Omnium Gatherum #82: What Do You Write About When The World Is Running Down And You’re Trying To Make The Best Of What’s Still Around?

Scene: An old abandoned theater, roughly the size of the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles, California. A stereotypical middle aged Black nerd stands on the stage, with a small script in his shaking hands.

[Taps microphone while staring out at an empty auditorium.]

Howdy, folks, and welcome once again to…

[Looks up at a very, very dusty banner hanging over the stage.]

… the Omnium Gatherum.

[Checks name tag on red shirt, laughs at the irony.]

I’m your host Vince Moore.

What’s happening?

[Pauses to allow for laughter.]

Seriously, folks, and I will stop with the obvious and oblique stand up comedy and other performance references here, it’s interesting to give this column a starting up like an old car sitting in the driveway gathering dust and rust. It’s interesting and frightening and somewhat relaxing to put thoughts to keyboard once again, thoughts that are meant to go public that is. I don’t know if I’ll do more than one of these things. My personal life has taken center stage (there I go again!) during this phase of life. Beyond one outstanding script waiting to get the comics treatment and working on The Beautiful Monster In A Box In The Basement Which Cannot Be Published, Even If It Ever Gets Finished (there I go sound ominous), my creative life has been more focused on my editorial clients. I enjoy editing. It suits me. The rest of my energies have been put into the Omnium Gatherum Ashram and the so-called Real World, as it were.

In other words, I’ve been living the life of a homebody for the most part.

And that was before these years When Corona-Chan Came To Town!

Haven’t the last two years been ever so much fun?

No? Oh well, I guess that’s what happens when an unexpected visitor comes and comes to stay. As is the nature of times, I will make a vague pre-apology by saying my casual attitude is in no way meant to downplay the events of the past two years as the world and its peoples struggled with a global pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a century going back to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1917-1920. However, given that I just named a previous pandemic, this isn’t a new situation to humanity. It’s only new to this particular segment of a long chain of humanity stretching back into the past and hopefully stretching ever forward towards an uncertain beyond simply happening future. The current crop of humans on Old Home Gaea who have grown up with increasing levels of instant gratification and distraction have found themselves fighting against Mother Nature in ways that don’t comport easily with cultures where information of all sorts is readily available at the touch of a button or the swipe of a finger across a screen. Surely, Corona-Chan can be swiped left like a bad Tinder choice, right? Right? No? Damn it, what do we do now?!?

Honestly, we humans will do what we have done over the last two years: follow the rules; don’t follow the rules; complain; complain about following the rules; complain about those not following the rules; cower in fear; moralize; rage defiantly against Mother Nature; rage against each other (our favorite past time as humans); simply get on with our lives as best as possible; and some combination of the preceding, along with tons of other variables I am mostly leaving as an exercise for my readers…

[Checks to see if payments were still being made to my Two Constant Readers during the When Corona-Chan Came To Town time period; doesn’t get a satisfactory enough of an answer from Accounting.]

…to complete on their own.

Speaking of my readers (I’ll get those checks out right away, I promise!), I guess this rambling column will serve as the not so triumphant, unsure if it will be a regular or consistent return of the Omnium Gatherum column. A return that nobody asked for but they are going to get, damn it! At least for now. Okay, maybe just for this column. No threats or promises.

My lame attempts at humor and asides aside, who cares if I get this column back up and running besides myself (and even that support can be shaky at times)? After all, there are so, so many things out there that can attract attention and where one can spend their time, energy, coin, and so on. The vast number of information ecologies forming new niches out there is astounding when one takes a moment to look at the situation. As someone who grew up with just three major television networks, a handful of local stations, and the then newfangled thing of pay TV, the Internet Age is the California Gold Rush each and every day and night. There’s just something new to discover or explore almost daily. Obviously the Internet isn’t viewed that way by everyone. For some, it’s a space filled with landmines and deep, dark rabbit holes to avoid; for others, those are the very things for which they are searching, whether they know it or not. The latter are finding their way or their place in an increasingly disjointed and fragmented and factionalized world; the former are afraid of the Wild west meets the Weimar Republic like nature of the Internet, and moreso of the latter folks themselves. In a sense, this too is just the latest turn in the human story, proof that the more things change the more they stay the same. Or to borrow and mangle an analogy from Robert Heinlein, some brown monkeys are rubbing the blue mud in their navels happily while others are rubbing different colors of mud in theirs and getting yelled at, and still a few are pink monkeys just trying to figure out what the deuce is happening and why it matters which mud one rubs into their navel, if not why bother with doing it altogether.

