The End of an Era
Reflections on Loss and Belonging
I don't have much to offer this week I’m afraid. I’m grieving for the loss of one of my oldest friends, a fixture of my youth and a cherished being in my life. Nearly everyone I grew up with either knew, or knew about this person. The resounding wails of sadness erupting from people whose names I haven’t thought about in ages are making their way to my ears.
I don’t have enough hands to count the number of pivotal life experiences I shared with my friend Chris. First time sneaking out of my parents house. First time living away from home. First time taking LSD, and far too many other drugs to name here.
I am who I am because of him. I miss him dearly. And, I knew this day would come.
I hope to honor him in a more complete way at some point in the future, but for now I simply don’t have it in me to conjure some poignant or useful piece of prose.
All week I’ve been wrestling with the cultural compulsion to somehow be of use. I’m not bedridden with tears, or melting down on the phone with friends. My grief doesn't seem to work that way. I almost wish it did. Instead, I’m just contemplating the wind in some quiet stillness, watching nature wrap her arms around me and this thrumming world.
All that is to say that this week, I’m elsewhere.
Grief does not play by the rules of modern culture. And it is for that very reason that I have a deep reverence for it. Grief offers up a refreshing fuck you to the manic hustle of capitalism. Grief compels us to shut it all down, placing our cultivated identities and plans on the altar of the great beyond.
Grief, the great shatterer, the great equalizer, the great deepener. Thank you.
It’s the 4th of July today. And again, I am met with the ironic juxtaposition of “celebrating” something which by now feels like a hollow facade. Given the nightmarish state of the current American political system, especially in the wake of last week’s utterly bizarre presidential debate, forgive me if I’m not inspired. I feel like an angsty 15 year old, horrified at the high school assembly where well-developed children sculpted like Olympic gods attempt to stoke some fervent star-spangled emotion called “team spirit.”
There’s something grotesque about all of this. I’m not feeling it. And I never did.
I’m nauseated by the spectacle of American culture, this mass delusion that equates sports teams and fireworks with some coherent sense of identity. This is the sweetness we crave from real belonging sold back to us as high-fructose corn-syrup. And it’s making us sick.
I’m no longer able to feel any sense of pride or real belonging in this Imperial nation-state we call the “United” States. My initiation into the American political landscape started with the stolen election of George W. Bush, followed by a calamitous, illegal war in Iraq. Corruption and lies is all I’ve ever known here. The mythology of my homeland has mutated into something that no longer serves life and liberty, but consumes and controls it.
America the carcinogen. America the addicted. America the scavenger. America the bloated. America the ravenous. America the con man. America the racist. America the smallpox blanket. America the war criminal.