Calendar year 2025 began yesterday with spectacular celebrations and unfathomable carnage—expressions of love and hope at one end of the spectrum, hatred and despair at the other. Around the globe, people observed a fresh beginning one moment and mourned the death of humanity an instant later. My response to yesterday’s horror was almost overwhelming; a feeling of utter hopelessness that would not recede—has not receded. Though terrors much larger in scale have taken place in the not-too-distant past, something about yesterday’s despicable attack in New Orleans triggered an emotional reaction like none other. Coupled with worldwide violence that coincided with the New Year, the New Orleans savagery revealed my sense that anguish and despondency are among the only reliable emotions. Virtually everything else is temporary; just waiting to be incinerated by the reality that there are no solutions. Only fuel for an inevitable brutal inferno that cannot be extinguished.
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The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.
~ Omar Khayyam ~
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I am giving up on fiction, at least for now. Fiction—even whimsical, joyful fiction—cannot hold a candle to the impact of reality. Fiction cannot douse the flames that seem to be consuming humankind. Perhaps the genre can temporarily hold true existence at bay, but it cannot prevent wave after wave after wave of withering hot sand from encasing us in searing, blistering reality. In years gone by, works of fiction could have enormous impacts on society. Fiction could alter the way people thought about the social order. It could change the way we considered our options with regard to restraining our own worst collective impulses. Today, though, fiction can offer only a brief reprieve from the unstoppable march toward the extermination of the species. Fiction has become a stand-in for hope, now that hope has faded into a transparent, vaporous veil.
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A well-insulated, thoroughly comfortable, and deeply-isolated lighthouse. Almost a mile from land, reachable only when the seas are calm—a rarity. The place has plenty of desirable provisions; enough to last for years. The bed is as comfortable as a bed can be. All the wooden furniture is solid wood; no veneers. Immeasurably comfortable chairs and recliners. All the modern conveniences one might need or want, nicely packaged inside its living quarters far, far above the highest tide. Even higher than the tallest and fiercest wave. This is not fiction, by the way. It is fantasy. Delusion. Dream. Hallucination, but with meat on its bones. This is my imaginary home from now on. This is my sanctuary; my mythological retreat. It is the place I go to escape the unpleasantness of the dissolution of civility and its accomplice, civilization. I am not alone here. My companion is here with me; she and I will adapt to this tower.
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The dark sky outside my window froze last night. I reached up to touch a star, only to smash my fist through a bubble of black ice. The light from the stars above had pooled at the base of the bubble, so when my hand broke through, the light poured down on me, drenching me in a luminous glow. Starlight, after travelling so far from distant galaxies, has cooled so completely that it has transformed into ice-rays. The sharpest ice-rays tend to move exponentially faster than the speed of light, but in reverse. Some people who saw me drenched in that luminous glow this morning might have mistaken me for an angel. Those people do not know me.
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I was up before 4 this morning, which was a perfectly reasonable time to be awake, in that I went to be early and slept reasonably well—though not necessarily soundly—last night. Now, two and one half hours after rising, I am cold. Not just cold; freezing cold. If I move my fingers too rapidly, they will snap off like icicles slammed against a fencepost on a Minnesota farm in mid-January. When I turn the hot water handle on any faucet in the house, I can be virtually assured of getting lukewarm to warmer water within twenty to twenty-five minutes. Showering in the wintertime can be an exercise in icy discomfort. But shower I will. I’ll just wait to get in the shower until the water has been running for half an hour.
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Despite my efforts to the contrary, I have not become awash in cheer this morning. Perhaps a little hydrocodone/tylenol combo will erase my headache and allow me to sleep for 45 minutes before my shower. I may try that.
