The general

 

Am I that close to end of life that I see most things on the cosmic scale? The number is sixty-nine. But I find all the political oppositional-defiance and conflicts infant tantrum-ish, stupid, mind-numbingly boring. Yes, I know life is supposed to be savored, lived in the moment, that the minutiae should be galvanizing for a vital person. But that’s for young children making a friend, a child and her puppy, children swimming in a lake, a child tickled (in both ways) that a ladybug is making a ladylike march up her arm. It’s not for all the adults living in their head, their attitudes that come from ignorance and pain, rather than from the world. Their substance is submerged suffocated feelings, thoughts about concepts. There is nothing real about them or their philosophies. Philosophy only happens when people don’t have answers in psychology, in who they are. You don’t wax ethereal about Beauty or Morality if you know your human nature. You don’t create vast metaphysics and epistemologies if you grasp our oneness with any given atom.

Movies and stories about a murder or other terrible crime may be compelling. But I’d replace them all with one line said by the narrator: “He is a mental disease that didn’t survive his childhood but in an unlivably twisted form.” That would be all the neces­sary truth, and dramatic enough.

There is some ignorance which we should poeticize. We don’t know why we love, or what it is, but it’s compelled to write its poetry. It’s good magic that comes from mystery, while crime and bad character and terrible fools like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump come from poison. There’s no mystery there.

I don’t believe I’ve found it difficult to live on a broader, general sweep, on the cosmic scale. There will always be moments when it steps aside for its betters. A lady bug crawling so rightly up my arm would be one of those moments.