down into the subatomic level, it is still very much a mystery, to say nothing of the workings of the brain, the weather, and the Universe itself. There was and shall always be more to learn and explore. It seems both religion and science work within the concept of infinity.

The United States leads the world in deaths from the virus for many reasons, but one main cause of infection is the lack of mask wearing. While I have addressed this before as a belief in person freedom, it is time to note that the present political situation has become a cult. I am not new to saying this, as it has been on the news for many weeks and said by many people. 

In brief, a cult is a group of people who, for whatever reason, take everything their leader says as Truth and will make excuses for any faults the leader has in order to not break the foundational belief that ties it all together. Here in this country, there are people who are choosing to follow the leader and refuse to wear a mask and, to make it more interesting, get into literal physical fights with people about wearing them. You must have a great deal of fear inside if you are willing to literally assault someone over beliefs.

This core community of believers have not budged one millimeter since Election Day four years ago. They believe at all costs and those costs have and will include non-believers. The number of dead will hit 200,000 most likely on or before Sunday, which shows that all actions have consequences. Also, there is now a rush of people who survived the virus going to NYC hospitals with severe problems. They are counted among the living but have damage that may last the rest of their lives. You just don't see that when looking at numbers.

If the power structure in this country is allowed to continue on the same course due to the present cult, which represents itself as very angry, very armed, and ready for a bloody revolution, the minority of people shall have done damage beyond numbers because of a false faith. However, this is nothing new within the realm of human history, as it has happened all the time and shall continue to do so. The chant from most people, unspoken but constant, is, "Well, that will never happen to us!" which is exactly what Camus said in the book.

We did not believe a pandemic could happen to us. We did not believe that a cult would form over a political leader and have that entwines with the corporate and financial structure. We still do not believe in the severity it all with almost 200,000 people dead. 

All of this shall be defined by its ending, and I hope and pray I live long enough to see an ending where caring and compassion are greater than blind belief.

The Gravity of the Calendar

 When I was young, I worked with an old man who said, "After the Fourth of July, it all goes by quickly." It took many years to lose my fight against that statement.

It is now September and Labor Day is passed, the unofficial end of Summer has come and gone. I honestly barely remember the past season because there was nothing similar to all the past Summers. Say what you may, but we are creatures of habit that pull on the past to navigate the present. But, like everything else this year since the middle of March, we are within a circular present that we have no reference for, simply inventing it as we go along.

The number of deaths since this started, 190, 589 people have died from the virus. We are headed for 200K very fast. The reason for this is because we have chosen to open colleges and schools. As an added bonus, the biker gathering in South Dakota caused a spread of about 250,000 cases. 

Let's be clear here, the colleges have opened up for one reason and one reason only: money. Period. They knew that is they did not open up and have the students arrive for their classes, there would have been an outcry over the fact that the students could have gotten the same cyber-education via an online university for literally 1/6 the cost. What an I so sure of this? Simple: Princeton announced months ago that they would not have regular classes. (I think Yale and Harvard did the same.) How does this prove my point? If you graduate from Princeton, the cache of that institution holds value regardless if you do it online or by Morse Code. The people there KNOW that they have the name to carry the value. All other places, outside of perhaps a few more, know they do not and are charging insane sums for their "college experience". So, they took the students in like sheep to keep the cash. If someone gets sick and dies, they can go, "OHHHH OHHHH we TRIED to have classes but we can't and have to go online!! Sorry! You still owe all the tuition..." This is capitalism without a moral check valve using the youth as a commodity, a literal canary in the cash mine. 

As for my own life, I was told about a place that is doing outdoor gigs and someone asked if I wanted to do it. I am, at best, very uneasy. I have been performing for well over half my life in situations that ranged from beyond hellish to silly to (very few) that were life affirming. I have realized over the years that, while I do love performing, I am not driven to perform like actors, dancers, or lead singers. yes, I WANT to perform, but......... what is the cost benefit analysis?

After having earned my stripes over decades of performing, I believe that I am a qualified worker just like a plumber, dentist, and welder. I have a craft, a vocation. And, just like everyone else, I believe I should be paid for what I do. I am not even sure of this gig even pays! It is a coffee shop so, at best, they will pay $30 for two hours work. I doubt it would be that much because there will be less people and they will be bleeding money from the months of being closed. So, I am to perform outside and sing and risk getting sick with a virus that can kill or make me violently ill and/or make someone I know the same way, for no money. 

And please, before you jump down my throat for sounding like a capitalist pig who only cares about money as a creative person, I would ask you to reflect on why you believe the people in the creative field where you find enjoyment should work for free? This, my friends, is a capitalist society, and it shows respect via money. Period. If you don't like the painting, don't buy it. Same with Music and the rest. But if you like it, show respect and pay for it. By the way, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and every other composer you listen to when you are in the mood wrote all that stuff because they were getting paid. It was their job. End of argument.

Also, it was a horrible life as  a maker of original Music before all this started. What broke my back was a place that wanted three hour of Music fo no pay. And if you didn't have people show up, you didn't even get free coffee. Lovely. Like it was in the 1960's and 1970's, you could not find a place to do original Music. It was all cover bands. So, it was abysmal before this hit and now it is just obscene.