I would put myself in the pink monkey category, which is the perfect place for me as a has been and a never was as a writer. One of many writers who had their shot, took it, had a hit in terms of hitting the target, and did not do much else. Now I’m not looking for any kind of pity party for my career or lack thereof. Bottom line is my career is where it is because of my actions, lack of action, and choices, period, end of sentence. Despite anything else, I took up writing for its own sake, to learn how to put together the kinds of stories I always wanted to read or see. That doesn’t require ever having published, even electronically, to be satisfying or enlightening. That just requires writing, which I’ve always enjoyed doing as practice in the Writing Down The Bones sense, and finishing what I started, as per Heinlein’s rules on writing. Mostly I was surprised anyone ever read this crazy column when it was a going concern more than a decade ago on The Comics Waiting Room’s website. Let alone anyone ever reading Total Recall: Life On Mars, which still makes me happy every time I see copies of the trade paperback. My view of myself is and always has been a weird mix of egotistic self satisfaction and seemingly modest self abnegation. I love what I do but I have no clue why anyone else would, in other words. There are so many other voices out there that it’s crazy to imagine anyone coming close to sampling even a decent fraction of them, of the stories and plays and comics and movies and so on, before they close their eyes for The Big Sleep. So that anyone would find or make the time to read over any silly thing I write is amazing to me, the Accounting Department at the Omnium Gatherum Ashram not withstanding.

Not expecting anyone else besides myself to care if I’m putting my fingers to the keyboard and words on the screen is oddly freeing though. If I know no one cares about what I’m writing or not writing these days (and please, don’t take this self analysis as a subtle call for attention or help; it’s not, it’s honestly how I think about myself, a topic I will explore later on, maybe), then I’m free to write about whatever strikes my fancy. I just have to find something to care about so that I can write about it. Beyond The Beautiful Monster In A Box In The Basement Which Cannot Be Published, Even If It Ever Gets Finished, that is.

Which brings me to my next topic, why should I care about anything in this world? And what should I care about, in terms of writing? That becomes a tougher area to tackle. Obviously in this crazy world there are plenty of things to care about. It really depends on what strikes your fancy or concerns you. This problem of care is something I’ve struggled with ever since I went back to school. Given how much and how many social justice type topics were being discussed in the humanities at the junior college level in 2014, I often found myself not being connected to anything being discussed in my classes beyond a theoretical level, if that. I mean, it would never dawn on me to think of Grendel as a representative of the 99% whereas the villagers in Beowulf represented the 1%; yes, that was an interpretation of the classic epic poem offered up in one of my classes. How does one respond to that sort of thinking? In that way, I felt more like an alien observer to this planet than a resident born and raised than ever before. So I tended to fall back into my own interests when reaching for topics on which to write papers, rather than applying any Critical Theories which were recommended by both the teachers and the texts. 

Meaning that I suppose I could write more about space exploration, nuclear power, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, Transhumanism, or even writing itself in any future columns. I guess I could write about race again but I don’t hold the orthodox views on that subject, never did if anyone really paid attention to my past writings on the subject. These days I am a disinterested agnostic as far as movements like Black Lives Matter are concerned, more concerned that such activities don’t disturb my life than anything else. If people want to get involved with that sort of things, have at it. Just don’t include me, I have a garden to attend amongst other things that make a better use of my time. Besides, I’m not much of a joiner anyway; I subscribe the Groucho Marx school of thought on such matters, that I wouldn’t belong to a club that would have me as member. I think the last two years have only deepened such feelings. If people want to go back to segregating themselves by race, no skin off my nose per se. The same with engaging in iconoclasm or revisiting and redefining history, if that’s what folks want to do. Have at it. 

Just remember that one lives in a reality ruled by cause and effect.

Meaning that for every push in one direction there will be a push back in the opposite direction. For every push for topics like Critical Race Theory, there should be an expected push back. Although I’m not seeing anyone who operates with that rather simple understanding. It’s almost as if some but not all folks have forgotten that causality exists. ’Tis passing strange to me some times.

