obfuscation

Don’t Look Up – ND #23

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Photo: L. Weikel

Don’t Look Up

We just finished watching Don’t Look Up on Netflix.  I’m still digesting it.

It’s not as if it’s a complicated plot or sophisticated premise. No, what I’m still digesting is how uncomfortable it made me feel. At least, discomfort was an initial feeling I experienced as the movie unfolded.

I had a rough idea of the plot of the movie, so the likenesses drawn to recent infamous figures were unsurprising. But the overall impact of that part of the satire was uncomfortable. (Satire doing its job, I guess.) It rang too true. In some ways, at least at first, it almost felt like a documentary.

Futility

What’s most disturbing is the inanity of society and the garbage that’s fed to us via so many outlets. While we know many people devote way too much time to staring at their screens, it’s still hard to look at that screen time being depicted as the pathetic mind-mushing tool that it is. And the vapid television programs! Oh my goodness, I just wanted to scream.

Hmm. Re-reading that last paragraph, I’m loathe to use the word ‘devote’ in the second sentence, given the sacredness with which I approach the concept of devotion. And yet I think it should remain precisely because, in so many ways, people are bastardizing the concept of devotion and applying it to objects or activities that actually disconnect them from all that is sacred or precious.

Yet again, the topsy-turvy, inside out reality we currently live in was on display. How do we counter craven power-seeking and money grubbing?

Photo: L. Weikel

Big Issues

This movie’s catastrophic event comes from outside of us – at the edge of our solar system, to be precise. But the analogies to the myriad big issues we have screaming for our attention (to just LOOK AT them, perhaps, and choose NOT to look away?) of our own making were obvious.

It’s unsettling to contemplate the reality of potentially losing everything we have here on Earth. Yet for me I think what’s most maddening is that we still have the ability to make some huge course corrections – but continue to fiddle around the edges.

I truly believe we still have time. But does it fit into our electoral schedule? I don’t know. The sense of urgency we should all feel about voting rights (here in the U.S.) bears directly upon the urgency demanded by climate change. We’re playing with fire right now. We can’t let those beholden to the (literal) dinosaur-based energy paradigm delay and obfuscate one more day. The tears rolling down my cheeks at the end of the movie were real, as was my desire to transmute my discomfort and sense of futility into action.

I believe the coming year has all the makings of seismic shifts in attitude and strategies. The sighted must take the wheel before it’s too late. Watch* and see if you know what I mean.

Feeling Passionate – Photo: K. Weikel

*and don’t miss the Tuvan shaman at the end of the movie, either.

(T+23)

Sheila Speaks For Me – Day 431

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Sheila Reacting to the State of the World – Photo: L. Weikel

Sheila Speaks For Me

The wind is howling outside, banging and clattering our wind chimes, making our window panes rattle back and forth and our front door occasionally burst open, not unlike Kramer making an entrance on Seinfeld.

Both the melodic clanging and the <<kloop kloop>> of our bamboo chimes outside sound so wild and undisciplined, I wish I could just stand on the edge of my porch and allow all the garbage of the world to whisk itself into the ethers.

If only it were so easy to clear away the old away.

Cleaning Out

Beginning during the days between Christmas and New Year’s, I’ve been sporadically binge-cleaning. I’ve donated a lot to charity, given away a fair share to family, sent some off to recycling, and thrown a bunch of stuff away entirely because it’s old, out of date, practically in tatters, or just astonishingly dumb to allow it to keep circulating in my inventory.

When I listen to that roaring wind blowing down the 611 corridor and into my living room, I’m hoping it will serve to further clean me up, clear me out, and coalesce The Tower’s presence and utterly necessary process in my life.

Everything is Changing

Beyond my personal needs and experience, today, with the official opening of the Senate Trial and the concurrent revelation and exposure of new evidence of – and rulings on – the impropriety (if not outright illegality) of certain behaviors of DT, it feels like these whipping winds are arriving just in time.

They’re stirring up, clearing out, sweeping away the lies upon lies we’ve been told for years now – the denials and demands that we not believe our own eyes and ears – by a myriad of actors, a tragic number of whom have taken oaths to act on behalf of the good of our country. And I wonder, if you look around in your own life: are there people or situations about which you’ve been told lies or, perhaps worse, have been lying about to yourself?

Have the north winds arrived with sudden, sweeping gusts, blowing away the unnaturally warm air of obfuscations to bring the cold clarity of truth?

It can be chilling on many levels to realize trust has been broken. That our faith in what we believed was true was, in fact, misplaced.

If any of these thoughts or feelings, worries or suspicions ring true for you during these tumultuous times, then perhaps you, too, feel like Sheila speaks for us all.

(T-680)

Fog – Day 429

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Foggy night – Photo: L. Weikel

Fog

As within so without.

In the vicinity of my home, a couple of alerts have gone out this evening warning of the presence of heavy fog.

It’s true. It’s thick out there.

Just now, I went out on my porch and took a shot at trying to capture the fog on my phone’s camera. The result is above.

The weather has been downright weird for about a week now. And life in general has struggled to mirror it. Things feel out of balance; skewed. Shrouded in obfuscation.

Clarity

The opposite of encountering a fog bank, I’d venture to guess, is a condition of crystal clarity, when everything within eyesight is discernible in high resolution perfection.

What happens when we encounter a fog bank? We’re pressed to rely on other senses. Not so easy when one is driving a car. But easier, somewhat, if standing around or walking in the thick. Our ears prick up. Our skin tingles. We rely less on sight for clarity and more on an overall bodily sensing.

This post is a bit foggy, I’ll admit. I’m trying to locate some other senses through which I can discern some clarity, but am finding only the desire to sleep.

I was surprised, when I went outside to take in the fog, to see a bunny hop out from the dripping hosta carcasses and scamper onto my driveway. It’s not common to see rabbits this time of year. Even less common to see them well past midnight in the dead of a January fog.

Playing with fire, I’d say. That rabbit could easily become owl food if it’s not careful.

Caught him! But where’s the fog? Weird – Photo: L.Weikel

(T-682)