November is always a warning that the weather is uncertain, sometimes sunny but not really warm, partly cloudy but not totally overcast. The wind is either still, or funneled
gusts that rise and fall. Brisk I call it. Leaves have been collected in the many scattered
piles with the help of my son Paul. He’s the horse pulling the heaped-on tarp down the
short stretch to our local depository of cuttings, leaves, and fallen branches. Periodically the adjoining neighbor has the bulk of it hauled off somewhere. Bless his soul.
Autumn can be a sentimental season. We look at where we stand with holidays approaching and size up our preparations for Thanksgiving and the holidays. Theater season is on, and I like nothing better than enjoying the work of local groups. We have many more now than back in the 70s and 80s. Even when I find a work uneven, our audiences rend their applause, make the most of the $25 or so spent on an evening of invention and dramatic commitment. Cinema may have polished performances, but here it’s raw risk.
Performative arts are the world we’re locked into. It’s always a play we’re watching no matter the angle. The play we’re performing for ourselves is also the play that others see. Life is never anonymous. It unfolds willy-nilly. We may try to hide, elude it’s impositions, succumb to its inevitabilities, or accept the fact that fate is mercurial and we are often its fools. Can we still laugh? Take it on the lamb, climb the mountain, love our humanity?
The war on human values must not erode our belief in our own divine power. It is our
responsibility to always follow our highest best interests. If true to ourselves, we always
find its just as true for everyone. Our needs change and we find ourselves seeking values in others that we hope they will see in ourselves. The redeemer lurks, and we her petitioner know the work is our own to do.
So here we are, surrounded by reality that has to balance self-interests with common good. In the absence of any reflection, caution, or conscience, the world of ego drives the wannabees into a frenzy of violence, unable are they to process the traumas inflicted by a humanity caught up in its self-righteous need for recognition. That’s not the majority, but the ego has been beaten, and panic leads to destruction rather than to a source of healing.
War takes over where wisdom lies hidden. A figure like Donald Trump emerges out of the pitiless gulf of any empathetic response in his life. And those who feel equally engulfed find common bond with his wounded pleas for acknowledgement. But like the Greek tragedies when blindness and impulse turned reason into final self-destruction, we are here in the second act when the growing pressures and cascading effects of Fate, his own creation, drives him further into the morass of his own self-pity. “Oh Woe! Oh woe,” the chorus chants. There’s no one around him to plead better vision for his own sake. Once convinced he can ignore the furies, bulldoze any and all in his path, there can be nothing but tragedy looming overall. “Thus blindness doth make fools of us all.”
Technology, the web, IT, the sectionality and diversity of each and every event, our reliance on information in one form or another, the bombardment of it all, blurring its effects, anesthetizing our perceptions, blotting out common sense in favor of packaged prose, too much to consider, get done, I’m already late, what did you say?
The streets are filled with demonstrators. Thousands of signs with colorful letters, costumes, huge puppets, everywhere, states, counties, large and small cities and towns. The crowd amasses upstage, the width of the proscenium, chanting in rhythm, joyous; the administration downstage, ridged, without sense of time nor place, Herr Leader spewing doom, right arm outstretched, a planet in its own orbit, no sense of a real future, no connection with people as humans, just objects, figurines in obsequious gesture, as the marchers inch forward, the Leader heading for the stairs stage right down to the audience, cross to the center aisle, sycophants marching behind stiffly, uncertain, unsure, Hide, Hide. Panic and dismay.
It’s all been a show, folks. You know, tomorrow we’ll all get up and go to our jobs, feed the cat, walk the dog. Was it all just a show, or was it history trying to once again rectify its mistakes. That’s our job, I thought, walking out the door with all the other participants. I’m the writer, you’re the evangelist, he’s the healer, we’re all in charge of knowing what’s right, who we are, and writing the real story, one that includes us all. Bless you.
Alan Harris of Shelburne Falls lives with wife Jane, son Paul, and cat Kiko who does the proofreading from her perch on the windowsill. Alan works on publishing a novel, singing, and hiking.