The Sublime Roundabout

 I love the musical “My Fair Lady”. One of my favorite songs has the lines:  The Lord above gave man an arm of iron So he could do his job and never shirk The Lord above gave man an arm of iron But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck Someone else will do the blinkin' work (With a little bit, with a little bit) (With a little bit of luck you'll never work) I know that many men would view this as an ideal - having not to work. But I can tell you from my perspective that I just don’t enjoy it. It wears on my soul. It makes me feel like less of a man.  I have not been out of work since I was out of high school. Being out of work for months on end like this means that our savings is dwindling, that we’ve had to rely on government and other assistance, and that I simply am not providing for our family. Fortunately our house has been paid off, and we have no other debt. We also have enough in savings to carry on for several more months without any real impact on our

 2021 has been a very tough year for many. Similar to 2020, it was full of ups and downs, and I guess that the “new normal” that everyone is talking about is real and here to stay. We’re still dealing with COVID, still wearing masks and looking warily at others in an effort to ward off the disease and its effects. It’s a little like how the world changed after September 11, 2001, when airports and travel - both international and domestic - have been different and persistently difficult.  On the political front, Biden entered the Presidency in January after an interesting event at the White House. I wrote about that in January, so I won’t rehash it here. Hash is the operative word. Usually an incoming President has a honeymoon period with the public, where he can enjoy some good will and get some things done. This has not been the case with Mr. Biden... His approval rating numbers have steadily gotten worse amidst increasing inflation and continued fallout from the global pandemic. Then

  I think about energy in the world. We're at once part of it and witness to it, but I wonder how we really KNOW it? It seems to me that we are often participants in processes of energy, without realizing what we are doing... In the Matrix (the first film), Neo was shown great fields of human beings who were being used to harvest their energy - as dim as that may be. We have energy. We ARE energy. We assimilate it, we resonate with it, we even glow with it. I'm not talking about a new-agey kind of phenomenon, where people try to realign one's energy with the universe - I'm not averse to that kind of thinking, I'm just not talking about that in this context... No, I mean literal, measurable, physical energy. We breathe in and out, and that generates sound compression waves. We generate heat/infrared light. We produce magnetic and electrical fields that are mostly internal but also can be measured outside of ourselves. We speak. We write (or type, in this case). And w

I reach for you  And you are not there  What should be solid and firm  Slips through my grasp  Not like water or air  You can feel those  No, this isn't like that at all  This is nothing  It isn't cold  It isn't dark It isn't even a void  Because a void implies some sort of edge  Where the nothing begins  And the something starts  Instead, there is nothing  Nothing  Nothing  And I learn that hell isn't fire and brimstone  It isn't a kind of torture that causes pain  It's not an agony of the flesh  It's just  Nothing  How does my heart go on?

 So when 2020 ended, we all hoped that 2021 would be better - that things would be calmer, and that we would see a return to normalcy. We were promised that with a new year, things would calm down and maybe we could get out and see a movie or go to a restaurant without wearing a mask. Or at least, we hoped, that we could have our politics and national government return to a semblance of calm.  Of course I’m just kidding. No one promised that, even if it was our actual hope. But what we’re starting to see in 2021 is more of the same. A last gasp of 2020, maybe, hopefully, and then we can move on to something a little more relaxed? One can still hope, even if we’re not there yet. See, there’s this guy in the White House. For some reason that I don’t understand completely, Mr. Trump has gained a following that borders on the Beatles. It is hard to describe - last year, before the elections, people took to the highways and byways of our fair country and drove their vehicles (everything to

 There will no doubt be many retrospectives written about the year that was 2020. It was a tough year for most, a good year for many, and generally speaking a very interesting year. Which reminds me of the the old curse - may you live in interesting times. Because, you see - interesting does not always mean good. It does not mean better. It does not mean happy. It just means interesting. So to highlight just how interesting things were, I offer the following post about things that went on. Or didn’t went on. It’s not intended to be chronological, necessarily, or even accurate. It’s just some of my observations.... Let’s start with the pandemic. Pandemic is a word that was previously the realm of science fiction and/or horror writers (The Stand comes to mind). Late 2019 a disease was identified in Wuhan, China, which is a place I’d never heard of before. Apparently coming from some kind of exotic meat market, this strain of Coronavirus was something that the world hadn’t seen before. Ma