Digressions notwithstanding, I have obviously put together enough care to write this bloody column. So why?

Why now? Why get back behind the keyboard now? It can’t be money, can it? As Samuel Johnson wrote, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” And I’ve been a blockhead for most of my writing career in terms of not getting paid, especially where this column is concerned. I’m not complaining as much as I’m observing the facts. Maybe I should come back to this.

We are living in the new plague years. I should find something to do with my time when not attending to my garden and other chores. After all, the sun does set at some point. Writing is just as good as anything, I suppose. I imagine I’m good at it or I’m too stupid and arrogant to think that I’m not good at it. And these new plague years have brought us all lots of new topics to discuss: lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccines, vaccine mandates, vaccines versus natural immunity, anti-vaccine movements, and, and,…

Looking at the above not so exhaustive but exhausting list, I don’t really have much to say about When Corona-Chan Came To Town beyond what I repeated to a few people over the last two years in public and on social media: it’s a disease; people can catch it, some folks more easily than others; wearing a mask can help but it’s not one of those Mormon holy undergarments (I haven’t pissed off the Mormons yet, so I figured now was my shot at being an equal opportunity bigot) and wearing it isn’t a great act of compassion towards others, despite how it’s been pitched and preached over the last two years, it’s both common sense and that little bit of security blanket some need to function; the disease is going to mutate until it gets through with all of the viable and available hosts and dies off or becomes endemic, we have and/or will develop treatments and  vaccines against it, or some combination of thereof. It’s simple. 

Or so I thought.

Watching the world the last two years in particular, but also during the period that will forever be labeled the Trump Era (starting from the announcement of his candidacy for president of the United States to his departure from that office) for a slightly longer view, has been equally fascinating and frightening. Oh, not so much because of Trump himself but moreso because the responses to him and how they shaped culture and everything else. Some but not all folks fell into one of two camps, anti-Trump or pro-Trump, as soon as he was announced as the winner of the 2016 Presidential Election in the US. Both camps then preceded either to rail against everything Trump did or did not do or to rally around everything Trump did or did not do, from the politicians and media on down to the common folks. Beyond that, there were likely folks like myself who didn’t fit into either camp easily or at all. (My assessment of Trump hasn’t changed, namely that he’s an asshole and assholes will behave like assholes. Again, it’s simple.) Not because we weren’t paying attention but, and here I have to speak only for myself, because I had a trust in the actual levers and engines of power—the bureaucracy of the federal government—to keep most things running fairly well and to catch any real problems before they became bigger issues. Despite how situations feel in America at this current moment, our governmental systems are pretty antifragile and were designed that way by the Founders. If there is any fault, it lies with us, not the stars nor the Constitution. Then again, I have also admit to one slight advantage in that I predicted Trump would beat Hillary in 2015 when asked by a friend who knew my love of politics. So I was mentally prepared for his presidency and for it to be a mess, as were most things involving Trump. What I was not prepared for was the way anti-Trump folks acted. I had planned on a general background hate level equal to that George W. Bush faced. I was not prepared for the astronomical levels the hate towards Trump reached. That was what was most fascinating and frightening to me to watch in action.

Now add When Corona-Chan Came To Town into the mix and boy howdy, did America seemingly go off the rails, as did the rest of the world.

The battle lines that I had been noticing being drawn prior to 2020 got drawn deeper and darker and bordering on becoming more permanent than any divisions in America since the Civil War. And yes, there’s been a subsection of people predicting  a new civil war the last few years. I’m not necessarily one of them. Although I will always say that anything can happen. Events tend to follow along certain trend lines but any X factor, like a global pandemic, can cause any predictions to be thrown out or rendered useless.

Just as my 2020 campaign predictions, based on history mostly, that Trump would win reelection was rendered useless by the fog of the Culture War his presence on the global stage inflamed, in addition to the plague year the final year of his presidency saw come into being. Mostly because I misjudged or rather did not want to accept just how powerful the fear of Trump was as a motivator. As I said above, anything can happen.

