As I sat down to write this today, I checked all my usual resources. In the way of birthdays, on this date, there were many people, of all walks of life. From Antoinette Bourignon, a woman born in 1616 with a cleft palate and a hair lip. She became a Flemish mystic and a French religious fanatic. But there wasn’t much gainful to report on her life, as she kept calling for the end of the world, back there in the early 1600s. It eventually did end. For her.
There were composers and queens. Hockey players and cellists. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Dempsey, Orlando Bloom, and Liam Hemsworth. I just couldn’t get behind any of them with my words today.
I turned to those past events in our history, only to be greeted by the Nika riots, which began in Constantinople. It quickly moved to a revolt against Emperor Justinian I, which, somehow, was prompted by chariot racing. This, in the year 532. A revolt over chariot racing.
There was more of the historical same. The Kings taking control. Ships burning and sinking in harbors. Clashes. Disruptions. The story of a Connecticut man, Richard Craft, accused of murdering his wife. And then, disposing of her body in a wood-chipper. He was arrested on January 13, 1987, and later found guilty.
The historical all seemed the same to me today. Perhaps, that is why they say history repeats itself. Yet, nothing was gaining traction with me.
As these things go, I can always turn to nature and write about that. There is the magnitude of the Universe, the kind and benevolent Universe. I fall back on that often, talking about black holes, and holy comets.
And when all else fails, I can always write about the slow loris. Those rarest of primates that are so very slow, and incredibly cute. But they are also the only primate who is venomous, and one bite from the slow loris can kill a human. But they will never put anyone, never ever, through a wood chipper.
Nope. That’s all I have to say about any of it today. Right now, the normally round earth is feeling a little more like a parallelogram to me. For those who need a refresher in geometry, it is a four-sided plane rectilinear figure with opposite sides running parallel.
Yes. The opposite sides are parallel. And no matter how far you take them, to infinity and back, those opposite parallel sides will never meet. That’s how the earth feels to me today.
I wish someone could come along and give us a fairy tale or a nursery rhyme. I wish we could just hey, diddle, diddle. Cats, fiddles. And in the end, the dish could happily run away with the spoon. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
These days, I am seeing people, who seemed mostly normal a few years back, turned into violent, fanatical extremists. They wouldn’t have any part of black lives matters. Instead, they chanted blue lives mattered. And now they kill those police and anyone else who holds an opinion that differs from theirs.
And all if this in the midst of a pandemic, which has killed 376,000 people in the United States alone.
So.
I’ve been sitting here trying to find the positive side to this story.
We just have to look, for there is one beneath it all. I believe that the majority of people in America are good people. Kind people. Caring people. I believe that they believe in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and what those documents stand for, that all people were created equal, and as such, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
I hope that can be enough to hold it all together in this parallelogram of ours.
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“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
― Desmond Tutu
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“It is good people who make good places.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
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“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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Don’t let the slow loris bite you in the parallelogram.
