A Howling

Sylvia Shawcross

We must greet each other now not by vague kisses in the air off to the side, or handshakes or elbow touching, but by reaching out and touching the cheek of the other.

This is to remind us of how our faces were covered over—muffled, muzzled, muted. We must not forget the way we were and how we chose and choose to be. Of how we chose compassion over judgment, faith over fear, reason over mayhem, sovereignty over cult, freedom over bondage, truth over propaganda, and love over hate. In so many different venues and in so many different ways. Despite the high price of doing so. And still do. But never mind all that.

Is it not astounding how much money there seems to be to fund studies that show that the unvaccinated are evil and stupid and selfish and terrible drivers and insane apparently?

And how all this sudden adult death syndrome thing is the result of climate change, cold weather, fear, pollution, and too much exercise in the heat and the absurd list goes on.

And yet, we do not have enough money apparently to do autopsies on most of those who died, or to fund studies to understand why more vaccinated than unvaccinated are in hospital and/or dying or why nobody is dying much more than usual from covid in Africa with a low vaccination rate or why Sweden with no lockdowns has faired better than all of us?

Funny that is. If not tragic.

We spend a lot of money trying to prove what remotely might be true rather than proving that which is highly likely to be true but as always that is another story for another day. It is simply another dollop of incredulity added to the unease of the thinking human being. And we cannot have such unease in the scripted world so it is labelled conspiracy theory and we can move on. Into the narrative we made so different from reality. Reality now heretical. Again, another story for another day.

And so now, in this great ghastly world in which we all live, great swathes of history sweep over us now like a silencing wind. How are we mere mortals to come to terms with such a vastness of unknowns?

If we are lucky, we are “in” the world and not “of” it, which is the only way to be while the Gods play their games and we become as insignificant as as pebble on a road or a leaf in a whirlwind or a mosquito on a rhinoceros.

We are both significant and not. We are everything and we are nothing. We are living in the New Abnormal.

Did we have any choice? That is the precise question we need to ask now because as long as we do nothing, then we have had no choice. And we will have thrown the strivings of untold generations of humans to that silencing wind—to the Gods that play—to groups of people who are trying to save the world but care nothing about the way your child stuck their tongue out in the rain and laughed that very day. To people who would make machines of us. For their fear. Their plans and constructions and greed–all a testament to their fear.

Once we have merged with the machine with its predictability and control, “all that made us” becomes part of an oppressive mechanical world where input equals output. We become just the tinkered utilitarian toys of measured minds that never touched a caterpillar on a summer leaf or loved so well their hearts became limitless—their human soul brimming a river to a sea. Not measurable by any human. And never by any machine.

They who want to dissect and mechanize and own the world do not know the human soul. We have loved this planet longer than they have had their dreams of power. We have truly loved beyond the greed and control and utilitarian curiosity. We have loved like children with their passions and their spontaneity. We have loved when love was lost and loved when no soul was there to see us.

Those who are small in their vast power do not see their own poverty nor smallness. Nor can they hear the fervent prayers that the rabble say that twirls and whispers in that silencing wind. The poor, the broken, the sad, the lonely, the fearful. How can those who are small in their vastness know what they have never known?

How could they craft a world to hold a boundless spirit? All the love we have given and strived for was not in fear. Never that. It simply was human. It serves no purpose beyond itself.

We are born to die but we are also born on this planet, this extraordinary place and here is where we will die. We are asked by some religions not to love this world, that there is a better world beyond this. How is that even possible when up above us, the clouds couch the sun and the birds murmur and a drop of water holds a universe and stars field the infinite? We are human. We are unable to not love. We know no other way.

We are not machines.

We are not machines and we do not choose this world they are making. Because they are making it. That is what they are doing. When humans seek to be Gods, the magic dies and the hollow wind is deafening.

And that is why, no matter who you are, you must do that which you must do, whatever you believe. There may be very few chances again in history. Just do no harm. For harm has broken many but it cannot break us all. Howl now, into the silencing wind.

Sylvia Shawcross, Montreal