Perspective as existence

Our nation has been defeated and taken over by the evil, hateful foreigner. There is terrible humiliation to have to submit to an overpowering enemy, fulsome with pride. We will not submit! But we have to.

Look, though: It’s only Trump and the idiot twisted-jockstrap conservatives sitting on the seats of power with their soiled pants, their childish id running rampant. We’ll watch the children break lamps and windows and grandfather clocks, write graffiti (“Obamacare,” “immigration,” “pussy”) on the hallowed halls, change the rules of the games. And knowing they’ll self-destruct more than they’ll us-destruct, we realize we’ve given our lives over to these false end-time matters for so many months, have replaced our heart with CNN. We pause, and we feel the good withdrawal. We turn off the television. We leave the poisonous cloud, we fall away. We come back to life.

Smell the flowers. Save money for a vacation, or for the future. The world is the symphony playing, not the audience coughing through it. The world is being home after a party, walking the dog at midnight. It’s when Facebook is turned off, when there’s no ice cream in the house and you think you need something. It’s the self alone or with a soulmate.

What do we do to make our lives work? Mostly dream stuff, I hate to say. I see mental health patients every day – Las Vegas homeless and drug-drowned – who should be writhing in their pain and seeking help for it, but are metal-stamped with daily cheer by the groups and the workbooks and the meds and the case management meetings. And the rest of us live by diversions – all the defenses and self-medications which pretty much comprise the outer-self.

I think we need to go out walking, and on the walk not think much, just be quiet and look, and let our insides orient to time and say who we are. If we’re centered in ourselves better, we won’t lose ourselves to elections or other drugs.

The new president will be a silly guy with a job.