As we are entering the beginning of year three of the new plague years, I think back to how 2020 was the perfect time for anyone who is an introvert and/or misanthrope like myself. It was a quiet time in some ways. A time for reflection and introspection as the world quieted down to try to get Corona-Chan under control. Meanwhile the Culture Wars waged themselves across the airwaves and the Internets. It was also a time to watch a new civic religion finish giving birth to itself amongst a fair number of anti-Trump folks. A new civic religion where queries like “Have you got your mask?!?”, “Have you gotten your vaccine or your booster?!?”, and “Don’t you want to be on the Right Side Of History?!?” from its early adopters were treated as shibboleths, rather than simple choices. A new civic religion that also found its scapegoats and infidels rather quickly in terms of anyone who didn’t answer the shibboleths fast enough or correctly or treated them as not being of any real import in the daily lives. I often found myself pondering what would happen if one already had a religion they truly believed in and practiced during this time. More than likely, though, such a religion would have found itself being syncretized into the new civic faith or such a person might find themselves also becoming a scapegoat or infidel before they could blink.

My problem with language like “Don’t you want to be on the Right Side Of History?!?” or “Being a good ally” is that the statements imply being at war. As in a real, blood being spilt kind of war. Why? Because one only need to worry about his or her allies when one is going on a quest or one is going off to war. I don’t see anybody setting up a giant Game Master’s Screen anywhere on the world stage, so I don’t think we’re about to play a few sessions of Dungeons & Dragons. Meaning we must be going to war some way, somehow, somewhere, right? 

Of course not helping the situation is the talk of the ongoing Culture War happening, depending on what news outlet one is watching. Whether it’s the removal of Maus from one Tennessee school’s curriculum or parents storming their local school boards to question the use or non-use or some such usage of Critical Race Theory at the primary or secondary levels, there still seems to be one cultural artifact or movement ruffling some good folks’ feathers in some fashion. As for myself, my thoughts on the Culture War are in agreement with a YouTuber who goes by the name of Colttaine, as stated in his video “Caricatures and Tbe Culture War”: that there isn’t really a culture war, there’s just culture. To which I will add that cultures clash; they also mesh, although that’s being discouraged under the auspices of a newfangled bit of semantic jiggery-pokery called cultural appropriation, yet another sin of the new civic religion.

The birthing of this new civic religion appears to be the final act in what had been increasing fragmentation of media and society, fostered by the Internets. After all, there’s no Walter Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley to provide the whole country their news, uniting us all around the glow of the old cathode ray tube campfire. Nor are we limited to three major television networks and one really good local newspaper. Nowadays, news can come from anywhere from CNN and Fox on down to Tim Pool and The Young Turks, and all kinds of folks in between, available on websites that can be seen anywhere. It isn’t just that we live in a post-truth world; we live in a “your truth, their truth, and The Truth” world.  We don’t have a Grand Narrative anymore; we have competing narratives and increased awareness of competing narratives. In more ways than one, today’s situation is like watching a room full of televisions, all broadcasting something different about similar topics.

What one sees and knows depends on one’s beliefs or lack thereof. That vast ocean of information, disinformation, and misinformation is leading to an almost Crisis On Infinite Earths level problem of overlapping and competing worldviews humans have never experienced before, at least as far as I can determine. We are all living in different worlds amongst our fellow humans, depending on what worldview the media one consumes supports.

Here’s a good example, the American comics industry has been dealing with what’s come to be called Comicsgate. Now, if I haven’t pissed anybody off by now (hey, didn’t I say that no one was likely to be reading this column earlier? Guess like a fair number of folks these days I’m trying to have things two different ways at the same time), I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of folks hot and bothered going into this charming topic. The election of Trump was already splitting the comics community on social media, like nearly every other sphere of American life, when the rise of a string of YouTubers who focused on comics and comics criticism, aiming at the then slow birthing pains of the new civic religion manifesting at The Big Two threw the whole ecosystem into a tizzy. A tizzy that reached perfect storm levels when, first, Ethan Van Sciver (like his art style but I’m no fan of his per se, based on a couple of interactions via social media with him during the Obama era; nothing major or shocking, just warning sign to me of how much cognitive dissonance was going to shape public life in the then immediate future, also known as the present) struck gold amongst his YouTube audience bringing back his CyberFrog character. Then Richard Meyer, the voice behind the channel that was originally called Diversity and Comics and is now called Comics Matter, had a deal with Antarctic Press which ended up getting canceled when Mark Waid got involved, which in turn led to Meyer also striking crowdfunding gold amongst his audience. Those two events, happening in quick succession, deepened the battle lines amongst the comics community. And all for what? Efforts to taken to strike down Van Sciver and Meyer may have felt to some in the industry as if they were Obi-Won Kenobi facing off against Darth Vader and actually striking the latter down. Except what ended up happening was the elevating of the supposed villains to even greater success in the marketplace and on the crowdfunding circuit, instead of the kindly mentor becoming something greater after losing to his former student. 

I’m not in the mood or the right frame of mind to go over each and every incident that led to the birth of Comicsgate but I was observing the scene on both sides at the time. To me, there were no heroes or victims on either side; each side has plenty of both by their own estimations, and in some cases the supposed heroes were actually villains and vice versa. Quite frankly, both sides just couldn’t leave each other alone, as the Waid/Meyer situation best demonstrates. In a lot of ways, especially during the last couple of years, the American comics industry and the growing YouTube and crowdfunding markets both needed convenient enemies to rail against and rally the troops, to distract from lagging sales, distribution woes, then a pandemic and a collapsing economy, or at least an economy with the vapors. The respective groups did indeed meet their desired enemies and they were each other, a match made on social media. We all know how that goes, don’t we? 

This smaller development was happening while the larger worlds of comics and pop culture themselves were struggling to find their ways in the new paradigm. It seemingly wasn’t enough that new voices had to be ushered into the halls of publishing and film and television production but that these new voices had to reimagine old, beloved concepts into serving as the gospels of the new civic religion. I will only focus on the changing of Superman’s tag line “Truth, Justice, and The American Way” as an example because there’s too many of these things to point out. DC decided to change the tag line to keep up with the times and to reflect support for the new civic religion. That move met with the usual grumbling, complaining, and so on from some folks, especially in the Comicsgate part of the  YouTube comics ecology. And yes, the latter did so with no such a great memory of how and why the iconic tag line came into being and how it was used. All one has to do is watch the opening for the 1960s New Adventures of Superman cartoon to hear how easily the tag line was modified during the heyday of its usage (going with “…Truth, Justice, and Freedom” instead of the iconic one). The point of the tag line was to provide Superman, and therefore his audience, with a set of values towards which to strive and aspire. The problem is aspirational heroes, like belief in one’s country, are passé in today’s world; it’s more valuable to the new civic religion that heroes be representational, as a demonstration of the new civic values of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. ‘The American Way’ is viewed by those adherents of the new civic religion as anything from propaganda to a hateful lie to being something only certain Americans ever felt or to which they were subscribed. Replacing ‘The American Way’ with ‘A Better Tomorrow’ or modifying the whole tagline into ‘Truth, Tolerance, and Justice’ may be well intentioned and not just serving the tenets of the new civic religion but the whole situation misses the deeper point. 

That deeper point being that, for many people, the world is changing much too fast and in such bizarre ways that they can’t keep up. Without something firm in which to believe like The Truth or a solid foundation upon which stand, many folks are drifting. Like it or not, we humans are designed or have spontaneously organized in ways that require having a set of beliefs, that essentially require a religion of sorts. We believe because we are made to believe, regardless of what that belief is. Faith is the rock upon which our survival is built. After all, if one can’t believe that he or she is going to all right when they leave the house, that things are relatively safe, that they won’t get into a horrible accident or get attacked, then they won’t leave the house. If one can’t believe that the food they’re eating is safe, then they will starve. Faith is more than just religion but the latter needs the former to fuel it. In these uncertain times, even a small change to any cultural touchstone, whether or not if it’s a practical or heartfelt or crass commercial one, even if it’s a classic character or a tagline, will feel like an attack on the fundamental nature of reality to some.

So changes in the things we all know and love and believe in, whether it be a character or a country, can send any number of folks into spasms and fits, just as those same changes can cause other folks to cheer and celebrate. It really just depends where one sits while watching and engaging in the human comedy.

Even this very discussion about ‘Truth, Justice, and The American Way” really depends on where one sits. Are you a person of ‘Your Truth, Their Truth, etc.”? Or are you a person who believes in ‘The Truth’? The former question marks you as a follower of the new civic religion, the latter means you follow older faiths. That instead of being concerned with Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, you are more likely to be concerned with the Four Cardinal Virtues of Truth, Justice, Courage, and Fortitude. Different values for different times, I suppose, although I tend towards being way too practical and pragmatic for such lofty values. At best, my only guiding value is simply to be true to myself.

