Acultural Shock:
I see the coming Storm
I am walking down John towards Broadway past Cal Anderson park… it is April of 2015 and I have just returned from many months.. A lifetime of months… in northern Iraq aiding in the battle against the Islamic state..
I look forward to broadway and the red lights of the sign for Scream barber shop seem to take on a special glow. I freeze as synchronicity adds a terrible flavor to the moment. A bust oasses southbound, it is a cold day, a gout of steam is emitted. And across the walkways a trio of asian girls run across the street counter to the direction of the bus; laughing as students do.
I freeze and my blood runs cold.
In the middle of my hometown the world has filled with the smoke of a war zone, and terrified kids run through billowing smoke as the world says in blood red letters… SCREAM.
And I can not move; for in this moment I realize the Syrian civil war is simply a harbinger of what is coming for us all. It is an inevitable juggernaut rolling inexorably forward in time toward this moment of terror where the most entitled city on earth will have skies laced read to animate the screams of the broken souls that run madly through the street.
I remember the phrase I had for this decades ago… it is “The Time of Tears”.
We all know and feel the approach, some sense it and lose themselves in epicurean celebration of life, some become the Ant looking on to the grasshopper with disdain. But I think we all feel it coming… and in this phantasmagoric moment, I see it in a kitschy diorama of still life that seems to last for aeon as my breath stops and my heart palpitates.
The past 5 years has been a walking nightmare with one foot in Iraq and one foot in the spoiled city of entitled brats. Knowing what is coming, as an ecologist, traveler, medic, warrior and artist. You can not look across the desert of war and not see the shining lights of the emerald city as the shore to which the bloody tide will soon crash.
And now we have our first moment. And sure we donned our pink hats at the horror of the monster that walked away with an election only lifer bureaucrats could lose. We have watched icebergs melt, democracy die and our streets and homes become places of violence and terror. But it was not until now that we faced a predator that took us by the throat and whispered passionately in our ear how it will feast on the bones of your species…
It was not until this moment where we saw that there is a space where we may scream to have our freedom taken away, because of an invisible hand that will hold our chest still and bring a painful hopeless eternal night to our eyes.
While we knew this was coming… as our visionaries spoke of it, and our scientists made reports of it… for many decades stealing from us the right to say that we were surprised. Even though none could say that this was not coming, that this was not deserved, that this was… inevitable in the every way. Even though we have no excuses, from our highest office to our lowliest workers, we knew in our bones, fr decades we would end up here.
Even through all of this. The first and tiniest of the pandemics has descended upon us and is beginning the dire feast of souls. And now that the table has come ripe and the reapers scythe sings the hollow hiss… we see the mortality of our society and our culture, and deep in our hearts something has begun to break.
What is coming is the moment that nightmares are made of…
