All of the conversation about this pandemic of ours is off the mark, across the board. There is nothing more unattractive than the role of the victim and I don’t care if it is in literature or life. When I was a good deal younger, I self-righteously blamed my wife for the demise of our marriage. It took the passage of time and a bunch of years in therapy to understand that active and passive postures, split responsibility right down the middle. For months now, I have been watching blame get moved around the board, with the dice of life getting maniacally shuffled from one direction to another.

The origin of this particular virus allegedly started out as a Wuhan Bat Dinner Special. Not ones to trust the Chinese, it was an easy leap to having it concocted as leak from a bio-lab in the same town, whether accidental or on purpose. After several months, it is no longer possible to even count the stories relating to the source of Covid, each one more ridiculous than the next.

Right up there with identifying the origin of this virus is how to deal with it. The remedies run the gamut from completely ignoring it to spending the rest of your life in a sealed bubble. I really think all of this lunacy is a result of not looking to science for answers, even if they are not immediately forthcoming. This doesn’t have a damn thing to do with God or one’s political persuasion, which is the worst perversion of all. Unfortunately, in Washington, our lives are nothing more than a political football, Red vs. Blue, where posturing on the side lines negates helping those who need it most. Mistrust and suspicion have been at epidemic levels for years now, capitalized on by mainstream media, starved for a cancer that will devour the eyeballs of their parishioners, because that’s where the money is.

In keeping with this idea of always blaming others, it is no different when looking at the origins of the pandemic du jour. It is our fault. We have degraded our environment, poisoning the air we breath. The food we eat has been polluted by an encyclopedia of chemicals, concocted to maximize the profits of the multi-national, corporate monoliths, more concerned with feeding their share prices than fostering our health. We have ruptured the carrying capacity of the planet, taxing her far beyond her ability to support us. Global poverty is the worst disease of all, destroying the spirit and resilience of billions of us.

For the past few months, with complete unpredictability, I have had these strange flashes of complete disorientation and it is always in the evening. They don’t last long and it’s not like a bad trip either. Everything comes to a complete standstill and I slowly explore the landscape of life on earth at this time. It’s like suddenly waking up on another planet, where nothing is the way I remember and all the rules have changed. I find myself trapped between big thoughts and small ones, an unpleasant limbo.

I plead guilty to following the news and staying relatively well informed about what is going on. After so many years of being with myself, I can say it’s my nature. The progression of my thoughts follows a predictable pattern in those moments of feeling like an astronaut in a t shirt.

It is impossible to avoid thinking about how badly this country has handled the pandemic. There is nothing as stunning as the ineptitude of our leadership. I guess that is the hardest thing to deal with, the utter failure of our government to address the desperate needs of its citizens. The disconnect is one of those electrifying moments I have when I am uncertain about what world I’m living in.

The world is coming apart right before my eyes and I have no idea where the pieces will fall. I sit, strapped into my space capsule of the mind, looking down at the landscape below and it feels terribly unfamiliar. The bigness of it all is overwhelming. The forces at play are so far out of my league. I am left feeling impotent, a dangerous space for many of us, forcing a contraction of the spirit, at least that’s my theory.

I guess being a Gemini makes it a little easier for me to travel down two paths without ripping my pants. I look at all that big stuff and there is no place for hope to live amongst so much poison. Then, I gently take refuge inside myself and I remember life before this circus of extremes. The level of betrayal is Shakespearean in scope, but salvation is completely within our grasp. It is in the small of it all, like the morning sunrise, the stillness of the moon or the quiet of the breath. I see you.