Losing Touch

 Our lives are becoming more virtual every day.  Seems as if the combination of the pandemic and the necessity to persevere with everything we desire has created a newfound dependence on our digital connections.  We buy clothing, linen, food, and now most of our holiday gifts online.  School is no longer about buildings and putting our seats together to work cooperatively.  

We already know that things will not be the same if/when we experience some sort of normalcy, but now it seems as if some of those changes are coming into sharp focus exponentially.  Who will we be when our relationships with others outside our inner family circles tail off.  When the way we interact with others becomes limited?  Our experiences are transforming before our eyes.  

What will be lost and gained without the in-person school?  Even now, as we watch live telecast sports events we see the haunting transformations.  Most notably are the empty arenas with cardboard cut-out figures populating the stands.  With shades of "Where's Waldo?" they ring silent as the voiceless audience who paid nothing for admittance is incapable of making a sound.  But sound accompanies most every play.  The canned crowd noise rises and falls with the crack of a bat, or when a halfback busts through the line.  An ace in a tennis match evokes wild applause from yesteryear.  But those artificial...I mean virtual sounds ring out on TV, radio, and internet speakers only.

It's been reported that the great arenas are eerily quiet on the field of play.  Moreover, the refs and umpires can hear almost everything the players say.  Not good sometimes.  Not good most times, I suspect.

With gyms closed it's fair to say that our physical health might suffer even more effects.  Dental and doctor visits have suffered.  Both, another opportunity to lose tough with real people.  

But...maybe the reverse will happen.  With the upcoming vaccinations, perhaps we actually will return to the way things were at the outset of 2020.  Perhaps we will realize how good we had it and commit to never losing the things we took for granted.  These small joys have the potential to impact lives.  Lives that long for the interactions with others that help us define and understand who we are and are becoming.

Thanks

 Looks like the Thanksgiving table will be much smaller this year.  Most folks will honor the  CDC cautions and keep their distance as COVID 19 seeks to darken the winter months with a spike.  People are probably missing their family members more this year after months of Zoom calls, Face Times, and all manner of restricted, distanced covered-up behaviors.  

Hopefully, the new normal will have a positive side, health benefits, of course, but also a reflection on the importance of family and not taking things for granted.  

Doing the holidays alone is an experience I wish for everyone.  Sure, it's rather sad, but at the same time can be enriching.  I've done it a few times, and like any good therapist will tell you, "it's just a day."

Whether you sit with no one,  just one, or your entire family, Thanksgiving, in particular, is the stuff of memories.  Rich in family lore, it was, for many years the only non-corrupted holiday.  All that has changed with Black Friday sales, pre-Black Friday Sales, and now pre-pre sales that would have people replace digesting their dinner with standing in line and crowding into stores for a chance to spend their money ahead of everyone else.  What's more, they do it.

When I think about the Thanksgiving table that my sister and I sat around, the stories easily come to mind.  My parents, my Aunt, and Uncle, often my Uncle's mother (whom we called Grandma), and my sister and me came together for the traditional meal roughly 15 times between 1950 and 1965.  Today, only my sister and I remain.  

I was given a turkey drumstick as a 3-year-old, so the story goes, and apparently put on a good show in displaying my pleasure.  The association stuck and a drumstick was reserved for me every year thereafter. Dark meat has always been my preference anyway, so I gladly kept up the tradition.  Long about 12:30 or 1:00 I'd wander into the kitchen where my aunt, sister, and mom ruled the roost, and sometimes get lucky trading some errand for the privilege of licking the mixer blades from the mashed potatoes.

One year, I was sitting on a piano bench brought to the table for my sister and me.  After a full meal, I forgot that my seat had no back and promptly fell over backward while trying to stretch my back.  Fortunately, by the time late evening turkey sandwiches appeared, all was forgotten.

Of all the memories, one stands out as the most memorable and most humorous.  It concerns the time my aunt and uncle were doing their best imitation of The Bickersons* about the timing of a homemade pumpkin pie.  As the pie sat cooling, my uncle contended that the pie was underbaked and needed more time. My aunt asserted it was done baking and just needed to set.  She won.  40 minutes later, when it came time to cut the pie, my uncle made two cuts and inserted a silver spatula under the crust.  He then lifted the slice gently and prepared to place it gingerly on a plate.  The pie filling trembled, the crust gave way, and the disintegrating piece of pie tumbled to the white tablecloth below.  

"The pie is underbaked," declared my uncle.  Nobody heard him because the laughter was way too loud.

*The Bickersons was a radio comedy sketch series where a couple spent most of their time verbally assaulting each other.  Look it up, it's still funny all these years later.

Take a Look

 Take a good look at the faces.  These are the people.  Look at the rigidity.  See their smiles.  Hear their voices and match that sound with the countenances you see.

Take a good look at the faces.  They lie without batting an eye.  

She is asked, will the President attend the inauguration of President-elect Biden?  She replies that the President will attend his own inauguration.  That is not the question; that is not going to happen.  

Take a good look at the faces of these people.  These are the people who lust for power.  When that power is no more, they conveniently lapse into an alternative universe for their alternative facts.  

Take a good look at the faces.  They belong to the wrong people.  The wrong people in the halls of power. Wrong. All, all, wrong.  

Maybe their brains are wired differently than most others.  They certainly act like it.  Maybe they are not able to perceive what most find obvious.  Maybe they do.  Maybe they are sociopathic...all of them.  Maybe they are simply evil.  They are unable to process what seems so obvious to so many.

In the meantime, the country and all its people are at risk.  They are vulnerable as the unclad emperor plans his coup.  He fires and re-hires.  He silently broods and consumes.  He connives, he ignores, he spews rubbish.  

Take a good look at the faces.  These are the people who would throw you under the bus.  Who would put you on the trucks, when they roll.  Who would fail to wear a mask, fail to feel what you feel, fail to abide by the law and order that drips from their forked tongues.  

Blue Yonder

 

So we wait for the incumbent to concede.  Most of us have stopped waiting because it's not possible.  Blood from a turnip and all that.  The refrain pulsing in my brain is this Dylan song.  I've listened to various versions in the last few days, but the original still shines bright.  

Often when we return to a Dylan song after years of letting it lie, we find that the images are fresh and have new meanings for our time.  Like his idol, Woody Guthrie, Dylan is able to do that.

The orphan with the gun sees the saints have begun to stir

The sailors are seasick and the army is silent...holding onto nothing but a red hat.

The harvest of coincidence leaves the artist without a brush to hold

stepping stones lead away, but to where?

Change your clothes don't answer the door

Turn off the lights

It's all over now.

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun

Look out, the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets

The sky too is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue

All your seasick sailors, they're all rowing home
Your empty-handed army is all going home
Your lover who just walked out the door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor

The carpet too is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue

Leave your stepping stones behind there, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore

Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue