| Ozymandias Melancholy |
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| Global Warning | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Tuesday, 08 August 2006 | |
Springfield, Virginia, USA. Whenever we find ourselves growing grim about the mouth, whenever a damp, drizzly November grips our souls and we start reading funeral notices in the Washington Post, we look to our partner, our best friend, our spouse, to help us make it through our dark night. And if there is no one … To some extent, we are all alone, even as we follow a path taken by thousands before us. At some point in this long strange trip, when transition seems improbably distant and gathering the money for surgery impossible, we all reach the edge from which there is no return.
 Those who have been our friends, our family, seem remote from turmoil tearing us apart. If we could be sure we would not met by derisive laughter, we would reach out, just as so many before had look for support from us. Our childhood religions, once beacons for our stability, now cast us adrift. Our gods, once merciful and understanding, throw us into eternal flames: we deserve to be cast into hell. Priest and preacher raise no objection against God using his power to destroy us. Damnation does not slumber.
The feeling of being alone in the fight can be overwhelming. The despair of risking everything can freeze us in mid-step. The demands of remaining silent resolve themselves as our finger slow pulls the trigger.
Foolishly we delude ourselves, confident in our ability to keep our identity hidden. We pretend to be like all the others, confident we can live with slipping in.
 We are nothing but shadows living in a world of our unmaking, going places we never intended to go, arriving with obligations that we should never incur. In our desperation, we costume ourselves with roles and missions, committing to ill-fitting fabrics we cannot unravel. We outwit ourselves with our foolishness and inviting our inevitable destruction.
We all do our best to hold closed the floodgates, less they fly immediately open and wash away our careful constructions in inconceivable fury. Inside each of us, the great waters rise, increasing more and more, higher and higher, until they burst over our lives, stripping us from our choices.
The road to survival runs through friends and family. If the old ones abandon us, deserting us in their prejudices or misunderstandings, we must replace them with new ones. If our religions deny our existence and condemn us to everlasting wrath, we need create new theologies churches that reach out to all the others, unfamiliar orthodoxies that do not deny science or physical realities.
We are alive and need to bond, find the one who loves us – as we truly are -- and cleave to them forever. Love pulls our fingers from the trigger, brings us out of our despair and gives meaning to our lives.
We must be willing to take that step, to be ourselves in the bright focus of the high noon sun. If we chose to remain silent, hidden within stealthy lives, the end is inevitable.
I chose life. What do you?
Come out and join us.
[Ed. Note: Jane Cannary died alone in 1903. She is buried next to Wild Bill Hickok in Mount Moriah Cemetery, overlooking the city of Deadwood, South Dakota.] |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 17 September 2006 ) | |
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