Being true to myself brings me back to the question of why should I get back into some form of writing. At this stage I have no clue as to whether there will be another column immediately following this one. Real life in the real world has a stronger pull than writing. Unlike stories I’ve heard from other writers like Heinlein or Stephen King, I really didn’t miss putting fingers to the keyboard. Oh sure, I’ve worked on and off on The Beautiful Monster over the years, especially during the last two, but that’s more like my imitating Tim ‘The Tool Man’ Taylor working on his hot rod in the garage and no major or minor projects have crossed my desk, whether developed by me or won as an assignment. I’ve been more happy to read than to write, and to live in the real world instead of the world of my imagination and outsider opinions.

What has changed the most has been the real world, I’m afraid.

The real world seems to have gone crazy or become more and more unreal with each passing day. I no longer take it as a coincidence or an offhand, random comment when on December 31, 2016, I saw Lewis Black perform where he said, in response to the election of Trump, we are living in fictional times. 

The times indeed have taken on a fictional hue as we are struggling to find our way collectively and individually it seems. It doesn’t help that we are also living in a world that Andy Warhol grossly underestimated in terms of fame. It’s not a world where everyone is famous for 15 minutes, it’s a world where someone’s fame or infamy can overstay its welcome and where the common folks worry more about those who pay more attention to the ‘wrong’ kind of famous person over the ‘right’ kind of famous person. After all, particularly for us Americans, we’ve moved from a world where it was concerning that more folks paid more attention to Trump than to Dr. Fauci to a world where it is concerning that more folks are paying attention to Joe Rogan than to Dr. Fauci, all while not asking if there are reasons why that is. Perhaps this too is an aspect of the new civic religion. After all, religions have their saints and sages as well as their infidels and heathens. As I said above, not offering the ‘right’ shibboleths right away and openly is more than enough to mark one as an infidel and a scapegoat that needs to be sacrificed as fast as possible. So as to not show the new civic religion isn’t as universal as it purports to be or believes itself to be.

Despite all of the above and the more than four thousand words it took to express these thoughts, I’m still struggling with the question that forms the title of this too long to dare read column of mine. What do you write about when the world is running down and you’re trying to make the best of what’s still around?

I could simply go back to writing about race and comics all over again. It’s old hat, but the benefit of there now being so many Black, Hispanic, Asian, Women, etc., etc., ad infinitum, writers being published, pushed to the fore, and the like, it’s actually a great time to get back into writing. All of those younger and/or more politically inclined and inspired voices can talk up the new civic religion all they want to their hearts’ content. That’s freeing to someone who wants to write about more than race, sex, etc. Those topics can be interesting at times but they aren’t the whole of the world.

I mean, do I really need to tackle those issues? I don’t really need to and definitely not in the usual ways. Although looking through the archives of this column I don’t think I ever had a conventional or politically correct view on those issues. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone I’m in no hurry to talk race and if I do it’s going to come from the very far left field (but not politically!) in a lot of ways. Then again, I was never one to fit into the slave, er, master narrative of the Black Community anyway. 

The danger in not writing about race, of course, is that I might be putting myself into the position of being That Old Man Yelling At Those Lousy New Neighborhood Kids to Get Off His Lawn or something like that. After all, my life is fairly settled. I don’t have a bone to pick with The System per se, beyond railing against the minimal amount of investment in space, space exploration, and nuclear power. Of course I grew up with 2001 A Space Odyssey; I’m still lamenting the lack of flying cars and a moon base as my fifth decade passes by. I guess I am That Old Man, after all.

Beyond the various efforts by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the fire of the 1960s to explore space and reach out has turned inwards in so many ways. While our world has become more interconnected, our technology seems more dedicated to small improvements than big developments. We communicate more and better but we are still trying to reach the stars with chemical rockets. For those who have that desire, that is. For many more people, the desire is more likely to follow the newest TikTok trend or get the new delivery from GrubHub or Postmates at our doors or gather amongst those of their self selected tribe, whatever intersectional configuration that has.