Time is doing what is can only do: move forward. The fading light that started on the first day of Summer can now be felt as it dwindled over the past two and a half months. Autumn is coming and with it the change of the seasons which has happened before humanity was around and after humanity is gone. I now realize what the man told me was something he never thought about. The light begins to fade in the middle of the candor of the year. On any calendar that is spaced three months or four months in a row, you can see the middle point of the of geometric space. Both in feel and visual representation, the first half is over.

The weight of passing time is hitting harder this year and, while gravity is a constant in physics, it seems much strong within this year of non-motion and anxiety.

Frogs in a Pot of Water: Plague Rebellion Edition

 There is that story we all know and believe that is you put a frog in pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, it will not notice the change in temperature and die. Well, it is scientifically not true, but I am banking that part of you still wants to believe it is.

Right now, there is an amount of insanity going on that is beyond comprehension. Perhaps simple butler points will suffice for an introduction:

1) The federal government is stating that it will have a vaccine ready to go and start being administered on November 1, 2020, two days before the presidential election. That is under two months from now.

2) Colleges have been sending students back to school with the provision that they have the students keep STRICT pandemic hygiene rules in order. Each day, there are reports of hundreds of college students getting the virus and there seems to be no end in sight.

3) Schools with grades 1-12 are starting to open up now. Teachers have been given paper or cloth masks for themselves (nothing industrial grade in the slightest), are told to keep the windows open at all times to help with circulation, and will be fired if they do not return to school to teach. (Note that this information is from a teacher I know in New Jersey.)

3.5) Bars, restaurants, and gyms will be open in a few days. While all with have a theoretical reduced capacity, diners will not be wearing masks. In movie theaters, you will be asked to wear a mask when you are not eating. 

4) A Christian wedding in Maine, where no one wore masks or distanced themselves, has caused a super-spread of the virus in a town that previously had no cases. The pastor who did the wedding flew to and from the wedding in his private plane. He returned to his parish and, in the course of a week has infected everything from nursing homes to the prison in the town. As of this writing, he is stating that he will never wear a mask and shall continue to hold services where people take no precautions at all in church,

5) The federal government has stated at some point this week that it is choosing to combat the virus via "heard immunity", meaning that they wish to have the virus spread as it will so that the bulk of the populous will get infected, the majority becoming immune, and the others die.

6) The current president of the United States has heard many rallies where masses of people have gathered to support him. Neither he, nor 99% of the people pushed together at these events, wore masks.

7) Wearing a mask has become a political statement. Not wearing one means you agree with the president, wearing one means you are an enemy to them. Many many fights have broken out between people in stores and other places over mask wearing.

8) There are continual protests against the police deaths of African-American men and women all over the country. At night, these peaceful protests turn violent via looters and radical militia-groups who come in with guns saying they are going to protect the people of the city and the businesses. A seventeen year old male shot and killed two people in such a situation. He walked around with a semi-automatic assault rifle in front of police who let him walk by, all the while people were screaming that he had just shot two people moments before. Also note that the police offered him water and food earlier in the evening and supposed his presence. Finally, as of this writing, he has received over half a million dollars in money for his legal defense via strangers online.

9) For the first time in the history of the United States, the upcoming election is in jeopardy and its outcome will most likely be challenged in ways ranging from legal battles to open gun conflict in certain areas.

I could go on for pages with all this, but you get the idea of what is happening. And this was the past few days. There is more, MUCH MORE, than what I am stating here, but I just want to give you a taste of what every single day is like, with all of us knowing that things are going to get worse and worse for the rest of the year. Even if, at best, the problems with the government get resolved peacefully, the virus will still be out there in 2021.

Is it any wonder why so many of us are having a hard time just existing? The blessing of mass and immediate communication has bloomed its shadow side in many ways during all this. If this were happening a hundred years ago, we would have newspapers and perhaps a radio to tell us what is going  on. Now, we are drowning in a pool of news every day. And even if, EVEN IF, you do not watch any news and are going past all of this in your own world, your old life is gone, whether you like it or not.

We have been sitting I this pool for decades now, with the advent of 24 hour news and then the internet. For the most part, the temperature was steady and we were fine. But since the pandemic, that temperature has been slowly been heating up to the point where all of us can see that we will be at boiling point soon and that we have no control over it. Camus states that we must rebel if we are to be fully human. But that is the problem with this situation, how do we rebel?

The simple answer is that we rebel against our fate by doing all that we should to stop it, just like the characters in "The Plague" did. In the oddest twist, this virus is (thankfully) not nearly as ferocious as that Black Plague in the book, so the enemy is not hammering down hard and long enough to make us feel a collective sense of urgency and brotherhood against it. There are no corpses in the streets, no wards filled with victims in every free building, no screams coming from houses. No. We are all on our phones or online if we do not have a job. We speak with others that are only of our like minds and nothing else. We watch news of the kind we only agree with. But, I am afraid to point out, many cities who are going through a blitz of deaths from the virus have been using their crematoriums all day and all night to take care of the victims. The book got one thing right, I guess.

The whole idea of the frog dying in water due to them not fearing danger due to the heat changing slowly enough to go without notice was proven wrong. As was stated: If you put a front in boiling water, it will die. If you put a frog in cold water, it will live but will jump out once it hits a certain temperature. The frogs, you see, don't like to sit still and they will jump out to survive. But, the scientist noted, you can't have a pot on the lid because, well, it will escape if it allowed to.

After these past few days and looking at the road ahead, I am certain that many people place the lid on their own pot.