#human despair

Order of Events

Phillip B. Williams

First, he taught us to use the dead as shawls in the viscous winter escorting his arrival. Next, he taught us to forget the dead were dead, our dead, and dead because of a wager we did not consent him to make with the thin-lipped savior of his own pantomime. Third, he delivered on promises that blew off the tops of homes in places whose names he could not pronounce. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown1 forced to fit a quiet country that has no need for a crown. Where once was honey unhived competition. 

The drones meant for war prepared for war. We dusted our shoulders of Shadows’ silent reconnaissance, surveilled as practice for a slaughter we did not consent to. The royal parade pride’s malady stomped its sequence through beat drums of human skin from which emanated a rhythm impossible to decipher. I too would shake my ass to the sound of stars falling night- wise into a pit of myth-bent nomenclature if the names sounded like home. 

Under eroding circumstances, this kingdom could become home. Under eroding circumstances my gasp has become home enough, love not consented to yet detected from beneath my mindless right hand pressing its devotion to ritual over my heart, flag above waving heaven and blood into the smoke-diffused sky I quake my way through anthems beneath. Rockets glaring off my breath forced to evidence I belong. The crown is crooked. We straighten it with vote-vapid hands. 

We live at ground level so we perceive life at ground level. We experience friends and family and coworkers, and clients and the more and more and more and more people we run across in our daily life as daily life opens up. Restaurant workers. Grocery store employees. All manner of retail personnel. We experience them all up close… and in person.

And you know what?

A lot of that life bears no resemblance to the day’s headlines. Most of daily life bears no resemblance to pandemic stories. To the push and pull of racism and Black Lives Matter. To the relentless drumbeat of politics. To the daily social media-induced all-caps announcements of rioting, violence, killing, marxism, socialism, assaults on freedom, loss of rights, tyranny, antifa, and so on.

Bears.

No.

Resemblance.

That’s because we’re catching the people we meet in their moments. Not the moments characterized by their demographics.

By the way, these experiences, the social and the personal... aren’t mutually exclusive.

They add up.

They multiply each other.

Of course, yes, our lives are subject to the day’s headlines. But those headlines aren’t the final words about our lives. 

Because aside from those headlines, hum a few bars of this: anything and everything else that damages our lives and deprives us in a complexity of ways. Endless variations on physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse. Dysfunctions of every kind. Unhealthy, unsafe environments growing up and/or living in. Physical and health problems. Mental health issues. The consequences of negative family history, conflicting personality types, and specific experiences that leave deep scars.

And so on.

We carry baggage no matter who we are, what our demographic. And this year, the weight of that baggage is becoming impossible given the challenges we face while we're all something less than we should be.

For example.

Consider anyone who’s responsible for other human beings. Parents, for example. Teachers, too. Anyone in charge. Anyone who’s supposed to know what to do.

But they don’t.

They don’t.

And that not knowing isolates people. Even if they’re a couple. Even if they’re married. Even if they’re part of a team.

Isolated.

Oh yeah sure we can say we’re all in this together… but no.

That’s not what’s happening.

People we know, people you know, people I know, are going through this…

Alone.

For different reasons, some of which have to do with not wanting to share insecurities and failures. Some of which have to do with not asking about another person’s life. And some of which have to do with not actually having meaningful relationships.

And to say that some of these human beings are dying on the vine would not be overly dramatic.

To say that some of these are experiencing overwhelming feelings of failure and shame… also not overly dramatic.

To say that some of these have no idea what to do about the rent about their jobs about their health about their lives...

Yeah. That’s very much happening.

And these people aren’t headlines. Neither will they be.

They’re simply the inevitable consequence of human beings in circumstances beyond their control and beyond their ability to manage. People with pre-existing conditions, baggage, that’s thoroughly exacerbated by the pandemic and all that arises from it.

A weight that’s becoming thoroughly impossible to bear.

While we are not.

At our best.

So be careful with those headlines.

Because headlines prevent us from seeing the people we don’t actually know...