We no longer have anything higher towards which to aspire. We only have things that represent us, our most basic surface characteristics. Rather than looking to the stars and using them to guide us, to inspire us, to help us to rise, we are standing where we stand, whether it be on solid ground or mud or quicksand, and looking at those who look just like us, standing where we stand, and we are supposed to act as if that is what will fix the world. 

As if the world needs fixing that it won’t do because of and/or in spite of us humans. If you don’t believe that, what else was When Corona-Chan Came To Town? Whether one thinks She was naturally occurring or escaped from a lab or any combination of circumstances and happenstances, Corona-Chan could be an initial way the world is trying to get us humans under control or to fix itself. This isn’t a denial of climate change per se (and notice have one has to pre-apologize for anything they say these days; is that normal or The New Normal?), however it’s an understanding that not all processes at work in the world are done by us. We may reach for the stars but we are made of stardust as well. And that stardust can be buffeted about by solar winds long before it settles on any planet if ever.

As for myself, I’ve always looked to the stars as my guide and goal. Looking at those who look like me is nice, in that generic social way it’s supposed to for us humans, but it’s neither a motivator nor a satisfier. It’s that introvert/misanthrope part of my personality. I’m not interested in where the herd is going but where they aren’t or where they aren’t looking.

I suppose that spirit is nice for me, but I still haven’t answered the question. What do I write about when the world seems intent on running itself down?

Mostly I began writing as a kid to explore my own thoughts and the ways they interacted with the world. The tall tales I told myself when roller skating through my neighborhood or my grandparents’ neighborhood were extensions of the adventures I saw on television. Like nearly every superhero comics fan, I had my homemade characters and I wrote and told myself their adventures. All I wanted was to be able to tell stories the ways my creative heroes did in order to tell stories about my versions of the archetypes: The Hero, The Heroine, The Damsel In Distress, The Villain, The Sidekick, The Gal Friday, and so on. For the most part that writing goal is being satisfied by working on The Beautiful Monster. But that isn’t feeling quite enough right now for some unknown to myself reason.

Of course there always writing to write, to treat it as a spiritual practice as suggested by Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I have used her books on and off over the years as inspiration and for ideas of writing subjects. Quite honestly I could probably crank out a series of columns based on her topics alone for a year or more. For Goldberg, writing is a river into which no one steps twice. Perhaps there’s part of me that wants to step into that river as many times as possible before I get my fill of it again.

Spinning off of the idea of writing as practice is writing as therapy. Writing in public is very confessional and therapeutic. In a time when the world seems to have gone crazy and is only determined to wallow in its madness, writing could act as an anchor for myself and possibly to the Two Constant Readers (if the check clears) and anyone else who happens to stop by this digital storefront/soapbox.

And there’s always the simple fun of watching words flow out of my fingers onto the blank page on the laptop screen. Watching as words become sentences, sentences paragraphs, and paragraphs become an overly long column. As I mentioned above, the simple act of writing has been a fun activity for me going back into childhood. More that anything else I think I needed to find simply writing to be fun again. To not have any reasons for doing it other than doing it. The beauty of The Beautiful Monster is I can play with ideas and forms of writing without having to worry about them working or gelling together. That was what this column originally began as, as a place to play with words and ideas. If I’m completely honest, putting this column together was difficult. It took longer than I thought. Ring rust, as wrestlers call it, is definitely real. The words don’t flow quite the same way, although there was one paragraph in this whole mess that really came out nicely as far as I was concerned. Maybe I can get two paragraphs to work the next time.

As one last digression, even the act of writing this column took far more time than I expected due to real life being real life. For example, when I started this column, Omicron was beginning to subside and the world seemed ready to emerge from hibernation; by the time it was posted Russia had invaded Ukraine and the world was bracing for either a third world war or simply sitting and watching the birth of a new world order to complement the birth of a new civic religion. Fun times, eh?

At long last, the answer to the question of what do I write at this moment in time, when the world seems old and tired and sick and sick of itself and its peoples, is the sky is the limit.

Except the next planned column has nothing to do with the sky or anything higher. Despite my complaints about the inward direction of the world, I have to begin this new round of writing with a confession that will likely cost me even the Two Constant Readers.

Join me next time for It Isn’t You, It’s Me: Notes Towards an Introvert/Misanthrope’s Manifesto, or How to Survive Being A Member of a Society To Which One Wouldn’t Want to Belong. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?

Until next time, folks!

Namaste, y’all!