I have taken this past decade for granted, granted I could not have known that until today. At this very moment, when every other word I read either fires me up or exhausts me. So I have decided to read my current news in historical fiction instead. All the characters are either imaginary or dead. And it makes watching the world fall down around them so much less stressful. Because here we are, still reading with our eyes open, seven kinds of Armageddon loom on the horizon. It is hard being current. Being alive. Living and breathing the organic diction of nonfiction. Here we are, buried heads in the sand between us and the glowing rectangle in our hands.
Ten years ago I read a book of poetry by Raymond Carver. And I read a book on agriculture, written during those too few enlightened years back in the forties. When government subsidized farmers not to grow. Covering up cornfield graveyards with soybean blankets, and tree-lines along deep furrows and fields buried under weeds, no hand touched their seeds. Eight years ago I read a bunch of theology and philosophy and social criticism from a man, Kahlil Gibran, who was fancied enough to profit off prophet. One of the few. I worked through this point of view, and it seemed like if grass could open up its mouth and speak to us. It seemed like oceans had finally found a lawyer to make a case for their emotions. Or like if a voice had a voice. Or we met the grandparents of language. I read the gospels. I read the kings. I read the stress that hope brings.
It was amazingly not like this. Not like reading these hungry feeds. These headlines laced by opinions no one could get away with in person. Just in print. Like there really isn’t someone behind them at all. Just intent.