“When I use a word, it means just what i choose it to mean. Neither more nor less.” – Lewis Carroll

Our country was barely into this pandemic, when I started becoming aware of conversations addressing when things would return to normal. I don’t know why, but I envisioned a contemporary version of Mad Men. Whether at major ad agencies or corporate board rooms, groups of high paid executives would be beginning to bat around ideas of how to reassure all of us everything is going to be okay. It will likely be veiled in patriotism, America’s greatness, maybe some historical references, like coming out of the Great Depression or bouncing back after September 11th.

This viral assassin has created a strange kind of short-term amnesia for many of us, definitely including me. Before this, days of the week mattered and going wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted was automatic, an in the moment kind of thing. Somehow, we have all instantly traveled to this emotional, intergalactic constellation, waking up on Planet #19, with no past to draw upon.

The haze is ever so slowly lifting and I am thinking, where were we before wearing face masks were required and looking at mortality charts was a daily routine? Here are a couple of normal things to think about: 25,000 people a day die from unnecessary starvation, 3,000 kids die from malaria each day, 10,000 people die everyday because they are denied publicly-funded healthcare. Hell, I don’t even want to talk about the bestial blockades that our country inflicts on the innocent around the world and the millions of refugees living in unspeakable poverty.

The normal we have been living with before the world stopped has been a long time coming. If I was writing a doctoral thesis about our contemporary cluster fuck, I’d go back to the beginning of this country and the white wigged, wealthy slave fornicators, who had a healthy mistrust of people like me and you. I can save us both time and jump ahead about two hundred years, when the sexy idea of freedom got perverted to promote the obscene accumulation of money, power and political influence by the psychological descendants of those fornicators.

This pandemic has rubbed our noses in the reality of the morally corrupt, power imbalance that has decimated our government’s supposed contract to care for its people. Our healthcare system is profit based and our well being is inconsequential. Workers have zero protection, their power long ago castrated by union busting, power brokers, speed dialing their political appointees, crafting legislation to insulate themselves, even from viruses. We have been spoon fed the bullshit that less government translates to more freedom. The Patriotic Act ate our personal freedom, subverted by the myth of our supposed protection. Watch what happens in the name of protecting our health?

Long, long before any of us got here, our Earth has borne silent witness to our selfish excesses. Those Mad Men, the embodiment of their bank rollers, won’t want any of us to think about the climate crisis that preceded this Corona Catastrophe. Buy your new car on great terms and purchase as many plastic wrapped gadgets you can’t do without. In the old normal, the epidemic of gluttony was choking our majestic planet and not a damn thing has changed since the first cough in Wuhan.

This whole experience feels like a dream to me. Somewhere in my prior musings, I am sure I wrote about the possibility of pandemic and how it was symptomatic of our wholesale disregard for the environment. It was one thing to write about it and now something else entirely to experience. To me, it feels like we have hit bottom. Now, look what we have done to this planet and to each other?

Just like 9/11, this is a singular opportunity to reach across borders, cultures and religions. Today, we are united by our shared suffering. It is a moment that is right here, right now and it is very precious. In many ways, it couldn’t be at a worse time. The disease of national arrogance is killing us and the vast majority of its perpetrators have no idea they are merely pawns of those same fornicators, who care only about themselves. The choice is ours.

So, here I am in the only place I am comfortable writing, sequestered at home, reaching out far beyond myself. The way things have been got us to where we are today. Our system is broken and there couldn’t be better proof than how terribly this crisis has been handled. I feel so conflicted, a life long cynic and a hopeless romantic.

Our salvation is right here before our eyes. While we are in the throes of dying, our planet has come alive. The air has cleared over our cities, wildlife have returned to their homes before their forced eviction and our water ways, the arteries of our lives, are vibrant once again. Before this, the idea of healing our environment seemed so far out of our reach.

Yes, I believe we must return to normal and our future depends upon its definition. You and I, we have choice. Our world has been unraveling at a dizzying pace and this ugly virus has stopped us dead in our tracks. Try and think of this time as a privilege being afforded us all.