I don’t know what it was about today, but things did not seem to be what they appeared. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they didn’t appear to be what they were. Either way, the trickery with which I felt my eyes and brain were being teased was unexpected.
I think I was expecting the light of this powerful full moon to illuminate everything that needs to be seen, both easily and obviously. If we have been deceiving ourselves, then certainly it stands to reason that when the big reveal arrives, we should be able to recognize it. Right?
Well, maybe that’s not the way things really work. I don’t know.
Or maybe some things were being revealed while others were just messing with me. Or – a third option: maybe the ephemeral is the reality. Maybe what I take to be something certain and obvious actually isn’t.
My first example of what I mean is the creature I encountered early this evening as I was driving home from the grocery store. The moon was just coming above the horizon and was filling the backdrop of blue-black sky with an eerie orange glow. I rounded a 90 degree turn and this was standing in the middle of the road. It took me by such surprise that I had to fumble for my iPhone – and even when I found it, I only managed to take this single photo.
I think it’s a chupacabra. And I think it usually disguises itself as an 8-point buck.
Sea Lion Amused at the Illusion – Photo: L. Weikel
Number Two
My second surreal moment today came while permitting myself a couple moments at the creek. The weather was flawless. Ha ha – I take that back. In all the vastness of this perfect autumn day, one single cloud appeared in the middle of that cerulean sea. Even that moment felt like it was hinting that there’s more to what things than what meets the eye.
But the photo below took what felt like an inordinate amount of time to come into focus. It literally felt like my brain was doing that in-and-out with a telescopic lens that cameras do now. No matter how I looked at this photo, I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of it.
The wavy attempts to focus and make sense of what I was seeing did settle. And when they did, I very clearly saw the smiling Sea Lion sitting at the base of the portal – err, I mean, the shimmering entrance to another world.
So, you tell me. What was revealed? The truth of the way things really ‘are?’ A glimpse into another realm?
Which makes me also wonder what ‘the truth’ is about the things and circumstances I’m seeing now in other areas of my life. Am I engaging in trickery over myself?
There was something about today that just doesn’t seem quite…right. I’m finding it a little difficult to articulate just what it is, but it’s real. Watching it all unfold, in real time, like a slow motion train wreck, however, is a bit surreal.
Everything about today, in one way or another, felt like it was being experienced by me, but from afar – sort of from an observer’s perspective. The conversations I had, the people I encountered, the weather, the interviews on tv – the videotape of statements made by DT – the headlines. I feel like I’m watching it all play out before me in some grotesque nightmare. But surely, I tell myself, it has to be something from which I’ll awaken.
It doesn’t seem possible that I’m seeing what I’m seeing and hearing what I’m hearing.
It doesn’t seem possible that we are actively being lied to about something as serious as a pandemic. By our own president. By our own vice president. It feels like a surreal horror show to be watching officials from governmental agencies staffed by the highest caliber scientists in the world stand behind a man who makes it all about him, whose only concern is ‘the numbers’ associated with how many people in our country are infected with the coronavirus – as if it is a game show. As if real people are not losing their lives every day as a result of his egotistical need to massage ‘the numbers.’
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
A Crisis Worse Than the Virus
Far worse than any virus is the crisis of VERACITY we’re witnessing. We’ve been groomed for this for at least three years, fooling ourselves that truth didn’t matter. Allowing the blatant lies to stand. Laughing it off in that screwed up, ‘boys will be boys’ attitude that dismisses and permits an astonishing amount of bad behavior in our society in all sorts of situations.
Remember the lies about inauguration crowd size? Well, that didn’t actually matter, did it? I mean, it was – what? A lie that everybody could see was a lie but, since it was The Donald, and – ho ho ho – he’s such an exaggerator – we could let him have that little white lie. Meh; soothe that ego. What could it hurt?
What it hurt is coming home to roost now. And we can be sure it is directly resulting in scores and scores of people – our most vulnerable fellow Americans, our elderly, our already sick and compromised – suffering from unnecessary profound illness and even dying.
How? By inuring us to the lies about things that we can see unfolding before our very eyes. By telling us that we cannot trust facts and figures from scientists or independent journalists who’ve spoken directly to hospital personnel and know the truth of how many are being tested. No – we’re supposed to trust someone who doesn’t want to allow 3,500 people essentially trapped on a cruise ship off our shoreline because allowing them to disembark and receive treatment on land will ‘hurt his numbers.’
The Big Lie About Tests
Do we fully comprehend the insidious nature of the lies we’re being told about the lack of available testing kits? We had months to prepare for this crisis. We had months to have reliable tests at the ready for when the virus inevitably arrived on our shores.
But did we have our act together? No.
We were told to disbelieve the experts. The virus’s arrival wasn’t inevitable. Not according to the best hunch of you-know-who.
And are we being told the truth now about the impact of this lack of tests? No.
Why Does This Matter?
This matters because it fosters a head-in-the-sand approach to this entire mess. The lack of tests perpetuates an illusion that only a few people are infected. This denial of reality, coupled with the fact that many people who are infected actually do not suffer serious symptoms, is what is creating the crisis and making it exponentially worse.
How? The ‘leaders’ of our country are actually encouraging people to continue going to work and to go about their daily lives in a ‘nothing to see here’ attempt to stave off the trauma to our economy that consumers staying home will create. And if people who are carrying the virus but are not showing symptoms borrow your pen at work, touch the ATM machine, handle your produce, offer you change, touch door handles, faucet handles, coffee cups – you get the picture – then anyone who is vulnerable because of age, underlying conditions, breathing difficulties, exhaustion, or any other condition that weakens their immune system could become very, very sick or die.
Knowledge is Power
What no one in the Administration is apparently thinking about is how far and wide this can be spread by people who show mild or no symptoms. That is why we need access to hundreds of thousands of tests – if not millions. Because knowledge is power.
Knowing you have the virus requires taking responsibility to refrain from infecting others. And that is why the testing crisis is bigger and worse than anyone wants to admit.
Telling ourselves that there are only X number of infected people (because we’ve only tested a small number) is self-delusion. It will not result in fewer serious illnesses and deaths. It will only enable the virus to spread undetected far and wide, thereby sickening and killing exponentially more people.
The emperor has no clothes. The virus is running rampant through our country – just like it’s running rampant across the planet. Pretending it’s not – ‘thinking positive’ by telling ourselves there aren’t that many infections (because we’re not testing to discover those infections) is incredibly naïve, delusional, and when deliberately implemented as a governmental policy? Criminal.
I knew they’d happen. You knew they’d happen. It was inevitable, really. And today is one of those days.
Perhaps it’s the number? 440? I can’t say it holds any special meaning for me one way or another. But it seems like a nice round number to get stuck on.
Or maybe the pelting sheets of rain that pummeled our area today left me, at least, feeling waterlogged? Yes, maybe all my inspiration got swept up into the streams overflowing their banks and barreling down the roads in muddy rages.
Detours were in place.
It could’ve been snow.
Sheep – Paused
We had to stop the car and turn around. Neither one of us felt the scene could be real. Stealthily maneuvering our Prius so that it was facing the meadow from a little used connector road, we stared at the long line of sheep coming and going – or at least frozen in motion while doing so.
Karl and I looked at the sight before us and felt a sense of unreality around us. There had to be 50 or so sheep in a row appearing to tread out to pasture. About half were headed one way on the muddy path and the other half, headed in, toward the barn, were on a collision course with them.
But the weird thing was that, in fact, none of them were moving at all.
